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Clasificación:
Explícito

Advertencia de archivo :
Representaciones gráficas de violencia

Categorías:
F/F, F/M, M/M

Fanático:
Harry Potter - JK Rowling
Relaciones:
Regulus Black/Personaje(s) femenino(s)
original(es), James Potter/Lily Evans Potter,
Sirius Negro/Remus Lupin, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa
Black Malfoy, Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas
Meadowes

Caracteres:
Regulus Negro, James Potter, Lily Evans Potter,
Sirius Negro, Remus Lupin, lucio malfoy, Narcisa
Malfoy Negro, Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas
Meadows, Walburga Negra, Druella Rosier Negro,
Bellatrix Negro Lestrange, Orión Negro, Cisne
Negro III | El hermano de Walburga Black,
Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Albus
Dumbledore, Tom Ryddle | Voldemort, Alastor
"Ojo Loco" Moody, Peter Pettigrew, Eufemia
Potter, Monty Potter, María Macdonald

Etiquetas adicionales:
Regulus Black merece algo mejor, Regulus Vidas
Negras, Buena Narcissa Black Malfoy, Mal Padre
Walburga Negro, Mal padre Orion Black, Los
negros necesitan terapia, Reparador de viajes en
el tiempo, Obscenidad eventual, Quemadura
lenta, El manipulador Albus Dumbledore,
Trastorno de estrés postraumático: trastorno de
estrés postraumático, Protector Sirius Negro,
Protector James Potter, Protector Remus Lupin,
Antes de la Primera Guerra Mágica con Voldemort
(Harry Potter), Primera Guerra Mágica con
Voldemort (Harry Potter), Moralmente Gris
Regulus Negro, Moralmente gris Severus Snape,
Anne Potter, moralmente gris, Espía Severus
Snape, Espía Regulus Negro, La amistad de Sirius
Black y James Potter, Harry Potter tiene un
hermano, Dumbledore haciendo pelear a los niños,
Regulus Black toca el piano, BAMF Eufemia Potter,
Orden del Fénix (Harry Potter), Mortifagos,
Personaje principal de Slytherin, Política de
Slytherin, Albus Dumbledore atacando, BAMF
Regulus Negro, Agresión sexual
implícita/referenciada, Abuso sexual pasado,
Bisexual Regulus Negro, Violencia doméstica
implícita/referenciada, Pelusa y obscenidad,
Protector Severus Snape, Protector Regulus Negro,
Caza de horrocruxes, Referencias de Ana de las
Tejas Verdes, Referencias de El Pequeño Príncipe

Idioma:
Inglés
Colecciones:
Fics de HP que amo , otra vida, otro mundo , mi
corazón está aquí , los mejores ficciones de Harry
Potter , las mejores ficciones de Harry Potter de
todos los tiempos , las ficciones favoritas de
Magnolia
Estadísticas:
Publicado: 2022-02-01 Terminado: 2023-02-21
Palabras: 539,604 Capítulos: 142/142
Comentarios: 887 Prestigio: 1.759
Marcadores: 455 Golpes: 88.249

Desde el Edén
INFPescritor
Resumen:
Anne Potter fue enviada al pasado
con la esperanza de arreglar todo
después de que la Orden perdió la
Segunda Guerra Mágica y con la
esperanza de devolver todo lo que
Harry había hecho por ella
dándole una infancia normal.

Sin embargo, descubre que

incluso después de todo lo que
hizo y pasó, todavía merece un
final feliz, incluso si tuvo que
luchar por ello.

Notas:
Este Fanfiction ha estado en
desarrollo desde hace algunos
meses y he estado
extremadamente nervioso por
publicarlo, aún así espero que sea
bien recibido por el fandom.

He estado obsesionado con

Regulus durante casi dos años y
todo lo que él representa, así que
traté de mostrarlo bajo la luz que
aprendí a verlo: un niño
traumatizado siendo presionado
hacia la perfección, tratando de
compensar lo que su hermano no
pudo. hacer. Espero que les guste
a todos, aunque es un proceso
muy lento.

Capítulo 1 : Prólogo

Una chica que no conocemos apareció en la cima de

la colina de Hogwarts en un destello de luz azul y
cayó al césped con un ruido sordo, el aliento escapó
de sus pulmones con un fuerte 'oof'.

La chica que vemos es un desastre.

Vestido con pantalones vaqueros que estaban rotos

en un largo chorro en la pierna izquierda y la
sangre manchaba la tela azul claro, los bordes de
los pantalones estaban ligeramente chamuscados
cerca de las canciones manchadas de sangre y
suciedad que alguna vez fueron blancas. Su camisa
también había sido blanca, pero ahora estaba
amarillenta por el sudor de los días, la sangre que
no estaba del todo segura no le pertenecía y la
suciedad de las varias veces que la habían arrojado
sobre las ruinas de la escuela que había una vez
llamado hogar. Tenía una chaqueta sobre su ropa
delgada y esa parte de la ropa estaba un poco más
limpia, porque se la había puesto apenas un par de
días antes del día en que fue arrancada de su
realidad: había un poco de sangre cerca de la
cremallera y vómito en las cuerdas de la capucha.
Su piel era blanca y alguna vez había sido clara,
pero ahora estaba claramente herida: cortes,
moretones y cicatrices por todo su cuerpo, y su
cabello era de un tono rojo vibrante y se pegaba a
la sangre seca del chorro de su frente y al sudor de
sus mejillas hundidas. La piel debajo de sus ojos
era oscura y sus ojos marrones eran de un rojo
brillante e hinchados. Parecía enferma, como si
hubiera llorado durante días, no las pocas horas
que había pasado en el mundo que conocía antes.

Esa niña tenía muchos nombres; diferentes

personas la llamarían diferentes nombres.

Su tía y su tío la llamaban 'niña' y, a veces (cuando

estaban realmente enojados) 'perra'; su prima
también la llamaba "niña" o "prima" cuando estaba
en público, pero evitaba usar su nombre y hacerla
parecer remotamente humana a sus ojos. Su
hermano mayor la llamaba 'Lia' cuando estaban
solos, les enseñaron a no usar ese nombre cuando
tenían cuatro años y su tía les levantó la mano por
primera vez cuando la llamó así de fuerte en la
casa, desde ese momento En ese momento él solía
llamarla 'Anne' cuando estaba en casa. La gente en
la escuela también la llamaba 'Anne', aunque una o
dos personas insistieron en llamarla 'An', como si el
nombre fuera demasiado largo para pronunciarlo
completo y a ella realmente no le gustara. La gente
que no le agradaba y todos los profesores la
llamaban por el nombre que compartía con su
hermano: 'Potter', lo único que parecían haberle
dejado sus padres además del dinero y un mundo
que sólo conoció cuando tenía diez años y le
quitaron a su hermano durante un año entero. Al
año siguiente la llamaron para unirse a su pequeño
mundo secreto y seguro.

Pero ese mundo nunca estuvo seguro.

Anne Potter nunca estuvo segura mientras era

Potter. Ese apellido parecía cosa de novelas que le
gustaba leer; convirtiéndola en el objetivo de un
villano adulto cuando apenas tenía edad suficiente
para alimentarse sin que su hermano le recordara
que lo hiciera cada vez que estaba concentrada en
algo. Y ahora, por culpa del mismo villano, lo había
perdido todo.

Los recuerdos todavía estaban claros en la mente

de Anne mientras yacía en el césped, mirando el
cielo oscuro y las estrellas que brillaban sobre ella
burlándose de su dolor. Su hermano con los ojos
verdes abiertos y desenfocados y un gran chorro en
la frente, la cicatriz debajo de toda la sangre y
tierra del lugar donde fue arrojado sin cuidado al
suelo frente al castillo; él vivió y se despertó poco
después de que ella cayera de rodillas en estado de
shock, pero no todos lo hicieron. Su mejor amiga,
toda rizos morenos y ojos marrones, gritaba y
lloraba debajo de un hombre mientras pateaba,
mordía y luchaba con toda su voluntad. Ronald,
acunando el cuerpo de su hermana pequeña
mientras lloraba, el cuerpo de su madre a sus pies
y su padre peleando, sin mirar dos veces a la
familia que poco a poco se hacía más pequeña.
George con ojos inexpresivos mientras intentaba
que Fred despertara y terminara la broma que
estaba haciendo antes de que toda la pared cayera
sobre él. Su padrino Remus tomándola del brazo y
tirando de ella, dándole una pequeña caja y
diciéndole que corriera, encontrara a Harry y lo
arrastrara con ella lejos de ese lugar. La luz violeta
vino directamente hacia ella y cayó de bruces al
suelo, la pequeña caja en su mano estrellándose
contra ella y el sonido de vidrios rotos con el dolor
agudo en su palma. Luego, la oscuridad. la
pequeña caja en su mano chocando contra ella y el
sonido del vidrio rompiéndose con el dolor agudo
en su palma. Luego, la oscuridad. la pequeña caja
en su mano chocando contra ella y el sonido del
vidrio rompiéndose con el dolor agudo en su palma.
Luego, la oscuridad.

Ahora ahí estaba ella.

Lentamente, su cuello se arrastra lentamente hacia

la derecha, sus ojos abandonan lentamente el cielo
y miran hacia la mano sangrante. De su palma
sobresalían fragmentos de vidrio y había arena
blanca sobre la hierba y sobre su sangre.

Anne volvió a mirar al cielo.

¿No se apiadarían de ella los dioses de la familia y

apagarían las estrellas?

El cielo estaba tan claro y se veía tan bonito que

sintió que no tenía derecho a estar debajo de él ya
que no sentía nada más que oscuridad y odio por el
destino. ¿Por qué los dioses de la venganza no le
sonreían y le daban la oportunidad de lograr lo que
su hermano no logró? ¿Por qué estaba sola? Así
que... total y terriblemente sola.

Su mano izquierda buscó el bolsillo de su chaqueta

y sacó los dos trozos de madera que solían ser su
varita. Se le dio un vuelco el estómago cuando lo
vio.

Había estado en medio de una guerra y sus oídos

todavía no habían registrado el silencio absoluto
que la rodeaba, pero, cuando lo hizo de repente, se
dio cuenta de que nadie la había atacado y no
escuchó llantos, gritos ni peleas. se quedó quieta
por un momento mientras se asfixiaba con el peso
de la comprensión de que estaba más que sola...
estaba en un lugar que reconocía, pero se negaba a
creer que era el lugar al que normalmente llamaría
hogar.

Se concentró lo mejor que pudo en el aire sobre

ella nuevamente.

" Tempus", murmuró, esperando que eso

funcionara. Su voz sonaba torcida y entrecortada,
probablemente porque no había bebido agua en
mucho tiempo o tal vez porque había gritado
mucho durante la batalla. Aún así, culpó a su voz
cuando su hechizo sin varita no funcionó. " Tempus
", intentó de nuevo, con los ojos llorosos en señal
de súplica.

Números verdes aparecieron frente a sus ojos,

brillando débilmente como advirtiendo que
desaparecerían muy pronto.

03:53, 05.03.1976.

Casi las cuatro de la mañana del día después de la

batalla que en el futuro se llamaría Batalla de
Hogwarts, la batalla Voldemort finalmente se
apoderó de todo el Reino Unido de una vez por
todas, pero esta vez el año iba muy mal. – ella
estaba demasiado retrasada.

She looked in her right hand again, the throbbing

pain suddenly reminding her of thinking about the
destroyed box and shattered glass and a thought
came to her head like a slap on the face. A Time-
Turner. That made sense; the small blue and fragile
box, the glass in her hand and the sand around her
wounds and on the glass underneath her.

The box had a Time-Turner inside and she had

broken it. The numbers disappeared and so did the
little courage Anne had managed to gather before
walking right into the battle they lost.

Anne’s eyes filled with tears as she sobbed at the

stars as the stars twinkled as if trying to comfort
her somehow. She let go of her wand as she cried
and gave up, knowing very well her chances of
going back and finding the people she loved well
and happy were ever so slim – no; not slim, but…
impossible. There was nothing left for her in the
future.

But there was a chance in the past. A chance to

make everything alright.

Chapter 2: Chapter One

Summary:
Trying to talk to Dumbledore once
one knows what he's capable of is
certainly harder than Anne
expected it to be.

HOGWARTS

Have you ever dreamed about a loved one after

they died and had the most peculiar feeling that
they were still alive once you awoke, dear reader?
A feeling ever so realistic that you feel that if you
search well enough, it’s capable to find the
deceased well and happy, walking around and
laughing in the company of friends and family.

To Anne, looking at Dumbledore and seeing him

pacing around his study and seeing him looking
back at her, was simply out of touch with the
reality she had.

Ella nunca había sido tan cercana a él como lo

había sido Harry, pero seguro que no había sido
fácil para ella después de su muerte: el dolor y las
reacciones de Harry no habían sido saludables y
ella comenzó a ser víctima de su ira; ella era su
hermana pequeña y él se sentía responsable de
protegerla, por lo que con la muerte de
Dumbledore las cosas se volvieron mucho más
difíciles de lidiar con su aplomo sobreprotector de
hermano mayor. Luego, los Horrocruxes entraron y
arruinaron aún más su cabeza, haciendo que fuera
insoportable para ella estar cerca de él y mostrar
sentimientos negativos, porque él comenzaría a
odiarse a sí mismo y a culparse a sí mismo.

La muerte de Dumbledore, para muchos, fue lo que

realmente inició la guerra y demostró a todos la
verdadera amenaza que rodea a la gente sencilla
del Mundo Mágico.

Mucha gente no se había dado cuenta de que la

guerra comenzó mucho antes de eso, en el
momento en que Harry y Cedric se aferraron juntos
a la Copa del Torneo de los Tres Magos y cayeron
en un cementerio oscuro y espeluznante con el
propio Voldemort esperándolos. La guerra comenzó
con el asesinato de un niño y terminó con el
asesinato de otro niño: esta vez, Harry.

La guerra es algo terrible; un lobo hambriento que

come todo lo que encuentra a su paso, no duda,
simplemente toma lo que puede conseguir – no hay
diferencia entre santos y pecadores, mujeres,
hombres o niños. En la guerra, un corazón
palpitante es suficiente para convertirte en un
objetivo, sin importar de qué lado estés. Hay algo
sobre la guerra que los adultos nunca parecen
entender, sin importar cuántas veces la hayan
pasado antes: las acciones negativas conducen al
caos negativo, y el caos negativo es destrucción en
su máxima expresión, mientras que las acciones
positivas conducen al caos positivo, y al caos
positivo. es constructivo y digno de enseñanza. Y la
gente mira hacia atrás y aprende la verdad sobre
cosas tan simples sobre la guerra y la paz.

Se preguntó si el sentimiento en su pecho, que la

asfixiaba, era tristeza por conocer su destino o si
era enojo por saber lo que hizo y aún así llevarlos a
perder.

Anne pensó que lo más probable era que fuera ira:

una persona no cambiaría tanto de una buena
persona a una persona que estaba dispuesta a
manipular a la gente y criar niños para que
creyeran en teorías divinas sólo para llevarlos al
matadero una vez que fueran. edad suficiente;
Dumbledore aún tenía que hacer todas esas cosas,
aún así Anne sentía ira por él hirviendo en su
sangre. Si fuera por ella, lo mataría ella misma y
temía no arrepentirse.

No era como si no hubiera matado antes. No era

como si no estuviera lista para matar una vez más.

"Creo que necesitas asistencia médica", dijo

Dumbledore de repente, deteniendo el paseo. Su
voz sonaba más curiosa que cualquier otra cosa.

Por supuesto.

Dumbledore era el tipo de persona que vio a una

chica de dieciséis años aparecer en la puerta de su
escuela ensangrentada, herida y exhausta y no
despertar nada más que curiosidad en su pecho:
sin preocupación, sin preocupación por su bienestar
a pesar de la cortés y obvia observación. después
de que ella le contó una historia de una hora y lo
vio pasear por su oficina durante diez minutos
completos en silencio.

Anne permitió que sus dientes casi se rompieran

mientras los forzaba uno contra otro para mantener
todos los insultos en su cabeza y salir por su boca.

"Tuve cosas peores", dijo, ignorando su cortés y

obviamente falso cuidado girando su mano
sangrante con la palma hacia abajo, lejos de sus
ojos. “Profesor, me encantaría ser delicado y
cuidadoso con esto, pero estoy muy cansado. ¿Vas
a empezar con las preguntas que sé que están por
llegar o puedo dormir una buena hora aquí? No me
importa dormir en una silla. Sólo me importa tener
que verte pasear toda la noche”, se quejó,
acercando los pies a la silla y apoyándolos en el
brazo de la misma. Eso la dejó en una posición
incómoda, pero estaba muy segura de que eso
llevaría la indirecta a un punto en el que ya no
podría ser ignorada.

Estaba cansada, hambrienta, afligida y privada de

sueño.

El 'puente de confianza' que estaba tratando de

construir con ella era inútil, porque ella lo conocía
demasiado bien y él pareció entenderlo mientras la
miraba con ojos azules brillando con vacilación. Ese
tipo de manipulaciones habría funcionado en su
versión de once años (lo hizo antes), pero seguro
que no funcionaría ahora.

“Perdóname, niña”, dijo, y ella hizo una mueca por

la forma en que lo dijo, “pero siento que
necesitamos repasar tu historia una vez más”,
insistió.

Ella contuvo un fuerte suspiro y simplemente se

burló con cansancio. Ella había explicado
superficialmente, pero muy bien, que había viajado
en el tiempo por accidente durante los años 90,
cuando ella y el resto de la Luz acababan de perder
la guerra: Harry acababa de ser enterrado vivo por
una pared, Hermione fue violada antes de que le
cortaran la garganta. destrozados por los dientes
de hombre lobo, los gemelos destrozados para
siempre, los Weasley destrozados y Remus
ensangrentado de arriba abajo, su esposa no
estaba a la vista, el nombre de su hijo fue la última
palabra que soltó con dificultad en los brazos de
Anne.

“¿Cuáles son tus preguntas entonces?” preguntó,

apoyando la cabeza en el respaldo de la silla. Su
cuello crujió.

Eran casi las cuatro de la mañana y estaba tan

cansada como podría estarlo una niña, a segundos
de desmayarse de agotamiento.

"Entonces, ¿no giraste el giratiempo?" el Confirmó.

She raised her hand, showing the glass on it, but

didn’t look away from the ceiling. Her eyes were
threatening to close at once, but she forced herself
to stay awake; she refused to show how tired and
weak she felt to Dumbledore at the moment.

“No, just broke it by accident,” she explained. “I

thought about coming back and killing young Tom
Riddle, of course, but the 70s was the opportunity
given to me,”

“You are aware of the consequence of meddling

with time, aren’t you?” he asked, left eyebrow
raising.

“Of course, I do, I’m not that stupid,” she answered

in anger, finally looking down from the ceiling and
into his eyes. “The idea of not existing anymore
scares me, yes, but… it would be worth it. I don’t
mind it. As long as we win the war this time
around, I don’t mind what happens to me. I can
take it. I’ll be more than happy to let my family
survive this,” she explained. “Dying as a martyr
isn’t half as bad as I thought I’d die, actually,” she
confessed. “Quite the legacy to leave behind, don’t
you think so, Professor?” she asked, eyes becoming
blurry with memories and distant from the past –
present.

Dumbledore seemed oddly annoyed by her lack of

love for her own life, but admired her for a second
too long as she lost herself in her own memories as
if wondering how to scold her for that.

“Yes, you said we lost,” he said out loud, but

sounding more lost in thoughts than in a
conversation.

“I suppose so. I don’t think my memory is bad

enough for me to forget to say something like this,”
she said. She slipped her feet back to the ground
and sat straight on the chair again. “Call me a Seer,
a crazy bint, I don’t know… I don’t care, just make
sure to trust me and make your ridiculous little
minions believe me too,” she hated begging, but
she was ready to do so – for Harry, for her own
little version of months old being left in the
doorway of a hateful family. “I can change the
world. I can help and save people,”

“Changing the timeline is dangerous. We never

have any type of certainty to fall back on. If we
start changing everything, perhaps we’ll lose the
war again and things will get even worse than it
already was in your time, Miss…” he hesitated,
“Potter, you said, am I right?”

"Lo hice, sí", respondió ella. “Profesor, no hay

forma de que las cosas empeoren de lo que ya
estaban, ¿de acuerdo?” dijo demasiado alto.
"Escucha", dijo más abajo y respirando
profundamente para calmarse, "los muggles se
enteraron de nosotros y estaban tratando de
matarnos a todos, incluido el lado de la Luz, no les
importa si estamos tratando de matarlos a ellos". .
Los muggles no entienden la magia y no quieren
entenderla. Quieren ponerle fin porque no saben
cómo afrontar lo desconocido. Además, Voldemort
mató a todos los que tenían algún cambio en la
dirección de la guerra antes de matar nuestra única
esperanza...

“Que era tu hermano y sus amigos”, completó,

asintiendo lentamente. "Me resulta difícil creer que
un chico de diecisiete años pueda ser de alguna
manera el salvador del Mundo Mágico".

“A mí también me resultaba difícil de creer y, sin

embargo, lo criaste para que creyera tal cosa desde
que tenía once años y descubrió el mundo mágico.
Seamos honestos, reunir niños como soldados no
está por debajo de ti”, le escupió. “Sé que suena
loco, créanme, lo sé. No tengo ninguna razón para
mentirte sobre esas cosas” se rascó la frente con
demasiada brusquedad, la sangre seca pasó por
debajo de sus uñas y enrojeció y marcó su piel.
“Puedo beber Verituserum o lo que usted quiera
que haga, señor, pero esto también le salvará la
vida. Tu mueres. Mueres en 1996, te matan y luego
te caíste de la Torre de Astronomía y mi hermano
tuvo que vigilarlo. No hago esto por ti, hago esto
por él”.

Durante toda su vida, Harry se aseguró de que

Anne tuviera suficiente para comer, cuando ambos
se vieron obligados a pasar mucho tiempo sin
comer, ella le daría su porción de comida para
asegurarse de que estuviera bien. Él se acurrucaba
lo menos posible para darle espacio en el pequeño
armario que compartían cuando eran pequeños. Él
aceptó maleficios, maleficios y maldiciones por ella;
era su momento de hacer algo por él, incluso si eso
significaba que nunca podría vivir con él y
agradecerle en voz alta por todo lo que ha hecho
por ella.

“Ya veo”, dijo.

“No, no lo haces. Mi hermano aún está por nacer y,

hasta entonces, usted es nuestra única esperanza,
señor. Voldemort te teme”, continuó.

"Voldemort me respeta", corrigió.

"Él te odia", respondió ella. “Él le teme, pero nada

más, señor. Tom Riddle es un hombre inteligente y
astuto, pero nada más que un mestizo ambicioso y
muy desagradable con un complejo de inferioridad
que desarrolló porque fue maltratado durante su
infancia, simplemente está chupando el poder de
las personas que pueden dárselo. es un paralelo a
mi hermano, y el pobre niño creció escuchando
esto”, dijo más enojada de lo que esperaba. “Le
gusta el poder, sabe cómo exprimirlo de la gente
que se lo puede dar. Haría cualquier cosa por ello,
creería cualquier cosa por ello; Él sabe cómo
funciona esto”.

"El conocimiento es poder", asintió Dumbledore

distantemente, asintiendo lentamente para sí
mismo.

“Power is power,” she corrected him this time,

voice sharp. “Look, we’ve been through this before.
You made your little speech to me before, even if
you can’t remember it. You can’t teach me shit –”

“Language, Miss Potter,”

“Fuck my language!” she screamed, getting up

from chair and stumbling with the wave of pain that
shot up her leg. She held onto the back of the
chair. “I’ve been awake for 38 hours, I stink and
I’m starving, I’m dirty for head to toe with blood
that’s not even mine and dirt from months camping
on the bloody forest!” she stumbled once more and
stood straight, trying to be as tall as him. “I don’t
care if you’re offended by my bloody vulgar
vocabulary, Professor. I need you to understand
me, and I need you on my side on this,
understood? For now, you’re my only hope, even if
that makes me hate myself even more than usual,”
she sighed and looked down in defeat, eyes filling
with tears, but holding them back. “I’m just so
exhausted…”

Dumbledore watched her a second.

"Un Slytherin", supuso. "Debería haberlo visto

venir", murmuró. “¿Qué obtendrás de esto?”
preguntó más fuerte.

Anne lo miró con una expresión en blanco, su

cuerpo estaba demasiado cansado para entender si
debería estar de alguna manera desconcertada por
su acusación o debería reírse de lo ridículas que
sonaban esas palabras y lo sencillo que podía estar
Dumbledore, exhausto y molesto.

Sin juegos de palabras, sin cambios de poder,

simplemente acusaciones.

No era un secreto el claro disgusto de Dumbledore

por la Casa Slytherin en general, incluso si tenía a
Snape como su pequeña mascota en el momento
en que ella creció con normalidad. Sólo le gustaba
Snape porque Snape estaba dispuesto a hacer sus
cuentas; ser el malo cuando Dumbledore no pudo
hacerlo él mismo, demasiado asustado para
ensuciarse las manos en público.

El recuerdo del rostro de Snape cuando la vio por

primera vez – el shock y la incomodidad que los
rodearon durante todo el primer año – la hizo
morderse el interior de la mejilla para no reírse a
carcajadas o sonreír. Snape tenía más o menos su
edad ahora y eso sería bastante incómodo.

"Lo perdí todo la primera vez", explicó. “No tengo

nada más que perder, sólo puedo ganar con esto y
tú también. Si bien nuestro objetivo es el mismo,
no tienes motivos para preocuparte por mis
lealtades”.

"¿Es eso una amenaza?" preguntó, interesado.

"Una promesa", corrigió de nuevo. "Mira... lo sé, es

extraño lo sincero que estoy siendo y lo sencillo que
suena, pero creo que si ambos somos honestos
aquí, entonces podremos trabajar juntos con bajas
menores".

“Te llevaré a cumplir esa promesa”, respondió.

Y así, Anne Lily Potter se convirtió en Anne Cordelia

Sage, pupila del propio Dumbledore, la segunda
hija de Jonathan Sage y Lilian Sage, una pareja que
vivía en Canadá, pero envió a su hija a pasar los
últimos dos años en Inglaterra. en la escuela de su
mentor por razones relacionadas con el dinero.

Sage, decidió Dumbledore, era el apellido más

seguro que podían elegir para ella en un momento
como este. Eran una familia de sangre pura que se
mudó a Canadá en los locos años 20 por
asociaciones comerciales que insistían en que era
más fácil ganar dinero allí y muy famosos por los
dones de adivinación y los videntes que aparecían
en cada dos generaciones de lectores de Tarot y
otros talentos relacionados con esa área de
profundidad. , magia subjetiva.

Si Anne dejara escapar algo de su boca, nadie se

inmutaría si ella ya fuera una Vidente de una
familia tan antigua. Además, como mestiza (una
traidora de sangre, pero criada en una familia de
sangre pura), su protección era casi necesaria y
ningún sangre pura tonto intentaría meterse con
ella cuando tenía a la Casa de los Sabios y a la
familia Dumbledore de su lado.

A partir de ese momento, Anne fue más de lo que

nunca fue: ya no era Anne Potter, la hermana
pequeña del Niño-Que-Vivió; ella era Anne Sage,
un nombre que era una amenaza por sí solo.

El poder que le daba ese nombre y tanta confianza

era difícil de describir y fácil de usar, fácil de
disfrutar.

She had been warned, of course, to try and stay

under the radar of people that would not be happy
with her presence in there (Voldemort himself), but
by her smirk Dumbledore knew that such request
had been listened by deaf ears and attentive
portraits who were confused by her presence in
there.

Her wounds had been treated in secret by

Dumbledore himself. She was less wounded than
she looked. She had just one broken rib and cuts
and bruises around her body, but nothing that was
life-threatening; still, Dumbledore couldn’t help but
notice she flinched when he brushed against her
arm. He watched her as she gathered the clothes
that he got her and left to the bathroom in the side
of his office to change.

She hadn’t told him much about her life before the
war, the life she had before Hogwarts to him in her
little story-telling time, but it was very clear to him
that, whatever that life was, it hadn’t been good at
all. The flinching, the way she hoarded the sweets
he gave her and shoved it deep into the pockets of
the pyjamas he gave her, as if she scared that he
would change his mind and take it all back from
her, the attentive eyes over all his little
movements.

It had also been decided that, although she was a

Slytherin, she would be safer in the Gryffindor
House, the House of the Oblivious (name she
suggested herself, making Dumbledore sigh).
If she allowed something too obvious escape in the
Slytherin House, she wouldn’t be safe anymore,
besides, they both agreed that it would be
important for her to be close to her parents – Lily
and James Potter – to make sure they would end
up together. Dumbledore and her were ready to
change the timeline, allowing themselves to take on
the consequences of changing so much suddenly,
readying themselves to not care the wounds and
battle scars that would come to them.

“I ask your permission to share this with one

specific person,” said Dumbledore as he walked her
to the Gryffindor Tower.

“Who would that be?” she asked, not really

enjoying it.

“Minerva, profesora Minerva McGonagall”,

respondió, “creo que será mejor si ella sabe la
verdad sobre su origen. Quizás no para hablar
sobre el resultado de la guerra, pero ella necesita
entender por qué estás aquí y tan perdido... Ella lo
notará.

“¿Notar qué?” preguntó Anne, deteniéndose frente

al retrato de la Señora Gorda.

“¿Alguien te ha dicho alguna vez lo parecido que

eres con tu madre?” preguntó, con los ojos
brillantes y centelleantes como si conociera un
secreto profundo. “Pero tus ojos… son de color
marrón oscuro, como los de tu padre”

“Sí…” refunfuñó. "Lo escuché una o dos veces"

Era lo primero que la gente le decía cuando se

encontraban. Algo que pocas personas podían pasar
por alto. Ella siempre fue la pequeña Lily Evans,
nada más que eso, aparte de la hermana de Harry
Potter.

Se preguntó si ahora que sus ojos todavía estaban

vivos y ya no eran sólo el recordatorio de un
cadáver, seguirían siendo igual de importantes.

Capítulo 3 : Capítulo dos

Resumen:
Interactuar con la familia
ciertamente no es lo más cómodo
cuando no saben quién eres.

ANNE SABIO

Moverse en absoluto silencio en medio de la noche

del lunes en un dormitorio lleno de chicas jóvenes y
cansadas es un desafío que sólo alguien que creció
en hogares tóxicos, se vio obligado a vivir en
dormitorios o un veterano de guerra podría
afrontar, querido lector.

Afortunadamente (o desafortunadamente), Anne

era ambas cosas y pudo mudarse a la nueva cama
vacía en la esquina de la habitación (cerca de la
ventana que daba al Bosque Prohibido) sin
despertar a nadie y sin tropezar con nada.

Anne sonrió mientras se sentaba en la cama. Había

sido exactamente el mismo lugar donde dormiría en
su época. Ginny estaba en la cama al lado de la
suya mientras la pared estaba del otro lado.

Se asomó a la cama a su izquierda y casi contuvo

la respiración por la sorpresa. Era otra chica
pelirroja, pero le tomó sólo un segundo ver que no
era Ginny.

La niña no estaba rígida ni se movía con cada ruido,

estaba relajada y dormía con los labios abiertos, la
baba se acumulaba en la almohada debajo de su
cabeza; esa niña era Lily Evans, su madre. En la
oscuridad, iluminada sólo por la luz de la luna el día
antes de la luna llena, era claro ver el tono vibrante
del cabello rojo y el tono pálido de la piel; Tenían
mucho en común, pero la cara de Anne tenía más
ángulos, mientras que la de Lily era más suave y
parecía bastante más baja que Anne.

Anne took a moment to appreciate it and think that

maybe her father was tall, because she was pretty
tall when compared to Harry, five whole
centimetres taller than him and Lily didn’t seem
much taller than Harry’s height, so Anne must have
got that gene from someone else.

She had never taken too much time thinking about

her parents; they hadn’t been in her life and she
couldn’t remember a single thing about them, after
all she was only babe when they passed away – a
few months old, while Harry was already a whole
year-old.

She hoped in silence that things wouldn’t be too

awkward.

Lily’s eyes opened when she felt too watched. In

her sleepy state, she looked in confusion to the tall
girl standing near the window and pulling sweets
out of her pockets and putting them all underneath
her pillow.

“Who are you?” Lily asked in a small whisper.

Anne turned and hesitated.

She thought it wouldn’t hurt, but it did – her

mother didn’t recognize her. Not that she expected
her to, but still her heart ached for a second.

“Anne Sage,” she answered, “just transferred back

from America,”

Lily squinted her eyes, looking her up and down as

if trying to decide if she was real.

“No one told us about a transferee,” Lily said. “I’m

a Prefect, I would’ve –”

“I wasn’t expected,” Anne cut her off. “Go back to

sleep. We can talk in the morning, it’s very late.”

Lily didn’t seem too excited about ignoring the girl

and going back to sleep, but it was Monday (well,
not anymore; by that hour, it was Tuesday) and
she was clearly tired about school and homework.
She went to sleep seconds after the small
discussion.

Anne sat on the bed and pulled her legs under the
covers and watched Lily’s back move with her
breath.

Things were going to be more difficult than she

expected. The way her heart skipped a beat when
her mother talked to her had made it sure to show
her that the several soon-dead people she’d see
were going to make her feel heavy and guilty, even
if she had nothing to do with their deaths – she was
only a kid when most of them died, there was
nothing she could do about it.

Lying wasn’t difficult to her.

Anne had knack for lying ever since she was a

child, easily escaping trouble by blaming other
people and managing to stay close enough to the
truth to make the other children so confused that
they started believing they were guilty themselves.

After all, Petunia and Vernon had created the

environment where liars would thrive and honest
people would get punished more often – then, there
was the explanation about how well she fit in
Slytherin, she lied her way through interactions and
managed to keep tracks about what lies she told to
each person, never being caught red-handed and
charming her way out of situations she didn’t want
to be in. She made quite a few people wonder if
they were losing their minds under her gaslighting,
not that she was all too proud of it, but she knew it
was necessary.

Harry, however, was too honest and too open to be

a good liar; he would get found out and punished
for the smallest of things and smallest of lies,
sometimes even doing so in purpose so people
would stop looking at Anne and suspecting her to
be the guilty one (even when she was), the only lie
he learned to use so often that it sounded like truth
in his lips was ‘it was me’.

Understand the mind of children in abusive homes,

please, dear reader.

Harry would take over the role of mother and father

to Anne because they both lacked that much in
their lives and, as older brother, he was taught in
movies and books that it was his responsibility to
make sure Anne would still be a child, even when
he couldn’t be one himself.

Anne, however, had been blind to the reality she

lived in for years and through that sleeping in the
cupboard was not something odd, she thought it
was nothing but her duty to clean and cook when
she had been taken in by the Dursleys – she had a
fairly normal childhood when compared to Harry;
he would take over her duties to let her play with
the small and dirt rag that she called a doll when
she was young and went as far as creating stories
about why their parents weren’t there when she
was just six-years-old.

Anne had been a child, while Harry was never given

the chance to do so.

She just wanted to pay him back now. Perhaps it

was simply selfish to want to take care of her
brother because she didn’t want to owe him
anything, but the intention was more important
than anything else when at situations such as
these, she supposed.

Anne no durmió nada esa noche, simplemente se

sentó en la cama y miró por la ventana, viendo la
luna grande y brillante que a veces se perdía de
vista detrás de las nubes que pasaban
rápidamente.

La luna casi llena se la hacía simplemente

imposible.

Nunca había amado la luna tanto como otras

personas.

Si bien Harry a veces miraba por la ventana y

observaba la luna durante unos minutos antes de
irse a dormir, decía que eso la calmaría. No, Anne –
sentía como si su corazón se apretara y se
desgarrara cada vez que la luna llena aparecía en el
cielo; ahora, le gustaba pensar que era porque
había una pequeña parte de ella que recordaba lo
cansado y destrozado que se vería su padrino
Remus cuando iba a visitarlos, y luego creció y notó
cómo él tendría que sentarse. para poder cargarla
en su regazo cuando tenía trece años y lo visitó
después de la experiencia casi mortal de Harry en
cuarto año.

Salió de la habitación y se puso su uniforme para

caminar hacia la Sala Común, aburrida de quedarse
allí en silencio.

Abajo, la Sala Común todavía estaba vacía cuando

llegó allí y se sentó cerca de la chimenea para
calentar sus pies fríos, pero no podía estar
demasiado cómoda por mucho tiempo, porque
alguien se rió cerca y se acercó.

Ella miró por encima del hombro y se congeló, el

chico que venía hacia ella también se congeló.

"Tú no eres Evans", dijo.

Por un segundo, Anne estuvo segura de que era

Harry, pero luego se encontró con unos ojos que
vería todos los días en el espejo. Le dolió el
corazón: era James. Era su padre y él ni siquiera la
conocía en ese momento.

“No, me temo que no soy ella. Todavía está

dormida”, respondió. “Hola”, sonrió, levantándose
de su asiento y extendiendo la mano, “soy Anne
Sage. Acabo de regresar de Estados Unidos”.

"Soy James Potter", se presentó. "No tienes

acento", dijo, levantando las cejas.

"Todo el mundo tiene acento", respondió

rápidamente, moviendo las cejas también. Tenían
expresiones similares y eso hizo que Anne sonriera
antes de que bajara las cejas, incómoda. “Crecí
aquí, solo estudié en Estados Unidos. Mi madre y
mi padre también son británicos, pero viven en
Canadá… parientes lejanos de la rama principal de
Sage House, soy mestizo”.

James, sin embargo, no parecía muy interesado en

la historia de la Casa, la que ella había estado
entrenando para contar durante mucho tiempo en
el fondo de su cabeza. No. James estaba interesado
en otra cosa.

“¿Creen realmente los estadounidenses que el café

es mejor que el té?” preguntó, como si esa
pregunta fuera una prueba.

Ella parpadeó.

"¿Perdóname?"

“Estadounidenses: una vez los vi bebiendo ese

maldito café horrible, estaban de viaje y dijeron
que les gustaba más que el té. ¿Todos tienen un
gusto tan terrible? preguntó una vez más,
especificando su pregunta un poco mejor esta vez.

"No todo. A algunos les gusta, a otros no. Pero

conocí a estadounidenses a los que les gustaba más
el té que al café y a británicos a los que les gustaba
demasiado el café para mi gusto”, sonrió.

Tenía una sonrisa juvenil, lo que lo hacía parecer

más joven de lo que realmente era una vez que se
entusiasmaba con algo.

Mirándolo, Anne se preguntó si Harry no tuviera

ese estrés y experiencias cercanas a la muerte todo
el tiempo, tendría la misma sonrisa y actitud
infantil y descuidada.

Sus ojos casi se llenaron de lágrimas cuando notó

la escoba en su mano derecha.

“¿Juegas Quidditch?” ella preguntó.

"¡Oh sí! ¿Tú?"

"No bien", bromeó. "Pero mi hermano sí... era un

Buscador".

“¡Un buscador! ¡Malvado!" sonrió una vez más.

“¿Quieres…” dudó, “Quiero decir, no estoy
coqueteando ni nada, espero que lo sepas… pero…
¿quieres verlo hoy? Mi amigo Sirius está a punto de
bajar e irse también, es un Golpeador. Ah, y mi
otro amigo, Remus, también vendrá. Le gusta
mirarnos, reírse de nosotros cuando fallamos o
cuando caemos; es un imbécil, de verdad, pero un
imbécil genial”.

Remus, su padrino; el hombre que la envió al

pasado, el hombre que le salvó la vida. El hombre
que no logró salvar a él y a su esposa. Su hijo, solo
con su abuela; otra víctima de la guerra, otro
huérfano abandonado por una guerra en la que no
tenían por qué luchar. Remus debería haber tenido
a su hijo y a su esposa y haberse mudado fuera del
país como Anne le rogó que hiciera, pero no lo
hizo; dijo que no dejaría a Harry y a Anne atrás,
pero la verdad es que no los dejaría. todos los
recuerdos y la valentía que tuvo que reunir para
estar en Inglaterra; él era Gryffindor y lucharía
hasta el final.

Sirius, her best friend, her confidant from the late-

night talks in Grimmauld Place. The man she had to
watch leave her and her brother; the death that
literally broke Harry, the death that made the war a
bit too real to her. He had been the man that would
make her tea and bring it to her room when she
wasn’t feeling well after she got back from the
Dursleys and the man that made sure to walk her
and Harry to the station in his animagus form even
though he would be killed on sight if discovered.

“Hm…” she hesitated.

“Oh, yes, and Peter. He’ll come a bit later, he still

wants to sleep a bit more, but he’ll show up at least
for breakfast, I’m sure. He’s cool too, a bit shy, but
he’ll open up after a bit, so don’t feel too awkward
around him.”

Peter. The traitor. The disgusting and vile little rat

that was the reason for every second of Anne’s
suffering. The man that had held onto her skirt as
he begged for his life in the Shrieking Shack, telling
she was as pretty as her mother – she had never
been so disgusted for being called pretty before,
she had never been as disgusted for being touched
before, and she hated being touched already.

“Oh,” she mumbled once more, hesitation leaving

her voice and only fear trembling it. “I… I suppose I
could go. I don’t know anyone yet.”

“That’s alright. I’m sure Remus will be happy to

show you around, he’s a Prefect. He’s sort of forced
to be that type of person,” he winked.

“I could never,” she tried to joke, trying to forget

the yellow teeth of Peter chattering as she held him
down on the floor before punching him for the first
time when she was fourteen. “I’d rather die than be
nice all the time to everyone.”

“You’re being rather nice to me,” he teased.

She smiled in secrecy, but didn’t answer.

The outside of the castle was colder than she

imagined it to be when she looked outside through
the window and, now, she was quickly starting to
regret not bringing some type of coat. It didn’t take
long before she remembered she didn’t have a coat
with her.

Remus glanced at her through the corner of his

eyes once more, clearly uncomfortable with the
noise of her teeth chattering as she watched the
practice with attention.

“Oof!” she made when James missed a goal. “Just a

little to the right and he would’ve gotten it,” she
mumbled to herself.

“Anne?” he called, she looked at him. “Do you – Do

you want my jacket? Your lips are turning blue.”

“You’re too kind, Remus, I wouldn’t dare,” she said

in her most diplomatic voice.

The truth was that Remus’ presence was far more

comforting than she remembered it to be. He didn’t
have all the gory memories and terrible guilt and
mourning in his heart; he was young and wild, he
was ready for adventure, but not for a war. He was
boy. He was innocent. And Anne wanted to keep
him like that.

Remus seemed to have liked Anne. She didn’t look

twice at his scars and didn’t ask questions, still she
didn’t uncomfortable with him nor curious, nor
scared to ask. Anne had accepted those scars and
secrets as part of him; that was because she knew
all his truths, but of course he didn’t know that part
of it all, but still it was valid for him.

“Nonsense. I run hot often, so whenever you’re

cold you can ask for my jacket. I wear it for style
more anything else,” he teased.

He wore jacket more because the scars on his arms

were far worse than the ones in his face and people
would stare more often, not because he was cold –
he barely felt any difference of temperature with or
without his coat. There was nothing stylish about
his clothes, either, especially that old jacket; it was
old, there was parts he had mended himself in the
muggle style and it was far from pretty with its
yellowish-beige colour.

“Style that I admire,” Anne jumped into the

conversation, smiling at him. “You look like a
muggle history professor in Oxford or something,”
she joked. “You are only missing elbow-patches.”

“I love elbow-patches,” he said. “I’m just holding

on from buying them for when I really get into
Oxford,” he joked back as he took off his jacket.

“I’m sure you could do it,” she said.

Without his jacket now, he turned to her and held it

behind her back, willing to help her get it on. She
smiled at him, thankful, as she passed her arms
through the holes, eyes still darting around the
people flying in the broomsticks.

They hadn’t been talking a lot during their time

together in the Quidditch stands.

Remus had been very focused on his Charm’s Book

and a bit uncomfortable with the idea of making
conversation with a girl he didn’t know without his
friends nearby to support him, while Anne seemed
very interested on the training itself – eyes glued to
the people flying, sometimes looking down and
freezing in place, clearly lost in thought, before
shaking her head and going back to cheer mostly in
silence. But now, Remus thought it was a good
moment to start a conversation as he closed his
book and put it beside him.

“So…” he hesitated, “do you like Quidditch?”

“I’m an enthusiast, yes, but a terrible player. I

have no motor coordination at all. I suppose my
brother got it all before me,” she said, shrugging.
“Of course, Harry is the best Seeker I’ve ever –”
she stopped herself. “Harry was the best Seeker
I’ve ever seen,” she corrected, voice shaky.

Remus blinked once in shock.

Alright… No talking about Anne’s brother (Harry).

Whatever had happened it was not his business just
yet.

“I can understand that,” he said, nodding. “I love

Quidditch, really do. Been watching it faithfully
through all my years in Hogwarts, but never really
got to feel well on top of the broomstick. My feet
were made to stay on the ground.”

“Yes!” she laughed, nodding in excitement that

someone had finally understood her. “Sirius is very
good, very quick. But James – oh James! He’s
wonderful!”

Remus looked down, not embarrassed or

disappointed, but somehow uncomfortable. He
should’ve expected one of the only girls that was so
nice to him to have her eyes stuck on Sirius or
James as soon as she met them. No, he wasn’t
interested in her in any malicious way – he had
never been interested in a woman in such a way
before; but he had really hoped her attentions
would be turned to him just for a little bit more.

“Yeah, I suppose they are,” he mumbled.

Anne didn’t seem to react to his awkwardness. She

didn’t even seem to notice it.

“Sirius could, however, pay more attention to

whatever he’s doing though. With his eyes
travelling around like that, never paying real
attention to the Bludger, he’ll kill someone –
reckless and irresponsible,” she said, shrugging.
“But James… is he trying to show off to someone?
Why is he flying like that? He should focus on the
goals, and that’s all.”

Remus chuckled in surprise.

“And here I thought you’d be swept away in just

one training session,” he teased.

“Me? It takes a lot more than watching boys flying

around to sweep me off my feet, Remus,” she
teased back. “Besides, James only invited me out of
pity.”

“Pity?” he asked. “James is not the type of guy to

feel pity for someone, let me warn you now,”

“Me vio solo justo antes de la práctica y me

preguntó si quería jugar solo cuando le pregunté
sobre la escoba. Fue una pena después de que me
confundiera con Lily Evans, a quien claramente no
esperaba ver en la sala común temprano en la
mañana”, explicó. "Sirius está siendo amable
conmigo porque James se lo dijo, pero en realidad
no le gusta que esté cerca de ustedes, de ahí las
dos palabras que me dirigió en las tres horas que
estuve aquí: 'buenos días'. Eso fue todo lo que dijo.
Y tú, bueno, no estoy seguro de por qué estás
siendo tan amable conmigo, pero claramente no
estás interesado en mí, porque estás mucho más
interesado en Tauro Harriman, quien, por cierto, es
Estoy muy interesado en ti, amigo, así que...
adelante, ¿supongo? ella divagaba.

Remus solo la miró fijamente por unos segundos.

"Que -?"

“Soy bueno captando señales sociales, Remus. No

te preocupes. No me gustan los chismes o algo así,
lo encuentro bastante aburrido, de verdad”, dijo,
poniendo los ojos en blanco. "Sal con quien quieras,
no es asunto mío"

“No, no es asunto tuyo”, estuvo de acuerdo. "Pero

lo reuniste todo bastante rápido, si llegaste aquí
anoche".

"Él te mira como si fueras algo para comer y...

bueno, no lo haces mucho mejor cuando lo miras a
él", respondió ella. “No te culpo. Está
maravillosamente en forma. ¡A por ello!" estrechó
su mano derecha como si estuviera agitando un
pompón como una animadora. “REMUS”, cantó en
voz baja, distrayéndose cuando James iba a toda
velocidad hacia la meta una vez más y dejó de
cantar poco después. "¡Oh, vamos, sólo un gol!"
ella suplicó al cielo.

James falló el gol una vez más. Anne maldijo un

poco.

"Está bien... entonces, sabes que soy un marica",

dijo, asintiendo para sí mismo.

“¿Así es como lo llamas?” preguntó ella, mirándolo

antes de levantar la vista de nuevo.

"¿Como lo llamas?" preguntó.

"Gay", respondió ella. “¿Es esa una mala palabra?

No lo sabría”.

Remus se encogió de hombros.

"Yo tampoco lo haría", respondió. “Entonces, sabes

que soy raro. Crees que Sirius es imprudente,
irresponsable y no le agradas por tu apellido. Y
crees que James se compadece de ti porque vio a
una chica bonita sola temprano en la mañana. No
eres tan bueno con las señales sociales como
crees”.

Ella lo miró.

"¿Ah, de verdad?" ella preguntó.

"Sí. James probablemente te invitó aquí porque

piensa que eres bonita y, por lo tanto, quiere que lo
animes y seas amable con él en público para
mejorar su juego con la chica con la que te
confundió. ¿Lily Evans, dijiste? Bueno, te pareces a
ella”.

“James is not interested in me. That’d be

disgusting,” she said more to herself than to
Remus. “He was just being nice.”

Remus nodded again. James sometimes would be

nice to random people just for the wish of being
nice, but it usually would be towards very young
students or random male Hufflepuffs, but never a
random new-student of older years.

“It could be,” he said, not really believing it

completely, but not wanting to bring it up. “James
is nice a lot,”

In Anne’s mind, the image of Severus Snape yelling

at her and telling her to look away from him while
he struggled to get up from the ground after a
small accident on their private Occlumency lesson
when she pushed back his advances a bit too hard,
just enough to get into his mind by accident, came
forward. She looked down, remembering her father
laughing as Sirius held Severus and pulled his
trousers down.

No, James was not nice a lot.

Of course, contrary to her brother, she didn’t cling

to the idea that Remus and Sirius passed down to
them that their father was perfect and good and
brave; no, like any Slytherin, Anne was taught very
early to see and understand people’s weaknesses
and mistakes, either to use them or to love that
part of them just as well.

She understood too that, much like Harry and

Draco, James and Severus seemed to have a rival-
thing going on; it was not one-sided bullying or
teasing.

Seeing that Anne didn’t answer, Remus looked at

her to see her looking away from him and from the
game. Her eyes were stuck to a tree near the Black
Lake, the tree where Severus Snape had been tied
up on his memories – memories that didn’t happen
yet. They would happen soon.

“Anne?” called Remus.

“James is nice a lot,” she repeated. “But Sirius is

not, but he’s trying for James. They seem close.”

“They are. They’re brothers, much closer than real

brothers,” Remus answered. “If I didn’t know them
any better, I’d say they were a couple.”

Anne chuckled.

“They’d make a good couple,” she commented.

Remus laughed.

“Sirius is very protective over James, so don’t take

it too personal. He doesn’t know you and James
seems to want to take you under his wing for
whatever reason,” Remus explained. “Sirius just
wants to make sure you’re good enough to stay
near James.”

“I can understand that after all he’s been through,”

Anne mumbled, too lost in the fact that she hadn’t
slept at all, ate very little and was very much tired
under so much pressure to care that Remus
wouldn’t understand her very well.

Once again, Remus looked at Anne in hesitance.

“What do you mean by that?” Remus asked.

Anne blinked twice, coming back to her new reality.

“Sirius Black… everyone knows about the family

Black and its scandals here in England, no surprise
to see him being so protective over someone with a
surname that was close to the Blacks a few decades
ago,” she lied exactly what Dumbledore told her to
say.

“Anne Sage,” he pondered. “The Sages and the

Blacks were close?”

“A very long time ago. Our grandparents time,” she

answered.

“So, you’re a pureblood,” he guessed.

“Half-blood. Dad’s pureblooded, Mum’s a

muggleborn… hm… Lilian Granger, well Lilian Sage
now,” she lied, using the easiest surname she could
remember.

She couldn’t very well use the surname Dursley,

could she? If Lily heard, she would maybe ask
questions, because it was impossible that such a
hateful and distasteful surname to be common
enough for her to hear from someone in school and
from her sister’s soon-to-be-husband.

“I’m a half-blood too,” Remus said. “Dad’s a

pureblood, Mum’s a muggle. Rather romantic story,
really. Proper bookish. She was attacked by a
boggart and Dad saved her,” he told, smiling a bit.

“That’s sweet,” Anne admitted.

“And your parents?” he asked.

She hesitated and Remus took a small breath,

trying to understand.

“Not nearly as romantic, I’m afraid. Mum hated

him, Dad loved her – he made it clear through time
and after some time she decided to give him a
chance after he matured enough to be a proper
human-being. They dated a bit and married right
off school,” she shrugged. “Dad was cocky, for all
I’m told. Mum was proud and a bit snobbish.”

“Pride and Prejudice all over again,” Remus teased.

“With a lot less money and balls involved, but yes,”

Anne laughed.

The loud whistle made Anne jump and hold Remus’

left arm with her hands, holding him in place and
preparing.

For a moment it was like going back in time all over

again, waiting for the loud boom that often followed
the whistle of a falling bomb, the shifting inside of
her calling for her attention and telling her to hide
and prepare to explode away.

Remus winced a bit when her nails stabbed him as

she closed her eyes tight, but he didn’t let go of
her, he just wait. He wasn’t stupid enough for him
to not understand how a traumatized person would
react – he had seen it before in the muggleborns
that got back to school after their parents were
threatened, he had seen it in movies and he had
seen it in the mirror every time he felt the
particular smell of rotting meat… the smell of…
Greyback.

“Sage?” he called. Anne didn’t move. “Anne?” he

called again.

Sus ojos volaron hacia él, no muy abiertos, pero sí

preocupados y vacilantes.

"Lo siento", logró decir entrecortadamente. “Um…

El ruido. No me gustan los silbatos”.

Era una explicación pobre, pero Remus no tenía

motivos para confrontarla. No era asunto suyo.

Sus pensamientos, sin embargo, fueron

interrumpidos por James y Sirius deteniendo sus
escobas – en contra de las reglas – en las gradas y
caminando hacia ellos, ambos riendo y hablando
entre ellos.

"¡Ey!" dijo James. "¿Entonces, qué te parece?" le

preguntó a Ana.

Anne parpadeó un par de veces y se tranquilizó

mirando a James.

“Necesitas concentrarte más, lucir un poco menos.

Pero en general eres bueno”, dijo.

James sonrió, pero a Sirius no parecía gustarle la

respuesta que estaba recibiendo su mejor amigo.

"¿Tu juegas?" preguntó Sirio.

James se volvió hacia su amigo y lo fulminó con la

mirada, claramente no le gustaba que ahora
estuviera decidiendo hablar con Anne, quien había
sido amable con él durante todo el tiempo que
estuvo absolutamente en silencio.

“No, pero solía ayudar a algunos jugadores en mi

otra escuela. Mi hermano estaba en el equipo,
entonces yo ayudaba a crear jugadas”, explicó.
“Era más pequeño y delgado cuando comencé a
hacerlo, así que estaba acostumbrado a
escabullirme para ver jugar a los otros equipos”.

"Si no juegas, ¿cómo es que puedes dar tu…?"

comenzó Sirius.

“Eran sólo sus opiniones, Pads. Deja a la chica en

paz,” lo interrumpió Remus.

Sirius se volvió hacia Remus, claramente

sintiéndose traicionado por lo rápido que se había
vuelto hacia la chica y contra él, incluso en una
discusión tonta como si ella jugara Quidditch.

Sirius no habló con James, Remus o Anne durante

el resto del camino de regreso al castillo y se aferró
a su escoba con demasiada fuerza.

Capítulo 4 : Capítulo Tres

Resumen:
Sirius tiene ideas sobre Anne.
Remus tiene ideas sobre Anne.

Ideas muy diferentes, pero

terminan en el mismo lugar de
pensamientos.

TRASLADO DE EMERGENCIA

Sirius sintió que algo terrible le hervía la sangre

mientras veía a Anne, James y Remus llevarse tan
bien y había arrastrado a Peter a su lado, quien no
quería dejar a Sirius solo de mal humor, pero
quería conocer e intentar socializar con Anne. .

"¿Qué te pasa?" Peter le preguntó a Sirius una vez

que Anne estuvo sentada entre James y Remus en
la mesa del desayuno, recibiendo bastantes
miradas de curiosidad.

"Ella es rara", respondió simplemente.

Peter puso los ojos en blanco.

“So am I and I didn’t see you avoiding and glaring

at me when we first met, Pads. What’s really
wrong?” Peter asked once more.

“She gives me a few bad feelings, like… I don’t feel

comfortable around her,” he explained.

That seemed to get Peter’s attention, making his

ears move a bit as he started to pay full attention
to his friend and leaving his breakfast on the side,
worried about what that meant as a whole.

“Do you need to get out of here? Did she do

something to you?” Peter asked, hand quickly going
to hold Sirius’.

Sirius pulled his hand back and crossed his arms,

ignoring Peter’s attempt of comfort by rolling his
eyes and pretending he didn’t see the worry and
pity in his friend’s eyes.

Sus amigos siempre lo mirarían así desde el año

anterior, quinto, cuando se enteraron de las
demasiadas cicatrices en su pantorrilla y muslos
causadas por el palo de ratán que su madre tenía
en su habitación. Ni siquiera era tan malo, pero
aparentemente nadie más le haría eso a sus hijos.

"No, no es nada de eso", lo descartó Sirius. "Es

más como... una vibra".

Peter suspiró y se cruzó de brazos también, sin

volver a comer.

“No eres muy bueno captando las vibraciones de la

gente. Apenas puedes leer una habitación,
Padfoot”, bromeó.

Eso hizo sonreír a Sirius.

"¡Oye, no soy tan malo!" se defendió a medias.

"¡Mi culo!" Pedro no estuvo de acuerdo. “Escucha,

dale una oportunidad, ¿de acuerdo? No necesitas
ser su amigo, pero al menos intenta ser cortés con
ella, ¿de acuerdo? Ella es nueva y está confundida.
A James parecía gustarle y ya la acogió como lo
hizo con aquel de primer año, el niño alemán
(olvidé el nombre). Si ella hace algo, vienes y nos
lo cuentas y ella sale. ¿Entiendo?"

Sirius miró a Peter.

Sabía que su amigo sólo quería ayudarlo y

apoyarlo, pero al mismo tiempo quería ser sociable
y un niño con la gente porque así era Peter. Aunque
necesitaba ayuda y protección de personas más
grandes y más fuertes que él físicamente, sabía
que debía ayudar a otras personas que eran
intimidadas como él antes de que James decidiera
que era hora de luchar por él y arrastrara a Sirius y
Remus con él.

Eran uno. Eran los Merodeadores.

Si a James le había gustado la chica, no era más

que el trabajo de Sirius asegurarse de que ella
estuviera bien y hacer que confiara en él de alguna
manera.

"Tienes razón, Colagusano", le dijo a Peter,

empujando su hombro suavemente. "Salud."

Peter sonrió un poco y fue a tomar un sorbo de su

jugo matutino.

Mientras ocurría esa conversación, la conversación

a dos asientos de ellos era mucho menos profunda
e incluso un poco incómoda entre las personas.

Mientras James y Remus decidieron que Anne era

lo suficientemente educada y amable como para
pasar el rato con ella sin hacer demasiadas
preguntas a la vez, las chicas no fueron tan
amables o sutiles con respecto a sus curiosidades y
habían hecho varias preguntas a la vez, lo que
hacía difícil que Anne entendiera o entendiera.
Quiere participar en una conversación sencilla.

“No te vi”, había dicho Lily Evans, entrecerrando los

ojos con sospecha.

"¿En realidad? Porque hablé contigo”, dijo Anne

parpadeando confundida. “Supongo que todavía
estabas medio dormido. Me dijiste que habrías
sabido si un estudiante transferido iba a venir
pronto y parecías bastante molesto por no tener ni
idea al respecto. Supongo que te calmaste una vez
que te expliqué que no me esperaban.

Evans se sonrojó un poco.

"Oh, lo siento si fui grosero", trató de disculparse.

"No, no -" comenzó Anne.

“Ella es bastante grosera una vez que se despierta.

Dale diez minutos y una taza y estará bien”,
Marlene intervino en la conversación, guiñándole un
ojo a Anne para mostrar que estaba bromeando.
“Ella es realmente agradable, sin embargo.
¡Promesa!"

"¡Oh, no! Ella estaba bien. Entiendo que es confuso

ver a alguien que no conoces entrar a tu habitación
en medio de la noche”, dijo, sonrojándose también.
"Supongo que tuve suerte de no estar hechizado".

Though it was a joke, some of the girls stiffened.

“With the present situation, it wouldn’t be

surprising,” Alice said quietly, just loud enough for
Anne to hear.

The war.

Anne had just escaped a war and there she was,

getting herself in another one.

She had forgotten for a moment what she was

meant to be doing in the past – she forgave herself
quickly because she deserved just a moment, just
one breakfast with her parents, even if they had no
idea who she was and would never love her the
way she wanted them to. Just a moment. Just one
morning of normal life.

She took in a slow, deep breath and tried to

remember the smell of her Normal Morning –
waffles, toast and tea with honey. She needed to
remember that. She wanted to remember that. She
wanted to – consciously – gather a small part of
her brain, erase the information in it and remember
it with every detail she could.

“You came from Canada, then,” Lily took the reigns

in the conversation once more. “How is the
situation there?”

Anne shrugged.

“Better than here,” she said. “But… Here’s home. I

thought it would be better to be here, present…
ready. Far away from the…” he hesitated, “past.”

James glanced at her before exchanging a look with

Remus.

Anne saw that, but said nothing.

“You think you’ll fight when the time comes?”

James asked.

“Are you wanting to put the girl in danger already,

Potter?” Evans attacked, making Anne look up,
alarmed. “Just because you met her first, it doesn’t
mean –”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a bloody

question,” Potter answered, clearly upset with the
accusation he had done nothing to get. “And,
apparently, you met her before me. That doesn’t
mean you’re her owner.”

“And you are?” Lily asked once more.

Remus sighed.

“He never said anything like that, Lily. We’re just

talking, just trying to know each other. Keep the
animosity between you two away from Anne’s face,
she just got here and is barely eating breakfast
watching you two,” Remus jumped into the
discussion. “We’re all used to it, she isn’t.”

“It’s alright,” Anne said, a small sting on her chest.

“I had a few friends that were just like you two…
They were going to get married, or so I betted.”

The quick memory of seeing Ron and Hermione

mid-discussion, one sitting on Harry’s right and the
other on his left and making him the arbitrary in
their ‘conversations’, came into her mind and made
her smile for just one second. One second before it
hit, she would most likely never see them again.

People around her noticed the sadness, but no one

said anything.

“Well, we’re not getting married,” Lily said with

certainty.

“Oh, just you wait, Evans. I’ll prove you wrong,”

James said, winking at her. “What do you like
more? Emeralds or rubies?”

Anne looked up at him in slight shock.

With James being so physically alike Harry, it made

her forget that – so many of the times – they were
so different when it came to girls. James had a very
healthy relationship with sex in general while Harry
was taught it was disgusting and not meant to be
talked about or enjoyed; James a teenage-boy,
Harry had always been a grown-man-child. While
Harry had his first crush with fourteen and only
allowed himself to focus on girls – truly – at fifteen,
it was just a small space of less than two years
before getting himself away from all that to fight in
a war that was never meant to be his.

Anne grieved once more for her brother, this time

in silence and with no tears.

“You two would make a good couple,” Anne said.

Remus held his breath so he wouldn’t laugh too

loudly.

James, on the other hand, was not as subtle, he

just threw his head back and laughed loudly,
throwing one arm around Anne’s shoulder and
poking Peter with his other.

Peter, who had been talking to Sirius, turned to

look at his friend.

“Did you hear that, Wormtail?” James asked, eyes

shining in amusement. “Anne said Lily and I would
look good together!”

“Anne doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” Lily

said, but it was too late. A lot of people had heard
the girl and were giggling, some even agreeing.
“Anne, take it back!”

“I cannot!” Anne said, laughing and trying to

escape James’ arm weighting her down and making
her feel a bit suffocated. She wanted space.
“Potter, you’re hurting me!”

James took his hand away from her and apologized

quickly before turning back to Peter and Sirius,
having a quick conversation with them.

Remus was not as distracted as James and had

clearly seen Anne’s subtle distress and
uncomfortableness as she hugged herself by the
elbows under the table and smiled with a relaxed
face to Lily, still joking with her. He had heard with
his good-werewolf-hearing how her heart seemed
to double the beating once she had been held
against James closely. Though it was clear he was
not flirting with her and she had made it clear she
was not attracted to him in any way, she still
seemed to have a disagreeable reaction.

The werewolf leaned closer to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, voice low.

Anne looked at him, face doing its best to look

confused.

“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”

“Absolutely,” he said, eyebrows frowning.

She smiled without showing her teeth and turned

back to Marlene, now talking about the classes they
were share.

Remus didn’t take his eyes away from her for the
rest of the meal, clearly not letting the small
conversation they had go to his head.

Remus sat beside Sirius during Transfiguration and

watched as James and Peter poked each other and
messed around trying to be as silent as they could
so McGonagall wouldn’t freak out with them. Still,
his eyes seemed to carry itself to Anne, who was
sitting beside Alice and trying to get some help
from the girl, clearly lacking a bit on the subject.

“Oh, come on, Moony,” grumbled Sirius trying to

transfigure his teacup back into a rat. “Don’t tell
me, now you’re interested in her?”

Remus chuckled.

“Absolutely not,” he promised.

“Then stop staring at the new girl!” Sirius hissed,

pushing his elbow in Remus’ ribs.

Remus pushed him away a bit.

“Stop it!” he warned. Sirius smirked and threatened

to do it again, but didn’t. “I just think there’s
something going on with Anne,” he explained.

“Oh, so you felt it too?” Sirius asked, sounding

surprised.

“What?” Remus asked, confused.

Was Sirius paying attention to their conversation on

the Great Hall?

“The off-vibes she gives. I feel like… she’s lying or

something, or least not being wholly truthful,” he
explained. “She said she came back to Britain
because she wanted to fight for the Light side in
the war or whatever bollocks she wants, but I think
she’s lying.”

Remus was surprised as she nodded.

“Yes, yes, I think so too!” he said.

Sirius sighed in relief.

“Oh, Merlin’s beard, I thought I was going

bonkers!”

"Sin compañero. Creo que se escapó de Canadá”,

dijo Remus, tratando de obtener apoyo de su
amigo, pero Sirius solo lo miró fijamente. “Lo sé,
suena como tonterías y mierda…”

"Absolutamente", estuvo de acuerdo Sirius.

“…pero escúchame. James la tocó y ella hizo lo

mismo que solías hacer en primer año”.

Sirius parpadeó.

"¿Qué?" preguntó. "No recuerdo nada de eso".

“Ya sabes”, se alejó lentamente, encogiéndose y

tratando de mantener una sonrisa falsa en su
rostro, forzando una risa incómoda desde lo
profundo de su garganta, “esta cosa, ¿sabes? ¡Era
lo mismo!

Sirius puso los ojos en blanco.

“Yo no haría eso”, dijo. "Nunca lo he hecho."

El hombre lobo se rió divertido.

"Hiciste exactamente eso", no estuvo de acuerdo.

“Pero ahora, en serio – y no hagas bromas, Sirius,
honestamente – creo que ha sido golpeada o algo
así. Estaba bastante nerviosa e incómoda”.

“Tal vez simplemente no le gusta que la toquen.

Hay gente así”, dijo Sirius. “Tú eres uno de esos”,
le recordó a su amigo.

“Sí, pero… la forma en que su cara se puso pálida y

todo. Eso no era sólo que no le gustara que lo
tocaran. Ella no se inmutó, pero parecía que quería
hacerlo, pero se contuvo”, dijo, en desacuerdo una
vez más.

Sirius miró a Anne, tratando de encontrar algo que

le resultara familiar en su comportamiento, pero
parecía una chica normal.

Era delgada, tal vez demasiado delgada, y un poco

más pálida. Aunque estaba sentada en el borde del
asiento izquierdo, dejando un espacio entre ella y
Marlene, era nueva en la escuela y no todos se
sentían cómodos compartiendo tan poco espacio
entre ellos y sus nuevos compañeros de escuela.
No parecía incómoda en presencia de alguien, pero
tampoco parecía, bueno… cómoda. Estaba
completamente concentrada en las enseñanzas de
Marlene y lo intentaba una y otra vez. No parecía
muy confiada en sus habilidades, pero no dejó de
intentarlo.

Inseguro. Determinado. Incómodo… Espacio.

Aunque no le recordaba a Sirius a sí mismo, le

recordaba a otra persona: Regulus. Su hermano
pequeño.

Pensó por un momento más.

She did say she had a brother, but didn’t say

anything about where he was or what he was
doing, maybe she didn’t have any contact with him
anymore. Was she the younger child? Was she
protected like Regulus had been by Sirius? When
her own ‘Sirius’ left, was she left behind and felt
betrayed and unproper, always like she was doing
something wrong like Regulus made sure to tell
Sirius he had felt?

Marlene moved, trying to holding onto Anne’s wrist

and show her the movement, but froze for a
millisecond when Anne’s eyes widened and she
tensed up. Anne laughed it off, mumbling
something that made Marlene smile uncertainly,
but keep going.

Sirius looked away to Remus, who was now holding

his rat and petting it, calmly watching the
interaction too. The animagus cursed himself for
being so rude and protective about James with
Anne as he knew that she had accepted the
invitation and wanted to get friend because she
most likely had never had such opportunity before.

“Fuck,” Sirius sighed, a bit louder than he wished

himself to.

“Mister Black, language, please!” McGonagall said

from her table, clearly having heard the cussing.
She did not give him detention, which made Sirius
very happy since he had a date that Saturday
before Quidditch and he didn’t feel like cancelling.

“Sorry, Minnie!” Sirius called, winking at her and

making her glare at him. He went quiet, not
wanting to push and finally get the detention he
had escaped from.

“I know, right?” Remus said, calling his friend back

into the conversation.

“I should’ve seen it coming,” Sirius complained. “I,

of all people, should’ve seen it coming. And I was
being so rude to her…”

“We’ve only known her for a few hours, Pads. I only

noticed because she was right next to me and
touched me when she cringed away, not a big deal
– you were busy,” Remus comforted him.

“Do you think we need to tell anyone?” Sirius

asked, worried.

Before Remus could answer and give his own

opinion about what they should do over their
suspicions, the classroom’s door opened and
Headmaster Dumbledore peeked his head in,
glistening eyes running around the students and
stopping only for the split of a second on
McGonagall, who got up from the chair she had sat,
watching the students and walked over to him.

They whispered on the talking, making it hard for

even Sirius, with his animagus’ hearing, to
understand anything more than Anne’s name.

Sirius looked at Remus, who was looking back at

him. They looked at James, who was already
looking at them with Peter by his side, all clearly
having understood the girl’s name and wanting to
know what it was.

“Miss Sage,” called out McGonagall. “Get your

things and follow Professor Dumbledore. He wants
to have a talk with you and it’ll take a bit, so you
won’t be able to come back to my class. Go straight
to your next class after, please,” she added.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Anne, getting up and giving the

professor her small white rat and thanking her
before walking around.

As the door closed, Remus heard.

“Professor, is this about my parents?” Anne had

asked, voice wavering in worry.

Remus held onto Sirius’ arm as he straightened his

ears to hear a bit more as the two people walked
away.

“No, my child, just about your… emergency

transferring. We need to decide the subjects you’d
like to take,” he chuckled. “We had little time to
decide so last night. We had a lot of things more
important than silly school subjects to talk about,
don’t you think so?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” she agreed.

The voices disappeared as they turned the corner of

the corridor.

Remus came back into his own body, finally taking

notice of his surroundings and smiling sheepishly at
Professor McGonagall, who seemed to know what
he was doing and was chastising him in silence.

“Anything?” Sirius asked.

“She was an emergency transfer,” Remus

answered. “Whatever that means…”

“We’ll find out,” Sirius answered. “Give me a bit of

time and I’ll have information.”

Lots of people saw Sirius and his laid-back ways as

lazy, but when the dog wanted something, he’d bite
it and never let it go. His curiosity always took the
best of him, making him go over the top to prove
himself to be right or to find out an information he
wanted.

Anyhow, by the time Sirius had not shown up to

lunch after the DADA class, Remus knew exactly
where he was and what he was doing, though she
couldn’t share this information with the others since
Anne was sitting beside Peter and talking calmly to
him.

Remus cut the Divination class to run into the

library and see Sirius with thirteen books on the
table he was sitting by, feet over the table.

“Sirius,” he called in a low voice.

Sirius looked up in surprise by someone having

found him.

“Hey, Moony,” he greeted, turning the page and

then looking back at the words in the book on his
hands. “What is it?”

“You’re skipping class and you skipped lunch too,”

Remus said, “James was worried and even went
back to the Tower to see if you were there, but I
said you had a stomach-ache and went to the
Hospital Wing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sirius dismissed. “And he believed?”

“He’s busy with Peter, he said he saw a snake

eating a rat on his Divination homework with his
crystal ball. Almost had a panic attack,” Remus
said, rolling his eyes. “But I knew you were here
and… Padfoot, I don’t think it’s very polite to come
and try to see what ‘emergency transfer’ means.”

Sirius chuckled.

“Oh, yeah?” he mocked. “Watch me. Come on,

Moony, since when have you known me to do
something simply because it’s polite?”

Remus took a second before nodding. It was a true.

He had not known Sirius to do so in any occasion
since the day they met. Sighing, he took a seat on
the same table as Sirius, but not beside him.

“I took the Map, to make sure he wouldn’t find us,”

Remus added. “Didn’t even have to look for you in
it, I knew exactly where you’d be.”

“You know, if someone heard you, people would

totally think we’re having an affair,” Sirius joked.
He looked up. “Are you interested?” he winked.

“Not since our third year,” Remus confessed.

Sirius laughed and looked back at the book.

“I knew you had a crush on me,” he teased.

“Fuck off!” Remus said. “Did you find anything?” he

asked, pointing with this chin to the book.

Sirius nodded.

“A few things,” he said. “It’s very rare. There were,

like, three or four in the whole Hogwarts history…”

“No me hagas esperar. ¡Dime qué encontraste!

Remus lo instó,

“¿No fuiste tú quien dijo que estaba mal y todo?”

“Me importa un carajo, sinceramente. Demasiado

curioso, y no es que estemos haciendo esto para
ser malos”, Remus entró en un pensamiento lógico.

Aun así, la culpa estaba ahí. Él lo ignoró.

“Bueno, encontré algunas transferencias de

emergencia en la historia de Hogwarts. Hubo uno
en 1560, una niña que quedó embarazada y se
escapó de su familia en Francia y Hogwarts la
acogió. Hubo otro en 1735, un niño de Escocia que
logró escapar de su familia, era un hijo de muggles.
, su familia quiso quemarlo tras años de abuso; el
director lo adoptó. Bueno, hubo otra en los años
40, no especifica el año, pero una chica de
Alemania”, levantó la vista. “¿Sabías que hubo una
guerra en el mundo muggle en los años 40? La niña
huyó de Alemania cuando mataron a su familia. Se
menciona a Dumbledore, pero otra persona la
acogió y cambió su nombre, después de todo, solo
tenía 11 años”.

Remus sintió un dolor en la parte posterior de su

cabeza mientras observaba cómo sus recuerdos de
Anne se alejaban y la forma en que ella hablaba de
su hermano.

"Creo que lo encontramos, entonces", dijo Remus.

"Desearía que nos equivocáramos, pero sí", dijo

Sirius. “Anne no estaba segura con su familia y fue
enviada aquí porque no había ningún otro lugar al
que pudiera ir. Es una sabia mestiza y está a salvo
aquí en Inglaterra incluso durante la guerra.

Remus miró sus manos.

“¿Qué tan malo podría ser?” preguntó.

"Debe haber sido malo para ella pensar que estaba

más segura en una guerra que fuera de ella", dijo
Sirius.

Remus miró a Sirius.

Esa tarde llegaron a un acuerdo tácito.

A partir de ese momento, Anne sería la protegida

de los Merodeadores, le gustara o no y sabían que
no necesitaban mucho para convencer a James de
que los siguiera y, a donde fueran los
Merodeadores, Peter los seguiría.

Anne sería la chica más segura de Hogwarts.

Capítulo 5 : Capítulo cuatro

Resumen:
Pociones y mentiras; Todo el día
de Slytherin.

MIXTURE

Anne couldn’t complain about her classes.

Though she had not been present for her sixth year
at all, she had been in the front-lines of a war and
therefore learned a thing or two about spells and
being useful in actually important potions.

By Wednesday, she had ignored what Dumbledore

told her about staying under the radar by actually
managing to do what her professors asked to do in
few tries, which caught the attention of every
Gryffindor, glares from Ravenclaws, smiles from
Hufflepuffs and second glances from Slytherins; the
last being the most dangerous thing she could have
gotten.

Slytherins, once interested, very rarely would look

away. By living her normal life, she had messed up
a lot of Dumbledore’s plans of her passing through
sixth year under the radar of people around her.
People now looked at her and whispered about her
and her daily decisions as if she had some type of
influence, which she didn’t – she had gotten there
days ago, after all.

In general, it took her a moment to understand

that the fact she had gotten to Hogwarts so little
time ago was the reason she had so much
attention.

En no más de unos días había logrado atrapar a los

Merodeadores (que eran muy populares en la
escuela, no sólo en Gryffindor, se enteró con
sorpresa) y se había acostumbrado a las cargas y
caminos de las clases dentro de los confusos
pasillos y escaleras móviles que Se suponía que no
debía saberlo como la palma de su mano. Varias
veces tuvo que recordarse a sí misma que el
Hogwarts en el que estaba no era su hogar y que
nunca volvería a casa.

Era difícil no sentirse cómoda y permitirse olvidar;

bueno, no olvidar realmente, pero al menos dejar
de lado los terribles recuerdos por los que se había
visto obligada a pasar y disfrutar la adolescencia al
máximo. Y era difícil recordar su verdadera razón
para estar allí; no era sobrevivir, como lo había
sido durante tanto tiempo en su vida, ahora tenía
una tarea realmente útil que podía cambiar todo en
la guerra que apenas había comenzado.

El mediodía del miércoles, el estrés era tal que la

profesora McGonagall notó lo pálida que estaba la
niña y simplemente la ignoró durante toda la clase,
ni siquiera la llamó cuando no intentó la lección
más nueva. Todo lo que podía pensar era en todas
las cosas que tenía que hacer; Tenía que encontrar
qué Horrocruxes ya existían, cómo destruirlos sin
tener que bajar a la terrible Cámara de los Secretos
y matar una basílica que ni siquiera estuvo
presente para ver cuando tenía 11 años y reunirlos
todos antes de que Voldemort se diera cuenta de lo
que había hecho. estaba haciendo – en realidad,
incluso antes de que él reconociera su existencia
con preferencia, pero los mendigos no pueden
elegir; si iba a meterse con él, también podría
aceptar que sus pequeños secuaces la verían y la
odiarían.

McGonagall había tenido la amabilidad de ignorar

su existencia, pero el profesor Slughorn no estaba
tan en contacto con los sentimientos de los demás
como ella.

"Señorita Sage", anunció, con voz entrecortada por

el placer de su presencia, "¡un honor conocerla,
finalmente!"

Levantó la vista del libro de Pociones y se obligó a

volver a su nuevo regalo.

“Profesor, es un honor conocerlo también. Admito

que escuché mucho sobre usted, señor”, mintió.

Ni una sola persona había abierto la boca para

hablar sobre el Profesor Slughorn en la Sala Común
de Gryffindor, además de cuando Lily Evans se
había quejado de Severus Snape, de quien Anne
supo que ya le había gritado en público y la había
llamado sangre sucia en enero de ese año. año, y
no la criticaron por intentar hablar con su clase
media.

Al igual que Snape en su época, el profesor

Slughorn siempre estaba buscando razones para
sumar puntos a Slytherin, aunque mucho más
manejables incluso si estuvieras en otra casa, ya
que no era tan discriminatorio, solo muy parcial y
evitaba conflictos.

“Espero que haya cosas buenas”, dijo con una

sonrisa.

Anne forzó una sonrisa.

“¿Hay algo malo de qué oír?” ella bromeó.

Ella sabía que así era, pero Slughorn simplemente

le devolvió la sonrisa.

Sin embargo, gran error de su parte. El veneno en

su lengua era demasiado familiar para la mayoría
de la Casa Slytherin, quienes ahora la observaban
pasar lentamente la página del libro del trece al
catorce con una dulce sonrisa que usaban en sus
propios labios de vez en cuando.

Anne vio su error cuando sintió los ojos de Severus

quemándole la nuca.

Ella respiró hondo y trató de ignorarlo.

“Don’t worry,” Marlene McKinnon, a Gryffindor girl

that usually had her rebel blonde curls pulled back
whispered, “he’s annoying,” she said, glancing at
Severus. “He’s probably jealous you’re getting
more attention than him in the only class he’s
actually important in.”

Professor Slughorn saw the girl whispering, but did

not say anything.

“Miss Sage, dear, do tell us about your education in

America,” he said, but didn’t give her a chance to
say anything. “You see, students, I was a good
friend with the last professor there, he retired in
1948, however I am familiar with the Americanized
making of traditional potions.”

With that he shipped off the class in a long ramble

about how America insisted in making things more
difficult by changing steps of potions that had been
made the exact same way for centuries.

Anne did not pay attention to it, she just doodled in

her notebook and tried to ignore how small the
glare in the back of her head made her feel.

Marlene noticed how uncomfortable she was feeling

and quickly took upon herself to look over her
shoulder and just stare back Severus until he
looked away with the blankest face Anne had seen
someone doing.

When Severus finally looked away, Anne took a

long and relieved breath.

“You know, sometimes I wonder how the other girls

survive without me as their friend,” Marlene joked
in a whisper as she started spreading their knifes
and ingredients around the table. Anne smiled just
a bit. “I guess they have their own lesbians,” she
shrugged.

Although Anne didn’t want to appear surprised, she

did. Anne looked at Marlene with wide eyes as she
wondered if she heard it all correctly.

"I’m sorry?” she mumbled, just to make sure.

“Oh, come on, Anne, dear, you really didn’t notice?”

she asked, not believing it as she rolled her eyes.
That was… until she noticed how actually shocked
Anne seemed to be as she watched Marlene
laughing in disbelief. “Bloody hell, I’ve been flirting
with you for hours now,” she laughed.

“You were flirting with me?” Anne asked, even

more confused than before.

Marlene’s laugh grew in volume, making a few

tables around look at them with interest and
annoyance. The thing was that the blonde just
couldn’t believe Anne had actually not noticed the
long looks and slurred, sweet words Marlene had
been throwing her way.

“This is a red-headed thing?” Marlene wondered out

loud, not actually expecting an answer. “I’ve been
flirting with Lily for almost two months when she
actually noticed it. If I hadn’t said anything, I think
you would keep on joking around without actually
flirting back.”

Anne blinked.

“Probably,” she admitted. “I’m not one for flirting,

I’m sorry I didn’t notice.”

Marlene shook her head.

“You’re fine,” she dismissed. “So, are you

interested in actually going out with me now that
you know I’m flirting?”

Anne sighed.

“I’m not, sorry,” she answered.

Marlene smiled, not upset at all.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, shrugging it off.

“Anyways… Do tell me you’re good in Potions,
because I’m so bad at it that it’s not even funny
anymore,” Marlene admitted.

Anne laughed loudly when she saw how pale

Marlene had gotten.

“Marlene, Merlin!” she laughed.

“I’m serious, Anne. It stopped being funny in third

year or so, now it’s just sad and straight up
dangerous,” she said, but Anne kept laughing.
“Stop it! If you’re not good at it, I can just use the
code-word I have with Slughorn for ‘please, I’m
about to muck this up, Professor. Help me’,”
Marlene said.

Anne just couldn’t stop laughing.

With Marlene’s help and distraction, the world

around Anne became clearer and lighter.

They had decided to become Potions partners.

Marlene was indeed very bad at it, but Anne could

save them by actually enjoying it and having quite
the hand for it.

Potions were easy to her. It was cold and exact;

her feelings could not get in the way of the tincture
or the mix she was doing, stirring away her anger
until her arms were heavy and hurting. As long as
she followed the instructions and just did what she
knew she had to do, then things were ending up
exactly where she knew they were supposed to –
that was something she couldn’t have in life outside
of the classroom.

Feelings got in the way of her decisions even if she

didn’t want to admit it, even if people said it didn’t
happen with Slytherins. It did, they just had
another name for it: revenge for when it was
anger, self-preservation when it was fear and
selfishness when it was greed.

Her last two classes of Potions with Slytherin were

enough to make things a bit easier for her to go
back to work when she had an empty spot in her
schedule after it and Marlene ran up stairs to go to
Divination, waving at her as she tried to reach the
Hufflepuff students (a small black girl waited for her
as she bit her wand and used both hands to pull her
very curled hair up and tied it with a silk pink
ribbon).

Anne, bored, sat down on the grass, taking in the

sun as she allowed her mind to work on the lonely
silence.

The sun was blocked and she opened her eyes.

Her breath was stopped in her throat.

She knew the crooked nose and the dark eyes that
glared more than watched under the awkwardly
long hair.

“Yes?” she asked.

“You brew like a British,” Severus Snape accused.

“It does tend to happen when both your parents

are British,” she lied smoothly.

Severus crossed his arms.

“Not when one studies in an American school,” he

disagreed.

Anne closed her eyes again, trying to appear

relaxed and laid-back when actually she hoped her
bored face would gain her time to think of a
protection lie and made him a bit late to get under
her mind. She wasn’t the most confident at
Occlumency, even if an adult Severus had been the
one to teach her such mental-defence.

“Whatever you say, Snape,” she dismissed him.

The dismissal did not work. Severus was not one to

allow himself to be ignored when he did nothing
wrong.

Even with her eyes closed, Anne was hyperaware

Severus was sitting down beside her by the way the
sun went back to warming her face. Slowly she
sighed and prayed that he would go away.
Mentally, she weighted the consequences of
actually calling him Snivellus to see if he would
leave her alone.

Teenager Severus was insistent, annoying and his

presence made her uncomfortably awkward as all
she remembered was that he was in love with her
mother (whom she was known for being similar to)
and that he was her favourite professor (whom she
watched die, spasming on the floor under the
effects of venom). Looking at his younger version
did very little for her nerves; she feared she would
live-through the weight of his body over her legs
and the smell of the blood in his neck, eyes, nose
and ears. She saw very little of Professor Snape in
Severus; there was no darkness embracing him in
guilt, there was protectiveness over her and Harry
under the promise he had failed to fulfil.

Still, when she was face to face with him, it was

hard to remember they were not the same person.

“May I help you?” she asked, opening her eyes

once more.

“No,” he answered.

“Then leave me alone, mate,” she said.

Severus had an ugly smirk on his lips the next

second.

“You should be the one to leave. Everybody knows

I always work under this tree, so…” he shrugged.
“I’m not leaving my comfort for yours.”

She scoffed.

“Very gentlemanly of you, Severus Snape. I can

see why Lily was falling for you,” she attacked,
irony drenching her voice as she sat down and
slowly got up.

Before she was standing, Severus had dropped the

books in his lap and had scrambled to a standing
position, wand in his left hand as he pushed himself
up with his right. He changed his wand of hand
before putting under her chin. Anne’s wand poked
his stomach as soon as he touched her.

“How dare you?!” he accused. “You know nothing of

me or Lily!”

“How dare you say her name, you piece of shit?”

Anne attacked back. “Clean your mouth with
soap…” she smirked. She tried her best to look like
James. “Maybe try using it on your hair too.”

He growled and his lips curled to show his teeth.

But then he froze.

His eyes widened and he stopped breathing.

…something in her eyes… familiar brown.

“Who are you?” he asked, this time voice truly

curious, not a drop of accusation.

There was a movement in the very back of her

mind, like fog coming from under a door.

Anne was familiar with Professor Snape’s presence

in her mind and it had changed very little from that
fog, but now it was easier to notice and it was
thicker. He was younger and didn’t have as much
experience now – it was easier to stop with just
taking one of the layers and layers she had
wrapped around herself and putting it over the
space of the door of her mind.

Severus took a step back.

“Leave me alone, Snape. I’m not someone you

want to mess with,” she promised with a firm voice.

As she took a step back away from him too, she

watched as his hands started trembling.

Professor Snape would be proud, she promised

herself as she nodded and walked away, not caring
that she left her potion’s notes back in the grass
near Severus’ feet. She was quite proud of herself
when she heard him fall on the ground and did not
look back to see if he was alright.

Every action has a consequence, this is something

basic that one must acknowledge when trying to
understand time and how to mess it up.

She didn’t think that one more Gryffindor

confronting Severus Snape, who was one of the
most hated Slytherins after the public display of
blood-supremacy he had against Lily Evans,
Gryffindor’s Golden Girl Prefect, would cause such
shift.

She noticed her grave mistake a bit before dinner.

The sun was still on the sky, only lightly lightning

the corridors while the torches were still cold.
Probably around five in the afternoon. That was
when Anne walked back from the library – where
she took her rest, away from Severus’ tree – and
two figures moved from the corner of the corridor
to walking beside her, matching her steps.

Anne did not stop, but her feet moved slower as

she watched the two people beside her.

On her right there was a beautiful young woman in

Slytherin robes with her straight light-blonde hair
pulled back from her face in a half-up, half-down
style that allowed the hair to fall over her
shoulders. Her cheekbones high and lips full
painted red were marking and her nose was thin –
she had seen that same face before more than
once. Narcisa Malfoy; well, by her ringless fingers,
maybe still Narcisa Black.

On her left there was a young man also in Slytherin

robes just as perfect for his size, and although they
looked just like one another, they were very
different. His hair was curled and he probably had
spent a lot of his time to tame those dark-black
curls and his skin was a tone lighter, his
cheekbones were higher and his lips were thinner,
his teeth bigger, but his jaw sharper. She didn’t
need to look much to him to see the Sirius in him –
Regulus Black was a version of Sirius that she had
not seen likeness; the only picture she had found of
him he was a pale and scrawny thirteen-year-old
kid and the other an eighteen-year-old man that
already was a Death Eater and had skipped one too
many meals. Now, the Regulus she was seeing was
a healthy and interesting fifteen-year-old boy that
was staring her up and down.

“Mister Black, Miss Black,” she greeted as coolly as

she could, tightening the hand around her books to
make sure they couldn’t see how she was starting
to tremble.

“Miss Sage,” Regulus greeted back. His voice was

sweeter than she expected and that only made her
more nervous. What did he want?

“So, you are Anne Sage,” Narcisa said. Her voice

was also sweet, though less than her cousin’s. She
was older, much more careful. She was scarier.
“How… delightful to meet you!”

Anne took notice at the split of a second that

Narcisa took to find a word to use to describe their
meeting.

“The pleasure is mine, I’m sure,” Anne said,

knowing what Narcisa meant.

“I’m sure,” repeated Narcisa, looking her up and

down, eyes stopping at her shoes. “Interesting
shoes,” she commented.

It wasn’t a compliment, and Anne didn’t need to

know a lot of Slytherin survival to know that, but
maybe it would have taken her by surprise when
she was thirteen – maybe little-year-old Anne
would have believed Narcisa’s genuine tone.

“Yes, they are,” Anne dismissed.

Her shoes had been given to her by Dumbledore. It

was black, simple and had two inches heels in its
Oxford style. It was old and probably had been
forgotten by someone in school a long time ago,
but Anne didn’t have money to buy anything else
yet.

Regulus’ eyes did not stop on her shoes for a single

second, they were in her hands – one holding onto
her books and the other curled around her wand.

“Stand down,” he teased. “You’re safe,” he

promised.

The ‘for now’ went silenced, but heard.

“Or so you say,” she commented, turning to him.

She had to think of a way to get away from

between them.

She couldn’t see an attack coming if she was

standing in the middle of the corridor between two
enemies. She needed to find a way to get the
higher ground; maybe turning her back to them,
walking to the wall in at ease and putting her back
against it would help, but it would be too in the
nose as soon as she touched it.

The Blacks were like dogs; they can smell fear, or

so Sirius had told her when she was fourteen and
crying because Walburga had said terrible things
about her weight after dinner.

“Or so I guarantee,” Regulus disagreed. “We’re just

here to talk.”

“About?” Anne urged. “You see, I have quite a few

things to do today and I can’t afford to spend time
chatting away.”

Narcisa crossed her arms and slowly leaned against

the wall. Regulus, however, did not move and Anne
did not look away from him.

“There were no Anne Sage in American Magical

Schools since 1972. But, let’s pretend the little girl
pulled out of school in her very first year because of
Dragon Pox was you and you studied at home for
the rest of your life… What happened for you to
move away from your country to a school where
you know your… kind, half-bloods, are not exactly
welcome?” he asked, a cold smile painting his lips.

“I wonder if Severus sees himself as not welcome,

Black. He does seem to enjoy your company,” she
teased back, not stepping back. She did not look
away from his eyes.

“So you have been watching me. I was beginning to

wonder if I was going paranoid,” he laughed. “But
don’t run from the answer, Miss Sage, I am
interested.”

“Well, dreadful sorry Mister Black, but it’s not my

duty to entertain you. I’m sure you can find
someone else to do that for you,” she shot back.
“Take you conspiracy theories to someone that
wants to hear them.”

Regulus scoffed.

“Oh, dear, it’s harder than I thought it would be,”

he admitted. “Usually, people just answer when I
ask.”

Anne watched him for a second.

“You think you’re scary,” she mumbled in disbelief.

She chuckled. “Oh, dear, I’ve seen scary before…
you don’t have his smile, I assure you,” she smiled.

Narcisa moved, taking the attention away from

each other and both of the younger kids looked at
her, wondering what her next move would be, but
she had just made herself sit on the edge of the
waist-heightened wall and was watching it with a
small smile, finding the interaction amusing.

Regulus watched her for a second before looking

back at Anne, who was already watching him.

“I don’t think I’m scary, Miss Sage; people just

know the consequences of crossing me,” he
explained.

“Well, I’m not crossing you, am I? You’re the one

that’s coming after me asking me about my life…
the one that I have all right of not speaking about,”
she said, thinking his thought process to be
ridiculous. “What do you actually want from me?”

“I want to understand what was so bad in America

for you to come to Europe?” he said.

“Past is past,” she dismissed. “Satisfied?”

“Not at all,” he answered.

Narcisa sighed.

“Who did you run away from?” she asked suddenly.

The two moved away from each other, both turning

to look at her with confusion in their eyes.

Clearly that question had not been in the script that

they probably created before coming to confront
her about it all, probably after hearing about her
attacks against Severus’ honour and whatever else
he had been upset about, being dramatic about it
to his friends.

Anne wondered if Severus knew where they were.

“Forgive me?” Anne asked.

“Who did you run away from? Someone bad

enough for you to come here in the middle of a war
that you know it’s about to break,” Narcisa said.

Anne took a moment to think and the answer came

as soon as her eyes met Narcisa’s:

“My parents wanted me to marry someone I didn’t

want to be married to. Professor Dumbledore, a
dear family friend, thought it would be smart to
come here to unwind while my parents rethink it
all,”

Chapter 6: Chapter Five

Summary:
Truths and Lies

Anne is not sure of which is which

at this point.

AN HEIR AND A BRIDE

Anne’s mind worked faster for a lie, but one look at

Narcisa’s empty hands had brought her the answer.

Arranged marriages were the nightmares of several

pureblood children since they were thirteen or so,
when the contracts and conversations began to
become more than the talk of their parents and
grandparent’s past, but their actual futures.

By Narcisa’s age, seventeen, she surely was

already betrothed and publicly engaged, but she
had no engagement ring, which meant she didn’t
appreciate her parents’ chosen husband for her.
That and the lie Anne told was the typical search
for sympathy that pureblood women would give to
a newly engaged or marriage (when there’s no
prior meeting between the groom and bride) girl in
their family.

Wearing red and being younger were weapons;

they pulled Narcisa’s guards down and she had
forgotten not only the green-wearing people could
lie and beg for something that was not there.

“He was older than me. We are to be wed when I’m

eighteen and he’s much, much older than me,” she
added, watching Narcisa’s eyes let the guards
down. Anne allowed the image of the most
disgusting person around that age to come to her
mind; the thought of marrying Alastor Moody
making her disgusted enough since she was so
terrified of him. “I couldn’t do that, so I ran and
found Dumbledore. He agreed to help me and…
here I am. I just thought my personal life should be
kept private,” she rolled her eyes. “Of course, you
needed to go and make sure to be different from
the others.”

The Heir of the House of Black glared at Anne,

eyebrows raising in surprise by Anne’s way of
joking around and somehow mock them in a very
discreet way.

Narcisa was too deep into the character Anne was

putting on to notice what the girl was truly doing,
but Regulus could see she had something more
behind her.

“How old is he?”

“Almost fifty or something,” she said, not specifying

at all.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Narcisa mumbled.

“His name?” Regulus asked.

“Moody,” Anne answered, no hesitation. She looked

for a surname to add. “Moody Spergon,” she
completed.

A changed surname from Moody in Anne of Green

Gables, the only books Aunt Petunia would allow
her to read in the house. Those old books belonged
to Lily, apparently, and Petunia did not care at all
for – they were old and smelled bad, but it was
enough for Anne to feel like she cared about
something as much as her mother cared for those
books; the ones that had ‘Lily Evans’ written in a
very bad handwriting in the very corner of the first
book only; she had been 9 when she had gotten
the book as a birthday present.

She wondered if the Lily she knew now also liked

Anne of Green Gables as much as she did.

The sound of footsteps made her look to the end of

the corridor, where James Potter was walking by,
talking to Hufflepuff girl that was giggling and
fluttering her eyelashes to him. James, however,
stopped talking and walking when he saw Anne
standing near the two pure-bloods.

“Anne?” he called out. “Are you alright?”

She forced a smiled.

“Yes, James, thanks. Just having a pleasant little

chat,” she answered.

James didn’t move even when the Hufflepuff girl

tried to call for his attention, he just watched the
girl crossing her arms and turn to Narcisa once
more, still with a smile on her face.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

“No, Miss Black and Mister Black were just

welcoming me into Hogwarts,” she lied quickly and
smoothly. “Very polite of them, I say.”

“Yes, very polite,” James said, clearly interested

and suspicious.

“Go on, James, I believe your friends is not finished

with the conversation you two were having. I’ll see
you later,” she said.

James hesitated as he glanced at the Hufflepuff girl

that was moving beside him, clearly wanting to get
away from there. He didn’t blame her, she was a
muggle-born that was being stared by Regulus
Black, who clearly wanting her to disappear from
that place by the disgust of his face.

“Do you want to come with us?” James asked.

“I believe our conversation isn’t over just yet,

Potter,” said Regulus quickly.

“I didn’t ask you, Black,” he quickly answered.

Narcisa sighed.

Anne rolled her eyes. In a few second, they would

whip their dicks out and take a measure… men
were annoying.

“I’m fine, James. Go on. I’ll see you in a bit,” she

promised.

“I’ll save you a seat on the table for dinner,” he

said.

“You do that,” she said, nodding at him.

James looked at the girl beside him and led her
away, glancing over his shoulder at the small trio in
silence in the middle of the corridor.

Narcisa watched James walking away, arms crossed

and eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“You make friends quickly,” she commented.

“They’re very open,” she explained. “I barely did

anything and I think I was adopted as a mascot,”
she joked.

Regulus rolled his eyes.

“If you’re friends with James Potter, surely you are

friends with Sirius Black,” he said, clearly disgusted
by it.

“No, actually, I’m not. I don’t think he really enjoys

my company very much,” she explained. “Seems to
always be having a mental conversation with the
others about me with looks, thinking he’s discreet.
I’m only friends with James and, maybe, Remus.”

Narcisa asintió. Sabía muy bien que su primo era

muchas cosas, pero discreto nunca fue una palabra
utilizada para describirlo. Detestable, tal vez, era
mejor.

“Entonces al menos tenemos algo en común”, dijo

Regulus.

En cualquier otra situación, Anne se habría reído y

habría hecho otra broma acerca de que Sirius no la
quería cerca, pero había una clara amargura detrás
de la expresión vacía en los ojos de Regulus y se
preguntó si estaba molesto porque Sirius se había
escapado.

Durante su primera vida, Sirius hizo que pareciera

que Regulus había estado emocionado y feliz de
que Sirius se hubiera ido y pudiera convertirse en el
Heredero, pero ahora estaba mirando al joven y no
veía nada más que cansancio y dolor mientras él
mencionaba eso. a su hermano no le agradaba. Se
preguntó entonces si Regulus había amado a su
hermano más de lo que su hermano lo había amado
a él y simplemente no sabía cómo demostrarlo.

Hubo un momento en el que su mente intentó

ponerse en el lugar de Regulus y a Harry en el de
Sirius. Su corazón se apretó y miró sus zapatos,
tratando de ignorar las náuseas que le invadieron
ese pensamiento. No. Harry no la dejaría atrás así;
él la arrastraría con él incluso si ella no quisiera, se
aseguraría de que estuviera a salvo después de
todos los gritos y patadas. Mientras tanto, Sirius
simplemente dejó a Regulus sin pensarlo dos veces,
tan impulsivo como siempre. Tocó el brazalete que
él le dio escondido debajo de las mangas como
consuelo.

El recuerdo del cuerpo de Harry y el pensamiento

de que ella nunca volvería a ser su hermana hizo
que su corazón diera un vuelco. El recuerdo le trajo
los ruidos de la batalla, el olor a carne quemada y
ella grita – oh, los gritos…

“¿Señorita Sage?” Narcisa dijo rápidamente. “¿Te

sientes mal? Estás terriblemente pálido.

Regulus observó a Anne mientras ella se

balanceaba, parándose y moviéndose lentamente
hacia adelante y hacia atrás. Intentaba mantenerse
de pie, pero tenía los ojos cerrados.

"¿Sabio?" Regulus llamó.

“¡Regulus, abrázala!” Narcisa exclamó justo en el

momento en que las rodillas de Anne dejaron de
funcionar.

Anne cayó hacia adelante, pero no se golpeó la

cabeza contra la pared porque Regulus se apresuró
a sostenerla y lentamente la puso en el suelo,
recostándola boca arriba.

Estaba pálida como la muerte, labios sin color y sus

extremidades temblaban mientras miraba hacia
adelante, los ojos no respondían cuando Regulus se
inclinó hacia ella y trató de llamar su atención.
Anne simplemente se quedó allí tumbada y no se
movió aparte del temblor durante un minuto
entero, con los ojos cerrados y luego lentamente
volviendo en sí.

"¿Sabio?" Llamó Narcisa, también de rodillas a su

lado en el suelo.

Ana parpadeó.

Her head was hurting now and her ears were

ringing enough for her to take a deep breath to try
and hear better.

“Sage?” Regulus called.

The male voice made her look around, unable to

remember who would be the man beside her, since
that voice was not Harry’s or Remus’ adult’s voice,
not even Sirius’ adult voice. No, that was… not as
familiar.

“What happened?” she asked once she realized she

was on the ground.

“You fainted,” Narcisa answered, making Anne look

at her. “Are you feeling unwell? Do you think you
can get up?”

Anne looked around, pulling her skirt down just a

bit when she noticed how much of her legs were
showing, however, she felt a bit better when she
saw that Regulus didn’t look away from her face as
he read her.

“I think so,” she agreed.

Regulus was quick to put her arm around his

shoulders and slowly sit her down and then pull her
up. He didn’t seem to mind when she leaned
against him as she tried to take a breath and make
sure she wouldn’t pass out once more.

“We’ll take you to the Hospital Wing,” Narcisa

announced.

“No, no. I’m fine,” Anne dismissed. “It’s just… bad

memories. It happens sometimes. It makes my
blood pressure drop a bit. I ended up skipping
lunch and --”

“A bit? You looked like Death, woman!” Regulus

said, cutting her off and slowly letting her go.

She took a step back away from him.

“I’m fine,” she promised. “It’s gone now. It

passed.”

“It happened before?” Narcisa asked.

“Yes,” Anne simply said.

Sucedió antes, en el salón de Malfoy Manor en el

momento en que Greyback rasgó sus jeans por la
mitad y se rió de sus bragas infantiles, olvidándose
por completo de que era una niña por un segundo;
una vez que lo recordó, se sintió aún más feliz. No
la tocó porque Draco Malfoy insistió en que
necesitaba ser arrastrada a las mazmorras con el
resto; ya sea que deseara haberla salvado o no,
ella ciertamente estaba agradecida con él. Ella se
desmayó en sus brazos tan pronto como Greyback
salió de la habitación. Se despertó en las
mazmorras con Harry enloqueciendo y Ron
tratando de escapar mientras Hermione gritaba a
todo pulmón, bajo la misma tortura por la que Anne
ya había pasado.

También sucedía cuando pasaba demasiado tiempo

sin comer. Aparentemente pasar hambre durante
varios meses durante los veranos y años antes de
Hogwarts no fue suficiente para que su cuerpo se
acostumbrara a no tener mucha comida. Hermione
había dicho que tal vez tenía un metabolismo muy
rápido e incluso le había puesto nombre a una
enfermedad; Anne no podía recordar cómo se
llamaba y seguramente no le preguntó a tía
Petunia, después de todo ella no había sido llevada
a un médico a menos que fuera por situaciones de
vida o muerte.

Narcisa no insistió, ni Regulus tampoco.

Regulus miró a su alrededor.

"Se hace tarde, deberíamos ir al Gran Comedor",

dijo.

"¿Qué hora es?" -Preguntó Narcisa.

“Hora de cenar”, dijo Regulus como si fuera obvio.

Narcisa lo fulminó con la mirada, pero eso lo hizo

sonreír un poco.

“Vamos”, dijo Narcisa, mirando a Anne caminar

como si tuviera miedo de desmayarse una vez más.
"Tengo hambre."

Anne caminó unos pasos delante de Narcisa y

Regulus mientras los primos hablaban entre ellos.
La niña estaba principalmente concentrada en cómo
asegurarse de que sus rodillas temblorosas
caminaran de la manera correcta.

Se detuvo, incapaz de seguir caminando y se apoyó

contra la pared. Narcisa también se detuvo y se
volvió hacia ella.

"¿Sabio?" ella gritó.

"Continúa", dijo, tratando de respirar

profundamente. "Estaré allí en un segundo".

Narcisa vaciló, claramente queriendo esperar con

ella hasta que estuviera lista para ir a cenar al Gran
Comedor, pero Regulus no parecía demasiado
preocupado. Él solo la miró por un momento y
luego asintió, entendiendo que ella quería estar
sola.

"Vamos", le dijo Regulus a Narcisa.

"Pero ella -"

"Vamos", insistió Regulus.

Narcisa asintió y comenzó a caminar con Regulus

hacia el Gran Comedor, aunque miró hacia atrás
para asegurarse de que Anne estuviera bien.

As soon as she was alone, Anne sat down on the

ground.

Still shaking, she brought her knees to her chest

and took a deep breath. She knew she had to stop
thinking about her past and start dealing with the
future – she had to find the Horcruxes that
Voldemort had already created and she needed to
destroy them before things got too bad. Besides,
she needed to make sure James and Lily would get
together so Harry could be born in 1980; she owed
Harry that much, a happy childhood.

It was 1976, there wasn’t much she could do while

she was still in school, but she had given
Dumbledore all information she could and made
sure to let him know that she would have opinions
on his decisions. Soon enough, the Order of the
Phoenix would be more important inside the war
and then she would be guided inside, according to
Dumbledore. In there, she’d have more power. She
just had to hold on until summer, because for now
the Orders consisted on Dumbledore himself and a
few alumni.

Slowly, calming down and gathering her thoughts,

she got up from the ground and sighed. She turned
the little silver bracelet on her wrist again, putting
it back inside the sleeve.

Footsteps made her look up from the ground as she

was still leaning against the wall.

James Potter had wide eyes fixed on her, wand in

hand and quick steps towards her. She froze when
she saw his flared nose and trembling limbs. He
was angry with her by the way he was marching
towards her.

And he had the Marauders Map on his left hand.

“James?” she mumbled.

“Anne Sage my arse!” he exclaimed loudly. “Who

the fuck are you to me, Anne Potter?”

Anne just couldn’t move, and she couldn’t talk.

Her finally calming heart went back to thumping

against her ribcage, breath escaping her lungs. She
tried to speak, but her mouth and throat were dry.
How could she explain anything to him? How could
he ever forgive her for lying to him? She couldn’t
lose her father once more, especially not like that.

“Mister Potter, I believe you met, finally, Miss

Potter,” said a voice. Dumbledore was walking from
the corner of the corridor. “Why don’t we take this
conversation to my office?”

Chapter 7: Chapter Six

Summary:
Meeting one's father is certainly
awkward, dear reader, especially
when it's your own.

THE HEIR OF POTTERS; ANNE POTTER

James Potter was frozen in his seat, stomach

churning and face pale as he looked at Anne once
more.

He could see the resemblance now that he had

been told the truth of her presence. The red-hair
had been one of the reasons he had mistaken her
for Lily Evans, she was taller than Lily and she
certainly had the same build as his own mother,
Euphemia, had on her youth, tall and skinny. She
had his eyes, his father’s eyes. Oh, and her nose
was exactly like Lily’s.

He was starting to shake as he started to wonder

how the hell that he had not seen that before, or
how one of his friends didn’t say anything besides
teasing that he had made a quick friendship with
one of the only red-heads of school besides his
crush.

“Mister Potter?” Professor Dumbledore asked,

glistening eyes curiously taking his reaction. “Are
you feeling alright? Do you happen to need a
Calming Draught?”

James looked at Dumbledore blankly, hearing him,

but his mind not making sense of the words for
long seconds. Suddenly, he shook his head.

“No, no. I’m fine,” he answered. “Just a bit…

surprised.”

“I understand, it must be very shocking to you,”

Dumbledore answered.

Anne was sitting on the chair beside James,

distractedly poking Dumbledore’s desk slime ball
with her wand and trying to ignore James’ eyes
over her.

“I have a daughter,” James said. “And that

daughter happens to come back on time and is now
the same age as me, ignoring that she’s changing
history just so she can save her older brother, who
didn’t survive the war. Also, she’s trying to fight
Voldemort,” he repeated.

“I do believe so, yes,” Dumbledore answered,

leaning back on his chair and waiting a bit more.

James looked at Anne once more and his lips were

pulled back in an amused big smile.

“Oh, bloody hell! Yes!” he celebrated. “What a

revolutionary use of Time-Turners!”

Anne looked at him with wide, surprised eyes. She

had expected a lot of things; she had expected
anger and screaming, but not happiness and
excitement so pure that it looked almost childish. It
took her a moment to understand that James still
was, in a way, a child and his excitement only
proved that.

“Really?” she asked.

“Where did you even get a Time-Turner? They are

very controlled by the Ministry. My dad took quite a
few back in the course of his years working as an
auror, said is one of the most commonly stolen
instruments,” he explained.

“Oh, um… Remus gave it to me,” she answered.

James laughed.

“Of course, Saint Lupin would be the one to have

the actual artifact that is heavily controlled by the
Ministry during the war and give it to someone else
midst battle,” he laughed. “What a scene!”

Was he being serious? Was he taking it all so

lightly?

“He was trying to save my life,” she explained. “He

just wanted me to get out of there as fast as I
could.”

James looked at her and nodded.

“It’s something that our Moony would do without a

single hesitation,” he said. “Was he close to you?”

“He was my godfather, Sirius was Harry’s,” she

said.

James blinked, expecting her to continue, but when

she didn’t, he had to try and urge her to keep on
the conversation.

“And Peter?” he asked.

Anne glanced at Dumbledore, who discreetly shook

his head. She understood that she had to improvise
quickly.

“I believe he was supposed to be the godfather of

the next child, but… the war happened and then
you and Lily passed. I was too young to remember,
months old really when Voldemort invaded our
home. Harry and I survived after he… I don’t know,
sort of died after trying to kill Harry,” she
explained, lying through her teeth.

James nodded, face paling once more. He had

known he had died, but to know it was when his
youngest child was not even a whole year old was
devastating. By the way Anne was looking around,
it was clear that she didn’t want to keep that
conversation going. What had happened to her
after he was gone? From what had he failed to
protect her from?

He forced himself to go back to his excitement,

wanting nothing more than to cheer Anne up.

“You know what that means, Professor?” he asked,

eyes shining. “It means that, in the end, Lily does
love me!”

Professor Dumbledore allowed an amused smile go

to his lips as he nodded, watching the boy get up
from his chair and ignore his trembling hands to
make a victory dance, chanting the girl’s name in
his mind.

Anne chuckled. You have to agree, dearest of

readers, that with training, James would a great
father.

“Well, we can’t be sure, though,” she said. “I mean,

I came here and messed up a lot of the time-line by
telling you and shit –”

“Language!” Dumbledore warned.

She rolled her eyes and ignored him

“So, we can’t be sure everything will be the same.

But, be sure, I’ll try to help you get her,” she
promised.

“For your brother?” he asked.

“For Harry,” she agreed.

James nodded, proud of himself.

“I had two children with the woman that I love!” he

celebrated once more. “It certainly is the happiest
day of my life.”

“You found out you died,” she reminded him.

James shrugged.

“And found out that my daughter is a brave girl

that went back on time to save us all, like a good
Gryffindor,” he answered. Anne looked away and
James froze. “No,” he mumbled, body growing cold.
“You were a Ravenclaw?” she shook her head.
“Hufflepuff?” he asked once more, voice choking.

"Slytherin", respondió ella.

Dumbledore estuvo a un segundo de caer en

carcajadas por la forma en que James se quedó
boquiabierto en clara ofensiva. Observó como
James dio un paso atrás, poniendo demasiado
dramáticamente su mano sobre su pecho y
respirando profundamente como si se hubiera caído
de espaldas.

"¡No!" el exclamó.

"Sí. Slytherin”, respondió.

Dumbledore se levantó de su silla, con las manos

juntas detrás de la espalda y asintiendo.

"Slytherin de principio a fin, se lo puedo asegurar,

señor Potter", añadió a la conversación.

James suspiró y sacudió la cabeza.

“Supongo que te arrepentiste al venir aquí”, dijo.

"Y entré en la Casa Gryffindor porque era el lugar

donde era menos probable que la gente sospechara
demasiado de mí", dijo. "La Casa del Olvido",
bromeó, "así es como solía llamarla, porque Harry
estaba demasiado distraído para enterarse de la
mitad de los chismes que circulaban por la
escuela".

James se rió entre dientes con eso.

“¿Ensimismado?” adivinó.

“En cierto modo”, respondió ella. “La gente

constantemente intentaba matarlo. Tenía que tener
cuidado con su vida, no andar metiéndose en
asuntos ajenos. A mí, al contrario que a él, me
gustaban los buenos chismes y las buenas risas”.

Dumbledore miró alrededor de su oficina,

distrayéndose con su tarro de dulces y dándoles a
los dos niños la falsa sensación de privacidad.

"¿Te gustó la escuela?" Preguntó James, llevándola

al sofá y sentándose a su lado. Anne se sentó y lo
miró. “¿Cuál fue tu materia favorita? ¿Quién fue tu
persona favorita? ¿Estabas saliendo con alguien?
¿Remus le dio al chico o chica, quién soy yo para
juzgar, una verificación de antecedentes antes de
dejarte salir con ellos?

"¡Una pregunta a la vez!" ella rió.

Dumbledore la miró por encima del hombro. Era la

primera vez en los tres días que había estado allí y
él la había estado observando que se veía
realmente feliz, cogida de la mano de su padre y
con los ojos brillando mientras lo escuchaba.

"Les daré a ustedes dos un poco de tiempo para

hablar", dijo Dumbledore. “Iré y les pediré a los
elfos que traigan buena comida. ¿Cualquier
solicitud?"

James ni siquiera lo miró, solo sacudió la cabeza,

sin dejar de mirar a Anne, quien miró a
Dumbledore y también sacudió la cabeza,
agradeciéndole con los ojos. Dumbledore se fue al
segundo siguiente.

“Entonces”, comenzó, “bueno, me gustaba la

escuela”, respondió. “Tenía una buena amiga
llamada Luna Lovegood, era maravillosa y una
Ravenclaw, incluso una vez salió con Harry a una
fiesta; eran buenos amigos. Nunca salí con nadie,
pero sí fui a una cita y Remus apareció a mitad de
camino y me arrastró porque no le agradaba el
chico; Más tarde descubrí, por supuesto, que el tipo
era un imbécil que parecía estar bastante
entusiasmado con el plan de su padre de sacrificar
a los hombres lobo conocidos. Entonces, estoy
agradecido de que Remus esté allí”.

She didn’t tell him that it wasn’t Remus that had

raised her. She didn’t tell him that she didn’t know
he was her godfather until she was twelve and was
terrified, shaking as she held Ron tight to not let
him die through the hands of Sirius, whom she
thought to be a mass murder, and he told her,
begging her to calm down and let him help Ron.

“That’s wonderful. Good job, mate!” he said to the

air around them.

She giggled, tears getting to her eyes.

She had never, in a hundred years, thought that

she would be there, holding her dad’s hand and
telling him about herself, getting to know him
without the fear of time running out. She was with
him now. She was going to be with him until the
end of their lives.

James, seeing the tearful smile, hugged her close.

Anne couldn’t hold back anymore, she just sobbed
loudly, holding onto him as if she was drowning and
he was a lifeguard.

“Oh, God,” she sobbed.

“You’re alright now, you’re with me,” he mumbled

against her hair. “You’ll be fine. I’ll take care of
you, alright?”

She nodded against his shoulder and he smiled.

“Oh, my parents are going to love you. Just wait

until they know all the truth. They’ll spoil you
rotten! Dresses, shoes, sweets, books; anything
you want, you’ll have,” he said. “You didn’t meet
them, did you?” she shook her head against him. “I
didn’t think so,” he said, sounding a bit sad. “But
you’ll meet them and you’ll love them.”

Anne pulled away from him, cleaning her cheeks

with the heel of her hands. James smiled as she
looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what? In your situation, I’d be crying a lot

more, but don’t mind me – everybody says I’m a
cry-baby, which… fair enough, I am,” he admitted.

She chuckled.

“Well, neither me nor Harry got that one from you,”

she said. “I’ve seen Harry cry like… three times?”
she guessed.

“Good, you got Lily’s strength,” he said.

“Something I envy, then.”

She sighed.

“God, I’m making such a mess,” she commented.

“It’s been three days and you already found me
out, the Blacks seem to want to know too much
about my fake like in Canada. That can’t be any
good.”

James crossed his arms, pulling his left leg under

him and sitting once more, turned towards her
completely.

“Yes, I saw Regulus and Narcisa Black with you

earlier today,” he said. “Are you alright? Did they
do anything?”

“No, no. Just asked me questions,” she said. “I lied

and I got Narcisa to believe me, but… I don’t think
Regulus is as gullible as his cousin. He looked at me
weird, almost as if he could smell I was lying – it
was terrifying!”

James chuckled.

“That’s because you didn’t meet his mother yet.

Walburga Black is a bloody cow!” he froze. “Don’t
repeat that,” he warned.

Anne laughed and shook her head.

“I met a portrait and I refuse to believe it can get

any worse than that,” she said. “I lived in
Grimmauld Place for a while,” she explained when
she saw his confusion, “before Sirius… passed.”

James looked away, nodding and trying to remind

himself that things were about to change. He could
help now and save Sirius this time, much like Anne
was certain she could save him and Lily this time
around. He begged all his ancestors and all the
gods that, if something were to happen to him, that
Lily, Anne and the future Harry could be spared of
his terrible destiny – he would bear it alone.

“I see,” he said.

“I’m a godmother, though,” she said, “or I was,”

she added, blinking with her smile disappearing.
“Remus married a nice woman and they had a
child, sweet Edward – little Teddy is amazing!”

“Remus married a woman?” he asked, surprised

and confused.

“Sirius had just died,” she explained, “and,

honestly, she got pregnant before the wedding. I
think he did it under the pressure of not leaving her
alone, but they loved each other – maybe not in
the way they thought they did at the start, but they
cared for each other and they would protect each
other. It’s love, even if not romantic. And they
loved Teddy deeply, he was a good dad”

James nodded once more, taking in more of the

information. Remus and a woman – what a shock.
He had the great hopes of Remus and Sirius
settling down with one another ever since the year
before.

“I’m glad he had his moment of happiness, then,”

James said.

“They love you,” Anne blurted out, making James

raise his eyebrows. “Sirius, Remus… they love you
very much. There was no happiness for a long time
for either of them after you were gone, they
couldn’t find comfort or relief anywhere. There’s a
lot I can’t tell you yet, things I’m not ready and
that you are not ready yet. I want to tell you, but
not now… But I will, I promise.”

“I believe you,” he said.

At first, when Dumbledore threw the whole story in

his lap, James had just stared forward and then
laughed. But then the image of the small feet and
the black letters spelling ‘ANNE POTTER’ made him
take a deep breath and try to listen more. A lot
started to make sense and he just couldn’t help
himself but to believe it completely.

“This war was a lot for everyone, and it’s hard

knowing that’ll have to go through another one,”
she explained. “But, if it’s for the good that no one
has to go through it again, I can bear it. I can help
– we don’t need to lose anyone.”

James stared at her, thinking with pity that she

truly believed that. The thing was that his parents
had been present when Grindelwald had taken over
France, the war they had seen was something that
the best of writers could not begin to describe –
war and violence, blood and pain; people would die,
either Anne was there or not, they would have
losses either way. He hoped, deeply, that she could
understand that would not carry it on her own
shoulders. He promised, in silence, that he would
share the weight if she needed to.

“I’ll be there,” he said. “I’ll fight beside you.”

She looked at him, eyes still tearful, but no more

tears rolling down her cheeks and no snot on her
nose.

“I know,” she confessed. “You never abandon

anyone.”

“No one gets left behind,” he agreed. “Especially

not my daughter.”

Filled with good food that they had eaten with

Dumbledore in his office, talking and sharing
secrets from each other’s timelines, they went back
to their Common Room late at night, through the
dark of the corridors.

Anne had done it several times, but doing it with

James was much more fun.

Not holding back giggles, they had been running to

try and get to the stairs before the other before
deciding that running together was better, and
having more fun than Anne had ever had in her life
– playing snow-ball with her friends and strolling
through Hogsmeade was nothing short of happiness
for her, but it didn’t compare to hold her father’s
hand and run across Hogwarts, where she had
always considered her home.

“Careful!” he warned in a hushed whisper when she

tripped on the stairs. He helped her up laughing
and not checking if she was alright because she
was also laughing. “You’re clumsy!”
“I’m trying to match you. You have really long legs,
you tall man,” she teased.

He laughed, holding onto her arm when the stairs

locked on the floor they wanted. They went back to
running.

“Hey!” a voice screamed.

James was ready to keep running, this time faster,

but Anne stopped and turned around to see Lily
Evans beside Remus Lupin, both watching them.
Remus crossed his arms as if disappointed James
had been caught, while Lily was glaring at James
without him saying as much as a word.

“Hey, guys,” James said.

“What are you two doing out here?” Remus asked,

watching them both with narrowed eyes.

“Oh, we’re going back to the Common Room,” she

said, voice calm enough to make James look at her.
“Dumbledore just freed us after he caught us in a
screaming match. We’re fine now, but I almost
ripped Potter’s head off,” she lied. “You can ask
Dumbledore. He said the Prefects would
understand.”

Lily looked Anne up and down and crossed her

arms.

“She’s scary,” James added, backing Anne’s story.

“I’m happy you’re in my team, not against me,
Anne.”

“Good to know, James, good to know,” she

answered, poking his ribs with her elbows.

He groaned and pushed her away lightly, letting go

of her hand in the process, making her laugh.

“Can we go?” James asked. “I’m really tired.

“That’s because you ate like it was your last bloody

meal,” she laughed.

“Go on,” said Remus.

“What?” Lily said. “What do you mean ‘go on’,

surely we are going to ask Dumbledore!”

“Yes,” Remus sighed. “If they’re lying, we’ll know

where to find them, Lily. Let them go. It’s late and
I want to finish this soon. I’m tired.”

It was almost midnight, and the full moon was a

day and week away and it was starting to take its
tool in Remus. The annoyance was starting to
appear, though he was still controlled; the nights
were starting to get longer for him.

James, hesitant, looked at Remus.

“We’re really not lying, mate,” he said. “I’m a lot of

things, but not a liar,” he looked at Lily. “If I had
been caught sneaking around, do you really think
I’d be laughing around and would still have the guts
to lie to you? No. We’re coming back from
Dumbledore’s office.”

And it was true. Anne had been the one to lie and
James was actually happy she was on their side of
the war, not on the other – all of that had been
true.

Lily looked at James with a surprised expression.

She had caught him sneaking around before, and
he had laughed and agreed that he had met a girl
and was going back to the Common Room. He had
seemed almost close to bragging, but when she
asked, he didn’t tell the girl’s name – he ‘didn’t kiss
and tell, Evans. I’m not much of an arsehole’, had
been his answer; she thought he had been joking
around, but the next day in detention, she found
out by Emma Pattinson that she had been the one
snogged.

James almost never lied. He was often proud of his

mischiefs, which made Lily crazy, dear reader.

Remus knew the only moment James would lie was

to protect Remus’ secrets. If someone started
asking too much, he would lie and say that Remus
was in a gang and that he had been cut by their
rivals; he would say that he had fallen off a muggle
bicycle and ended up scratching his face and now
that they were older, the newest version was that
Remus had taken a muggle motorcycle while he
was drunk and suffered an accident.

“See?” Remus said. “Let them go.”

“Fine,” Lily sighed. “Don’t let me catch you again.”

“Don’t worry,” joked Anne. “You won’t, Mum.”

That made James choke and then start laughing.

Remus watched them in confusion and Lily’s

eyebrows raised as they ran away.

“Are they drunk?” Lily wondered out loud.

“Nope, James is as sober as a stone,” Remus

answered. “What the hell was that?”

“Are they – are they together?” Lily asked, even

more suspicious now.

“No. James would have told us he was seeing

someone,” Remus said, though he wasn’t very sure
anymore, just saying that to calm Lily down. “I
believe they’re just… friends, I guess.”

Lily nodded very slowly, unsure if she believed

Remus’ excuse.

Anne Potter has learned a lot about James Potter,

her father.

He liked Quidditch even more than Harry and he

very excited for the probability of being the Leader
of the team next year. He hated potion, even
though he was surprisingly good at it, though he
didn’t try anything. He loved transfiguration and
teasing McGonagall.

The year before he went to Gay Pride Parade in July

with Remus in England and had dragged Peter and
Sirius with him because Remus was scared of going
alone. He wanted to be an auror like his mother
and father. And the only potion he would use on his
hair was one that his ascendent had created, since
it was the only one that he trusted with Potter hair,
which he was proud to know that Harry had
inherited.

Lying in bed, she smiled to herself and accepted the

darkness sleepiness got her, sleeping through the
whole night for the first time in a long life.

No nightmares attacked.

She only dreamed of holding Harry’s hand and

showing him how life could’ve been if their parents
survived. For the whole dream, they were both
happy while they ate sweets behind Lily’s back
before dinner and with the help of James, who
would wink and tell them to be quiet, Sirius
covering for them and Remus glaring at both of
them, but not telling Lily. Peter told her soon after,
making the kids giggle, Lily would scold the other
boys and James start running away from her,
laughing and carrying the kids on his escape.

Chapter 8: Chapter Seven

GRANDPARENTS

The switch between James and Anne was clear.

People didn’t seem to understand, not even the
other Marauders, but it was clear enough.

James would always (always) say good morning to

Anne and put a hand on her shoulder as he sat
beside her on the breakfast table, he would always
keep an eye on her during the classes they shared
and wave at her when they went their separate
ways for other classes. She would always fix his
glasses when it was near from falling off his nose
and would laugh when he would mess up his hair as
if it was a personal joke (which she had explained
to James that Harry had been terribly embarrassed
when he saw James messing his hair, all while
Harry was always trying to tame it through his life),
and – gosh – the smiles they would share.

James and Anne were often side by side. James

had stopped teasing and hexing Slytherins and
Anne had started to feel more and more
comfortable around the Gryffindor Common Room
and the people that were often there.

Friday night, the Marauders decided it was time for

an intervention.

They had tried to hold it off and give their friend

some time to fix his mind and actually tell them
without being pressured into it after they implicated
several things and waited, but James never said
anything. They were tired of waiting.

“How do we even start this?” Peter asked, worried.

Remus sighed and sat on the middle of his bed.

“I don’t know, mate,” Remus admitted. “I guess we

can just be honest and tread…” he looked straight
at Sirius, “carefully!”

Sirius rolled his eyes and leaned against the post of

Peter’s bed while Peter sat on the end of the bed.

“You speak as if I’d cock this up,” said Sirius, quite

offended.

“Because I think you will,” Remus said.

“Right, nice, mate. Thanks,” Sirius said.

“You’re not very known for being careful with your

words, Pads,” said Peter, siding with Remus.

Sirius glared at Peter.

“Since when do you have your own bloody

opinion?” he asked, angry.

Peter flinched and Remus raised his eyebrows.

“See? You just proved me right,” said Remus. “And

apologize to Wormtail!”

Pads took a deep breath and looked at Peter before

noticing that the boy actually seemed upset by
what he said. He hadn’t meant to actually hurt him;
he was just annoyed because he knew he was
right.

“Sorry, Peter,” he said.

“It’s alright. I get it,” Peter said.

“No. It’s not alright, I’m truly sorry. You were right,
I’m not very known for saying the right words. I
always dig my grave deeper,” Sirius admitted.

Remus got up from his bed.

“Look, Pads, I know that you’re excited to talk to

James about this and all, but let me start the
conversations, alright?” he said. Sirius nodded and
Peter nodded soon after. “James gets hurt easily.”

“James is a cry-baby,” Sirius complained.

Peter nodded once more. At least everyone agreed

with that.

“Just make sure James understands that we’re not

angry at him,” Peter said. “That’s the first thing
he’s going to think. Make sure we’re trying to
understand what’s going on and that we actually
like Anne.”

“Yeah, Anne’s alright,” Sirius agreed.

Remus looked at Sirius confused.

“Alright? I thought you liked her,” Remus said.

“I mean, I know she’s not dangerous or anything,

but truly don’t know her very well. She’s been
glued to James since she got here and I don’t really
like that,” said Sirius, shrugging. “She’s not bad.
But I don’t know her enough to form an opinion.”

Peter looked up at him.

“If James is really dating her, you’ll have to be

much better with her than just… not have an
opinion on her,” Peter said.

Remus shook his head.

“Not really. I mean,” he looked between them,

“she’s going to be James’ girlfriend, not Sirius’. As
long as he’s respectful, I think she’ll be fine.”

Peter laughed.

“You truly think James’ girlfriend is not going to be

involved in absolutely everything we do? Please,
Remus, she’s going to be James’ bloody other-half,
where she goes, he’ll go and vice-versa.” Peter
said. “Anne’s pretty nice.”

“I think so too, but I’m saying that –”

Steps coming up the stairs made them stop talking,

freezing for a moment and looking at the door
before exchanging looks. Remus goes back to his
bed and tried to look as comfortable and normal as
Peter just sat there, eyes wide and back as straight
as a plank. Sirius slowly walked towards James’
bed, standing in front of it and shoving his hands
into his pockets.

James walked into the room still smiling and

humming a song that he had been humming for
almost an hour; Anne had taught him that it was a
song that was to be released in ten years or so and
he had been the first one in the world to hear it –
quite exciting – so he had been humming it over
and over again so he wouldn’t forget it.

“Hey,” he greeted, looking to his friends.

They were being odd, but he didn’t say anything

about it.

“Mate,” greeted Peter, voice high-pitched.

James lo miró una vez más, con una ceja

levantada.

"¿Lo que está sucediendo?" preguntó.

Remus respiró hondo.

“¿Podemos hablar todos contigo, James?” Preguntó

Remus, con voz tranquila.

Los ojos de James se entrecerraron con sospecha.

"¿Acerca de?" preguntó. “Porque si se trata de los

vidrios rotos en el baño, no fui yo. Me desperté y el
espejo ya estaba roto y…”

"No no. Fui yo”, lo interrumpió Sirius. "Rompí el

espejo, olvídalo".

"Oh, está bien, entonces", dijo, sentándose en el

arcón a los pies de su cama. “¿De qué se trata
entonces?”

“Entiende antes que nada, Prongs, que esto es sólo

una charla. No estamos enojados y ciertamente no
lo estamos presionando; sólo tenemos curiosidad y
un poco preocupados, ¿de acuerdo? Dijo Remus.
Peter asintió con entusiasmo. "Hemos sido tus
amigos desde que tenías once años y, bueno,
desde que te conocimos, siempre has estado
completamente enamorado de Lily; saliste con ellos
el año pasado, pero nunca pasaron de algunas
semanas y ciertamente no". No empieces tan
rápido.

"¿Qué?" Preguntó James, más confundido que

nada. “¿Se trata de Jenna? Quiero decir, tuve una
cita con ella la semana pasada, pero no fue más
allá”.

"No. No sobre Jenna”, dijo Sirius.

"James, ¿estás saliendo con Anne?" -Preguntó

Pedro.

James miró a Peter con el rostro en blanco, sin

entender realmente lo que estaba pasando;
probablemente lo había escuchado mal, porque no
había manera de que alguien realmente pensara
que estaba saliendo con alguien como Anne y… oh,
no lo sabían. Ninguno de los Merodeadores tenía
idea de que Anne era su hija.

“No, no lo soy”, dijo. “¿Qué provocó esto?”

"Bueno, siempre estás rondando por ella, incluso

cuando no estás hablando con ella, nos acercas a
su mesa o lo que sea", respondió Sirius.

“Ella es nueva. Sólo estoy vigilándola”, respondió

James, esperando que sonara al menos un poco
creíble.

Remus sacudió la cabeza y se levantó de la cama

nuevamente.

“James, nunca estuviste atento a las personas que

eran transferidas a Hogwarts. O estás interesado en
ella a un nivel romántico o viste algo que nosotros
no vimos”.

“¡Basta, Lunático!” Dijo James, empezando a

sentirse presionado. "Esto no es nada romántico".

“¿Sexo, entonces?” —ofreció Peter.

"¡Merlín, no!" Exclamó James, saltando del cofre,

con cara de disgusto. “No pienso así en Anne y
todos ustedes pueden estar seguros de que ella
tampoco piensa así en mí. Esto no tiene nada que
ver con esto”.

"Entonces, ¿qué está pasando?" Insistió Sirius,

sacando las manos de sus bolsillos. “Quiero decir,
no la odio, pero ciertamente no entiendo qué está
pasando dentro de tu cabeza para que estés tan
interesado en ella, amigo. Quiero decir, ella es
bonita y todo eso, pero no pasa nada dentro de su
cabeza. ¡Está callada y entra en este lugar extraño
para pensar, mirando al vacío! Es genial y ella es
inteligente, pero simplemente se distrae y ese no
es el tipo de amigos que haces”.

“I’m not her friend because she’s pretty, Pads,”

James said, “and that’s a terrible thing to think. Are
you friends with girls just because they’re pretty.
That’s horrible! And misogynistic!”

Peter got up from his bed too, starting to take a

few steps towards the two in case the argument
started to get physical.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying that’s a

bit off,” Sirius said. “Remus and I researched a bit
about Emergency Transfers in Hogwarts and we’re
pretty sure she ran away from her family. You
barely can deal with me, mate. Why are you going
off, picking up strays?”

“Oh, so this is what that talk was truly about,”

James scoffed. “You’re jealous?”

“No, this is not –”

“Sirius, you’re my best friend and nothing is going

to change that,” James said. “Hell, you’re my
brother, mate. Anne is a different thing, she’s just
someone I want to protect and, if you guys truly
knew her as Anne, not ‘James’ friend’, you’d
understand where I’m coming from.”

Sirius’ eyes widened.

He had not thought about what his odd feeling

towards Anne was really about. At first, he thought
it was because she was weird and acted weird, but
then he found out that she was probably someone
like him – someone that was safer dealing with
other peoples’ troubles than with her own, most
likely to come out alive from a war than from her
own family. Now, he understood that it was just
fear of losing James to someone.

He thought Anne was new. She was fresh and much

more traumatized than he was; he thought James
would see little Sirius in her and leave him behind
to take care of someone that needed him more, not
understanding that Sirius still needed him.

“What’s wrong with Anne?” Peter asked, breaking

Sirius trance.

Sirius blinked, trying to ignore how his throat was

closing and his nose itching. He was very close to
crying and he had to stop before he started,
otherwise he wouldn’t be able to stop.

James, however, had tears on his eyes already, not

caring at all about being close to crying.

“Anne’s been through a lot and it’s not my place to

share this,” James said.

“It’s her brother, isn’t it?” Remus asked. “The boy

named Harry that she mentions sometimes, isn’t
it?”

Everyone looked at him.

“How do you know?” James asked.

“She talked about him in the Quidditch pitch,” he

answered. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

James nodded.

“He is,” he answered. “And I have no idea how

Anne managed to survive.”

Peter looked down, feeling a chill going up his

spine. He couldn’t imagine how it was to lose a
sibling. He was an only child, but he thought it
must be very similar with losing James or Sirius or
Remus; he didn’t think he would be able to survive
without them. He’s rather die with them.

“Wow,” Peter mumbled.

“Yeah,” agreed Sirius in a mumble too.

“So… Anne. We are going to see her more often,

aren’t we?” Remus asked.

“If you agree so, yes. I really like her in a friend

type of way and I really think that if you lot gave
her a chance, you’d like her too,” James said.
“Anne is under my wing, understood?”

Peter nodded.

It was like a law. If one of them took someone

under their wing, then the person was to be protect
by all of them; a friend of a friend, is always a
friend and an enemy of a friend is always an
enemy. They knew that. They never forgot that.

What Anne had to teach them was the most

Slytherin rule of all: the enemy of your enemy is
always a friend.

Saturday morning brough a surprising amount of

sun.

Gryffindor’s Quidditch Team was more than happy

about their training being cancelled after James
Potter, their star Chaser, had to go out of school
with his parents for personal reasons, according to
McGonagall, who went to talk to the team and tell
them the pitch was to be used by Ravenclaw.

James was brought to Dumbledore’s office at ten in

the morning, after breakfast. Anne got to
Dumbledore’s office fifteen minutes later after
talking to Marlene and telling her she had to go to
St. Mungus to get a check-up for the school
paperwork.

The lied brought peace to them as they waited two

more minutes in the office.

Anne was nervous, of course, she was to meet her

grandparents for the first time in her life when she
was already sixteen-years-old with her sixteen-
year-old father. That was not a situation one can
prepare themselves very easily, reader, and that
was something that Anne wished that was different.

“Don’t worry,” James said, trying not laugh.

“They’re going to love you. My dad is an auror and
my mum retired last year, she was an auror too,
but she’s older than my dad. You know… you look
quite a bit with her.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised.

“Absolutely,” he answered.

“Everybody always said I looked like my mum,” she

admitted.

“You do look a lot like her, but your height… that’s

my mum,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you
two had the exact same height,” he looked at her
for a bit. “Actually, maybe you’re taller, but you
certainly behave like her – same hand movements
when you’re talking.”

“Is your dad tall?” she asked.

“Yeah, quite a bit. Taller than me,” he answered.

James was taller than Anne by almost 10 cm, quite

a bit, she had to admit. She supposed, however,
that it was enough, after all her mother was quite
small and she couldn’t very much complain when
her own brother was small too, once more almost
10 cm smaller than her.

“¿Entonces tengo los mismos movimientos de

manos que la señorita Potter?” preguntó,
interesada, queriendo saber más sobre ellos antes
de conocerlos.

James se rió.

"¿La llamarás Señoritas Potter?" preguntó. "A ella

no le gustará eso".

“¿La llamo Lady Potter?” preguntó ella, preocupada.

“No, cariño. No”, se rió. "Lo entenderás cuando ella

venga".

"Jaime -"

“Olvídalo”, desestimó. “Anne, escucha, no tienes

que preocuparte en absoluto. Te van a amar. Eres
mía, no lo pensarán dos veces antes de amarte.
Siempre quisieron tener un nieto, pero supongo
que no lo esperaban tan temprano en la vida”.

Ella lo miró.

"¿No es así?" ella bromeó.

"¡No soy una puta!" -exclamó James-.

La puerta de la oficina se abrió y Dumbledore miró

a James.

"Idioma, señor Potter", dijo, entrando a la

habitación y cerrando la puerta. "La profesora
McGonagall fue advertida sobre su... visita médica,
señorita Potter".

"Gracias", dijo Ana.

James le dio un golpe a Anne de todos modos y le

lanzó una mirada burlona.

Aunque James había notado rápidamente la

cantidad de tensión entre el profesor Dumbledore y
Anne, no se atrevió a comentar al respecto. Sabía
que Anne no le había contado todo lo que sabía
sobre la guerra que estaba por llegar y que
Dumbledore probablemente también sabía más de
lo que dejaba entrever, pero confiaba en ellos. La
parte lógica de él decía que era estúpido confiar en
alguien tan rápidamente como confiaba en Anne,
pero la parte emocional de él lo instaba a
comprenderla y apoyarla; no había manera de que
ella fuera a traicionarlo, y él lo sabía porque desde
el momento en que la vio en la Sala Común de
Gryffindor esa primera mañana se sintió obligado a
protegerla.

Llámalo una extraña tontería del primer amor

paternal si quieres, querido lector, pero James
sabía en el fondo que Anne era suya de una
manera que nadie jamás lo sería.

Anne nunca había tenido abuelos en su vida y, para

ser honesto, Dudley tampoco. Los padres del tío
Vernon fallecieron cuando Anne tenía sólo tres años
y no tenían muchas ganas de visitar la casa de
Vernon, ya que estaba "lejos" de donde vivían
(Anne nunca entendió cómo dos horas en coche
estaban "lejos"). Los padres de la tía Petunia
fallecieron incluso antes de que Anne naciera de
forma normal, ya que la tía Petunia estaba alegre
de compartir, y la muerte humana causada por la
edad después de que no habían cuidado su salud
durante muchos años, siendo retiradas del mundo
en 1980.

Sin embargo, leyó que los abuelos debían ser

personas cálidas, amables y deseosas de mimar a
sus nietos con ropa, dulces y cualquier otra cosa
que el niño quisiera. Anne no era del tipo que pedía
mucho y se sentiría culpable la mayor parte del
tiempo si usaba el dinero en su cuenta atrasada
compartida con Harry; Hermione había dicho que
era porque fue criada con muy poco dinero
disponible para ella, tenía culpa por gastar y era de
esperarse, al igual que Harry no tenía idea de cómo
gastar el dinero y lo malgastaba para ayudar a las
personas que le importaban. sin pensar mucho en
las consecuencias.

"Vamos a ir al Callejón Diagon a tomar té y

almorzar, Anne, no a un campo de batalla", dijo
James, tomándole la mano de repente. "Cálmate,
¿de acuerdo?"

"Sí, lo siento", dijo, asintiendo y alejando sus

pensamientos. "Simplemente nervioso".

"Lo sé, no hay razón para pedir perdón".

Un pequeño ruido se escuchó en la chimenea de

Dumbledore y de repente la llama verde se apoderó
de toda la abertura.

Dos personas estaban junto a la chimenea cuando

el fuego volvió a apagarse.

Lord y Lady Potter eran conocidos por ser un poco

mayores que la mayoría de los padres en la
escuela, pero ciertamente lo compensaban con ropa
elegante y comportamiento tranquilo.

Lady Euphemia Potter era una mujer mayor que

tenía sus rizos rubios recogidos en un elegante
moño en la parte posterior de su cabeza y el
cabello comenzaba a volverse un poco plateado; no
parecía querer teñirse por su edad, fingiendo no
estaba allí; sólo la hacía más elegante. Era alta, de
hecho, en comparación con Harry, pero era más
baja que Anne, de pie orgullosamente con la
barbilla alta y la espalda recta. Sus ojos azules eran
inteligentes, como si conociera más secretos que la
mayoría de las personas en el mundo. Tenía una
túnica de vestir de color naranja suave con mangas
puntiagudas abullonadas que llegaban hasta la
mitad de sus manos, la túnica llegaba más allá de
sus tobillos donde sus botas de tacón negras
estaban muy bien pulidas, alrededor de su cintura
había una fina seda negra atada; En la mitad del
busto, había pequeños botones negros y detalles
negros por todo el busto y los hombros.

Anne touched her own hair. She had gotten

Euphemia’s curls – James had Euphemia’s curls.

Lord Potter was an older man, hair already greying,

but clearly had been deeply black before; Fleamont
Potter had learned to tame his Potter hair much
better than his son; his hair was pushed back and it
stayed in place in an elegant way. His brown eyes
were exactly like James’, but his skin was
surprisingly tanned; well, not all that surprising
since he was an auror and that meant he spent a
lot of time outside. Anne had been expecting him to
have a beard or a moustache, but his skin was
clean. He had black dressing trousers, black socks
and black polished social shoes, but his dressing
robe was a deep royal blue with three black leather
straps on the left side of his torso with his
shoulders being a bit square because of the
shoulder pads.

Fleamont smiled in the second he saw Dumbledore.

Anne was surprised that, though he was older, he
had the same smile as James, boyish and genuine.

“Dumbledore, my old friend!” he greeted.

“Dumbledore,” Euphemia greeted back, voice not

as excited.

Euphemia’s eyes were now stuck on Anne.

Anne jumped up from the sofa she had been sitting

beside James as if she had done something wrong.

“Fleamont and Euphemia, an honour to have you

two here, as always,” Dumbledore said, voice calm
as if he had not noticed the way Euphemia was not
listening to him.

“When I first received the letter, I admit, I thought

James had gotten into trouble again,” Fleamont
said. “I’m glad that, this time, I was wrong.”

“Dad!” complained James. “You barely got here and

you’re already attacking me…” he glanced at Anne
and added, “and in front of my daughter, to make
matters worse.”

Fleamont laughed and turned to the two children,

eyes stopping on Anne and smile growing.
“Your daughter indeed,” he said, “I can’t even deny
that.”

“I know, I know, she has my beauty,” James said,

pulling Anne to his side and putting his face right
beside hers, fluttering his eyelashes.

“She’s your daughter, James, therefore I believe

she knows the type of trouble you get yourself into
more often than not without your father having to
say it,” Euphemia said.

Slowly, Euphemia got closer and smiled for the first

time to Anne. Her smile was pretty too, but much
smaller than her husbands – Anne wasn’t sure it
was a real smile until she saw Euphemia’s eyes
shining in interest.

“So… you are my granddaughter?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Anne,” she presented herself.

Anne reached her hand out, ready to shake her

hand and be the polite young girl Aunt Petunia
made sure she was and that Harry had raised.

Euphemia chuckled, ignored her hand and just

pulled her in.

Anne was hugged and she didn’t flinch.

Chapter 9: Chapter Eight

Summary:
A sweet understanding between
the generations of warriors as
they see just another victim of the
war.

DIAGON ALLEY

MacTonshik’s was a small restaurant that was

clearly very expensive on the very end of Diagon
Alley and Anne couldn’t help but feel underdressed
as she watched all those fancy people walking into
the restaurant.

“It’s my favourite restaurant,” had explained

Euphemia. “I swear, in another life I was a cook,”
she joked. “Do you cook, my dear?”

“I bake better than I cook,” Anne admitted.

Euphemia smiled.

“Much better than what James is able to do, then. I

refuse to have him in the kitchen,” she answered.

James rolled his eyes and he pulled the chair for

Anne and pushed it slightly as she sat. A bit taken
aback by the gentlemanly act, she looked at him as
he sat beside her without hesitation.

“Are you still holding me responsible for the

incident at Christmas with the biscuits? Mum, it
wasn’t me!” he insisted.

“Sure, it was Sirius,” dismissed Euphemia, not

really believing James.

Since Sirius had run away from his family house the
summer before, he had been living with the
Potters, which he made sure to tell them he was
very thankful for, even though Euphemia had been
trying to make him live with them for years before
that. However, she had to admit that having two
marauder boys was hard, especially with Fleamont
working so hard all the time.

“You’ll see when you come home with us that those

two are forbidden from even entering the kitchen
without close observation of me or Coco,” said
Euphemia.

“Coco?” Anne asked.

“Our house-elf,” Fleamont answered. “She took

care of me when I was baby and took care of
James. She’s quite excited having Sirius to take
care of too, though I suppose she’s getting bored of
him. She’ll be happy to have another girl home.”

Anne blinked as it dawned on her that they were

expecting to take her to live with them too. She
was to really be part of the family like in the
dreams she had when she was a little girl.

“She’s crazy!” James complained. “Pops into the

rooms without warning and gives us all heart-
attacks. I swear, she’ll be the death of me!”

Euphemia glared at James.

“James, she changed your diapers and bathed you

when I broke my arm, I don’t think there’s much
for you to hide from her.”

James shrugged, agreeing with his mother on that.

Still, he always had a mini-heart attack whenever
the house-elf popped up out of nowhere to wake
him up or to tell him about dinner. Sirius had a
much worse time than him by the yelps and
startled screams he had heard throughout the year
that Sirius had been living with them. Apparently,
the Black’s house-elf would not walk into Sirius’
room unless forced, so he would just hit the door
strongly to wake him and then leave, not caring if
Sirius was truly awake or not.

Fleamont laughed as he watched Anne look

between Euphemia and James arguing, waiting for
the moment James would be grounded or hit.

“They’re always like that, dear,” he said. “Don’t

worry.”

Anne laughed, awkward.

“Dad, did you know that Anne is, like, really good
at potions?” James said, suddenly changing the
subject. He turned to Anne. “Mum is really good
too, but Dad is a proper genius!”

“Don’t exaggerate on my talents, James, it’s

unbecoming,” Fleamont said.

“He’s right, love, you are good,” Euphemia said.

“You’re too kind,” dismissed Fleamont once more.

“Anne, how are your grades in Potions?”

Anne shrugged.

“I mean, I good grades in most of the subjects in

my time. ‘O’ in potions, herbology, arithmancy,
ancient runes and charms, sir,” she said.

“Great! Five O’s!” Euphemia exclaimed.

“Amazing!” agreed Fleamont.

Before anyone could say anything else, a young

man came into the table dressed all in black as he
gave a quick bow.

“Lord and Lady Potter,” he greeted. “Heir Potter

and Miss…” he looked at Anne, blinking a few times.

Feeling weird about how the man seemed to just

freeze for a second as he looked at her, she forced
a smile.

“Sage,” she answered.

“Miss Sage,” he greeted.

Was he a Death Eater? Did he somehow recognize

her? Who was he? Why did he look at her like that?

“Let’s start with a simple entrée, yeah? Do you

have anything you don’t eat, Anne dear?” Fleamont
said, Anne shook her head. “The same as always
for now then and elf-wine. For the underage kids,
juice?” he asked. He seemed to glare at the man.

“Pumpkin,” agreed James, looking at the man

weirdly too.

Had they noticed the man staring at her too? Had

they decided she was in danger in that place?

“Orange is fine,” she said.

The man left four menus on the table before

walking away quite quickly.

“What a –” started James.

“Hold your tongue, son,” warned Euphemia.

“What was that?” Anne asked. “Why did he look at

me like that? Does he know I –”

“Oh, no, dear!” Euphemia said, quickly

understanding what had been going on in Anne’s
mind. “No, that had nothing to do with who you
are. He just thought you were pretty and was
trying to flirt with you.”

The explanation took Anne by surprise as she

looked for the man that was talking to the cook as
he slowly walked back to the table with the juices,
wine bottle and goblets. He was a handsome young
man with black skin and golden eyes, but certainly
was older than her.

“Oh, so that’s why you said underage that way,”

she mumbled as it dawned on her.

“Yes,” said Fleamont. “Don’t worry, darling, you’re

safe with us. No one will harm you while you’re
near us. You are family now and family keeps each
other safe.”

Surprisingly enough, she felt safe with them.

James, trying to distract her as the man got closer

to the table, put a hand on her shoulder and
opened the menus between them. He started
rambling about which of the options were actually
good and which had just pretty French names.

Anne was quick to ask for a confit de canard in the

hopes it tasted as good as it sounded as James
explained it to her. James used his flawless French
to ask for coq au vin, which raised Fleamont’s
eyebrow and made Euphemia roll her eyes.

“That’s the closest you’ll get to wine today, young

man, forget it,” warned Fleamont. “Give Anne a
good example, yeah?”

The man walked away with the orders, leaving a bit

of bread and two plates of food.

“It’s roasted fig and ham,” Euphemia explained.

“Just a starter, take a bite.”

The fig was much better than the ham, she had to
admit as her eyes fluttered shut in delight with the
taste.

Anne had her heart beating on her throat when she

noticed that Fleamont wasn’t going to let her see
the check. Guilt was growing on her stomach,
suffocating her little by little as he talked to the
owner of the restaurant, warning him that if Anne
ever came in there, he wasn’t to ask her for money
– the check was to be sent to Potter Manor straight
away.

James laughed as he threw his hand over her

shoulders and led her outside, Euphemia right
behind them.

“James, careful. You’ll hurt her!” Euphemia said.

Anne ended up smiling, hand going around James’

waist so they wouldn’t fall.

“Leave them, Mia, they’re having fun,” Fleamont

said, holding his wife’s hand.

The two kept walking straight after the group had

decided they needed to go to Gringotts to deal with
some paperwork, not telling Anne what that was
about. Anne and James were talking about the
differences of Diagon Alley in the different times,
James listening excited to know that another
Quidditch Store was to be open sooner or later.

Euphemia watched them, eyes alert.

“I can’t even deny she’s his daughter, Monty,” she

mumbled. “She’s just like him.”

“It took me by surprise too,” Fleamont agreed.

“She’s beautiful!”

“If I didn’t know any better and didn’t believe

Dumbledore, I’d –”

“You don’t like Dumbledore.”

“But I believe him in this, either I like him or not.

He’s not one to trust lightly, if he told us and
James, then he’s absolutely sure she’s telling all the
truth she has to tell,” Euphemia said. “I swear,
Monty, if I didn’t know the truth, I’d say she was
your daughter with another woman.”

Fleamont laughed.

“As if any woman would ever have me,” he joked.

“You’re the only one that can take me.”

She laughed.

Fleamont kissed her temple lovingly.

“You’re worried,” he commented.

“She’s… been through something I can’t even

imagine. Dumbledore said she lost James and Lily
when she just a baby and then lived with someone
else, whom clearly wasn’t any of James’ friends.
Look at the state of her, Fleamont! Something
happened there and then a whole war where she
was one of the main targets,” she shook her head,
disappointed. “This is not something a child is
supposed to be involved in. She’s just sixteen!”

“War is war,” he said.

“But children are not soldiers!” she disagreed. “I

don’t give a damn that she was willing to fight,
she’s just a kid. She wasn’t supposed to be through
this. She was supposed to be protected and loved,”
she sighed. “Fleamont, she seemed surprised when
I hugged her. She seemed terrified when James
joked around with me. I don’t even know if I want
to know what actually happened to her!”

“I don’t think I want either, Mia, but we can’t

change it now. We can feel bad for her and for what
she lost, but we can’t go back on time and undo
everything that led her to have this life,” he said.
“She came back to help James; she’s brave and
strong, and she’s doing this for her brother. I
couldn’t be prouder, even if I wished she didn’t
have to do this. But we can change this in another
way!”

“How?” she asked, trying not to cry as she watched

Anne laugh when James told her a story of when he
was fell off his broom in the backyard as he pointed
at the broom he was using, after all it was the
newest one and it was in the glass of the store.

“We can give her what she didn’t have the first time
around,” he answered. “We can love her and teach
her what she didn’t learn – we can make a Potter
through and through. Let’s spoil her and give her
food and love her unconditionally. Let’s be her
grandparents,” he said.

Euphemia looked away from her children.

“It still doesn’t make me relax. What about Sirius?

How do we even begin to explain this to him? And
James – oh, James is barely a man; he can’t be a
father!” she said.

Monty held her shoulders and turned her to the

children once more.

Someone walked by, brushing against Anne and

making her lose her balance. James was quick to
hold her without even looking away from her,
listening to her talk and nodding with a smile.

“He already is,” Monty said. “And he seems quite

proud of it.”

“Monty –”

“We raised him right, Mia. I wouldn’t worry about

him,” he smiled at her.

Slowly, he put his arm out and she held onto it.
They walked through the people, the crowd opening
space for the sweet older couple to walk through,
some even going as far as taking a second look and
smiling. After all, dearest reader, isn’t it amazing to
see how love survives through time?

“Come on, kids!” Mia exclaimed.

Anne nodded and ran after her, James on her

heels.

It was comforting for Anne to know that Gringotts

had not changed at all even through decades. It
was the same crooked and odd smelling building as
ever, but now she felt like she was being watched
as she walked into it. No. The people in there didn’t
know she had broken into Gringotts in her own
time, used an Unforgivable under the invisibility
cape and flown out of there in a dragon. She was
being watched because she was a stranger walking
right behind Lady Potter.

“Lord Potter,” greeted Uloct, the goblin that was

responsible for many important families’ vaults.

Anne knew him. Anne had kicked him in the nose

last time she had been there and he tried to hold
her before she could jump into the dragon.

Anne looked down at her ugly shoes, feeling out of

place and quite embarrassed by the memory she
was having alone.

“I want access to the paperwork on my vault,” he

announced.

“Any specific ones?” Uloct asked.

“I want to add another dependent under my family

name,” he explained.

Anne looked up with that, eyes widening in shock.

She had not been expecting that.

Uloct dark eyes went to Anne.

“Another one?” he asked.

Fleamont’s eyes went cold.

“Yes. Is there a problem with that? And this time

I’d like the access to both of the vaults, if it’s not a
problem to you.” he asked.

“No, sir. Just a second, please. I’ll go get it,” he

said, jumping out of his stall and walking away.

Uncomfortable, Anne’s left hand went to her back

and held the right one tightly, not wanting to feel
embarrassed by having a reaction she couldn’t
control.

“Sir, you shouldn’t –” she started.

Monty smiled at her.

“Dear, you can just call me Monty at this point.

You’ll be another one of my protegees now,” he
explained. “Sirius, James and you will have more
than enough money to go around and round.”

“And do call me Mia, please,” Euphemia said,

putting a hand on Anne’s shoulder and hugged
sideways.

Anne was more confused than anything at that

point. Why would people that she just met go
through all that trouble to help her?

“Now, come here,” Monty said. “I’ll teach you what

you have to know.”

And it was quite a lot.

In the 600’s level was the normal Potter vault; it

was where she would go most of the time,
especially while she was underage because it was
where most of the Potter wealth was located,
though in the 700’s lever things were a bit
different; that vault was much more important to
the family, but much less valuable to others: it was
documents, mostly, and some family jewellery that
was charmed (apparently it was a common practice
with generational wealth and engagement rings).
Only wizards and witches of age would have access
to the second vault.

Before Monty was done, the goblin was back with a

great stack of papers.

He put it over the table and Monty started

scratching it with his quill, signing page after page.
It took him almost two whole minutes.

“Now we need blood-tying,” said Uloct.

Anne looked up, confused.

“Sirius didn’t need it,” said James, confused.

“Sirius doesn’t have access to our second vault,”

explained Euphemia. “Go on, Anne, it’s not going to
hurt.”

Month smiled once more and offered his hand. She

put her left hand onto his and he the quill a small
shake, it turned into a dagger that poked her
finger, she jumped, but it didn’t really hurt. The
finger was pressed against two papers and soon
after the papers glowed an odd greenish light.

Uloct seemed surprised as well.

“Are you aware that the blood shared between –”

“Yes, we are. Do put those on the files and

remember the name Anne Sage,” Monty said,
cutting the goblin off once more. “From now on,
she’s to be recognized as a Potter as well.”

Anne felt a strong pull on the back of her stomach

towards Monty and, before she could stop herself,
she threw herself in his arms and tried her best not
to cry.

Maybe she did inherent James’ cry-baby tendencies

and was just now allowing them to wash over her.

Anne was back in Dumbledore’s office, who was

trying to ignore his amusement as both James and
her dragged quite a few shopping bags into the
school with them.

“If it was anyone else, I’d say I’d need to check the
bags, but I think there’s too many there,” joked
Dumbledore.

Anne rolled her eyes and glared at him.

“You tell me, old man, I told Monty and Mia that I
didn’t need all of that, but apparently I do to
them,” she said.

James looked at her in shock, very close to scolding

her from talking to Professor Dumbledore in that
way, but the professor just laughed and nodded.

“Go on, Mister and Miss Potter,” he said. “It’s

almost dinner time. Your friends surely have
questions about why you two disappeared for so
long. You two are late.”

“Two hours, I know,” Anne dismissed.

“The story is: you were shopping and ended up

meeting me in Diagon Alley without meaning to, my
parents insisted on accompanying you,” James
said. The two looked at him in surprise. “My dad
told me to say this story is anyone asked; he’ll back
us up if anyone goes after him for any reason.”

“You’re getting better at lying,” she complimented.

“Thanks, I’m learning from you,” he teased back.

Dumbledore smirked in amusement and opened the

door of his office for them to go down to dinner and
put the bags away.

“Don’t take too long, please. I know that Miss

Potter has the tendency to skip meals if she doesn’t
eat with everyone else,” Dumbledore said.

Feeling attacked and exposed, Anne looked at

Dumbledore in betrayal. Oh, reader, Anne hates
when her eating habits are brought to the public,
who always seems to find like they have the right
to tell her to eat or not to eat, which they don’t.

“I’ll keep an eye on her, don’t worry, Professor,”

said James.

Trying her best not to get mad at James, she

smiled at him.

“I don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me, mate,”

she answered.

“I know,” he whispered. “But that’ll make him leave

you alone.”

She laughed of how quick he backed up from his

protective façade as they walked out of the office
and down the stairs towards the corridors that
would lead them back home.

Chapter 10: Chapter Nine

Summary:
In a school such as Hogwarts,
rumours are powerful, a lot more
than Anne expected it to be in the
70s.

RUMOUR HAS IT

Lily Evans would never admit it out loud, but she

was very invested in understanding the dynamic of
the odd relationship happening between James
Potter and Anne Sage. Like with a car accident, she
knew it probably wasn’t polite to stare, but she just
couldn’t look away as she watched James glancing
every now and then to Anne as they both ate.

James was excited about something, talking to

Sirius with big movements and loud words that she
couldn’t help but hear from so far away, and Sirius
seemed to be excited too, listening to his friend
with attention and nodding along with the story.
Remus was laughing of something Peter had said,
trying to bring the very quiet and tired Anne into
the conversation, and the girl was trying to be
friendly and all, but her skin was becoming pale
and she was becoming more and more distant from
the others.

“You know, if you keep staring, I’ll start telling

Potter that maybe he has a chance with you,”
teased Marlene, poking her in the ribs with her
elbow.

Lily turned to her.

“Stop that,” she scolded, clearing hurting from the

poking.

“I’m serious, Lily. It’s starting to become sad. If

you don’t like the two of them together, you might
as well tell him that. I’m sure he would drop her for
you,” Marlene said. “She’s proper nice too, I’m sure
she wouldn’t be upset to take a step back since you
like him.”

“I don’t like him,” she answered, shaking her head.

“Keep telling yourself that while all you do at dinner

is watch the two of them,” said Marlene. “Just talk
to them, or at least to her. Anne is chill, joked
around with her and flirted and she didn’t even
notice. I don’t think she knows James is flirting with
–”

“James is not flirting with her,” Lily said, voice firm

and tone final. “That’s the odd thing. I was
expecting him to flirt and to ask her out, but he
didn’t. He’s keeping himself… friendly, but no more
than that.”

Marlene frowned, more confused than before.

“Then I don’t understand. How is that worrying

you?” she asked.

“Because I thought that one of the boys might have

a crush on her then, since he kept his distance and
all, but none of them came forward to talk to her.
Remus is pretty friendly and Sirius is civil with her,
but Peter is just plain nervous,” said Lily.
“Whatever is going on that kept them on ‘friends’ is
something I didn’t see or understand.”

“And that worries you?”

“I never seen that happening before. I mean, the

only female friend that James Potter has is you.”

“Well, I’m not very interested in him, am I?” she

joked, raising her eyebrows.

“No. That’s what I meant. Do you think she’s –”

“No.”

“No?”

“Absolutely not. She’s not interested in girls, I’m

pretty sure,” answered Marlene. “She’s just not
interested in James. That happens, you know? Girls
are not interested in Potter and Black sometimes,”
she joked.

“Keep teasing,” grumbled Lily, stabbing her stake

and cutting another piece of it. “Keep teasing, you
don’t understand.”

“I understand that you’re apprehensive now that

he’s not paying as much attention to you as
before.”

“I’m not jealous!” Lily exclaimed in surprise.

“Never said you were. Just saying that is something

you didn’t have since you were in third or fourth
year, you just don’t know how to act now that
James is not waving, smiling and noticing you every
three minutes,” said Marlene. “It’s a great shift.
Understandable confusion, too.”

Lily hesitated.

Though she hated to admit even to herself, she did

miss James Potter’s attention in a way or another.
Even though she was quite happy to have her
space and her own moments, she missed the
smiles and gentleness that he always seemed to
have on him, fake or not – he was a good boy in
general and she knew that, but now that he was
being a good boy to someone else, it was odd.

Someone throwing themselves on the bench right

in front of Lily made the two girls look up in shock
as Dorcas, flushed even through her dark skin, and
wide eyed leaned towards them.

“Did you guys hear?” she asked.

Lily looked at Marlene, question clear. Marlene

shook her head.

“No,” Marlene answered.

“Regulus Black is being pushed forward!” Dorcas

said in a scream-whisper. “His grades and Potion
are, like, proper good and they’re pushing him
forward. I just heard Snape talking about it.”

Lily’s eyes widened.

“What?!” she exclaimed.

“I know, right?” Dorcas said. “Mary is freaking out.

She was about to ask Dumbledore to push her
forward too, but I managed to change her mind. I
don’t think she would survive the pressure.”

“Poor boy,” mumbled Lily.

“Regulus Black? Why poor him?” Marlene asked,

confused.

“You know how the Blacks are. Can you imagine

what his mother is telling him to do and not do?
He’s being pushed forward! The first student in the
century. This is not something taken lightly,
Marlene, there’ll be a lot of eyes and pressure on
him from now on and, believe me, it won’t be
easy.”

“I guess,” agreed Dorcas. “Dumbledore said he

could back down any time he wanted, according to
Narcisa Black, but I doubt he will. I mean, he is a
Slytherin after all.”

However, a movement in the corner of their eyes

called their attention away from each other to meet
Anne’s eyes staring right at them, looking somehow
suspicious and hesitant as she watched them.

“What’s going on?” Anne asked, curious.

“Regulus is skipping a year,” answered Dorcas.

La mandíbula de Anne cayó en estado de shock

cuando su mano rápidamente fue a agarrar el brazo
de James mientras él se giraba para mirarla con
preocupación, inclinándose hacia las chicas después
de que ella susurró algo, agarrando a Sirius para
escuchar el chisme también. Remus y Peter
también se inclinaban ahora, queriendo saber. El
resto de la mesa en el medio miraba interesado.

“¿Regulus Black comenzará el sexto año a los

quince?” preguntó una niña de cuarto año, con los
ojos muy abiertos.

"Maldito-"

"¡Sirio!" James lo regañó.

"¡Mierda, amigo!"

"¡Remus!" James lo regañó.

“¿De quién escuchaste eso?” preguntó Ana.

Dorcas parpadeó.

"Hm... Snape estaba hablando con Narcisa Black y

lo escuché camino a cenar", respondió Dorcas.
"¿Por qué?"

Anne no respondió, simplemente se inclinó y miró

fijamente su plato como si su carne le hubiera
hecho algo terrible, mirándolo con tanta furia que
Lily se sentía increíblemente incómoda solo por
estar en la misma mesa.

Mientras Anne caminaba de regreso a la Torre

Gryffindor sin siquiera terminar de cenar, estaba
bastante segura de que Anne miró directamente a
Dumbledore por encima del hombro. Se odió a sí
misma por pensar que, por un segundo,
Dumbledore parecía de alguna manera
avergonzado, apartando la mirada de ella y
mirando a su plato.

Cuando llegaron a los dormitorios, Anne estaba

dormida encima de las mantas todavía con su ropa
de día puesta, pero sus manos y parte de su rostro
tenían marcas de tinta.

Lily los limpió con un hechizo y una mirada

preocupada antes de irse a la cama.

Regulus igualó su paso con facilidad al de Anne

Sage, con una sonrisa en sus labios mientras
levantaba la barbilla.

"Hola, señorita Sage", saludó.

"Negro", respondió ella. "¿Pociones?" ella preguntó.

“Contigo, sí”, asintió. "Espero que no te importe

que camine contigo".

"No lo hago", descartó ella. “¿A tus amigos les

importa?”

Her eyebrows raised with the question, the clear

implication of her blood making him glance at her
without any surprise. It didn’t matter how she
knew, but it was clear that at that point Anne would
already know about his family’s beliefs and how he
still followed such beliefs though her buddy Sirius
had run away.

“I heard you had a medical emergency,” he

commented. “I trust you’re faring better now?”

“Hardly a medical emergency. Just a check-up,” she

dismissed. “You know, protocol for school for
emergency transfers and all that.”

“I also heard you came back with Potter. I’ve been

hearing quite a lot about you two together these
last few times,” he said.

She rolled her eyes, steps still calm though she felt
slightly nervous by the way he had been grilling her
for simple and unimportant questions.

“I ended up meeting him on Diagon Alley on my

way back, buying a few things I need before
coming back and he was a gentleman to
accompany me with his parents, who were also
there,” she answered. “You, Regulus Black,
shouldn’t believe in everything you hear though. I
thought you were smart enough to know that
gossip in Hogwarts is hardly reliable for
information. I, for one, heard that you’re a Death
Eater.”

He froze in place, hand flying to grab her wrist at

once and make her stop walking to somewhere as
silly as Potions’ Class.

“Careful with those words, Sage,” he hissed,

looking around to some students passing by them
and glancing to them as they walked away. “Don’t
accuse people of something so serious without any
proof.”

“I’m not accusing,” she said innocently, “just

putting gossip I heard out there to strengthen my
point about how unreliable gossips sources in this
school are.”

She smiled, as if she had not just said ‘Death

Eaters’, as if she had not just simply guessed the
type of man that he had been forced to meet
during the winter break the year before after his
brother ran away from home and left all burden on
his shoulders. No. There was no way anyone knew.
He had told no one, not even Snape, his only close
friend. She had to know something too deep into
the circle to just let something like that scape.

However, the word and surname ‘Sage’ came to

mind.

He knew the family in general. They had appeared

in some of the family trees of very distant relatives
and the name appeared on conversations about the
past of his family, but what he thought of was the
fact that they were known for being talented with
Seeing the future. Had she dreamed of it? Had she
Seen it? Had she heard something? Was she
involved in something?

“A warning, Sage. Keep your mouth shut for now.

You don’t want to get involved in this mess,” he
warned. “You’re a half-blood. Keep your head down
and your mouth shut; you’ll survive like this.”

She just stared back at his eyes.

“If I wanted to ‘survive’, Regulus, I wouldn’t have

come here. I came here to live,” was her answer.

She turned away from him, pulling her wrist away

from his hands as she walked back to her way into
Potions Class.

By the time he got in there too, he had to sit with

Severus, not too far away from where Anne and
Marlene were giggling and talking amongst
themselves as they did their job – well, Anne did
their job and Marlene followed her orders blindly,
just accepting whatever the red-headed said.

“Do you notice?” Severus asked in a low voice.

“Notice what?” Regulus asked.

“She brews like a British witch, though she said she

was raised in Canada,” answered Severus, pointing
at Anne with his chin. “It’s been bothering me for a
long time now.”

Regulus wanted to spill his thoughts to his friend,

but Anne didn’t seem to be dangerous, so the
confirmed truth was all he allowed himself to say.

“She was educated at home,” he answered. “She

told me so not too long ago. Her parents are
British, of course she would have a British way of
brewing; she even has a British accent.”

Severus turned to him, eyebrows raising.

“You’ve been talking to her?” he asked, surprised

and confused. “She’s… not exactly the type of
people I thought you’d be trying to befriend.”

“She called your attention, so I wanted to make

sure she had something special going on,” Regulus
explained. “And it’s hardly a friendship or a
befriending mission; no, Narcisa just wanted to ask
questions and I tagged along. She told us she ran
away from an arranged wedding and was taught at
home – nothing more.”

“But you don’t believe her,” guessed Severus.

Even without his words and with his mind shield put
in place, Severus seemed to be able to know
exactly what she was thinking.

“No, I don’t. Not completely, at least,” Regulus

said. “I’ll find out, don’t worry. And when I do,
you’ll be the first to know.”

“Good, I want to bring her down. Did you notice

she has been walking around with Potter all the
time? Terrible taste, I say,” he started.

Severus started rambling about her terrible choice

of friends and possible romantical pairs for the
rested of the class, stopping to talk about the
potion they were doing together occasionally, which
made Regulus distracted from his thoughts and
very happy as he heard all the gossip and rumours
about Anne Sage.

He liked hearing about Anne Sage, he found out.

She was interesting. A character that was seen
differently through different eyes.

While to him she was a girl who was far too smart
and far too curious for her own good, Severus saw
her as someone who was far too petulant and cocky
even though Regulus thought her to be slightly
insecure. The Ravenclaws saw her as a threat as
she kept going on classes upon classes without
encountering a problem. The Slytherins found her
to be someone worth of attention and, sometimes,
praise. The Hufflepuffs found her interesting in the
same way they found the newest addition of baby
unicorns in the Forbidden Forest to be interesting,
though far more watchable, not interacting with her
unless she called them over. The Gryffindors saw
her as nothing more than just another lion, which
to Regulus was the most wrong take of Anne.

No, she was much more than that. She was much
more dangerous than that, and all he needed to do
was to prove that so he could find a way to get her
out of his way before he got into his plans.

“She knows Occlumency,” commented Snape near

the end of the class.

Regulus froze as he threw a bit of unicorn horn

powder into the caldron.

“What?” he asked in shock.

“I’m serious. Threw me out of her mind in a

moment, could barely see anything before she
blocked me.”

“What were you doing in her mind anyways,

Severus, that’s weird.”

“She was being weird. I tried to confront her and

she didn’t answer,” was his poor explanation.

“So you tried to force it out of her? What were you

expecting?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

Severus had the grace to look slightly ashamed.

“When you say it like that…” he mumbled.

“Is there any other way to say it?” Regulus asked.

“This is not war, Severus. Had she said anything to
anyone, you could’ve been expelled. To use that
power without permission or government approval
is simply illegal; being underage won’t save you
from these consequences,” he sighed. “I’m not
saying this for her, but for you. You’re my friend,
but even I couldn’t get your arse out of Azkaban
after that.”

“I know, I know,” he mumbled. “She just got me

upset.”

“I can notice that.”

Still, Regulus couldn’t look away from her for too

long.

“Anne Sage,” he mumbled to himself.

Severus turned to him, confused by the sudden

distraction, but didn’t say anything to Regulus
again for the remain of the class.

Chapter 11: Chapter Ten

Summary:
Anne finds out the truth about
Regulus Black's life outside
Hogwarts.

ANNE OF HOGWARTS

Walking around the school in her empty period

surely made her legs feel like she was still used to
physical exercises without actually having to be
running away in the middle of the war. As long as
she kept her body safe, her mind would be a bit
saner.

But that also meant being alone.

James and Sirius were very busy with Quidditch,

Peter apparently had managed to get a spot on the
team as the couch, helping the captain lead without
having to leave the ground, he was smart enough
to make up strategies. Remus had three fourth
years following him around so he could tutor them
in transfiguration. Lily was sunbathing in her school
clothes with Marlene, who was hidden from the sun
under the shadow of a tree near the Black Lake.
Dorcas had joined them, bringing food with her and
Mary MacDonald, though Mary didn’t seem to want
to be there.

That left Anne to walk around alone. Well, not

completely alone – she had found a copy of Anne of
Green Gables in the Hogwarts’ library and was quite
happily reading it as she walked the corridors,
sometimes acting out the words she knew as the
back of her hand.

She found comfort in the imaginary, thinking of

herself living in a small room in Green Gables was
ever so much better than to confront the reality of
imminent war facing her. People that she had strike
some type of friendship or the thing most similar to
it she had in years would die, she could die, Harry
could never come to existence.

“…did it hurt?” asked a female voice in a breathy

whisper. There was awe in that voice.

“Yes,” answered a male voice. “Like hell.”

Anne cerró el libro, haciendo todo lo posible para

que sus zapatos no hicieran demasiado ruido
mientras bajaba unas escaleras, girando con él y
escondiéndose detrás de la pared. Ella notó por la
oscuridad que estaba cerca de las mazmorras, por
lo que quien estaba hablando probablemente era
Slytherin. Si se escondía, se irían y no se meterían
con ella: autoconservación.

“¡Pero esto es asombroso! Tienes quince años y has

conocido al Señor Oscuro en persona, ¿por qué
rechazarías un lugar, Regulus? preguntó la niña una
vez más.

Ana se puso tensa.

Regulus ya estaba involucrado, pero se había

negado a formar parte de ello.

"Soy negro, no debo seguir a la gente", dijo. "No

entiendo cómo mamá y papá pudieron desmayarse
tan fácilmente por él".

“¡Él es la revolución!” ella dijo. Los pasos se

detuvieron; Debió haberse detenido en medio del
pasillo. "Él es el futuro y el protector de nuestro
pueblo".

"Es un político", respondió Regulus. “Y como

cualquier otro político, busca dinero y poder, y
nosotros, las familias de sangre pura, tenemos
ambos de sobra. Sabía dónde buscarlo. Me negué a
darle el mío”.

La chica suspiró.

"Y mira lo que te trajo", dijo en voz tan baja que

Anne casi no la escuchó.

“Elizabeth, si fuera tú, controlaría mi lengua”,

respondió con voz más firme que antes.

“No lo digas así, todos lo notaron, Regulus, no solo

yo”, dijo, pareció dar unos pasos porque su voz se
hizo más baja como si estuviera más lejos. “Apenas
podías moverte y Burke me dijo que fuiste a la
enfermería más de una vez. Estabas negro y azul,
con huesos rotos y...

"Y eso no es asunto tuyo", la interrumpió.

“¿Crees que no me di cuenta de que todavía no

estás completamente curado y que no fuiste a la
enfermería por nada más que un remedio para los
dolores de cabeza?” ella preguntó. “No estás
curado. ¡Tus costillas son un desastre!

"Esto no es asunto tuyo, Fawley, ¡déjalo en paz!"

"¡Bien, negro!" dijo, claramente agotada. "No

vengas a verme cuando estés a punto de morir por
la pérdida de sangre. Te dejaré sangrando en el
suelo y tomaré un sorbo de té mientras miro".

Sus pasos tenían un sonido particular ya que sus

zapatos parecían tener tacones, pero los pasos de
Regulus eran mucho más difíciles de notar. Tenía
un modo particular de caminar que hacía que sus
movimientos fueran casi libres de ruidos, como los
pasos de un felino.

Esa fue la razón por la que el libro se cayó de las

manos de Anne y casi se cae por las escaleras
cuando miró hacia arriba y encontró a Regulus
parado allí. Él también casi se cae, claramente solo
ahora se dio cuenta de que ella había estado allí.

"Sabio", saludó. "¿Cuanto tiempo has estado ahi?"

preguntó.

Ella hizo una sonrisa incómoda sin mostrar los

dientes.

“Más tiempo del que te gustaría, seguro”, fue su

respuesta.

Sabía lo que era que le arrancaran secretos que

guardaba cerca de su pecho, sabía lo vergonzosa
que era la experiencia y lo vulnerable que dejaría a
alguien, especialmente a alguien tan expuesto al
público como Regulus.

“¿Qué quieres a cambio?” preguntó, suspirando

derrotado.

Ella parpadeó.

“¿Por mi silencio?” ella preguntó.

Él puso los ojos en blanco.

“Wasn’t that obvious?” he asked, leaning down and

getting the book from the ground. He did not give it
back to her, just held it. “What do you want?”

She wanted a whole lot of things out of him. She

wanted to know everything that he did about
Voldemort and the already existing Horcruxes, but
she couldn’t very well ask those directly. Anne
needed a way to get there without asking for it.

“Tell me about the Dark Lord,” she said.

His eyes narrowed.

“Information?” he asked. “You want me to give you

more clearly secret information in exchange for
silence of information that you overheard?”

She blinked once more, cocking her head to the

side with a jerk. Well, when he spoke like that, it
certainly didn’t sound very great.

“Yes,” she answered, though it sounded

suspiciously like a question. “You have my word
that’s all I need.”

“Do you want me to set a meeting up? I can do

that, but don’t make me talk,” he said.

“That’s my price, Regulus Black,” she insisted.

He looked up, clearly thinking of the consequences

of the next decision he would take. Still, Regulus
was a smart boy, he knew what would come next if
he didn’t speak – though he was surprised a
Gryffindor could play that game so well, certainly
he would have imagined a confrontation or running
around with the gossips straight away, but there
she was with a schooled blank face.

“Alright. What do you need to know?”

Unfortunately, Regulus didn’t seem to know clearly

as much as Anne expected him to and Regulus
noticed his information hadn’t been enough to the
girl as she frowned, listening to him with great
attention.

Fearing she would just speak about all that she

knew, he started to try and get more specific in the
little things he knew: where the meetings were,
some of key members. But it wasn’t enough. Anne
wasn’t surprised. And that was when he understood
something that might have helped him quite a lot.

“You know this already,” he commented.

She nodded, distracted.

“Of course I know this already,” she said.

“Did you See it?” he asked.

She turned to him. As a Sage, that was her excuse

to a lot of things.

“Yes,” she lied.

“Then why did you ask me?”

“Because if I want to understand him, I need to see

him through the eyes of someone that knows him
personally, that hears about him in the dinner table
as if they were talking of a king,” she explained. “If
I want to be a step ahead of him, I need to know
how the one’s a step behind are thinking.”

Regulus looked down at his hands on his lap. One

step behind, following him – those were good
synonyms. She was good in word-play.

They were both sitting in the hidden stairs side by

side and comfortable in the privacy they had found.
The book was already back at her lap, her hands
holding tightly to it.

He looked at the book.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “Anne of Green Gables, I

never heard of it.”

“Yes, it’s my favourite book and it was my mother’s

favourite as well when she was a little kid,” she
explained. “I was named after the main-character
of the book. My mother wanted me to be a
dreamer, to see the brighter side of situations
where others would see only darkness and fear. I
suppose it worked, I’m still alive and I’m still
fighting for my right to live. This character right
here taught to me stop surviving and start trying to
actually live for once.”

“It’s just a book,” he dismissed.

“It’s an escape for most people, actually,” she

corrected. “When used the right way, silly story
books can teach us a lot. I’ve seen you reading
before. If you don’t read things such as these, what
do you read?”

He shrugged. “Potions, Alchemy,” he answered.

“Nothing as childish as story books.”

“These are not childish,” she said, shaking her

head. “Even the silliest of children’s book can teach
grown-ups something. With this book, I learned
that even without parents I can find a place in the
world if I survive and find things to live for in the
midst of it.”

He read the title of the green book that had nothing

but the golden words in the hard cover. She held
the book closely, almost as if cradling it.

“Hm,” he did. Regulus didn’t want to admit that he

could understand that, but that there were no
books of story and aimed to children in his house
and he grew up surrounded by Dark Magic books.
“What will you do with this information? Run away
from him?”

She looked at him as if the answer was obvious.

“I’ll fight him, of course,” she answered. “I’m done

losing things to him and his cause. It took me a
while, but I’m ready to fight for what I believe in.”

Regulus felt confused, but the distance in her eyes

kept him quiet. He watched as she looked down at
the book once more, caressing the cover as if the
book was a lot more than just a book.

He took a second to appreciate how grown-up Anne

seemed to act. No sixteen-year-old acted like that;
like they had seen too much and known too much
about the world outside of their small comfort zone,
it was unsettling and just plain sad. Anne was
hungry, eager – she was as ambitious as any other
Slytherin that Regulus had met, still she was
dressed in red and gold in her school days, but he
saw no recklessness and no arrogance. Either those
parts were simply his brother’s characteristics, or
Anne was simply the exception on the house.

“I don’t see how you’re a Gryffindor,” he said, still

sitting beside her.

She looked up at him.

“So I heard before,” she commented. “I’m brave.”

“I can see that. But I’ve seen people like you

before. The protection walls, the bluntness, the
hunger,” he said before shaking his head lightly.
“You have more than the Gryffindors I met. I just
don’t know why.”

Maybe because she wasn’t a Gryffindor, she

thought. Regulus couldn’t know that, but it
certainly felt like he did. Anne felt like Regulus
always knew too much, his eyes saw too much and
his smirk meant too much – uncomfortably alluring;
it made her want to know as much as he did, she
wanted to ask questions though she knew in the
end she would be the one answering them.

“When I got here, I had nothing,” she admitted.

“But now I have quite a lot to lose, Regulus, which
means I’m going to fight twice as strongly as I did
before in my life. Nothing can stop me from
surviving. Nothing will stop me from winning,” she
turned to him and let go of her breath, looking into
his eyes so deeply that he held his breath – she
had dark eyes, he noticed suddenly, brown with
gold specks in it… and he couldn’t look away. “No
one’s like anyone else, don’t you think so? For
example, you’re by far the most curious Slytherin
I’ve ever met, but that doesn’t mean it’s because
you’re not a Slytherin – you have your traits, I
have mine – the difference is which of them we
cherish the most,” she smiled kindly now. “What do
you cherish, Regulus?”

“I don’t cherish much,” he answered. It hurt him to

say so, but he knew it was one of the most truthful
things that ever left his mouth even though he
meant it to be dismissive so he couldn’t change the
subject. Now, it sounded like a confession that had
just escaped from his lips. “My family, I guess.”

“If you have to guess, I don’t think it’s true,” she

answered. “You might love them, Regulus, and
that’s good – that’s expected from a son. But
cherish is something completely different.
Cherishing is caring, protecting something or
someone adoringly. I’ll make a better question,
there is a war coming and you’ll have to fight, you’ll
have to pick a side and that much is obvious –
when the side is chosen what will make you want to
go back home?”

Regulus blinked, speechless by the thought that he

had no answer. After all, he wasn’t sure he wanted
to go back home.

“I –” he hesitated and stopped himself.

“You should think of it carefully. If you fight only for

fighting, then this war is nothing but violence and
chaos, which is something some people seem to
triumph on and those are the people I hate more
than fear – those people have no hearts and no
conscience and I’d hate to think of you like that.”

“You have a high esteem for me,” he commented,

scoffing.

“Expectations, not esteem,” she corrected.

There was silence for a moment as they both stared

into each other’s soul, trying to get answers
without words having to be exchanged.

“You know,” she started again, “I’m very good at

healing spells and glamours. I had a lot of
practice.”

I’ve been where you are before, it meant, and they

both knew.

“I think one of my ribs healed wrong,” he admitted.

She had been very honest to him; he might as well
do the same to her.

“Let’s go heal it, then,” she said, getting up and

shoving the book on the side of her trousers with
elastic on the waist. “Come on,” she offered him
her hand to get up.

He did not accept, but struggled a bit to get up.

Regulus followed Anne where she went, but blushed

deeply and froze on the outside of the broom closet
she had shoved herself into, looking at him as if
waiting for him to get in as well, crossing her arms
and just staring at him with raised eyebrows and
small smirk in her lips – he was seen as a baby to
her.

“Come on, Black, or do you want someone to walk

by and see me with my hands up your shirt?” she
asked, mocking him. “Because that can be
arranged.”

He blushed even more and uncomfortably walked

into the closet as well, back shoved against the wall
harshly as to not touch Anne.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled once his hand brushed

hers in the dark.

“Lumos,” she mumbled.

The light gave him some comfort until he saw her

face. In the dim light, she looked like a painting –
like the ones in his mother’s drawing room, the
ones he would sit and watch sitting and sipping
their tea when he was a little kid; he had been
upset that that one painting would never talk to
him when he tried to get conversation until his
mother said that the woman in there was not a
Black, just a mistress one of the men in the family
had, but she was so beautiful and lovely that she
had been accepted into the family either way. Veela
blood, that was the explanation he received.

He wondered if Anne had any veela blood. Dearest

of readers, he was enchanted by her eyes.

Regulus cleaned his throat, trying to focus anything

else to not embarrass himself in the tight space
they had to move.

The spells were not said out loud, but he could see
she was focused, eyes down on his open button up
shirt as the yellowish-greenish bruises disappeared
slowly, fading away as if spreading through his
body back to being usual blood. There was a feel of
a slice and he jumped.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed.

“Shush!” she answered. “That was it popping back

to place. You were right. It healed wrong, but it’s
done now.”

He looked down at his chest through the light of her

wand, it certainly looked better and moving didn’t
hurt as much. He took a deep breath and no
stabbing pain came. He was healed after too long.

“Thanks, Sage,” he said, reaching down for his shirt

and buttoning it up. “I suppose this will stay
between us.”

“I’m not into the idea of anyone knowing I’m in a

closet with you and –”

And if she had jinxed the words, the door opened

and they stared right at Filch and his awful face
exposing a creepy smile, completely satisfied he
finally had someone to punish.

“What do we have here?” he asked, voice scratchy.

“Fuck,” Anne mumbled.

Regulus didn’t cuss out loud, but he certainly

agreed with Anne.
Fuck.

Chapter 12: Chapter Eleven

Summary:
Anne deals with the consequences
of her actions... again.

DETETION

Student Anne Cornelia Sage, year 6, has been

assigned detention:

Date: 13.05.1976 – Time: 06:30 PM – Room:

Slughorn Office, dungeons.

Reason for Detention: Indecent behaviour with a

male student inside a broom closet, caught red-
handed by Mister Filch.

Now, that was embarrassing.

Dear readers, understand that Anne only caught

one detention in all her school career, and that one
time had been to save Harry’s arse from getting his
seventh detention that year.

She didn’t even correct Filch that her middle name

(in that life, at least) was actually Cordelia, that
was how nervous she felt.

And there she was, in the year she had gone for an
important job with a pink piece of paper that she
was pretty sure weighted a lot more than a piece of
paper would. Still, she wondered who would be
notified of her detention; all the terrible alternatives
she had sounded terrible: her grandparents or her
actual dad, who certainly would find out about her
detention in one way or another.

Entonces, en la cena, comió rápido para ir al

castigo que tenía en una hora.

"Oye," dijo Sirius, sentándose a su lado. "Más

despacio, te ahogarás".

"Tengo un límite de tiempo, amigo", respondió ella,

con la boca llena.

"Oh", dijo Remus, girando su cabeza hacia ella

desde donde estaba sentado al otro lado. "¿Le
importaría detallar eso?"

"No, no lo sé", respondió ella, sintiendo que había

cometido un terrible error al responder así, porque
en el momento en que giró la cabeza hacia un lado,
Sirius vio el pequeño trozo de papel rosa dentro del
libro sobre la mesa.

"Vaya, vaya, parece que nuestro nuevo Niño

Dorado recibió una detención, Moony", bromeó
Sirius, alcanzando el libro. “¿Qué hizo, señorita
Sage? ¿Entraste en la parte equivocada de la
biblioteca? ¿Le pisaste la cola a Madame Norris
mientras caminabas y leías por los pasillos otra
vez?

El movimiento fue tan rápido que ninguno de los

dos lo vio venir, pero Anne tenía su mano
sosteniendo el libro cerrada y determinada, con
ojos enojados mirando a Sirius tan intensamente
que él se congeló por un segundo, desconcertado
por su reacción. Lentamente se alejó del libro y
solo miró a Peter confundido, pero el pobre niño
simplemente se encogió de hombros; nunca
entendió a las chicas, y mucho menos a las
enojadas.

"¿Hiciste qué?" Preguntó James, alejándose de

donde estaba hablando con Marlene, quien se giró
confundida, sin haber escuchado lo que había
sucedido antes de que James se congelara a mitad
de la frase. “Anne, ¿cuándo diablos te castigaron?
¿Qué hiciste?"

Sintió que se le revolvía el estómago por el

nerviosismo y sacudió la cabeza.

“No fue nada, James. Un malentendido”, respondió.

James claramente no le creyó, porque entrecerró

los ojos y arregló sus gafas en su puente de ruido.

“Anne…” dijo en tono de advertencia.

"¡No estoy mintiendo!" —se quejó, sentándose de

nuevo y cruzándose de brazos.

Sirius se movió más rápido de lo que ella jamás

podría hacerlo entonces, una sonrisa creciendo en
sus labios mientras tomaba la hoja de detención y
la desdoblaba, leyéndola y dejando que su sonrisa
creciera aún más y sus ojos se abrieran.

"¡Señorita Sabia!" dijo como escandalizado.

"Comportamiento indecente -"

"¡Para!" exclamó, arrojándose hacia él para quitarle

el papel antes de que pudiera terminar. "¡Sirio!"

Se levantó de la mesa.

“¡Comportamiento indecente con un estudiante!” él

dijo. James se atragantó con fuerza, Marlene lo
miró alarmada, acariciando su espalda para
intentar ayudarlo. "Y en un armario de escobas de
todos los lugares, te estás convirtiendo en un
estudiante de Hogwarts".

She froze in her place, feeling her face burning so

much that he felt about to pass out in place or just
like she would throw up. Her hands started to
shake as she grabbed the paper from Sirius’ hand.

“It was a misunderstanding, I swear,” she said,

turning to James, getting up from the table and
shaking her head. “Please, don’t think any less of
me.”

James got up from the table as well, eyes wide and

hands raised as if trying to call down a wounded
animal. Sirius, confused, turned to his friend before
turning to look at Anne with raised eyebrows.

“He can’t judge you for shit, he’s done worse, I can
assure you,” Sirius said. “I can tell you about the
time I caught him with –"

“Shut it, Sirius, you did enough today,” James cut

him off with a glare.

Upset and clearly offended, Sirius crossed his arms

and looked at Remus in hopes for support, but
nothing came. Peter, however, seemed to be much
less interested in the conversation, because his
eyes were stuck on someone else, someone who
was moving towards them.

“James –” he started.

“Not now, Wormy,” said James. “Anne, sweetheart,

is alright. Don’t worry. If you say that it was a
misunderstanding, I believe it and you can explain
it to me–”

“James!” called Peter again. “Mate!”

“Bloody hell, what?!” James asked, turning to his

friend.

But Wormtail barely had time to answer before

Regulus Black was standing right beside Anne,
glaring at everybody that as much glanced his way.

“Come on, Sage,” Regulus said. “We got detention.”

Sirius jaw fell to the ground in complete shock.

Peter yelped and his eyes widened, jaw slacking as
well, though much more discreet than the dramatic
way Sirius had done. Even Remus, the one that
judged the less, had turned pale.

“Holy shit,” said Marlene, trying her best to muffle

a laugh of shock, she did manage when Lily slapped
the back of her head.

All of James calmness and understanding

disappeared in a second as he turned to Anne
again.

“Regulus Black?” he asked. “That was your

‘misunderstanding’?”

“D—James, I –” she started.

In her despair, she had almost called James by

‘Dad’, which would have been embarrassing for
both him and her and very hard to explain to
everybody around them without someone thinking
it was some type of kinky shit that neither of them
wanted to be involved in.

“Yes, or no?”

“Yes, he is,” she said. “But I really –”

“It’s none of your business, Potter,” said Regulus,

raising his eyebrows in challenge to James, who
glared at him, but did not answer him directly,
fearing what would escape his mouth if he said
something.

“I’ll explain it later,” Anne promised. “I’m sorry. I

really got to go. I’m sorry, James. Please, don’t tell
–” she stopped, just nodding.

James knew she was talking about his parents, her

grandparents.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “You’ll explain it to me when

you come back.”

Regulus scoffed and turned to start walking out of

the Great Hall. Anne grabbed the book and started
moving to follow him.

Regulus looked over his shoulder and smirked at

Sirius.

“Don’t wait up,” he teased.

Anne started walking faster, leaving Regulus behind

to see Sirius turn even paler and James jump up
from his seat, being held back by Peter and
Marlene.

As soon as Slughorn managed to find a reasonable

excuse enough to escape from actually staying with
the two in the detention, he took it and bolted from
there, promising to come back to let them out in
time. He locked the door on the way out.

“You know, Slughorn is not all that smart, or I just

think he doesn’t care for shit,” said Anne, looking at
the locked door. “I suppose he didn’t read the
reason to why we are here, but he certainly just left
two teenagers alone in dimly lit room and said he
was going to take a while to come back.”

Regulus tries his best not to laugh or smile.

“Now that you say it like that, it is stupid,” he

agreed. “I could do a lot in the time we’re going to
be alone.”

Ella lo miró, sintiendo el momento adecuado.

Aunque Regulus parecía haber estado haciendo una
broma ligera y en realidad no tenía intención de
hacerlo, ella aun así aprovechó la oportunidad para
confrontarlo en privado sobre su broma inoportuna.

"Bueno, después del truco que hiciste en el Gran

Comedor, en realidad no", dijo.

Levantó la vista del ensayo de dos pies que estaba

escribiendo.

"¿De qué estás hablando?" preguntó.

"¿Sabes lo vergonzoso que fue que vinieras a mi

mesa y dijeras 'no esperes despierto' como si
fueras un chico malo en un libro muy mal escrito?"
preguntó, dejando la pluma sobre la mesa. “Esos
son mis amigos, Regulus. Te ayudé y quedamos
atrapados en un malentendido porque no quería
exponer tu vida privada a Filch y, sin embargo,
tomaste mi amabilidad y la pisoteaste al insinuar
cualquier cosa frente a mis amigos, ¡frente a ti y a
tu hermano! "

"¡Él no es mi hermano!" dijo, dejando la pluma. "Y

lo siento si ser visto conmigo es vergonzoso".

"¡No tergiverses mis palabras!" ella dijo.

“Oh, por favor, no tengo que torcer nada, fuiste

bastante directo, Sage. ¿Crees que es bueno que
mi reputación sea vista contigo? Fui allí porque
parecía que estabas a punto de llorar y necesitabas
ayuda para salir de la situación. No quise
empeorarlo”, dijo, poniendo los ojos en blanco. “Y
sobre la broma, eso fue todo. Una broma."

“Una broma que tiene en cuenta mi vida privada”,

dijo. "No sabes nada sobre mi vida, por lo tanto no
deberías bromear así sobre mi vida sexual,
especialmente delante de todos".

“Creo que el problema no es de todos. Creo que el

problema es James Potter, y que la broma se hizo
delante del maldito James Potter”, se burló.

"¿Y si lo es?" ella preguntó.

Se reclinó en su mesa al otro lado del salón de

clases, cruzándose de brazos y mirándola
fijamente.

"Sabes, él no es lo suficientemente bueno para ti",

comentó. “Él no está enamorado de ti. Ha estado
enamorado de Lily Evans durante años y
probablemente solo esté interesado en ti porque te
pareces a ella y se toma sus bromas mucho más
tranquilamente”.

"¡No!" ella dijo.

“Es verdad, sabio. Potter no es un santo. Crecí con

Sirius contándome sus aventuras, colgando sus
'experiencias' sobre mi cabeza para ver si podía
hacer que me interesara en salir con chicas cuando
tenía catorce años. Sé mucho sobre él”, dijo. “Lo
que sea que esté diciendo, son mentiras. Sólo
quiere una cosa”.

"¡No! ¡Regulus Black, no! dijo, levantándose de la

mesa en la que había estado sentada con disgusto,
sintiendo un tirón en el estómago. Le dio la espalda
a Regulus, incapaz de mirarlo a la cara para ver la
expresión altiva que había puesto. “James y yo no
tenemos ninguna relación de ese tipo. Somos
amigos, nada más que eso: es alguien con quien
me gusta tenerlo cerca. Me recuerda a mi
hermano”.

Regulus parpadea, de repente muy consciente de

cada respiración que toma. Se sintió muy tonto. Su
expresión quedó en blanco y sorprendida.

"Pensé -"

"Pensaste mal. ¿No te han enseñado que no debes

hacer suposiciones? ¿No he dicho ya que no
escuchemos chismes? Pensé que eras un Slytherin.
¿No eres el tipo de gente que dice 'sé lento, pero
asegúrate'? preguntó ella, molesta.

Regulus took a moment to lean back forward on the

table, taking his time to think. He had watched
James and Anne interacting for the good part she
had been in the school. First it had been out of
simple curiosity over the newest girl that had
managed to get the attention of the Marauders so
fast, then it started being out of actual curiosity to
understand what was going on between them. He
had assumed he knew.

And then Anne took care of him inside of a broom

closet and something changed. Though he
promised himself that it was because no one had
showed him such selfless kindness, he knew there
was something more – desire. To have a girl so
close to him for the first time in his life had been
exciting and thrilling, he had felt his breath get
stuck on his throat and his heart skip beats.

He had several girls available in case he was

interested, but none of them had awakened his
interest quite acutely as Anne, and she didn’t even
mean to do what she was doing.

Regulus took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She turned; eyes surprised.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“I overstepped with an assumption I shouldn’t have

made over a very private detail of your life and
embarrassed you in front of our peers,” he said,
detailed. “I’m sorry, Sage.”

She sighed. She went back to sitting.

“You know, you might as well call me Anne at this

point.”

It was odd to be called by a name that didn’t

belong to her. Other than the professors, no one
called her by Sage – she had insisted of asking
people to call her by Anne, even if she wasn’t all
that close to them. Some didn’t follow her request,
but she certainly had tried.

“Llámame Regulus”, respondió. "Al menos cuando

estamos solos".

Capítulo 13 : Capítulo Doce

Resumen:
La angustia y el trastorno de
estrés postraumático se mezclaron
cuando Anne bajó la guardia por
una vez.

Notas:
TW: Hay fuertes implicaciones de
abuso infantil, tortura y abuso
sexual, tenga cuidado. También
hay una escena de un flashback.

El flashback se usa de la forma en

que me dijeron que mis flashbacks
se ven para las personas que me
rodean; Han pasado algunos años
desde el último, así que
comprendan que los flashbacks
pueden verse así, pero no siempre
así: cada persona tiene una forma
diferente de lidiar con el trauma.

PESADILLAS DURANTE EL DÍA

“Honestamente, la historia fue buena. Si no supiera

la verdad, la habría creído”, dijo James mientras
estaban sentados solos en su cama. Estaba
buscando su tercer pantalón corto de Quidditch
para el entrenamiento que tuvo en treinta minutos
y Anne estaba haciendo su tarea en su cama. “Tu
pulsera se quedó atrapada en su camisa y tuvo que
quitársela para no romperla. ¡Genial!”

"No fue tan inteligente", se rió de su entusiasmo.

“Soy un mentiroso de mierda, y para mí lo es. Lo

estaba creyendo y luego recordé la verdad”, se rió,
agarrando el short y sentándose en la cama por un
momento. "Ahora, en serio, ¿qué tan gravemente
herido estaba?"

“Ahora, no es tan malo, pero en ese momento

debió doler mucho. Pasar meses con una costilla
fuera de lugar”, temblaba mientras hablaba. “No
entiendo cómo jugaba Quidditch como si no sufriera
un dolor agonizante. Ni siquiera fue a la
enfermería”.

James negó con la cabeza.

"Él no lo haría", estuvo de acuerdo.

"¿Qué quieres decir?" ella preguntó.

James vaciló. No era su responsabilidad contárselo

todo, no era su historia. Aún así, ya se había
escapado de la boca.

"Bueno, Madame Pomfrey está obligada a decirle a

Dumbledore y contactar al Ministerio si ve un caso
que parezca ser abuso doméstico", explicó. Eso
había sido suficiente para que ella entendiera sin
una explicación verbal por la forma en que sus ojos
se dirigieron a la cama vacía y ordenada de Sirius.
“Él no iba a pedir ayuda allí. Lo que nos lleva al
punto: ¿por qué aceptó tu ayuda?

Ella se encogió de hombros.

"Me ofrecí", respondió ella.

No quería decirle a su papá que había estado en

situaciones similares antes en su vida. Moretones
donde su tía le sostuvo el brazo mientras golpeaba
su trasero con la palma; Eso ni siquiera fue lo peor,
tampoco lo fueron los golpes y pellizcos que venían
de Dudley. Quizás más pesadas que esas fueron las
miradas que recibió de su tío: cuando era niña, no
tenía sentido; A medida que crecía, el disgusto que
sentía por su propio cuerpo en crecimiento debido a
él tomó una herramienta más pesada en su cuerpo
que cualquier hematoma.

De los trece a los quince años, justo antes de salir

de casa para siempre, comía lo menos que podía.
Todo para lucir lo más posible con un niño; Si ella
se parecía a la niña que él odiaba, entonces él no la
miraría como a una mujer, si ella lo hubiera
pensado. Funcionó por un tiempo, pero cuando
regresó de la escuela, con el peso normal y el
cuerpo como el de un adolescente real, había sido
su fin. Durante unos meses, deseó la muerte más
que nunca en su vida, ya que se vio obligada a
lucirse ante la cámara instantánea que tío Vernon
tenía en su habitación. Se preguntó dónde
terminarían las fotografías; ella sabía que él los
vendió, pero ¿a quién?

"¿Tuviste mucha experiencia con la magia curativa

durante la guerra?" preguntó en voz baja mientras
observaba cómo sus ojos volvían a enfocarse.

“Más de lo que deseaba”, respondió ella.

James nodded to himself, trying not to look so sad

for her so she wouldn’t confuse it for pity.

“Anne, look, I got to go,” he started, getting up and

shoving the shorts in the already too full bag that
he had with him everywhere. She started to move
to put her school work away when James held her
hand. “No. No. Anne, you can stay here. Remus
and Peter are about to get here and I’m sure they’d
enjoy company as Sirius and I are busy.”

“Can’t I go with you?” she asked.

Again, she felt a strong urge to call him ‘dad’, but

she pressed her jaw close. She wouldn’t dare to do
that. She felt embarrassed simply by the urge, she
couldn’t even think how she would feel if it slipped
from her mouth.

“No, sweetheart, you need to stay behind this time.

Closed practice,” he answered with the explanation.
“I’m sorry, truly.”

She sighed, disappointed, but nodded.

"Esta bien. Necesitaría la ayuda de Remus con mi

ensayo de Aritmancia de todos modos,” descartó,
tratando de no parecer molesta mientras se
encogía de hombros. “¿Peter es bueno en
Transformaciones?”

"No", admitió James. "Sin embargo, es el mejor en

Adivinación", añadió como una ocurrencia tardía.

“No lo acepto”, dijo.

Pero ella sabía que era verdad. Había escuchado

antes que Pettigrew era sobresaliente en
Adivinación y el estudiante favorito de algún que
otro profesor que vivía en el ático del castillo y
daba clases en un salón polvoriento; no había sido
la misma clase o profesor de su época y
Ciertamente era extraño para ella no ver a Sybill y
sus gruesos anteojos en la mesa alta del Gran
Comedor, pero como no tomó la clase, era fácil
ignorarlo. No era tan fácil ignorar ver a Severus
Snape y su rostro altivo como un compañero, no
como un profesor y en realidad un buen tutor.

“Sin embargo, podría serte de ayuda con Runas

antiguas”, dijo James. "Él es mejor que yo en esto
y no lo abandonó como Sirius y yo. Remus ni
siquiera lo intentó".

No comentó que la razón de eso era que Remus no

tenía ningún otro espacio en su horario para ningún
otro tema, pero Anne pareció adivinar de todos
modos, una sonrisa apareció en su rostro al
recordar a Hermione caminando, con las bolsas
rompiéndose debajo. el peso de varios libros
pesados.

"Bien por Remus, porque apesta", respondió ella.

James se rió, inclinándose y besando la parte

superior de su cabello rojo antes de murmurar otra
palabra de despedida y salir de la habitación
rápidamente, ya un poco tarde.

Sola en la habitación, Anne respiró hondo.

Curiosamente, Harry había logrado elegir la misma

cama que James en su primera vida. En el
dormitorio vacío, podía imaginarse esperando a que
él regresara para poder contarle los chismes más
recientes que escuchó sobre él después de que un
estudiante de primer año le permitió entrar y
recibió miradas furiosas en su camino debido a sus
colores: extrañaba vestir de verde. y plata,
extrañaba el poder que sentía allí.

Se acostó en la cama, con libros y pergaminos aún

esparcidos cerca de sus pies. Acostada, podía ver el
techo.

Era simple, marrón y aburrido.

Podía ver ese mismo techo cada vez que

despertaba, saltando desesperada de la cama,
huyendo de otra pesadilla, mordiéndose el labio con
tanta fuerza para contener un grito que a veces
había sangre. Aún así, saber que el techo en el
dormitorio masculino era el mismo era de alguna
manera reconfortante: había algún tipo de
comodidad en los patrones que Anne no sabía cómo
encontrar antes.

A Anne Potter le gustaba ser diferente, le gustaba

la atención que podía recibir sin tener que
involucrar a su hermano para inclinarse hacia el
éxito académico. Anne Sage necesitaba ser
invisible, pero estaba fallando porque había una
parte de Anne Potter que insistía en volver a salir.

Anne no estaba segura de cuándo se cerraron sus

ojos, pero lo hicieron, aunque deseaba que no fuera
así.

Todo porque era como regresar al momento en que

conoció la verdadera pérdida.

Perdió a sus padres, por supuesto, fue uno de los

momentos más importantes de su vida y de su
historia, pero no conoció la pérdida. Anne nunca
antes había asistido a un funeral, pero pensó en
ello: la gente lloraba y hablaba de los buenos y
malos momentos que la persona en el ataúd había
pasado con ellos. Así era la muerte en la televisión.

Así no era la muerte para Sirius Black.

La muerte de Sirius Black estaba empujando a

Anne al suelo, parándose frente a ella con todas
sus fuerzas. Era como ver la forma humana de un
perro en lugar de la versión canina de un hombre:
leal, fuerte y feroz. Sirius Black parecía saber que
iba a morir, porque su mirada por encima del
hombro hacia Anne había quedado tan
profundamente grabada en su mente que nunca la
olvidaría.

Ojos grises, ojos tristes incluso a través de la

sonrisa.

"¡Aquí vamos, princesa!" él dijo.

Ella le devolvió la sonrisa y se levantó en un

segundo, con la varita apretada en la mano. Se
volvió hacia el Mortífago a su derecha, enviando un
buen hechizo estupefaciente antes de darle la
espalda a Sirius. Harry estaba a su lado en una
segunda cara determinada cuando le dijo que fuera
a ayudar a Hermione, que estaba teniendo
problemas con un hombre a unos metros de
distancia.

Anne estaba tan concentrada en pelear que solo

notó que algo andaba mal cuando el único ruido
que pudo escuchar fue la terrible risa de Bellatrix.
Se giró y vio cómo Sirius se alejaba de Harry y
entraba en el Velo.

Eso fue todo.

Sirio desapareció.

No quedó ningún legado, ni inocencia que

demostrar, ni dulces últimas palabras en su lecho
de muerte. No hay cuerpo que enterrar.
Simplemente… desaparecido.

Y Anne no había podido despedirse. Como todo en

su vida, la tristeza se convirtió en ira y con un solo
movimiento lanzó:

“¡Crucio!”

Ella sonrió ante el gemido de dolor de Bellatrix.

Sirius Black tocó la costilla de James cuando vio la

pequeña figura moviéndose cerca del árbol en las
afueras del campo de Quidditch. Estaban saliendo
cuando vio movimiento por el rabillo del ojo.

"Oye, amigo, ¿ese es Peter?" preguntó, mientras la

rata iba detrás del árbol, convirtiéndose de repente
en un niño tambaleante que corría hacia ellos con
los ojos muy abiertos. "¡Es! ¡Colagusano! ¡Estaban
aquí!"

"¿Jaime? ¡JAIME!" gritó Pedro. "¡SIRIO!"

Sirius sintió que su estómago se enfriaba de

repente. Algo andaba mal por la forma en que Peter
estaba sudoroso y pálido.

"¿Qué está sucediendo?" —preguntó James.

Peter tosió, ahogándose con el aire e inclinándose

hacia adelante, pero no cayó al suelo porque se
sostuvo de sus rodillas, luchando por respirar lo
suficiente para responder la pregunta de James.
Sacudió la cabeza y miró por encima del hombro.

“Anne… soy Anne”, respondió.

Eso fue todo lo que tenía que decir, porque James

estaba corriendo lo más rápido que podía, dejando
caer su escoba sin pensarlo dos veces. Peter respiró
hondo antes de caer de rodillas, y aunque Sirius se
quedó atrás, deseando ver si su amigo estaba bien,
Peter sacudió la cabeza cuando se agachó frente a
él.

"Pete, son-"

"Ve con Anne, Sirius", dijo. Tenía los ojos muy

abiertos. “Fue aterrador. Nunca había visto a
alguien gritar así”. Sirius notó que la mano que
descansaba sobre su regazo temblaba
violentamente.

"¿Qué pasó?" Insistió Sirius, acariciando la espalda

de su amigo para intentar que respirara mejor.

"Un mal sueño", respondió Peter. “El problema es

que incluso cuando tiene los ojos abiertos, no deja
de gritar. Es como si todavía estuviera dormida”,
los ojos de Peter se llenaron de lágrimas. "¿Qué
diablos le pasó a esa chica?"

Las instrucciones se dieron rápidamente. Peter era

una rata otra vez y Sirius lo sostenía mientras
corría con las escobas levitando justo detrás de él.

Llegaron a la Sala Común a través de las escaleras

tan rápido que Sirius se sorprendió de no caer por
las escaleras de alguna manera. Pero no hubo
gritos hasta que entró en la habitación; Remus
había puesto un hechizo silenciador tan pronto
como ella comenzó a gritar, él estaba sentado en
su propia cama, leyendo.

Peter era un niño otra vez y corría hacia la cama de

James.

La escena no era la que Sirius deseaba ver.

Remus estaba parado al pie de la cama,

aferrándose a los postes, observando impotente
cómo James sostenía a Anne por detrás, cerrando
sus agitados brazos sobre su pecho, teniéndola
entre sus piernas y meciéndola suavemente de
derecha a izquierda. Anne todavía estaba gritando,
gimiendo y sollozando, jadeando por aire. Sirius
había escuchado gritos como esos antes, los que
vienen del estómago, desgarrando todo a su paso,
pero había sido su propia voz gritando en el salón
de su casa. , rogándole a su madre que se
detuviera, advirtiéndole que iba a morir si seguía
adelante.

Peter estaba a la izquierda en un segundo,

sosteniendo una pequeña botella de agua que tenía
cerca de su cama para cuando Anne volviera a la
normalidad.

Le tomó un momento darse cuenta de que los

gritos de Anne no eran solo gritos, había palabras
perdidas allí.

"¡Por favor!" Sollozó tan fuerte que Sirius se

preguntó si su garganta ya estaba sangrando. "¡Por
favor!" Ella jadeó por aire, arqueando la espalda
mientras sollozaba de nuevo. "¡Harry! ¡Harry! ¡Por
favor!"

"Anne, estás bien", dijo James. “Estás en Hogwarts.

Estamos en 1976”.

"¡Harry, no dejes que me lleven, por favor!" ella

gritó. "¡Ayúdame!"

Sirius se acercó, sintiendo cada centímetro de él

temblar. Estaba de pie junto a Remus.

“¡Hermione! ¡Ron! Ella sollozó; los ojos bien

abiertos. "¡No no! ¡No más! ¡No más!" parecía estar
empeorando. Sus piernas pataleaban y James tenía
problemas para sujetarla. "¡Escapar! ¡Alejarse de
mí! ¡No tomé nada! ¡No sé nada!

Sirius sintió que estaba a punto de vomitar cuando

vio los ojos de Remus llenos de lágrimas, muy
abiertos. El hombre lobo ni siquiera parecía saber
que estaba llorando, sus ojos casi tan indiferentes
como los de Anne.

"Cariño, está bien", dijo James, abrazándola. "Sé

que sé."

Sus gritos cesaron, pero contuvo la respiración. Ella

jadeó de repente, las lágrimas aún fluían, los
sollozos seguían, pero aún así, no gritaba.

"Aquí tienes agua", dijo Peter.

James soltó lentamente a Anne, vacilando como si

ella fuera a lastimarse. Le agradeció a Peter
mientras tomaba el agua y ayudaba a Anne a
beber.

"Lo siento", susurró, limpiándose las lágrimas. "Lo

lamento. Esto es embarazoso."

Al principio nadie le respondió.

"¿Estás bien?" preguntó Sirio.

Ella simplemente volvió a sollozar, se dio la vuelta

y trepó a James, quien la abrazó con fuerza,
meciéndola suavemente mientras ella lloraba con
todo su corazón. Sirius simplemente se quedó allí,
incapaz de ayudar, agarrando el brazo de Remus
como si eso pudiera evitar que cayera al suelo.

“Fue un flashback, pero se acabó. Estás bien”,

susurró James. “Sucede, Ana. No hay necesidad de
avergonzarse”.

Anne asintió contra su hombro.

"Ana, ¿necesitas algo?" -Preguntó Pedro. “Tengo

algo de chocolate guardado. ¿Quieres un poco de
eso?

Anne miró a Peter, con el rostro todavía rojo y los

ojos aún húmedos, pero había una suavidad en sus
rasgos que le recordó a Sirius a la madre de James.
La verdad era que a la chica realmente no le
agradaba Peter, cada vez que lo veía lo único que
podía pensar era en el hombre gordo y sucio
agarrándose de su falda, llorando pidiendo perdón
después de admitir que toda su vida infernal era
culpa suya y que A Anne le resultaba difícil ser
amable con él, pero allí estaba él, preocupado y
deseoso de ayudarla en todo lo que pudiera.

"Eso estaría bien, Peter, gracias", dijo.

Peter casi tropezó al llegar a su pecho cerca de la

cama y buscó la media barra de chocolate que
había mantenido alejada de Remus, agarrándose de
las manos cada vez que había chocolate
involucrado. Remus ni siquiera se quejó de que
Peter no le había dado parte, solo vio a Peter
romperlo en pequeños pedazos y dárselo a Anne.

Ella tomó un pedazo.

"¿Te sientes mejor?" -Preguntó Peter

inmediatamente.

La respuesta fue no, pero Anne forzó una sonrisa.

"Sí, realmente está ayudando, gracias", respondió

ella.

Él asintió y se paró junto a Sirius.

Sirius ya no pudo contener la lengua ni la

curiosidad, simplemente soltó a Remus – quien sólo
cuando Sirius lo soltó pareció darse cuenta de que
lo había estado sosteniendo.

"Ana, ¿qué fue eso?" preguntó Sirio.

“Un flashback”, respondió ella.

"Lo sé pero -"

"Sirius, déjalo en paz", dijo rápidamente James.

"No, no, está bien", dijo, calmando a James con

una caricia en la pierna. “Fue simplemente… una
colección de recuerdos que en cierto modo me
atacaron. No esperaba dormir, así que no puse un
hechizo silenciador. Lo siento”, suspiró. James
estaba a punto de hablar de nuevo, pero ella
retrocedió. “Perdí a mucha gente antes de venir
aquí, pero hubo un día en el que casi me pierden a
mí; algunas personas pensaban que era débil
porque era la más joven, así que me llevaron a un
interrogatorio. Crucio es una excelente manera de
hacer que la gente diga la verdad”.

Sirius sintió que le faltaba aire en los pulmones. Lo

sabría, había sido herido con esa maldición desde
que tenía edad suficiente para recordar.

“¿Por qué querían hacerte daño?” preguntó Remus.

Ella dudó. “Anne, lo que acaba de pasar fue
aterrador. Si podemos ayudar...

"No puedes", lo interrumpió ella. “E incluso si

pudieras, no lo harás”.

No podía decirle todavía que él ya la había

ayudado.

Pero James lo sabía, así que hizo pequeños círculos

en su espalda, felicidad de que su amigo hubiera
cuidado a su hija hasta el último momento; salvarla
a ella en lugar de salvarse a sí mismo.

"Me alegra que nos hayas contado esto", dijo

Remus.

“Y me alegra que entiendas que no puedo decir

más”, respondió.

Remus asintió.

"Entiendo cómo es soñar con algo y cuando te

despiertas la pesadilla continúa", dijo, mirando
hacia abajo, acariciando con un dedo sin pensar
una de las cicatrices en su rostro. "A veces estar
despierto está lejos de ser la mejor solución para
detener las pesadillas".

Ella lo miró y dudó por un momento.

“Sólo sobreviví esa época porque mi padrino me

cuidó”, le dijo. “Gran hombre, maravilloso en
Healing, quien me enseñó todo lo que sé sobre
Healing. Un hombre lobo como tú”.

La habitación quedó en silencio cuando todos se

giraron para mirarla antes de girarse para mirar a
James con sus miradas más feas.

"¡¿Le dijiste?!" Dijo Remus, claramente molesto.

"¿Qué? ¡No!" dijo James. "¡Ella ya lo sabía!"

Se encogió de hombros cuando todas las miradas

volvieron a ella.

“Lo supe desde la primera vez que te vi. Hay muy

pocas cosas que pueden dejar cicatrices como esa:
maldiciones y algunas criaturas mágicas como
dragones o hombres lobo; de lo contrario, Dittany
puede lidiar con eso y no dejar ninguna cicatriz.
Dijiste que eres mestizo, por lo tanto tu padre
mágico lo sabría”, dijo Anne, explicándolo. “No
parece que trabajes con dragones o que te
maldigan a menudo en casa, ya que te encanta
volver siempre y hablas muy bien de tus padres… Y
también me diste tu abrigo, dijiste que siempre
corrías caliente y "Bueno, hacía mucho frío afuera".

“¿Así que lo adivinaste?” Preguntó Sirius, realmente

impresionado por una vez.

Ella asintió. "Cualquiera que pase tiempo con

hombres lobo puede reconocer las señales",
explicó.

“¿Todavía estás aquí por diez días y adivinaste que

uno de los estudiantes es un hombre lobo?” repitió
Pedro.

“Sí”, respondió Ana.

James levantó las manos. "Realmente no se lo dije,

lo prometo". el insistió.

Anne terminó riéndose de su miedo, con las

lágrimas todavía ahogándola en la garganta, pero
insistió en que su mente permaneciera en su nueva
realidad, incluso si se sentía demasiado bien para
ser verdad. Su cuerpo cansado se apoyó contra
James, quien simplemente la abrazó sin hacer
preguntas mientras hablaban y trataba de hacer
bromas para hacerla reír y olvidar sus
preocupaciones.

Capítulo 14 : Capítulo trece

Resumen:
La actitud protectora de James le
lleva a tomar una decisión
apresurada.

Notas:
TW: mención del suicidio y
pensamientos suicidas...

NEGRO Y GRIS

Por tercera vez en ese día, Marlene gritó cuando

cometió un error con la poción e hizo que Anne
saltara lejos del caldero para evitar ser quemada
por las burbujas claramente ácidas que se
derramaban de la mesa y caían al suelo.

"¡SUFICIENTE!" dijo Slughorn. “Suficiente de

ustedes dos, señorita Sage y señorita McKinnon.
¡Vamos a cambiar de pareja, de lo contrario
tendremos una muerte aquí antes de que termine
el semestre! Slughorn pareció realmente
preocupado por un momento mientras miraba a las
personas que deseaba cambiar de pareja; poner a
James o Sirius con Anne o Marlene no funcionaría.
Un movimiento en verde le hizo mirar. “Snape,
muchacho, ¿puedes cambiar de lugar con la
señorita Sage y dejarla con el señor Black? Sólo tú
podrías lidiar con los… talentos en pociones de la
señorita McKinnon.

Marlene se rió. "Gracias, profesor, pero prefiero

vomitar".

La risa de Sirius desde el otro lado de la habitación

fue tan fuerte que Anne dio un pequeño salto.
James estaba tratando de no reírse ya que Lily
Evans estaba sentada justo detrás de él, pero soltó
una risita. Peter escondió su rostro y Remus de
repente pareció muy concentrado en quitarse la
suciedad de debajo de las uñas y empujar a Peter
para recordarle que revolviera la poción.

Anne golpeó a la rubia con el codo y la reprendió

con un silbido pidiéndole silencio. Aun así, Anne
estaba bastante de acuerdo con ella, no quería
dejar a Marlene con Severus después de que esa
nueva versión de él fuera aún menos amable que la
que conocía antes.

"Snape es bueno en pociones", dijo Anne. "Estarás

bien."

Marlene miró a Anne como si la hubiera traicionado,

pero la vio caminar hacia Regulus sin atreverse a
mirar a Severus mientras él, muy en contra de su
voluntad, se sentaba al lado de la chica rubia, quien
puso los ojos en blanco y lo miró como esperando.
él para decirle lo que tenía que hacer.

La pelirroja era ciertamente más educada que

Severus o Marlene. Le dio una sonrisa con los labios
apretados a Regulus y se sentó a su lado, cruzando
las piernas y esperando pacientemente mientras él
guardaba algunos de los libros para que ella tuviera
espacio en el mostrador para poner su propio libro
y notas. Él apenas la miró, simplemente se levantó
de su asiento y empujó con cuidado el caldero más
hacia el centro de la mesa para que ella no tuviera
que acercarse demasiado a él.

"Buenos días", dijo en voz baja.

"Buenos días", respondió ella.

En la mesa frente a ella estaban Evan Rosier y

Elizabeth Fawley que Anne había visto hablando
con Regulus ese día; parecían cercanos de alguna
manera, y Anne no pudo evitar preguntarse por
qué Regulus no había estado sentado con ella. En la
mesa detrás de ellos estaban Remus y Peter,
ambos trabajando en silencio, aunque podía sentir
los ojos de Remus sobre ella mientras le sonreía a
Regulus una vez más.

"Mi... costilla se siente muy bien", comentó en un

susurro. "¿Te importaría cortar las hojas de
alihotsy?"

"En absoluto", dijo, acercando la tabla de cortar,

todavía sentada mientras cortaba. “¿Por qué
estamos haciendo una poción de risa? ¿No es súper
fácil o algo así? A estas alturas del sexto año, creo
que estaríamos haciendo algo mucho más divertido,
como… Félix Félixces o algo así”.

Regulus levantó la vista de su libro.

"No todo el mundo es bueno en pociones, Sage",

dijo. Echó otro vistazo, pero esta vez a la mesa
frente a ellos. No podía llamarla por su nombre de
pila. "¿Has hecho esto antes?"

“No, solo estudié la teoría”, respondió ella. “Sin

embargo, he visto gente usándolo. Un... amigo mío
tenía una depresión terrible y...

“¿Qué es la depresión?” Regulus la interrumpió.

Ella lo miró sorprendida, con el cuchillo congelado

en su mano mientras parpadeaba para tratar de
encontrar las palabras.

"Um... Es... Melancolía, supongo que así es como

se llama", dijo. Eso pareció tener sentido para
Regulus porque tarareó en reconocimiento y
asintió. "De todos modos, cuando estaba tan mal
que teníamos miedo de dejarlo solo, le dábamos un
poco; su madre lo hacía".

"¿Cómo se llama?" Estaba tratando de ser

agradable, pero eso hizo que Evan mirara por
encima del hombro a Regulus. “Tal vez lo conozco”.

"No es así, estoy segura", dijo.

“Tengo amigos en Estados Unidos, Sage. Se llama

red social, es importante en el futuro y debes
saberlo”, respondió Regulus.

Ana suspiró.

“Su nombre era George”, dijo. "Se suicidó cuando

yo tenía quince años después de que su hermano
gemelo muriera de una enfermedad".

Regulus casi siseó avergonzado al comprender que

como esa persona ya no estaba en su mundo,
entonces no había manera de que pudiera
conocerlo.

Anne estaba nuevamente lejos del salón de clases,

moviendo la mano para seguir cortando las hojas,
pero con la mente muy lejos. Le gustaba recordar a
Fred y George juntos, por supuesto, al igual que a
la mayoría del resto de la familia Weasley. Después
de que San Mungus se cerrara a cualquiera que no
siguiera la filosofía de Voldemort, Fred enfermó
gravemente debido a un corte que tenía en la
pierna; la fiebre llegó fuerte y la infección se lo
llevó rápidamente, pero dejó a todos los demás
sufriendo. George se suicidó unas semanas después
y luego Arthur desapareció en la batalla y su cuerpo
nunca fue encontrado.

La señorita Weasley había sido fuerte, seguía

cuidando de todos, resolviendo sus problemas para
no tener que lidiar con el lado vacío de la cama y el
dormitorio vacío frente al de ellos en la Madriguera.
Sólo se rompió cuando Ginny vino llorando hacia
ella, una poción de embarazo en verde vibrante
mientras le pedía perdón. No hacía falta perdón,
porque ese niño había sido quien había hecho que
Molly admitiera que esperaba que alguien más se
fuera para poder seguirla.

Comenzó a tomar pociones de la risa cuando

pensaba demasiado en la muerte.

“Parece que he vuelto a pasarme de la raya en

nuestras breves conversaciones, señorita Sage, le
pido disculpas”, dijo.

Anne lo miró y sacudió la cabeza, descartando sus

disculpas mientras se levantaba del asiento y ponía
las hojas en el caldero. Empezó a moverse muy
lentamente. Sin embargo, cuando sus ojos se
encontraron con los de él, contuvo la respiración.

La intensidad de sus ojos no era algo que ella

hubiera esperado ver.

"Está bien", dijo.

Él miró hacia otro lado.

“¿Perdiste… a mucha gente antes de venir aquí?”

preguntó, su voz no era más alta que un susurro.
Nadie los escuchaba. “No viniste aquí sólo por una
boda, viniste aquí para huir de algo peor; si
realmente hubo una boda, lo cual no creo, fue solo
la última gota, pero no la tormenta en sí. "

Sus labios se torcieron cuando su sonrisa ya no

pudo ocultarse más.

"Eres demasiado inteligente para tu propio bien,

Black".

Eso provocó una risa en su pecho mientras miraba

hacia abajo con modestia, un poco más fuerte de lo
que esperaba. Algunos estudiantes los miraron ya
que la risa de Regulus era bastante rara de
escuchar; entre esas personas estaba Sirius Black,
quien tocó las costillas de James.

"Compañero", susurró.

"Espera, estoy ocupado con las alas", respondió

James.

Lily Evans levantó la vista, casi riéndose de su

broma, pero vio que él estaba seriamente
triturando las alas de Billywig concentrándose en su
rostro. Sirius, sin embargo, había dejado de
moverse y estaba mirando a alguien al otro lado de
la habitación. Lily siguió sus ojos para ver a Anne
apartando un poco de cabello de su rostro y
poniéndolo detrás de su oreja, concentrada en su
propia poción, pero Regulus le estaba susurrando
algo; Una sonrisa en sus labios mientras se reía, su
mano volando hacia su boca para amortiguarla.

"Amigo, lo digo en serio".

"Sé que lo eres", dijo James, cansado.

“No, Sirius no. En serio”, insistió Sirius. "Amigo, mi

hermano está coqueteando correctamente con
Anne".

"¡¿Qué?!" James exclamó tan fuerte que Lily casi

deja caer una pluma dentro del caldero. "¿Dónde?
¡Oh, joder!

"Idioma, señor Potter", dijo Slughorn a un metro de

ellos, pasando por las mesas para comprobarlo.

"¡Señor, profesor!" llamó James. Slughorn se

detuvo junto a ellos, con las manos en las caderas.
“Necesita alejar a Anne de él, señor. ¡Míralos, mira!
¡Está coqueteando con ella! Slughorn miró a
Regulus y Anne. Parecía un poco cansada de tanto
revolver el caldero, así que él le puso una mano en
la espalda y se hizo cargo, revolviendo
vigorosamente. "¿Ver? Él no puede hacer eso, ella
es mi... James se detuvo.

Sirius ahora estaba mirando a James como si

tuviera dos cabezas.

"Su --?" Slughorn lo animó. "¿Están usted y la

señorita Sage juntos, señor Potter, porque creo que
es demasiado personal para…"

"Primo", dijo James. “Una vez eliminado”, añadió.

“Ella vino a vivir con mis padres”.

Slughorn parecía pálido. "Ya veo", dijo, incómodo.

Los Potter eran poderosos, por supuesto, pero una

Sabia con sangre Potter y la ramificación principal
de la Casa de Potter detrás de ella, estaba cerca de
una nobleza dentro de la escuela y del Mundo
Mágico Británico, aunque su estatus de sangre la
acercaría. abajo.

"No me dijiste esto", le siseó Sirius a James.

"Porque no debería haberle contado nada a nadie",

siseó James. "Si esto pudiera quedar entre
nosotros, profesor, estoy seguro de que mi padre
estaría encantado de explicarle la situación con más
detalle durante una cena".

Manipulación. Anne le había enseñado bien.

“Por supuesto, señor Potter. Dígale a Lord Potter

que estaría encantado”, dijo Slughorn. “Sin
embargo, no puedo hacer mucho por nuestro
pequeño… problema. Miss Sage y Mister Black
trabajan bien juntos, como puede ver claramente.
Esta clase trata de lograr que los estudiantes
alcancen su máximo potencial, pero creo que sólo
puedo hacerlo si Sage y Black están juntos”.

Y ese fue el final de la conversación que James no

deseaba tener.

Dumbledore no estaba contento con la nueva

incorporación a la historia, pero estaba haciendo un
buen trabajo ocultándoselo a James, porque el
niño, aunque culpable, salió del estudio luciendo
bastante satisfecho consigo mismo, pero Anne se
quedó.

"Es libre de irse, señorita Potter", repitió

Dumbledore.

Anne no se movió de su silla.

“No deseo moverme”, dijo. “No tenías derecho a

hablarle a James de esa manera, insinuaste, más
de una vez, que era una decisión estúpida. Estaba
tratando de protegerme”.

"Una decisión no tan sabia", dijo Dumbledore. “No

fue una decisión tomada por protección; Fue una
decisión tomada en base a los celos. Fue una idea
terrible que él supiera la verdad detrás de tu
existencia”.

“¿Preferirías mentirle?” preguntó Anne, riéndose

con ironía. “No es de extrañar, director. Todo lo que
haces desde que te conocí es mentir, mentir,
mentir. No puedes engañarme. Sé demasiado sobre
ti como para dejarlo pasar.

"Sería inteligente detener esta conversación

mientras todavía tenemos el control", advirtió.

“I don’t want stop this conversation. I know shit

you’d be very inclined to kill me if you knew that I
knew, and the most amusing thing is that you just
can’t,” she laughed. “You can’t kill me because you
need to win and you can’t do it without me, so I
fear nothing that will come from you.”

“You told me everything already –”

"¿Hice?" preguntó, levantando las cejas. Ella frunció

el ceño poco después. "¿Está seguro?" El tono
condescendiente hizo que las mejillas de
Dumbledore se pusieran un poco rojas de ira, pero
la expresión de su rostro no se movió. “No me
subestime, profesor, no le irá bien, se lo puedo
asegurar. James Potter hizo lo que pensó que era
correcto para ayudarme porque sabe que Regulus
Black está involucrado con la filosofía de la sangre
pura y aquí hay una cosa de las muchas que no les
dije: necesito a Regulus. Él es quien debe saber
antes que nadie acerca de los Horrocruxes y
cuándo fueron escondidos”.

"Lo estás usando", comentó Dumbledore, aunque

no parecía demasiado sorprendido.

Anne se levantó lentamente de la silla, fingiendo

estar demasiado ocupada con la simple tarea de
arreglarse la falda para responderle de inmediato.
Su mente estaba buscando una respuesta, pero no
estaba segura de si Regulus Black era una
herramienta para su plan, tal vez al principio, pero
ahora… simplemente le parecía un niño cualquiera.

“Sí”, respondió ella.

Los labios de Dumbledore se torcieron tan pronto

como sus ojos se encontraron.

"Te crees mucho mejor mentirosa de lo que

realmente eres, querida", dijo. "Te gusta él."

"Le espera una conversación interesante", descartó.

No podía dejarle saber que tal vez se convertirían
en buenos amigos; él no necesitaba más influencia
sobre ella, no necesitaba más balas en su arma de
manipulación emocional.

Él asintió, levantándose también de su silla.

“El joven señor Black es realmente un chico

interesante, muy inteligente, pero muy crédulo, ¿no
lo crees? Ve el mundo en blanco y negro con tanta
frecuencia que de alguna manera sorprende lo
interesado que está en el conocimiento”, dijo
Dumbledore. Sus manos se posaron detrás de su
espalda en una postura educada mientras
observaba los fríos ojos de Anne posarse en los
suyos. No había ninguna brecha en su mente, sin
importar adónde intentara ir. Ocultó su frustración.
“¿Quizás usted, señorita Potter, podría ayudarlo a
ver el gris? ¿Quién mejor que un mestizo?

“Crédula”, se burló. "Es un niño abusado".

"Y Sirius también, y está lejos de ser crédulo", dijo

Dumbledore.

"No, simplemente es ingenuo y tiene una relación

terrible con figuras de poder", dijo. “Dos respuestas
diferentes al mismo trauma. ¿Por qué ayudas a uno
y no al otro?

“Porque uno vino a mí”, dijo.

“Y no es tu responsabilidad si finges no verlo,

¿verdad?” Ella sacudió la cabeza y una sonrisa
amarga apareció en sus labios. Unos ojos verdes
pasaron por su mente. “No se preocupe, profesor,
lo entiendo. Hiciste lo mismo antes”.

"Tu tiempo no ha..."

"¡No estoy hablando de mi tiempo!" Ella lo

interrumpió, mirándolo. “Sabes muy bien que
enviaste a Tom Riddle de regreso a un orfanato
muggle durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial en el
mundo muggle, ¿verdad? Inglaterra era uno de los
lugares más peligrosos del mundo para la población
muggle y lo enviaste de regreso allí sin pestañear.
¿Por qué crees que te tiene tanto miedo?

“Hice lo que tenía que hacer”, dijo. "No había nada

que pudiera haber hecho por él".

“¡Habías muchas cosas que podrías haber hecho

por el niño que era sin convertirte en otro adulto
que le falló una y otra vez!” Ella exclamo. “En quién
se convirtió Tom Riddle es culpa suya, director. Le
fallaste. Sé que te pidió ayuda antes, vino a ti y te
rogó que no lo enviaras de regreso cuando estaba
en su primer año y nuevamente cuando estaba en
el segundo; sin embargo, regresó muy diferente
cuando tenía trece años, ¿no? ¿el? Fue entonces
cuando realmente empezaste a prestarle atención,
no por amabilidad o interés real en su carrera
académica; Le prestaste atención por nerviosismo y
miedo de que se convirtiera exactamente en quien
es ahora”.

Dumbledore miró hacia abajo, derrotado por los

recuerdos que lo atacaban. El niño pequeño de
rodillas, suplicando, suplicando y prometiendo que
haría cualquier cosa para no ser enviado de regreso
allí, pero Dumbledore lo hizo.

"Tom es más que malvado", dijo.

“Ahora sí lo es”, dijo.

"Tenía bondad dentro de él, mucha, pero la Magia

Oscura lo corrompió y era muy fácil de manipular;
su magia era tan fuerte que pasé por alto su ira",
admitió. "No esperaba que actuara basándose en la
oscuridad que tenía".

“Cuando lo único que te queda es la oscuridad, te

vuelves hacia ella. Es lo más cálido que tienes
cuando todo lo demás está vacío”.

“Pero tenía más que oscuridad”, dijo.

"Pero le hiciste pensar que no valía la pena por su

propia luz", dijo. “He estado en su cabeza antes.
Intentó invadir mi mente y lo empujé con tanta
fuerza que terminé sobre la suya: está oscuro allí,
es frío y solitario. Estaba aterrorizado al igual que
él cuando dos de los niños del orfanato intentaron
matarlo por primera vez. La primera vez… sucedió
más de una vez antes de que llegara a los once
años. Y lo enviaste de regreso allí. Esta guerra,
todo lo que tuve que pasar… todas estas muertes
que tuve que pasar, fueron consecuencias de tus
acciones”.

Dumbledore volvió a sentarse en su silla, el aliento

desaparecía de sus pulmones mientras miraba
fijamente a la chica, sintiendo que le dolía el pecho
y se le revolvía el estómago.

"Recurrió a las ideas básicas de Grindewald porque

conocía mi historia con él", confesó Dumbledore.
Anne asintió, claramente sabiendo eso también. "Es
mi culpa, ¿no?" Se preguntó en voz alta, pero Anne
no respondió. "Debería ir a cenar, señorita Potter".

Ella suspiró, pero se giró hacia la puerta para irse,

deteniéndose en la puerta y respirando
profundamente.

“Yo también vine a ti”, le dijo.

Dumbledore miró hacia arriba.

"¿Lo lamento?"

“I came to you, I told you things I feel like I cannot

tell anyone ever again in my life,” she answered. “I
never told Harry out of your request and I agreed
because I thought you were right, you said you’d
fix it and you never did anything. I was never
important to you, I was just Harry’s sister, just
another war casualty when time came to it, or – in
good days – the leverage you had on Harry,” she
explained, taking another deep breath. “The day I
agreed to keep my… suffering in secret was the day
that I finally felt like I was protecting Harry. He had
so much to be like Tom and I didn’t want to give
him another reason; I thought you were right, and
perhaps you were, maybe Harry would’ve turned to
revenge, but perhaps he’d have done something to
protect me a bit better.”

“You said you were tired of being protected by him,

that’s why you came here,” Dumbledore said.

“I was fourteen,” she said. “I had no one else, I had

no support from anyone besides him and I had no
friends besides his. Harry was all the protection I
had, but it wasn’t all that I needed – I asked you
for help and you failed me too.”

And with that, Anne turned around and left the

room, closing the door carefully behind her.

She did not have dinner and she spent the night
sitting in her bed, protected by silencing charms,
crying her eyes out until dawn came and a new day
had shined upon her, bringing the new once again.

Harry, Hermione, Rony, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Fred,

George, Ginny, Arthur, Molly, Luna, Neville, Draco,
Credic, Colin, Davees, Kinglsey, Cho, Dean,
Seamus and ever so many more that she lost in the
past. Her future was dedicated to them.

Chapter 15: Chapter Fourteen

Summary:
Pandora has a birthday party.
 Notes:
I'm sorry if it sounds like a sudden
apperance, but I was just trying to
find any way at all to have
Pandora to appear, I love her so
much!

RAVENCLAW GIRL, FUTURE LOVEGOOD BRIDE

More than ever before, summer seemed to be

approaching slow.

Anne had just reached the first of June, but she felt
like dying in the Common Room rug out of
exhaustion.

Her head was resting on James’ left thigh as he did

his homework lazily, stopping to talk to Sirius and
sip his tea more than actually writing.

Remus had her feet on his lap, reading his book

calmly and had not a single word in more than an
hour.

Peter was sitting on the chair two feet away from

them, curled up in a ball and sleeping so deeply
that drool was coming out of his mouth, he had
been so tired and yet he had gone up to their
rooms and grabbed a blanket to put over Anne’s
legs to ‘protect her from eyes’, he had said, glaring
at the fifth years that had looked up when she lied
down in her skirt, James gave him a thumb up.

Sirius was another one that had looked, though

clearly out of reflex when James had told him not
to look. He had received a good kick of James’ right
leg, but did mostly ignore Anne besides a normal
check up to see if she was asleep. Ever since he
found out Anne was James’ ‘cousin’, he had been
kinder, though still hardly ever going past
politeness.

Los ojos de Anne acababan de cerrarse cuando

James dio un pequeño salto y gimió. Ella abrió los
ojos, sorprendida, y la mano voló hacia su varita.

“¿Evans? ¿Adónde vas?" Preguntó James,

levantándose tan repentinamente que dejó caer la
cabeza de Anne.

Peter se despertó y también miró a su alrededor

confundido.

"No es asunto tuyo, Potter", dijo Lily cerca del

retrato.

Gimiendo cuando su cabeza golpeó el suelo, Anne

se sentó para ver a Remus riéndose en silencio y a
Sirius con el rostro rojo, tratando de contener la
risa.

"Ay", se quejó Anne, acariciando la parte posterior

de su cabeza con la mano.

Remus se apresuró a poner su mano sobre la de

ella y abrazarla, con el rostro enterrado en su
pecho. Al principio, pensó que él la estaba
consolando por el dolor, después de un segundo,
entendió que era su manera de mantenerla callada.
Ella se alejó, confundida y somnolienta.

"¡Te ves genial!" James derramó.

Sirius rió disimuladamente, tapándose la boca con

el brazo para evitar que Lily lo escuchara.

Pero la cuestión es que Lily tenía un aspecto

fantástico. Llevaba un vestido azul, probablemente
hecho de satén y claramente no llevaba sujetador
por la espalda desnuda del vestido que mostraba
toda su piel blanca en la espalda. Tenía zapatos
negros y el pelo suelto.

"Te ves genial", dijo Anne. "Me encanta el vestido".

Recién ahora Lily pareció notar a Anne sentada en

el suelo.

"Oh, gracias", respondió ella.

Para consternación de Anne, no había logrado

acercarse a Lily. Fueron educados el uno con el
otro, pero ciertamente fue incómodo. James se
había reído, pero parecía un poco preocupado por
eso ahora que se acercaba el verano y no tenía
ninguna relación y Anne tampoco.

"¿Fiesta?" preguntó Remus.

"Sí", dijo ella. "Pandora cumple diecisiete años, así

que..."

"Oh", dijo Sirius, finalmente luciendo alerta.

“Fuimos invitados, Prongs. ¡Sabía que me estaba
olvidando algo! Mierda. Si corremos, podemos
prepararnos por completo y aparecer por un
momento”.

"Es martes", dijo Peter.

Todos los chicos lo miraron con el mismo mensaje

de 'cállate, Pete'. Anne entendió entonces que los
chicos no habían planeado aparecer en la fiesta en
absoluto, Sirius no lo había olvidado, lo había
ignorado. Poniendo los ojos en blanco y suspirando,
se levantó.

“¿Marlene va?” Ana preguntó.

"Sí", dijo Lily. “Está casi lista, pero voy un poco

temprano porque quiero tener un pastel en la
cocina”.

Anne tarareó y miró a los niños.

"Vas o no, yo iré a la fiesta", anunció.

Eso pareció haber tomado la decisión de James.

Como si fuera a dejar que su futura esposa de
dieciséis años y su hija de dieciséis años fueran a
una fiesta sin estar allí por si algo salía mal.

"¡Chicos, a los dormitorios!" Ordenó James.

Sirius gritó y Remus gimió cuando se levantó, pero

pareció caminar rápido mientras recogía la manta
que Anne había estado usando. Peter, todavía un
poco confundido y no completamente despierto, lo
siguió.

Anne subió las escaleras tan rápido que cuando

llegó a la puerta, Marlene todavía estaba entre tres
opciones de falda, caminando con una fina blusa
negra de manga larga con cuello alto y bragas.
Levantó la vista cuando se abrió la puerta,
mostrando su hermoso maquillaje.

"¡Ana, gracias a Merlín!" ella dijo. "Ayudame aqui.

¿Cuál?"

The three skirts were mini, Anne noticed as she

added mentally, really mini. Marlene did have great
legs, which would look great in those skirts. One
was black and of false leather, too shiny. The
second one was maroon and had buttons all the
way down. The third one was yellow, which to Anne
was a no straight away.

“I like the maroon,” Anne said.

Marlene smirked.

“You want me to go matching you?” she teased,

pulling a strand of her own hair to show what she
meant. Anne laughed. “Why are you still in your
uniform?”

“I didn’t know there was a party,” Anne explained.

“I was going to ask you for help to get nice clothes.
Is my first party,” she shrugged, “I need to pass a
good impression.”

Marlene seemed honoured, because she moved fast

to Anne’s chest at the foot of the bed and opened
it. She didn’t look for long, gasping as she pulled a
dress from the chest and showed it.

“How the hell did you not wear this yet?” Marlene
asked.

It was a white mini dress with long sleeves in a

shape of a bell. It had gold details on the end and
on the collar in a shape of a tie neck. It was a very
discreet dress on the upper part, very well-covered,
but it did get her legs very naked.

Anne hesitated.

“James’ mum bought it,” she explained. “I didn’t

have the opportunity to wear it yet.”

“This is your opportunity, babe,” said Marlene. “Get

in this, I’ll find hairstyles in the magazine.”

“James is going to hate it,” Anne warned.

“James can fuck himself.”

Anne did not go to the bathroom, just took her

clothes off there. Marlene made sure not to look,
not wanting to make Anne uncomfortable as she
went through the magazine with attention. Anne
didn’t seem to mind at all, but Marlene minded.

They decided simple waves was more than enough

and with a spell she was ready.

“No makeup?” Marlene asked. “Anne!” she said,

almost pleading.

Anne sighed, allowing Marlene to have her fun. It

was simple, mascara and some gloss that tasted
like cherry. Marlene was satisfied and let Anne go.

They went down the stairs together, getting to the

Common Room at the same time Remus and Peter.

“Hey,” Marlene said.

“Ladies,” Remus greeted with a smile. “You two

look great.”

Anne smiled at him.

“You look good in black,” she said, getting closer to

him and fixing his crooked collar. “You should wear
it more.”

Remus smiled and put his arm around her

shoulders, pulling her close to him so he could
speak in her ear.

“Do not ruin James’ chances with Lily,” Remus said

as a warning. “Leave them alone, they get to an
understanding on their own.”

“Yes, sir,” laughed Anne, getting away from him

and going back to standing beside Marlene.

Peter stood there, hands moving nervously. He

wanted to compliment Anne too, but maybe he
needed a few drinks before that, she made him a
bit nervous, though she had been nicer to him.

“OH NO!” screamed James as soon as he saw Anne.

“Where’s the rest of your dress? No. No!”

Anne turned to Marlene, who rolled her eyes and

watched as Sirius appeared beside James, looking
approvingly at Anne’s dress – he always loved girls
in white, they always looked cute and somehow
kinder when in white, perhaps it was because his
mother avoided the colour like the devil avoids the
cross.

“I like your dress,” Sirius said, not having heard

James’s scandal.

Marlene turned to Anne, who rolled her eyes and

went back to looking at James.

“I like this dress too, thanks Sirius. Mia bought me

it,” she did not look away.

“It looks great, but you can’t go in it to a party,”

said James. “Maybe… I don’t know, Christmas in
our house, away from the rest of the terrible world
that will try to eat a pretty girl like you alive.”

“I’d know all about that,” Anne grumbled.

That made James hesitate for a moment.

“James, leave the girl alone, you’re not her dad,”

Marlene said.

“I agree with her,” Remus said. “Anne looks great

and she looks happy. Now, let’s go to the party – I
need a tequila shot… pronto.”

Sirius nodded, excited and eager to make James

forget it all and just go to the party at once. Peter
hesitated before he gathered his courage.

“I really like you dress and your hair,” Peter said

suddenly.

Every head turned his way.

Anne smiled. “Thanks, Pete.”

Peter smiled back at her a spring on his step all the

way there.

Aunque Pandora aún no había conocido a Anne

oficialmente, estaba más que feliz de abrazarla con
una pequeña charla que duró solo un par de
minutos antes de tener que decirle que olía muy
bien, a pesar de que Anne no tenía perfume en el
momento. tiempo, supuso que era su champú, pero
no tuvo tiempo de preguntar antes de que Pandora
estuviera hablando con otro Ravenclaw.

"Ella es..." comenzó Anne a Marlene.

“Excéntrica, pero es muy agradable”, dijo otra voz.

Se giró y notó que Marlene estaba ocupada

hablando con una chica de Hufflepuff y los chicos
no estaban a la vista.

La persona que acababa de hablar con ella era

Regulus Black, sentado en uno de los sofás de la
Sala Común de Ravenclaw con una bebida en la
mano. Su frente brillaba un poco, claramente por el
sudor de estar en la pista de baile.

"Estoy segura de que lo es", estuvo de acuerdo

Anne. “Ella saltó a mis brazos antes de que yo
pudiera presentarme y sabía mi nombre”.

Incluso a través de la música alta, Anne pudo

entender que se estaba riendo entre dientes por
cómo le temblaban los hombros y se produjo un
pequeño tic en sus labios.

“Todo el mundo sabe tu nombre”, dijo.

Anne se dirigió a sentarse a su lado en el sofá.

Levantó las piernas y las colocó a los costados con
la esperanza de estar cómoda, pero sus bragas no
quedarían expuestas al resto de la fiesta.

"¿Qué quieres decir con eso?" ella preguntó.

“Que todo el mundo ha oído hablar de ti. Viniste a

la escuela casi un mes antes de que terminara el
año y has estado bajando las calificaciones de
muchas personas porque eres bueno en las
materias. Dudo que esté entre los tres primeros
aquí contigo”, explicó. "Algunos padres en Slytherin
escribieron para quejarse de ti".

"Eso no es bueno", refunfuñó.

Regulus se inclinó hacia ella.

"Lo siento, no te escuché", dijo por encima de la

música.

A Anne no le gustaba gritar y ciertamente había

venido a la fiesta para conocer más gente y no
dejar que la dulce Pandora pensara que no le
importaría su cumpleaños, es honesto, Anne estuvo
bastante cerca de Luna por un tiempo en su cuarto
año. La cuestión es que ahora que había logrado
entablar una conversación con Regulus, bien podría
continuar.

"Vayamos a un lugar más tranquilo", le dijo ella.

Él pareció sorprendido, pero asintió cuando la vio

levantarse del sofá. Regulus la siguió sin hacer
preguntas mientras ella subía unas escaleras hacia
una ventana con un asiento al lado.

"¿Has estado aquí antes?" preguntó Regulo.

“No,” she laughed. “Just saw some couples come

up here, I thought it might be quieter. See? I was
right.” The song was muffled, loud, but not
deafening. “So, I have been a cause for
complaints?”

“Quite a few,” he agreed. “I suppose is good, you

got attention –”

“I was supposed to pass on unnoticed.”

Regulus shook his head.

“It didn’t work,” he said in false sympathy. She

ended up laughing when he frowned to look like he
understood. “I don’t understand. Attention is good,
it might give you a good job and a good position
when you’re out of school. Next year is our last, we
need to start thinking about it.”

“Sure, attention is good for someone that wishes

for a normal life. If one has plans like mine, you
shall understand is not very smart to get too much
attention,” she answered.

Regulus didn’t seem to have understood in the first

moment, but then he remembered the odd
conversation about the Dark Lord they had on the
stairs near the dungeons. He looked at her, worry
growing in his stomach.

“I honestly doubt he has heard anything about

you,” he said. “I don’t think he’s trying to recruit
yet. He has been talking to the Heads of the
Houses in the Twenty-Eight that would accept his
offers, most have given support,” he took a deep
breath. “Anne, if completely honest, I believe it
would be smart of you to give up on that plan you
have. He’s strong, he has means – whatever he
wants, he can get.”

“There’s a lot you don’t understand, Regulus,” she

answered.

Giggles made them go quiet in their seat on the

window. Anne poked her head out from the space
they were sitting very close to one another to look.
A Ravenclaw girl was leading a boy into her
bedroom.

Anne went back to her place.

“You… would tell me if you have Seen anything,

right?” Regulus asked. “You can tell me, I’m a great
Occlumens and I won’t tell anyone.”

She hesitated. Regulus didn’t want to follow

Voldemort, but they both knew that in the near
future he would have no option but to accept the
offer and look down, he would need to do whatever
that man would tell him to without questions and
without complaint, but only Anne knew the result of
his efforts to survive would lead: death. And in the
moment that he changed sides, forgetting his
orders, he would die alone, scared and being
dragged down the dark waters of the cave.

"Regulus", comenzó. “No sé si esto sucederá,

pero…”

“Pero has visto que me pasó algo malo”, supuso.

“Dímelo”, insistió.

“Él te llevará a la muerte”, admitió. “Muchas

personas morirán y serán torturadas por él.
Regulus, lo digo en serio. De su lado o no, nadie
está a salvo de él. Morirás, Lucius será esclavizado
en su propia casa y Narcisa tendrá que mirar hacia
abajo y permitir que la gente le haga cosas terribles
a cambio de la seguridad de su hijo; lo he visto
suceder”.

Aunque la parte de su propia muerte no había

asustado a Regulus en absoluto, después de todo
muchas personas dirían que la gente moría en sus
visiones, la forma en que ella se veía pálida y
susurró esas palabras sobre Narcisa con verdadera
pena en su voz le hizo creerlo. tanto que sintió
náuseas.

“Ningún bando ganará”, murmuró.

Ella sacudió su cabeza. “Todas las partes perderán.

Si no lo detenemos esta vez, la próxima generación
también perderá y con ellos todos los muggles se
volverán contra los magos. Esto no terminará
bien."

Regulus respiró hondo.

"Aunque te creo, me resulta muy difícil confiar en

que una chica de dieciséis años luche sola contra
uno de los magos más poderosos de todos los
tiempos", dijo.

"No estoy solo."

Se tomó un momento antes de que el

reconocimiento tocara sus ojos.

"La Orden del Fénix", dijo, asintiendo para sí

mismo. “Debería haber visto venir esto después de
la forma en que Dumbledore te miró. Pensé que era
porque eras familia, pero ahora puedo ver que él es
más que eso: es tu mentor”.

Ella hizo un ruido de disgusto. "Por favor no lo

hagas. No hay nada que pueda enseñarme”.

Regulus arqueó las cejas y se rió entre dientes.

"¿Eres tan poderoso o simplemente confías

demasiado en tus habilidades?" preguntó.

“Ninguno de los dos”, admitió. "Simplemente

molesta con Dumbledore y alguien que preferiría
morir antes que quedarse más tiempo del
absolutamente necesario para nuestros planes con
él", se tomó un momento para pensar en silencio
con solo la música que venía de las escaleras.
"Regulus, sabes que puedes venir a verme,
¿verdad?"

"¿Ir a ti?"

“Las cosas se pondrán difíciles, muy difíciles a partir

de ahora”, explicó. "Te verás obligado a ir a su
lado, te guste o no, pero puedo ayudarte a salir de
esto en el momento en que se vuelva demasiado
arriesgado, pero para eso necesitaré ayuda para
destruirlo".

Se levantó de su asiento de un salto.

"¡Me estás usando!" él dijo. "¡Quieres un espía!"

“I want you to be safe!” she answered, getting up

too. “But for that, I’ll need help. You said it
yourself, I can’t destroy bloody Voldemort all by
myself and I doubt the Order will simply accept
everything I have to say. You don’t know
Dumbledore – I can’t trust him 100%. You never
know what he’ll do for the greater good. I’ll be
honest here, you’re my plan B.”

“Anne –” he started, clearly hurt.

“There’s a lot I can’t tell you yet, but you’re going

to be the one I trust the most in this fucking mess
I’m in,” she said. “I have no doubt Dumbledore will
sacrifice me if needed, but I’ll have you know that
I’m trying to save everyone – person by person,
not… everyone in general. I don’t leave people
behind.”

“How can I be sure?” he asked. “You could just

leave me to die in the hand of the Dark Lord after I
gave you what you wanted. What’s my plan B?”

She sighed. She had not thought of a plan B for

him, she didn’t plan of failing him.

“In the moment shit gets too much, I’ll get you out.
I promise,” she said.

“When is too much?” he asked.

“In the moment you think that you won’t survive,

send me word and I’ll come get you,” she said. “We
can keep in contact through several completely safe
ways. I can promise on my magic for you, Regulus
Black. I won’t let you die.”

Regulus watched her for a moment, trying to see if

she was being sincere or not.

He raised his cup.

“To our newest…” he smirked, “alliance.”

“To friends,” she corrected.

She raised her own cup.

Chapter 16: Chapter Fifteen

Summary:
A single second, a single sentence
can ruin a lot of things under a
misunderstanding.

Oh, and protective Remus...

because we all love Protective
Remus Lupin!

MISUNDERSTANDING

The window of the Ravenclaw tower was starting to

get uncomfortable with the alcohol mixture and
proximity. It was never a good idea of leave two
intoxicated teenagers together in a tight space.

They weren’t drunk, but certainly the alcohol had

given them enough courage to be whispering in
each other’s ears whenever someone passed by
because they didn’t want anyone hearing them.
Their tipsy state was giggly, though completely
conscious of their decisions, though words might
escape.

“Are you sure you won’t be upset for not being

Head Boy next year?” Anne asked. “I mean, you
could’ve been if you didn’t just go to my year.”

He looked at her and laughed, throwing his head

back, belly shaking with every laugh.

"¿Hablas en serio? ¿Podría haber sido Premio Anual

si me hubiera quedado en quinto año? Qué poco
extraordinario de mi parte”, se rió. "Ahora escucha.
Entre ser tu compañero de pociones y ser el Premio
Anual, asegúrate de que te elegiría siempre.

"¡Oh, me siento importante!" anunció, riéndose

también.

“Bien, porque mi último compañero en quinto año

era una persona terrible y apenas podía sostener
un cuchillo”, dijo. “Tenía a Severus, por supuesto,
pero todo lo que hacía era quejarse y chismear
sobre los demás. Tú, sin embargo, pareces ser un
compañero divertido”.

"Divertido", sacudió los hombros como si bailara.

“Sí, puedo ser divertido. ¿Pero qué dijo Snape
sobre mí? Tengo mucha curiosidad ahora”.

"Está enojado porque lo sacaste de tu mente".

"Bueno, si no fuera una perra tan entrometida, no

tendría que sacarlo de mi mente", dijo. “Dile a tu
pareja que me deje en paz, ¿sí? Es un poco raro,
sigue mirándome y ni siquiera estoy cerca de él”.

Regulo se rió.

"Esa es su manera de demostrar que quiere

conocerte mejor", dijo.

“Bueno, entonces dile que venga y me hable como

una maldita persona normal”, se quejó.

Regulus se rió aún más.

"Tienes la boca muy sucia cuando estás borracho",

dijo.

Había una sonrisa en sus labios al segundo

siguiente.

“Primero, no estoy borracho, sólo borracho.

Segundo, entonces necesitas verme en la cama,
Regulus, querido, mi boca es la alcantarilla misma.

Regulus se congeló por un momento, sintiendo que

su estómago se revolvía, su ombligo tiraba y su
cabeza se quedaba en blanco mientras intentaba
recordar cómo hablar inglés. No quería admitirlo,
pero podía sentir la sangre corriendo en algún lugar
en el que no quería pensar – muy vergonzoso. Aún
así, su deseo por ella era difícil de ocultar; sus ojos
eran tan oscuros que apenas podía ver el gris.

Levantó las cejas una vez que sus pensamientos

regresaron.

"¿Es eso una oferta, cariño?"

Ella se inclinó hacia él, sonriendo.

"¿Quieres que así sea?"

“¡ANA SABIA!”

Ambos se giraron para ver a Sirius Black parado

cerca de la trampilla en lo alto de las escaleras,
mirándolos con los ojos muy abiertos. Poco
después, James subió tras él al segundo piso,
sosteniendo la taza con los dientes.

Regulus got up from his seat. That called James’

attention and he almost dropped the cup, but he
held it as he stared at Regulus standing beside
Anne, who was still sitting.

“What are you two doing here alone?” Sirius asked,

looking between the two.

“Talking,” Anne said.

“Alone in the dark, with – how many? One, two,

three, four. Four empty cups each, oh please,”
James said. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” Anne answered. “I’m alright and we’re just

talking.”

She got up from seat slowly, trying her best not to

look nervous and put her half-empty cup on the
window where she was sitting. She smiled calmly at
Sirius and James, pushing her hair over her
shoulder as if she always did that. The truth was
that she was becoming so nervous that she was
starting to feel the sweat coming from the back of
her neck.

“Potter, Sirius,” Regulus greeted with great

indifference. “We were just talking. If you cannot
do so with a girl, please do not project it over to
me.”

“First you two go inside a closet for Merlin-knows-

why –” started Sirius.

“I had a perfectly good explanation for that,” Anne

said.

“Now, I catch you two together in the middle of a

dark corridor, sitting on the window inches away
from each other,” Sirius continued, ignoring her.
“It’s pathetic that you think you can fool me with
your little speech of ‘talking to a girl’. Honestly, I
know you, Regulus, the way you watch her is
ridiculous. It’s like you’re about to bite her.”

Regulus blinked, confused.

“Why would I bite anyone?” he asked.

Anne looked at Regulus more surprised than

anything. He had not denied anything, just asked
the most obvious question. She understood then
that Regulus had no idea of what coupled usually
did besides kissing during sex, or maybe he
thought of it as wedding night, but whatever it was,
he had no idea of the many possibilities that one
could find.

That, however, brought laughter to Sirius’ mouth

and James glared at Sirius, punching his arm, but
the Black ignored him.

“Why wouldn’t you?” Sirius asked.

“Don’t give him any ideas!” James scolded.

Anne rolled her eyes.

“For Merlin’s sake, I’m not a little kid,” she

complained. “I can be alone with whoever I want. I
can sleep with whoever I want if I wanted to. You
two should not have any control over that part of
my life.”

“I’m your –” started James.

“It doesn’t matter!” she cut him off. “You didn’t

even know that until last month. I survived a great
deal without you.”

Though she meant it in a way to say that she could

protect herself, it did leave her mouth quite bitterly
and made James’ face lose all colour at once as he
stared at her with wide, hurt eyes. Guilt made his
jaw lock.

“Oh,” said James. “I suppose you’re right. I’m

sorry, Anne, it wasn’t right for me to do this. I’m
sorry.”

The guilt hit her in the stomach like a punch as she

started to walk towards him.

“James, James, it wasn’t what I meant,” she called

out. “For Heaven’s sake, James, wait! I didn’t mean
it like that.”
Pero ya era demasiado tarde, ya había abierto la
trampilla y había bajado las escaleras, dejando la
taza con alcohol en la mano de Sirius. Sirius, a su
vez, estaba mirando a Anne y Regulus, claramente
no había disfrutado lo herido que estaba su mejor
amigo.

"Buen trabajo, Anne", escupió Sirius hacia ella.

“No quise decir eso, sólo quería que viera que

puedo lidiar con las cosas que me rodean y que no
necesito protección todo el tiempo. ¡Dios! Es igual
que Harry. ¡Oye algo, saca sus conclusiones y se va
a la mierda antes de que pueda decir qué diablos
quise decir realmente! ella dijo. "No es de
extrañar".

De tal padre, tal hijo, era todo lo que podía pensar.

Sirius observó cómo Anne caminaba de un lado a

otro, claramente molesta también. Por un
momento, permitió que su ira permaneciera, pero
luego la lástima se apoderó de ella tan pronto como
vio sus ojos brillantes con lágrimas, aunque ella
rápidamente se los secó y respiró hondo, evitando
que salieran por completo. Suspiró, descontento
con el resultado de una fiesta que se suponía iba a
ser divertida, pero tomando la decisión de
mejorarla.

“Me ocuparé de él. Dame media hora”, dijo Sirius.

Ana lo miró.

"¿Harías eso por mí?" ella preguntó.

“No para ti”, admitió, “sino para él. Le gustas a

James, por cualquier motivo. No puedo echarte a la
calle a patadas, ¿verdad? Ahora eres amigo de mi
hermano pequeño...

"No soy tu hermano", se quejó Regulus, pero fue

completamente ignorado.

"Supongo que no tengo escapatoria de ti ahora",

Sirius terminó la frase, sin siquiera reconocer que
Regulus había hablado. "Escucha, lo digo en serio,
media hora, pero si arruinas esto una vez más,
olvidaré tu maldito nombre".

"Bien", dijo Anne.

"Genial", respondió Sirius, dándole la espalda,

abriendo la trampilla y desapareciendo por el
agujero.

Un momento de silencio.

Regulus se metió las manos en los bolsillos.

“Eso me tranquilizó”, admitió.

Anne se rió entre dientes ante la confesión

aleatoria, pero estuvo de acuerdo.

En el silencio de la vacía Sala Común de Gryffindor

a las tres de la mañana, Anne Potter temblaba
aunque la noche era sorprendentemente cálida. La
soledad era mucho más dura para ella que el frío
cuando corría por el bosque.

Cursing herself mentally, all Anne could think of

was how she barely had any time with her dad
before she fucked it up by saying things she didn’t
think through – less than a month and she had
managed to lose her own dad by her own fault. She
was still waiting Sirius to come back down to tell
her what to do, he had gone up to talk to James.

It took more than half an hour; it was almost two

hours when someone came down the stairs.

“Sirius, thank goodness, you took so long! What did

– oh, hi Remus,” she said.

He had his face a bit bloated and he seemed to

have just woken up.

“Sirius told me to come down here and tell you to

go up. He’s with James to stop him from doing
something stupid. He’s crying for some reason,”
Remus said. “What happened?”

“A small disagreement over his duties as a family

member,” was her answer.

Remus didn’t understand and he certainly didn’t

want to know more than that. He sighed and
nodded.

“Go up. I’ll sleep down here today. I’m not in the
mood for that shit tonight,” he grumbled, going to
the sofa and lying down in it, complaining things
that Anne couldn’t hear and closing his eyes. “You
know,” he added, eyes closed, “whatever is going
on between you two, you’re fucking him up.”

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“I don’t want to know what’s happening, don’t

worry, I’ll ask no questions,” Remus said.
Apparently, sleep-deprived Remus was too honest
and too tired of everybody’s shit and Anne didn’t
know what to feel about it. “But I want you to know
that your lies are not as good as you think they
are.”

“What do you even mean?” she asked, rolling her

eyes and pretending her heart had not skipped a
beat.

“You know what I am, you know what the boys are,
I imagine,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at
her. She nodded. “They’re pack, my pack. And,
oddly enough, you smell like pack as well. At first, I
thought it just meant that were meant to get along
or something like that, but then I noticed that you
knew that and you were trying your best to muffle
it with perfumes and wearing other people’s clothes
– you knew you’d be pack.”

“Remus –”

“James and you share blood, this much I can be

sure,” he added. “But I doubt you’re his cousin
once removed; you’re far closer than that.”

Anne sighed. She had to imagine Remus would be

the next one to find out, though she was surprised
it took so long for him to go anywhere with it and
she had been lucky enough that Remus had not
taken the map from James to peek.

“I want to tell you everything,” Anne admitted, “but

I can’t yet. I’d have to talk to James.”

“Don’t you think I’d help you, that I’d help James?”
Remus asked, sitting down and looking at her, hurt
in his eyes.

“This isn’t about you or James,” she said. “This is

about me and what happened to me before I came
here and I’m not sure it’s the right moment to tell
you this. Not even James was supposed to know.”

“But James does know,” Remus said.

“Yes, he does,” she answered. “He found out.”

Remus lied down on the sofa again, eyes fluttering

shut as he started to think for a moment.

“I can wait for a bit more,” he said. “But I swear,

do not lie to me anymore. I can’t take part of my
pack lying to me. Just be honest, tell me you can’t
actually tell me the answer to something.”

Anne felt a deep tug in her heart. That gentleness

was completely familiar to her, Remus was always
so kind and patient with her ever since she was
twelve and they met. He had told her that he’d
have done anything for her if the government had
not found out he was a werewolf; he had been
ready to take her and Harry to take care of them
when Dumbledore mentioned to someone that he
had an ‘affliction’. Gringotts did not help him.
Government forbade him from seeing them.

‘Do not lie to me anymore’, would she have heard

this if she had been his creation? Would Harry be
very different if Remus had taken care of them?

“I can do that,” she agreed after a moment

watching him.

He opened one of his eyes.

“Sirius wants you, go up,” he said.

Ella le sonrió y rápidamente subió corriendo las

escaleras, se congeló al pie, regresó, besó la mejilla
de Remus y luego subió corriendo las escaleras
nuevamente.

Remus la miró, se rió entre dientes y volvió a cerrar

los ojos. Se quedó dormido muy rápidamente en el
sofá de la Sala Común, pensando en lo
increíblemente cómodo que era el sofá con el calor
del fuego.

Capítulo 17 : Capítulo dieciséis

Resumen:
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡LA VERDAD!!!!!!!

Notas:
Ok, este es un capítulo un poco
agotador, largo y muy prolijo...
Puede haber muchas implicaciones
para la agresión sexual y algunos
crímenes de guerra... pero ahí
está Sirius tratando de mediar en
una discusión, lo que sonó
gracioso en mi mente. ¿¿Así que
Disfrutá??

LA VERDAD

A James Potter realmente le gustaría decir que

enfrentar a su hija mientras su mejor amigo estaba
a su lado como mediador en un divorcio no fue
incómodo ni cómo se imaginaba tener su primera
pelea con su pequeña, pero ciertamente era su
realidad.

"Yo quiero -"

"Lo siento mucho y..."

Ambos habían hablado al mismo tiempo, con las

manos temblando por el nerviosismo. Anne no pudo
evitar pensar que se parecían más de lo que
deseaban y que se comportaban de manera más
similar que Harry y James: el dulce Harry era la
copia de gentileza, bondad y determinación de Lily.

"Está bien", dijo Sirius. "¿Quién es el que debe ir

primero?"

“Puedes ir primero”, dijo James, sentándose en su

cama y cruzando los tobillos. "Caballería de
Gryffindor y todo".

"Gracias", dijo. Se puso un mechón de pelo detrás

de la oreja y respiró hondo. "James, sé que sólo
estabas tratando de protegerme y estabas
preocupado de que estuviera sola con alguien que
es conocido por tener... problemas familiares", dijo,
vacilando y mirando a Sirius mientras él
simplemente los miraba a los dos. “Y no quise
sonar tan amargado o herido porque no estuviste
allí cuando yo era niño, sé que no fue tu culpa y si
hubieras salido con la tuya, nunca me habrían
dejado solo. Estaba tratando de decir que podía
cuidar de mí mismo, eso era todo”.

Sirius asintió y se volvió hacia James, señalándolo

una vez que notó que Anne había terminado. James
se mordió el labio.

"Sé que puedes cuidar de ti mismo", dijo James,

sonando mucho más tranquilo que antes. "Pero
quiero que sepas que no es necesario y que puedes
contar conmigo. Merlín, puedes contar con
cualquiera de nosotros aquí, todos te cuidaremos si
lo necesitas o si quieres que lo hagamos". . Ya has
pasado por bastante, Anne, eres una niña.

"¡Tengo la misma edad que tú!" ella lo interrumpió.

Sirius chasqueó la lengua.

"Anne, por favor, claramente aún no ha

terminado", dijo Sirius, con la mano frente a él,
mostrándole la palma. “James, continúa”.

James asintió.

“This was not about Regulus being alone with you

or your love life, I don’t care about those, because I
know it’s none of my business,” he said. “I was
shocked, yes, but not as much as you think I was.
But I love you, and it hurts me to know that you
never knew me,” he tried his best not to start
crying, but his tears were already pooling on his
eyes. “Look, I wish I was there and I’m sorry I
wasn’t.”

“I know you are, James, there’s nothing in the

world that’d make me think that you don’t care or
that you wished to leave me,” she said, shaking her
head.

“And I’m sorry that your mum couldn’t be there for

you,” he added. “If I had the chance, so much
would’ve changed. You didn’t tell me much about
your childhood, just after you got to school, which
means that it wasn’t good and something happened
to you and it suffocates me that I won’t be able to
change that and it tears me apart that you feel you
can’t tell me.”

Anne’s eyes filled with tears so quickly that for a

moment she was scared to why her vision was
blurry. The next moment, she was running into
James’ arms, shoulders shaking with her sobs.
James held her close, petting her back slowly as if
he was calming a crying baby in the middle of the
night.

“James,” she whispered in his ear so low that

James thought he had imagined it for a moment. “I
think we can tell Remus and Sirius.”

He pulled back in shock.

“Peter?” he asked.

Sirius looked up with the name, though he had

been looking at the ground to give them the feeling
of privacy, making his best impression of someone
being distracted with the very interesting spot of
dirt near Remus’ bed.

“He’s terrible with secrets,” she said. “Very

twitchy.”

Though James was confused, he knew that Anne

knew better than him, so he nodded, completely
agreeing with her.

“What’s going on?” Sirius asked.

“I’ll call Remus,” James said, quickly walking away.

Sirius went closer to Anne. “What’s going on?” he

insisted.

Anne hesitated.

“Just wait for Remus,” she said. “I’ll tell this story
only once.”

James came back quickly with a very tired and a

very annoyed Remus, who wished to do nothing but
sleep.

“Go on, then,” Sirius said as soon as Remus took a

step inside the room and closed the door. “What do
you want to tell us when poor Peter is not here?”

“Hey, Peter’s not here,” said Remus as if he had

just noticed, looking around. “Where’s he?”

James glanced at Anne and mumbled something in

Remus’ ear, not wanting to tell Anne what was
going on.

“Whose bed is he in?” Anne asked, smiling a bit.

“Mary MacDonald’s,” answered Sirius. “No changing

the subject. What do you want to tell us and why
isn’t Peter allowed to know?”

Anne sat on James’ bed and James sat beside her,

holding her hand gently before nodding in
encouragement.

“My real name is Anne Potter,” she said, not looking

at the two boys watching them. “I was born in May
1st of 1981 and I’m the youngest daughter to
James Potter and Lily Potter with an older brother
named Harry who was born in July 31stof 1980. I
survived an assassination attempt because
Voldemort turned too weak to be of physical form
when he tried to kill my brother, but my mother
and my father passed while trying to protect us.”

The silence was deafening.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” said James, “but it’s

been proven – to me, to Dumbledore and to my
parents.”

“What the fuck?” Remus asked, suddenly looking

very awake. “Is this a dream?”

“If it is, it’s a very weird one,” answered Sirius.

“Slap me, Remus.”

“Sod off,” James said. “This is serious – do not

dare, Sirius, not the time for the joke. But listen,
this story is important.”

Anne watched the three interacting.

“I might as well tell you what I didn’t tell you

before, James,” she said. “I’m tired of keeping
secrets. I feel like I’m falling apart.”

“Whatever you feel comfortable telling us,” James

said, a hand caressing her back with small circles.
“We’re here.”

Anne took a deep breath by her mouth and let it go

through her nose.

“My brother and I were not given to our

godparents,” said Anne, which was not a surprise to
James, he had figured it out, but it was the first
time she had said that out loud. “We were given to
our aunt, Lily’s sister. Aunt Petunia is a Muggle and
doesn’t like magic at all and Uncle Vernon is…” she
stopped for a moment, not finding a good word, “a
bad man,” was what she decided.

“Did he do something to you?” Sirius asked. “Did he

hit you?”

“Sometimes,” she answered. “When I’d do

something wrong or when I broke a cup, but it was
usually Harry, he protected me my whole
childhood.”

“Anything else?” James asked, hand leaving her

back.

“Nada a lo que no pudiera sobrevivir”, lo

interrumpió. Eso fue suficiente para que James
entendiera lo que implicaba, tuvo que tragar con
fuerza la bilis. “Harry hizo lo que pudo, pero cuando
yo tenía diez años tuvo que irse a Hogwarts. Fue
entonces cuando nos informaron sobre el mundo
mágico, ni siquiera sabíamos que existía y no
teníamos idea de lo famoso que era Harry: El niño
que sobrevivió, ese era su apodo en absolutamente
todos los periódicos. Al principio fue sorprendente,
hasta que descubrimos que bastantes personas
querían que Harry muriera”.

"Tenía once años", dijo Remus, confundido.

“Sí, pero él era la encarnación de la esperanza”,

dijo. "Mientras estuvo vivo, Voldemort no pudo
ganar".

"¿No estaba muerto?" preguntó Sirio.

“No, simplemente… no cabo”, respondió ella. “Cada

vez pensamos que estábamos a salvo; Regresaría y
se aseguraría de recordarnos que no había ningún
lugar en el mundo seguro para nosotros”.

"Tus padrinos", dijo James. "Dígales."

Ana respiró profundamente.

"Sirius era de Harry, Remus era mío", dijo. "Sirius

estuvo en la cárcel por asesinato en masa y por
traicionar a nuestros padres durante la guerra,
dándole información a Voldemort. ¡Doce años en
Azkaban antes de que estallaras, pero estuviste allí
por error!" añadió cuando vio lo pálido que se había
puesto Sirius. "Nunca hiciste nada, pero estabas en
shock y confundido cuando los aurores llegaron y
tú... confesaste que estaban muertos por tu culpa".

"No entiendo", murmuró Sirius.

"Se suponía que tú serías el guardián secreto de la

casa segura", explicó. “Pero, como… no sé,
cambiaste de opinión a James en el último minuto
sin avisar a nadie. Peter era el Guardián del
Secreto; es importante recordar que, aunque los
traicionó, Peter desde ahora no ha hecho nada”.

"Hijo de -"

"Sirius, por favor", dijo Remus.

"¿Por qué no me lo dijiste?" —preguntó James.

"Peter nunca…" se detuvo, sabiendo que Anne no
mentiría sobre algo así. "¿Por qué hizo eso?"

“Miedo”, respondió ella. “Estaba aterrorizado. Hizo

toda una escena frente a varios muggles y acusó a
Sirius en público, se pelearon y hubo toda una
explosión donde murieron varios muggles. Sirius
sobrevivió y había un dedo en el suelo, el dedo de
Peter. Él lo cortó”.

Remus gimió de disgusto y dolor de compasión.

“¿Se lo cortó él mismo?” Preguntó James,

enfermizamente verde y pálido.

"Sí", dijo ella. “Entonces, lo lógico era que Harry y

yo fuéramos entregados a Remus. Pero alguien le
dijo al gobierno que es un hombre lobo. Le
prohibieron vernos en la casa de Petunia. Entonces,
cuando Sirius escapó y no sabía que era inocente,
vino a Hogwarts para enseñar y protegernos a
Harry y a mí porque pensó que Sirius vendría por
nosotros. Al final estuvo bien, descubrieron la
verdad sobre Peter con el Mapa”.

"¡Dije que nunca estuvo mal!" dijo Remus a Sirius,

orgulloso.

"No seas tan arrogante", dijo Sirius.

"Oh, tú eres quien puede decirlo", dijo James,

poniendo los ojos en blanco.

Anne permitió que una pequeña sonrisa apareciera

en sus labios. Eran tan buenos amigos y, a pesar
de que ella les estaba dando noticias muy duras y
terribles, todavía se apoyaban mutuamente e
incluso intentaban hacerse bromas entre ellos para
asegurarse de que nadie fuera aplastado por todo
ese peso.

“¿Qué pasó después?” Preguntó Sirius, sin querer

reconocer a James.

“Peter managed to get away and Sirius was forced

to hide in Portugal for a while, Remus went with
him,” she continued. “But in 94, we ended up
fucking everything up in general. Harry somehow
got picked for the Triwizard Tournament, which was
impossible for him to do so, he was just fourteen.
In the last task, Cedric Diggory died – murdered by
Voldemort himself after Peter used Harry’s blood to
bring Voldemort back to a corporal form. What
came after…” she hesitated, “Merlin knows that
what happened next was the worst year of our life.”

The image of Uncle Vernon smiling at the small

instant picture on his hand made her cold. That
one, in particular, he had sold to one of the guys he
worked with; she didn’t know him, but she knew he
was young and new in the small group, he probably
only bought it because he really wanted Vernon’s
acceptance.

The image of Dudley unable to swallow his own

saliva made her shiver as he held onto her hand
tightly. Harry had done a patronus when Anne
couldn’t manage to do so, just ran to go to Dudley.
Aunt Petunia slapped her in front porch, publicly for
the first time, when she tried to get into the car to
go to the hospital with Dudley too.

“A group of friends came to pick us up and got us

to Sirius’ Family Home, and, let me tell you,
Grimmauld Place is shit, but at least your parents
were already dead and it was transformed to the
headquarters of the Order, a group against
Voldemort,” she said, looking up at Sirius. He
nodded with an absolute face, agreeing completely.
“We stayed there for a bit the summer and then we
got back to school and it was shitty as well. Harry
was tortured and humiliated, I was looked down at
and nobody in Slytherin would talk to me
anymore.”

“Wait, Slytherin?” Sirius asked, surprised. “You

bitch, you had me fooled! I really thought you were
a Gryffindor.”

“Your brother disagrees,” she laughed.

“And did you meet Regulus when you were in

Grimmauld Place?” Sirius asked. “That’s why you
were so close so fast to him?”

She shook her head.

“Regulus was already dead by the time Harry was

born,” she explained. “But I know quite a bit about
him. You talked a bit about him when you were
drunk and we were alone smoking in library, you
were the only grown up that saw… my reaction to
some things that most people don’t react the same
way as I do. You acknowledged it, but never really
asked any questions and it made me feel safe, so
you were the only one that knew everything.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Remus asked before

Sirius could say anything.

“You’d want revenge,” she answered. “Sirius

couldn’t get out of the house, so his anger was
contained.”

“Ok, a more important subject: how the fuck did

my brother die before you were even fucking
born?” Sirius asked, face so pale that he looked
about to faint.

“He drowned,” she answered.

“He’s a great swimmer,” he said, getting up from

his bed and crossing his arms. “He’s better than me
or Narcisa, and Narcisa won a title when she was
thirteen. Regulus has won three!”

“However impressive that is, I believe it must be

hard to swim at all when Infernis are dragging you
down,” she answered. “I didn’t want to get into
details, but that’s how he died. And he was trying
to help our cause, not Voldemort’s.”

Sirius had to lean against the pole of his bed to

keep standing. It was a great shock, she had to
admit, but he was taking it surprisingly well.

“Sirius, he’s not important yet to my story, so let

me keep going,” she said. He nodded; eyes closed
as if he was dizzy. “Harry and Voldemort shared
minds sometimes, so Harry was learning
Occlumency from Snape and –”

“Snape?!”

“Not the time, Remus,” she cut off, glaring at him.

He bit his lip. “… Snape, and they had a fight, so
the classes stopped; that gave the opportunity for
Voldemort to get into his mind and plant an image
of Sirius being tortured. We all ran to get to where
he had been tortured: the Department of Mysteries,
but we were wrong. Sirius wasn’t there and
Voldemort had lied. We fought some Death Eaters
until a group of the Order came to help us,
amongst them was you, Sirius. And you died, and I
had to watch.”

There was no sound in the room as they all turned

to stare at Sirius, who had to be directed to sit
down by Remus when his knees almost gave out
from under him.

“I died?” Sirius asked.

“Protecting us, yes,” she answered. “Harry felt very

guilty.”

“Anne, do you want to take a break? You look

pale,” James said. “I think Sirius could take a break
as well –”

“Don’t stop,” Sirius begged. “If you stop now, I

don’t think I’ll have the courage to keep listening to
you after this.”

“And I don’t think I’ll have the courage to go on if I

stop now,” she admitted to James. “The things only
get worse.”

James accepted it, nodding in retraction.

“Go on, then,” Remus said, voice wavering a bit.

“The next year, things didn’t get much better, we

got back to school after being attacked during the
summer by newspapers. Everybody knew
Voldemort was back now, everybody believed and
everybody knew the war had already started,” she
said. “The pure-blood elitists got worse too, and
there was one in particular who dared to attack me:
Draco Malfoy.”

James scoffed with the name. Of course, a Malfoy.

He had to expect that.

“What do you mean, he attacked you?” Remus

asked.

“He was ordered to; the poor boy had been forced
to take the mark and he was being forced to
undergo a mission he had no power and no will to
fulfil. I had gotten in his way, I found out he had
the mark, so he attacked me before I could tell
Harry the truth,” she explained. “It took a while to
convince him that I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but
I did tell Hermione, a close friend of Harry, but who
did not tell him out of my personal request.”

“You were helping a Death Eater?” Sirius asked,

sounding a bit firmer, though his voice still was
nasal.

“No, I was convincing a Death Eater to stop his

mission before he could make matters worse,” she
answered. “The price for my try was my silence,
which caused Ron’s friendship and dragged Harry
away from me for months before I could convince
him of what I was actually trying to do.”

“What was his mission?” Sirius asked.

She hesitated once more. The memories of her

brother gasping for air while he sobbed, watching
the dead body of Dumbledore was a hit on the
stomach.

“He needed to kill Dumbledore,” James said in her

place.

“And he managed to do so,” she added, coming

back to her reality, able to speak again.
“Dumbledore was killed at 1996, but not before he
told Harry about something he found out:
Voldemort made Horcruxes to keep himself alive –
in 1996, there were seven of them.”

“What is a Horcrux?” Remus asked.

Of course, the one to ask would be the half-blood.

James had already received an explanation and
Sirius didn’t seem to need one, just sitting there
looking like he was going to throw up at any
second.

“Is a very dark and ancient type of magic, where

one breaks the soul in pieces and put those pieces
in other things in the hopes of your soul surviving
and the possibility of being brought back to life,”
Sirius answered.

Though that wasn’t the explanation Anne would

have given to what a Horcrux, such a dark and
horrible magic, she had to admit it was good
enough for Remus to understand and put those
pieces together without a deeper one. If he was
interested, she could get some books to him during
the summer.

“When Harry turned seventeen, the protection my

mother put on him ended and he was mortal to
Voldemort again,” Anne kept on going. “Voldemort
came after us on birthday in 1997 and that was
when I understood that the war that was coming
would make me lose many more people than I
thought I would and the concept of war turned into
reality in my mind. We didn’t go to school that
year, Hermione, Ron, Harry and I, I mean; we all
started hunting the Horcruxes to end them before
going after him.”

“Did you get them?” Sirius asked.

“Most of them,” she answered. “The most important

one, the one that started to introduce all of these
things in our lives was false – Dumbledore and
Harry had almost died in cave, drank poison and
almost drowned to get a fake one.”

“Voldemort took it out?” Sirius asked.

“No, Regulus did,” said Anne. “In the moment

Regulus found who that man really was, what he
intended to do – all the pain and torture and death
– he changed sides, though he had to be quiet for a
while. Kreacher was used by Voldemort to test
some poison and he almost died, but Regulus cured
him and Kreacher told Regulus everything about
the cave and what the Horcrux was. Regulus went
there, drank the poison himself, gave the medallion
to Kreacher and was dragged down the lake by the
Infernis surrounding the little island inside the
cave. Kreacher helped us to get it back from who
had stolen it, we destroyed it. There were others, of
course, and we suffered to get them and to destroy
time and time again.”

“You said most of them,” James said. “Which one

did you miss?”

“The snake,” she answered. “Voldemort has a little

pet, a snake.”

“Living things as Horcruxes?” Sirius asked.

“Harry was a Horcrux himself,” Anne said. “Harry

had to die to save us all, but he came back with
some help and all. Not important at the moment,
the important is that I missed the snake and it
killed my friend Luna Lovegood during the
Hogwarts Battle – I lost everybody in that battle.
To make matter worse, the Muggles found out
about the existence of magic a few months before
the battle and they were killed the people I loved.”

“Harry?” Sirius asked.

“Killed by Voldemort, protecting his girlfriend, she

had just had a baby,” she answered. “Hermione
was killed by Greyback. Ron was killed by Bellatrix,
though soon after there was a bomb that the
Muggles threw,” she said. “I ended up finding a
way to get out of the castle and was running to the
hills near the Forbidden Forest when you found me,
Remus, and you saved me.”

“Me?!” Remus said, surprised.

“Yes, you gave me a Time-Turner and told me to

get out of that, to have a new shot. You stole that
the day Sirius died and we broke into the Ministry,”
she said. “Your wife had just died and you were
covered in blood from head-to-toe, and all I could
think of was your son; young Teddy, sweet little
boy and my godson, barely a year old.”

Remus was the one pale now, hand shaking as he

passed his fingers through his hair.

“Wife? Son? Anne, I’m ---” he stopped himself.

It was no secret Remus’ preference for the

company of men.

“I know,” she said. “We know. And we don’t care –

you loved her, yes, but never in the way a husband
is supposed to love a wife. You were her friend,
which is a great base for a marriage, but she ended
up getting pregnant and you married her so the
child wouldn’t be a bastard. You cared for them,
and you loved them. You were a great father
through and through, Remus.”

“You came back in time,” Sirius mumbled.

“Because I want to make this right, and this is my

only chance.”

Chapter 18: Chapter Seventeen

Summary:
The general aftermath of new
alliances being formed as more
information comes to light.
Severus Snape also tries to be a
normal person.

ALLIANCE

It took hours for the boys to go back to their

normal selves and for them to get up without
almost passing out. Anne was asleep in James’ bed,
while the boys were all sitting in Sirius’, talking to
each other; the subject? Peter Pettigrew.

“He couldn’t have done that,” James said, shaking

his head. “Peter would never, but still… Anne would
never lie about something like that, and
Dumbledore wouldn’t back her up if he thought her
to be lying at all.”

“James, she said he was afraid,” Remus said.

“Forgive me, but Peter is scared of everything.”

“What do we do?” Sirius asked.

“Nothing,” Remus quickly answered. “You all heard

what Anne said. He has done nothing to not
deserve our trust and she came here to change
everything, which means this might not happen at
all. We can change it all, we can help her and we
can protect Peter on the way.”

“Remus’ right,” mumbled James, getting up from

the bed and starting to pace. “Things are going to
be different this time, either we like it or not.”

Sirius nodded, taking it all in. “I can’t believe

Regulus would do such a thing,” he said. “I always
saw him agreed with Mother and Father was always
so proud of him that I never imagined him going
against them at all.”

James hesitated, not wanting to talk about

something that Anne had shared with him in secret,
but yet he thought it to be necessary.

“You need to trust him a bit more,” James said. “He

already has gone against them and, just because
he hides his pain a lot better than you, it doesn’t
mean it didn’t hurt at all. Anne healed him.”

“Oh, Merlin. How bad?”

“Nothing Anne couldn’t deal with. He’s fine now,”

James said.

But Sirius didn’t feel like his brother was fine at

that point, he felt the guilt choking him as he
thought of any moment where he had flinched,
looked sickly or did anything out of the ordinary,
but he couldn’t. Sirius couldn’t remember a single
time he had paid attention to Regulus’ life in school
and it could’ve been a death sentence if Anne
hadn’t found out what was going and took care of
it.

“Well, at least we can know something,” Remus

said, trying to lighten the subject a bit. “Lily totally
can be interested in you.”

James turned to Remus, smiling.

“That’s what I said to Dumbledore!” he said a bit

too loud. Anne’s eyes fluttered open, looking
around. “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart, you can go
back to sleep,” but too late, Anne was already
pushing herself to sit and pushing the sheet Sirius
had put over her naked legs away. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she said, pushing some hair away

from her face.

Remus and Sirius took one good look at her as she

got up and yawned, cracking her neck once she
was standing beside James’ bed and then leaning
down to reach her feet and stretch her legs a bit.
They looked at each other and then looked back at
Anne, smiles taking over their lips.

“Mate,” said Sirius, “how the hell did we not

notice?”

“What do you mean?” Anne asked. “What didn’t you

notice?”

“You and James literally share the same braincell!”

Remus said, laughing a bit. “You do the same thing
when you wake up after a nap. Yawn, crack,
stretching – same order, too.”

“Well, Harry and Lily share one thing, for sure: the
terrible mood during the mornings,” she said,
walking towards them and sitting in the bed in front
of Sirius’, which was Peter’s. “Most of his
detentions, when not with Professor Snape, was
with any professor who had the terrible luck getting
his class during before ten o’clock.”

James chuckled. “Oh, what a menace those two

would be together.”

“A danger to society,” agreed Sirius. “Well, I do

think Lily is a danger to society on her own. She’s
terrifying when she has no caffeine!”

“All women are terrifying,” Remus complained.

“And yet you married one,” James teased.

“Oh, smartarse, so did you,” Remus said back.

Anne ended up laughing, bringing her legs up the

bed with her knees against her chest. She put her
chin over her knees and watched them tease each
other. It was so close to what Ron and Harry had
that she couldn’t help herself but be nostalgic.

“Anne, put your legs down, please,” said James

gently.

She looked at James, confused, suddenly

remembering she was in a skirt. She put her feet to
the ground again.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, blushing.

“Relax, Anne,” said Sirius. “Neither of us care,”

suspicious, James watched Sirius with narrowed
eyes for a moment. “Come on, mate, if I wasn’t
interested in her when I didn’t know she’s your
daughter, do you really think I’d be interested now?
I think you’re handsome, but not that much that I
need to jump in bed with your daughter.”

“Don’t say ‘jump in bed’!” James scolded, lip curling

in disgust. “Oh, Merlin.”

Anne laughed, but turned to Sirius.

“Why aren’t you interested?” she asked, teasing

James. “Maybe I am.”

“Anne!” scolded James, a bit too loud this time,

face in shock.

Sirius ended up laughing as soon as she saw the

mischievous glint on her eyes. Anne followed, not
being able to hold back anymore. Remus and
James, however, though understanding it was just
a joke, still looked a bit uncomfortable.

“More than anything, I think I’d kill him if I spend

too much time with him. We always had screaming
matches back at Grimmauld,” Anne said, rolling her
eyes. “I’m not interested either, Dad, relax.”

Dad. There it was, the word she had been running

from for almost a month. She had been introducing
James as her dad and thinking of him as her dad,
but she had never used the word to refer to him
out loud and now the word had such a weight that
made her feel nauseated.

She froze, looking at James with fear, but he was

laughing a bit too, not even noticing what she had
called him by. She forced a smile, shrugging it off
since he had not noticed. Anne looked around, but
neither one of the other two boys seemed to care
about what she had said. She understood; it was
three and something in the morning and they were
tired, maybe they were distracted and –

The door opened and Peter walked in.

The room went silent as the boy smiled at the boys,

standing near the door.

To the boys, Anne’s warning was still clear in their

mind: be normal to him, he was no more guilty
than anyone in there. He had done nothing… yet.

“Hey, Pete,” said Remus.

“Hey,” he said, a small smile on his lips. “Hi, Anne.”

Anne smiled at him, until she noticed.

“Oh,” she said, jumping from the bed. “I was in

your bed. Sorry.”

Peter shrugged. “Don’t worry,” he dismissed. “Are

you – Are you sleeping over?”

James got up from Sirius’ bed.

“No,” he answered for her. “Go back to your own

bed, Anne. We’ll talk tomorrow, alright?” he kissed
the top of her head. “Good night.”

“Goodnight,” she answered.

She didn’t exactly want to go back to the girl’s

dormitory and be alone with the sleeping girls, she
felt very exposed near sleeping people she didn’t
completely trust. She felt like she needed to take
care of them, but she felt terribly uncomfortable
because they wouldn’t do the same for her.

Anne left anyways, though she looked back into the

dorm before walking down the stairs.

James looked back to his friends only to find Peter’s

eyes stuck on Anne’s backside as she walked away
holding her shoes in her hands.

“Wormtail, what the fuck?!” James said.

Peter turned to James in surprise. He had not

noticed he had been staring and he had not been
expecting to get caught either.

“I’m sorry, I’m a bit… distracted,” he answered.

“Well, be distracted away from Anne’s arse,” Sirius

attacked, narrowing his eyes at Peter.

Confused, the boy sat on his bed, took off his shoes
and watched his friends.

“What’s up with you all? What is this ‘don’t look at

her’ thing going on?” Peter asked.

Remus sighed. “New rule,” he announced with a

single clap. Peter turned to her with raised
eyebrows. “Anne is out of limits to everybody in
this room, agreed?”

“Agreed!” James quickly said, raising his hand on

the air as high as he could and nodding very
quickly.

“Agreed,” answered Sirius, he sounded bored as he

took off his shirt and lied on his own bed, pushing
Remus from his bed with his foot and receiving a
glare from the werewolf when he was kicked.

“What? Why?” Peter asked, furrowing his eyebrows

in confusion and a bit of hurt. “She’s pretty and
she’s nice to me. I might have a shot.”

“You don’t, mate,” James said.

“How can you say that? You don’t know that!” Peter
said, taking off his shirt and throwing it to the
ground. “I might have.”

“You don’t, mate. Believe me, I know how to read

girl’s clues – James, I swear that if you say
something, I’ll kick you too – and you don’t have a
chance, Wormy,” laughed Sirius. “I think that the
one who actually has any chance with her is
nowhere near this dorm or in this bloody House, if
I’m honest. By what I noticed, she has a type.”

Peter looked even more hurt than before.

“I was going to ask her out to the last Hogsmeade

weekend,” he admitted, blushing. “Do you really
think I don’t have a chance with her?”

Remus looked at James, hesitating with his answer,

but all Sirius did was roll his eyes and close them.

They all knew that Peter had no chance at all with

her and that being her friend was surprising enough
since Anne could barely stand the sight of him
without remembering the crying man begging for
his life and grabbing her skirt to keep himself on his
knees.

“I don’t think so,” James said. “Anne is really not

looking for a relationship and I’m not sure I’d feel
comfortable with one of my best mates dating my…
cousin.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot she’s your cousin,” Peter

mumbled, opening his belt and taking it off, letting
it fall to the ground. “I’d reckon you’d know her
better than me.”

James, feeling bad, went to his messy bed and sat

there.

“You know, I heard about a Hufflepuff girl that

thinks you’re really sweet,” he said.

Peter looked up.

“Who?”

Sirius groaned, knowing that there was no way he

would be able to fall asleep, because he also really
wanted to know all the gossip James had.

Anne sat down on the library table, she just given

Rilla of Ingleside back to Madame Pince, who did
not frown at her, which was already quite the
victory.

Now, however, she was focusing in the two books

that Dumbledore had sent her. It was the first time
he had sent anything to her about Horcruxes and
safer ways to deal with them without having to go
and kill the bloody Basilisk under the school.
Though in her life before they could’ve relied on
Gryffindor’s sword, the blade had not been bathed
in Basilisk’s venom, so it would be as useless as
any other sword or dagger.

She had thought of alternatives when Dumbledore

brought it up that morning of 10th of June, but
there wasn’t much she could’ve think of. She could
either go to the black market and find someone
that will sell her Basilisk venom or its tooth without
asking questions, or she found something else.

With her notebook open beside her, she had written

down some names of people she knew to be
involved in black market activities, but it remained
just one name that might not ask anything: Nott.
She did not like him, but he certainly was a
business man and could get whatever she wanted.

“You know,” said a voice, startling so much that

she jumped and her chair made a noise, “if you
were always this interested in your work, you
wouldn’t be half as annoying, but certainly
Dumbledore would have a lot more complaints
about you on his table.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” she scolded

Severus Snape as he sat in front of her on the
table, putting his books and parchment down.
“What do you want?”

“To sit and be in silence, because some of us have

to study and cannot simply read joy books all day
long,” he answered.

“Well, do try to do that away from me, then,” she

said.

Severus looked at her with a smirk.

“Regulus said that if I wanted to know more about

you, I’d have to ask you and talk to you like a
‘normal person’, by his own words,” he said. “I
suppose those words came from you before coming
out of his mouth.”

“Not really, my darling, that is common sense,” she

said, faking a smile at him.

Severus lips twitched as he tried to hold back

another smile, clearly quite enjoying the odd
conversation they were having. However, it was the
look in his eyes that made her Occlumency shield
come up strong as she glared at him.

“Don’t worry, Sage,” he said, dismissing her glare

and looking back down at his books. “I don’t want
to get into your mind, I understand it was somehow
indecent of me to invade your privacy like that.”

“What an awful apology,” she grumbled.

“It was not an apology,” he said back at her.

“Well, ‘normal people’ apologize,” she said.

Severus looked up at her once more, but did not

answer.

At first, it was uncomfortable and awkward, but

after a while Anne felt like she was back in some
detention or some of her extra potion’s class.
Mayhap it was the oddly dark table she had chosen
to sit that reminded her of the dungeons, or even
the familiar presence of quiet, but powerful Severus
Snape doing his own thing beside her and asking
no questions and not curious to what she was
doing.

She was starting to enjoy herself again when a

name caught her eye and her breath caught on her
throat. Fiendfyre. Anne had not seen it in action
before, but she had heard the terrible things that
Dark Magic could do. An unstoppable fire of giant
dimensions that could take form of terrifying beasts
and animals.

“Old English,” commented Severus looking up from

his book when he saw Anne tensing up. “Rune’s
homework?”

Anne sabía que necesitaba responder y ser normal,

pero podía sentir que le temblaban las manos.

“Un placer leer”, argumentó.

"Parece que no lo disfrutas en absoluto", dijo.

"Pareces a punto de vomitar, así que si vas a
hacerlo, apunta lejos de mí".

Volvió a su libro.

Su pecho se sentía pequeño y su corazón parecía

estar a punto de estallar, el aliento le dolía al llegar
a sus pulmones. ¿Cómo podría hacer algo para
conseguir todos esos Horrocruxes y destruirlos si
uno de los únicos métodos disponibles era algo que
estaba segura que nadie podía controlar? ¿Fue una
sentencia de muerte?

Cerró el libro para ver si tal vez la magia oscura

estaba actuando en su contra, dejándola sin
aliento, pero el libro no tuvo ningún efecto en ella.
Anne había estado allí antes, sabía lo que se sentía
la ansiedad, pero eso no significaba que no pensara
que estaba a punto de morir de un ataque al
corazón sentada frente a Severus Snape en una
mesa distante en la biblioteca.

"¿Sabio? Sabio”, llamó Severus. "¡Necesitas

calmarte de inmediato!"

"¡Ordenarme que me calme no servirá!" ella le

respondió.

Severus se levantó de la mesa, sintiéndose

bastante ansioso también. Si esa chica muriera en
sus manos, James Potter terminaría en Azkaban
por matarlo lentamente. Aunque no le tenía miedo
a James por nada, ciertamente no quería otra pelea
con él después de la humillación por la que había
pasado unos meses antes.

"¿Qué está sucediendo?" preguntó Severus.

"Estoy bien", dijo. "Sólo un ataque de ansiedad".

Nunca lo había sentido antes, pero esperaba no

sentirlo nunca en su vida mientras caminaba hacia
ella y la hacía ponerse de pie.

“Pon las manos detrás de la cabeza y levanta los

codos”, dijo, poniendo sus manos como si estuviera
acostada en una posición cómoda sobre el césped
afuera. “Esta posición abre las vías respiratorias”,
explicó. “Tú mismo lo dijiste, estarás bien. No
entiendo lo que está pasando: estás en Hogwarts,
en la biblioteca leyendo inglés antiguo y burlándote
de mí; ¿No debería ser un sábado normal para ti?

Aunque Severus no pretendía calmarla, le había

dado una charla de ánimo extrañamente efectiva.

Estaba en Hogwarts, se recordó por lo que Severus

había dicho. Era 1976, ella estaba en la biblioteca
leyendo un libro que la ayudaría a mantener a
todos a salvo. Estaba haciendo todo bien y no había
razón para que perdiera la cabeza por algo tan
pequeño como un pequeño obstáculo en el camino,
como un hechizo peligroso desconocido: podía
aprender, podía estudiar más. Esta vez tenía el
tiempo de su lado.

Le tomó casi cinco o seis minutos, pero terminó

calmándose lo suficiente como para respirar
profundamente. Sus manos todavía temblaban,
pero Anne estaba completamente consciente de
todo lo que pasaba a su alrededor, incluyendo que
Severus ahora estaba sentado a su lado y haciendo
su tarea con calma, a veces mirándola.

Ella miró hacia arriba, apartándose un poco de

cabello.

"¿Necesitas que llame a Madame Pomfrey?"

preguntó.

“No,” she said. All she hoped was that she wouldn’t
faint, though she certainly felt weak after
hyperventilating so much. “I’m alright. I’m fine.”

“Hm,” grumbled Severus. “Now, answer me this:

what do you want with Nott? Or are you so into him
that you are trying to see if your name would sound
nice as Anne Nott.”

“No, thank you,” she answered, voice still

wavering. “I heard he sells things.”

“He doesn’t,” he answered, not even looking at her.

“Is alright, you don’t need to lie to me. I know he

does and I know he’s expensive, but I pay well,”
she said.

“I’m not his bloody dealer,” Severus said, gathering

his stuff and starting to get up to go away. “But I’ll
put on a word for you,” he added, folding his
parchment and putting it inside his bag for last.
“And Regulus told me to tell you that he’s sorry for
the party and for not talking to you, his family got
word that he’s with a new half-blood partner in
potions and he said you didn’t want attention.”

“Would you mind telling him that –”

“I would. I’m not an owl,” Severus said. Anne

sighed in exasperation. No matter the age, Severus
was aggravating to deal with. Severus sighed in
return as if that would annoy her even more. “What
do you want me to tell him?”

"Que es muy amable de su parte disculparse como

una persona normal", dijo, atacando a Severus de
inmediato. Parecía disfrutar su broma. "Y que fue
muy considerado de su parte al pensar en no
arrastrarme al centro de atención".

"Aunque estoy de acuerdo, creo que es mejor decir

que ya se ha hecho. Sage, has estado en el centro
de atención en el momento en que apareciste en
esta escuela", dijo.

No añadió nada más a la conversación,

simplemente se dio la vuelta y se alejó tan
dramáticamente como siempre lo hacía.

Adulto o no, Severus parecía tener talento para

hacer que su capa lo persiguiera.

Capítulo 19 : Capítulo dieciocho

Resumen:
Anne se divierte un poco y hace
amigos.

HOGSMEADE

A Anne no le habían dado la oportunidad de

acercarse tanto a Lily como le gustaría durante su
mes en Hogwarts, lo que la aterrorizaba.

Cuando era niña, le gustaba pensar qué pensarían

de ella sus padres si pudieran verla. Le gustaba
creer que su padre la amaría sin sentido y sin
razón, estaría orgulloso de ella simplemente porque
hacía algo tan tonto como lavar un vaso sin
romperlo o la llevaría por las abarrotadas calles de
Londres con ella en el hombro, con su dedos
tirando de su cabello como si pudiera guiarlo así;
había visto a niños en su escuela haciendo eso con
sus padres y Harry hizo todo lo posible para que
ella no mirara demasiado y comenzara a llorar.
También le gustaba creer que su madre pensaría
que ella era la niña más bonita que jamás había
visto y eso la ayudaría a trenzarse el cabello en dos
cuadros como Anne en los libros.

Su oportunidad, sin embargo, llegó con la ayuda de

su ángel.

Marlene se quejaba, una vez más, de que no tenía

más dulces durante las últimas semanas de clases.

"Marlene, ve a Hogsmeade y compra más", dijo

Lily, poniendo los ojos en blanco. "Podrías escribir
una carta para solicitar que te la envíen si no
quieres ir allí".

“¡Quiero ir allí, pero Dorcas tiene una cita y Mary

está detenida!” - se quejó Marlene, tirándose sobre
la cama de Lily, haciendo que la pelirroja gruñera
de dolor. “Oh, ¡ay de mí! ¡Odio mi vida!"

"No odias tu vida", respondió Lily.

“Creo que esa es su manera de intentar invitarte a

que vayas con ella”, dijo Anne, pasando la página
del libro que estaba leyendo.

Lily la miró antes de volver a mirar a Marlene en

clara confusión.

“¿Por qué no dijiste eso entonces?” -Preguntó Lily.

“Porque vas a decir que no”, respondió Marlene.

“Marlie, you know I don’t really like going to

Hogsmeade,” Lily sighed. “It’s always raining –”

“Lily, it’s Scotland, everywhere here is always

raining,” Marlene groaned. “Oh, come on, please,
come with me! You should come too, Anne, don’t
leave me alone to listen to Lily’s complaints by
myself.”

Anne, a bit taken aback by the invitation, looked at

Lily as if to see if she would feel fine with her
coming along, but Lily seemed almost pleading for
her to come too, which surprised her.

“Oh,” said Anne, unable to find words for a second.

“Well, yeah, if you two don’t mind some company.”

“No, that’d be great,” said Lily. “Marlene always

ditches after she gets bored and leaves me to walk
back alone.”

“We can make each other company, then,” said

Anne, smiling a bit to Lily. “Get some butterbeers
before coming back would be nice too, to warm up
a bit.”

Lily smiled back, though she didn’t answer out loud.

It took less than thirty minutes for them to be

ready for bed and going to sleep. Marlene was the
first one out.

“Marlene shouldn’t be alone,” Lily said suddenly,

making Anne jump and turn to her. She had
thought she was asleep already. “Dorcas is having
a date with this boy from Ravenclaw and Marlie
doesn’t like him at all.”

“Because she likes Dorcas, I know,” Anne said.

Lily looked at her through the moonlight.

“You noticed too?”

“Absolutely,” Anne answered, sitting on the bed.

“We need to find a way to distract her before she
freaks out and decides to watch them.”

Lily chuckled. “That’d be weird,” she agreed, eyes

fluttering shut already sleepy.

Anne reached for her wand, ready to silence her

bed and go to sleep as well, but before she could
do the spells, Lily’s eyes were glued to her again.

“Why do you do that?” Lily asked.

She turned to her.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, confused.

“The silencing spell, I noticed you do that every

night and you never have a visitor in your bed or
anything like that,” Lily answered. “But you do it
religiously.”

“I have a lot of nightmares,” Anne answered, a bit

on defensive. “I tend to make a lot of noise during
it and I don’t want to wake anyone up.”

“Night terrors?” Lily asked. “My sister had that

when we were kids as well, screamed so loudly that
our neighbours would sometimes complain the next
day. Her name is Petunia.”

Anne knew very well who Petunia was. She had no

idea, however, that Petunia had night terrors when
she was young. She couldn’t very well answer Lily
and tell her that she didn’t have night terrors, they
were simply memories or her subconscious finding
a new way to remind her of the guilt that she had
managed to push away from her mind during the
day.

“Yeah,” Anne said. “Something like that. I scream

sometimes, but I usually just cry. People worry
when they hear, so I just shut the sound off for
them. I wake up, notice what’s going on and then
go back to sleep – sometimes I don’t even wake up
and just stop, so… it’s fine.”

“If I knew how to do magic, I’d certainly had shut

Petunia up,” Lily joked.

“I get that,” laughed Anne. She would’ve shut

Petunia up too.

Lily laughed.

“You’re nice,” she commented. Anne was quite

happy hearing that. “It’s late and we’ll have to go
to Hogsmeade tomorrow, I suppose, so…
goodnight, Anne.”

“Goodnight, Lily,” she answered.

It was June and yet Anne had a shiver when the

morning air hit her as she went into the carriage
with Lily and Marlene beside her. She was wearing
bell bottom trousers and a nice long-sleeves
blouse, but she was regretting deeply not bringing
a coat with her. Fortunately, Marlene had given her
the coat she was wearing, it was black, thin and
simple, but it was good enough for Anne, who was
shocked to see the short-sleeved red shirt in
Marlene’s body and tight brown bell-bottoms.

“You’re cold already?” Marlene asked, laughing

once they were sitting on the carriage.

“Oh, sod off,” Anne said, not wanting to cuss in

front of Lily just yet. “You know I’m always cold.”

“You should eat more,” Lily said. “They say that

people that skip a few meals feel colder than the
others.”

“I don’t skip that many meals,” Anne said. “I just

forget sometimes.”

“You skipped dinner and breakfast; that’s not

‘sometimes’” Marlene argued.

Anne ended up blushing once she understood that

they were right. She had skipped dinner because
she wanted to take a nap and she wasn’t hungry
and she skipped breakfast because she was
nauseated, probably because of lack of food, but
she couldn’t eat much anymore since she started
starving in the forest.

“Alright, what’s the plan?” Lily asked.

“No plan, we’ll wing it,” said Marlene.

Lily sighed, annoyed. She liked to have an order of

stores to go to and just skip the ones nobody was
interested in, though she knew that Marlene liked
stopping in every single store to look at things and
never actually buying anything.

“We’re here for sweets, right?” Anne said. “We

could start there and then make our way out.”

“I’m in,” said Marlene.

Lily shrugged, not really caring where they were

going to start at, she just wanted an idea of where
to go, so she focused on fixing the blue dress she
was wearing, it was simple and had short sleeves.
She was starting to regret coming in low heels,
knowing she should’ve got a closed shoe since
there was a bit of mud around because of the
constant thin drizzle that had been going on since
the early morning.

As soon as the carriage stopped, Marlene jumped

out. Her trainers made a small splashing sound
when she hit the ground before turning to help Lily
out by putting her hands under her armpits and
lowering her to the ground. Lily giggled, but took a
step out of the way. Marlene did the same with
Anne and smiled at her when Anne copied Lily’s
giggle to tease her.

“Marlene is so strong!” Lily said, starting to lead the

way to the sweet shop with Marlene and Anne right
behind her. “She’s thin, so I keep forgetting it.”

“I’ve done fighting since I was four, Lils, of course,

I’m strong,” said Marlene, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, what fighting?” Anne asked.

“Jiu-jitsu, the Brazilian one, you know?” Marlene

answered. “But Dad really likes practicing boxing
with me when I’m home. It’s fun. Have you
practiced anything before, Anne?”

As if! Anne would’ve really liked to do so, but Aunt

Petunia would’ve never allowed her to do anything.
She grew up watching the girls in her class doing
ballet lessons and talking about it and she had just
yearned for that opportunity in silence whenever
people dancing on the telly appeared.

“No,” she answered shortly.

Marlene hesitated, but took over the conversation

once more.

“You know, Lily is being very modest,” Marlene

said. “She’s strong as well. I’ve seen her carrying
her art bag and I could barely believe it when I saw
it.”

“Art bag?” Anne asked. “What does that mean?”

“I like drawing,” Lily answered. “It’s silly and it’s

mostly sketches, especially of clothes and people. I
don’t like drawing objects or landscapes, I think it
to be boring, so I ended up drawing people a lot.
Marlene thinks my bag is too heavy.”

“It’s heavy, I saw it! I carried it!” Marlene

exclaimed, jumping over a puddle.

“Is not that heavy,” Lily argued. “There’s some

pencils, pens, paper and paint. Is not like I’m
dragging a canvas around.”

Anne chuckled, though she was pretty impressed.

Nobody had ever mentioned that Lily liked drawing
to her and she understood sadly that she knew her
mother very little; they had said she was a good
student, kind, proud and a loving mother while she
was alive. Perhaps she had barely known James in
her past life as well, just what his friends would tell
her when they were drunk enough to talk about
him without crying; he liked Quidditch, he loved Lily
with all his heart, he was silly and immature, he
liked pranks and the colour red because it was his
House’s colour and because Lily’s hair was red as
well.

“Everybody has their quirks, Marlene,” Anne

dismissed.

“Mine is alcohol,” agreed Marlene.

“How poor of personality,” laughed Lily.

“Oh, yes, Miss Sympathy? What’s yours, then?”

Marlene asked, laughing.

Lily thought for a moment, but she smiled after the

answer was on her tongue.

“Weird socks,” Lily answered.

“Socks?” Anne asked, confused, but smiling in

disbelief.

Marlene threw her head back, belly laughing as she

understood what Lily had meant.

“You didn’t notice, Anne?” asked Marlene. “Lily

wears really weird socks, very childish,” she
received a glare from Lily with the word ‘childish’,
but continued without a problem. “Colourful and
with little bees and shit. You didn’t notice, really?”

“I didn’t,” Anne admitted. “Socks are not something

I pay attention to. But I suppose they must look
nice.”

“Thanks!” Lily said. “They give me luck,” she

explained.

Anne could understand that, she wore the small

bracelet that Harry had gotten her to give her luck
ever since she received it. She never took it off, not
to take a shower and surely not to sleep, hoping it
would somehow comfort her.

“Oh, here we are!” Marlene said, turning around

and almost running into the sweet shop.

Anne stopped outside when she saw the number of

people inside and hear the loud noise of people
talking and laughing when the door opened, but Lily
noticed her hesitance. Lily stopped beside her and
smiled, intertwining their arms and walking in
together.

She understood that Lily had a reason for not liking

to come to Hogsmeade with Marlene. The blonde
took several minutes to decide between sweets
before deciding to buy both and then went back to
the other sweets she had dismissed to make sure
she didn’t want anything while Lily and Anne were
standing in the corridors, walking out of people’s
ways and not really talking amongst all that noise.

It was almost twenty minutes before they could get

out of the shop.

“Clothes?” Marlene asked.

“Absolutely not,” Lily answered quickly. “Books?”

“Oh, come on,” Marlene complained.

“I could do with some books,” Anne agreed.

“Et tu, Brutus,” accused Marlene.

The bookstore was three stores down the street on

the contrary side. It wasn’t very big and it certainly
wasn’t very full since the students tried their best
to run away from books, especially right before
summer holidays, but not Lily.

Lily found three books to buy before Anne had

managed to browse one of the four rows packed
with books in odd positions and creating odd
shapes. The other red-head was calmly talking to
the owner of the bookshop, Mister Orque.

“Do you want to buy anything, Anne?” Lily asked as

she paid for the books.

Anne blushed a bit. “I didn’t really bring a lot of

money,” she admitted. “I’ll skip book buying this
time.”

“I can pay for it,” Marlene offered. “You can pay me

back later in the dorms.”

Anne shook her head, not wanting to owe anyone

anything. Those type of things never ended well.

La puerta se abrió de nuevo, la pequeña campana

en la parte superior hizo un pequeño ruido y llevó
al hombre detrás del mostrador a mirar la entrada
de la tienda y sonreír.

“Señor Black, ha pasado un tiempo”, saludó.

“Señor Orque, ¿cómo está la familia?” preguntó la

voz.

Anne se puso de puntillas para mirar a Regulus

Black entrando a la tienda con las manos en los
bolsillos y con una túnica mágica normal de color
verde esmeralda con adornos dorados brillantes en
la cintura, haciéndolo parecer más delgado.

“Bien, bien”, respondió el hombre.

"Chicas", saludó Regulus con frialdad mientras

pasaba junto a la rubia y a Lily, pero casi se quedó
helado en el lugar cuando vio los ojos marrones
mirándolo con el cabello rojo en la parte superior
de la cabeza. "Anne", saludó, con voz demasiado
sorprendida para sonar fría.

"¡Regulus, hola!" Dijo Ana.

Marlene intercambió una mirada con Lily en silencio

mientras la pelirroja sostenía sus tres libros cerca
de su pecho, caminando hasta pararse junto a
Marlene con gran incomodidad con Regulus estando
tan cerca de ellos.

“¿Puedo ayudarlo de alguna manera, señor Black?”

Preguntó el señor Orque.

"Oh", dijo, recordando de repente dónde estaba.

“Sí, de hecho, puedes. Estoy buscando unos libros
específicos, estos”, dijo entregándole un papel al
señor Orque. "Por favor, empaquételos
discretamente".

“Por supuesto”, dijo el dueño, alejándose del

mostrador y caminando hacia las filas.

Anne dejó su casa para ir con sus amigos.

“Entonces…” dijo Regulus de repente una vez que

Anne estuvo cerca de Marlene, quien estaba
observando a Regulus con atención. "¿Encontraste
algún buen libro?"

Anne se volvió y lo miró sorprendida. Estaba

tratando de entablar una conversación frente a
otras personas y eso era bastante extraño, pero
verse tan nervioso hacía que la situación fuera aún
más extraña.

“Sí, tendré que volver con algo de dinero antes del

verano para conseguir los libros. ¿Has oído hablar
de 'Tamino', de ese autor griego que escribió todo
el punto de vista de Perséfone sobre el matrimonio
o lo que sea? Es su nuevo libro y suena
encantador”, respondió Anne.

“Oh, no lo había hecho”, dijo. “Me gusta ella,

grandes analogías. Lo echaré un vistazo más tarde,
gracias”.

"Deberías", asintió Anne, incómoda con la

sensación de ardor de sus amigos mirándolos
hablar. “Que tengas un gran día, Regulus. ¿Te veré
más tarde?"

“Por supuesto”, respondió Regulus, de repente

mirando al señor Orque y pareciendo un poco
interesado en lo que estaba haciendo, haciendo
todo lo posible para parecer desinteresado por el
hecho de que Anne se iba. "I te veré por ahí."

Caminó hacia el dueño de la tienda como si nunca

hubiera estado hablando con Anne.

Marlene agarró a Anne del brazo y la arrastró fuera

de la tienda, Lily les abrió la puerta y casi corrió
tras las dos. No se detuvieron hasta que estuvieron
dentro del pub Three Brooms y pidieron tres
cervezas de mantequilla en el mostrador.

"¿Qué fue eso?" -Preguntó Marlene.

Anne parpadeó, sintiéndose un poco mareada y

todavía bastante confundida.

“Se me olvidó cómo hablar cuando él entró”, dijo

Lily. “Oh, estoy temblando. ¡Es tan guapo, pero da
tanto miedo!

"Das más miedo, amor", le dijo Marlene a Lily.

“Pero Anne, ¿qué diablos fue eso? Habló contigo y
te llamó por tu nombre”.

“Oh, sí, lo hacemos”, dijo Anne. “Quiero decir,

llamarnos unos a otros por nuestros nombres de
pila. Es más fácil en Pociones y tuvimos un castigo
juntos, no mucho. Supongo que sólo intentaba ser
educado”.

"Es educado mi trasero", dijo Lily.

"¡Acordado! ¡Cortés mi trasero! Marlene dijo,

asintiendo. “Eso fue – oh, gracias Rosmerta, amor
– coqueteo. Era como un niño pequeño tratando de
hablar con una niña por primera vez y era
patéticamente adorable. ¡No encuentro adorable a
Regulus Black, Anne! ¡Tengo una reputación que
mantener aquí!

Las chicas tomaron sus bebidas y caminaron hacia

una mesa cerca de la ventana. Marlene se sentó
frente a Lily y Anne se sentó a su lado, siendo la
más cercana a la ventana y jugando con su bebida
con vergüenza y timidez.

“No fue nada”, dijo Anne.

"Podemos estar de acuerdo en no estar de acuerdo

en eso", insistió Marlene.

Anne se movió en su asiento; se sintió un poco

incómoda.

"Somos amigos", explicó Anne. “Lo mantenemos

discreto para que nadie intente matarme o algo así.
Soy mestizo, debo tener cuidado aquí”.

"Pero habló contigo en público", dijo Lily,

sacudiendo la cabeza como si no estuviera de
acuerdo.

"Habló conmigo delante de ustedes dos, a quienes

sabe que son mis compañeros de dormitorio y no
chismosos", dijo Anne. "Lo mantendrás bajo,
¿verdad?"

Marlene suspiró y puso los ojos en blanco como si

la pregunta hubiera sido estúpida desde el
principio; Eso hizo sonreír a Anne. Lily sostuvo su
mano sobre la mesa y asintió, entusiasmada por
tener un secreto para compartir con Anne.

“Nuestro primer secreto”, se rió Marlene.

"Bien, he estado tratando de ser tu amiga durante

semanas, Anne", dijo Lily. "Ahora tenemos nuestro
secreto y es la prueba de que somos amigos".

Anne sonrió, desconcertada de que su madre ahora

fuera su amiga y en realidad parecía disfrutar de su
compañía sin saber su conexión con ella o
sintiéndose presionada a ser amable y comprensiva
con ella.

Por el rabillo del ojo, vio a James, Sirius y Peter

entrando y riéndose (Remus decidió quedarse en la
cama antes de la luna esa noche). James sonrió
cuando pasó junto a ellas para llegar a su mesa y
saludó a las chicas cortésmente, pero no coqueteó
con Lily como lo hacía normalmente.

Lily le devolvió la sonrisa.

Anne sintió calor por dentro.

Capítulo 20 : Capítulo
diecinueve
Resumen:
En el camino de regreso a casa
para pasar el verano, Anne se
reencuentra con Severus y
Regulus toma una decisión que
podría cambiar su propio destino.

Notas:
Ok... entonces, TW para un
ataque de pánico (ligero) y un
flashback leve, este basado en mi
propia experiencia sobre un olor
específico que me llevó de regreso
a una situación traumática de
hace años, por lo que fue bastante
difícil de escribir. Espero que
entiendas entonces que no me
tomé el tiempo de volver a leerlo
y encontrar algún error en el
capítulo, avísame si encuentras
alguno.

CAMINO DE VUELTA

"Está empezando a doler, Lily", se quejó Anne. "Mi

brazo no puede soportar mucho más".

"Sólo un minuto más, lo juro", dijo Lily, con un

pequeño lápiz negro en su mano rayando el papel
más rápido. "¡Casi termino!" ella añadió. Algunos
rasguños más. “Y…” algunos más. "¡Hecho! Puedes
relajarte ahora, Anne.

Anne gimió ruidosamente una vez que apartó su

brazo de la pose que la habían puesto frente a Lily
en el pequeño compartimento del Expreso de
Hogwarts. Su espalda ardía por la posición
incómoda y los músculos de su estómago saltaban
después de tanto esfuerzo.

Marlene se rió, pero masajeó un poco la espalda de

Anne con algunas mascotas para que el dolor
desapareciera.

"Lamento haberte dejado dibujarme", admitió

Anne. "No sabía que ser modelo implicaba tanto
trabajo".

Lily se rió, con los ojos todavía en el papel y el lápiz

todavía trabajando, pero esta vez sin memoria y sin
el boceto que tenía. Tuvo grandes dificultades para
dibujar a Anne; no solo se movía cada pocos
minutos, sino que era difícil concentrarse en su
rostro: durante el trabajo, había logrado ver varias
similitudes entre Anne y James y ahora mirarla a
los ojos era un poco incómodo.

"Ana, Lily", dijo Marlene. “¿Puedo tomarles una foto

a ustedes dos?”

"¿Puedo?" —corrigió Lily.

"¿Quieres tomarlo tú mismo?" Anne preguntó,

confundida.

Marlene se rió, pensando que Anne estaba

bromeando. Nadie se detuvo para responderle o
explicarle por qué había sido una broma. Marlene
puso la pequeña cámara que había traído consigo
en el otro asiento, haciendo que Anne se sentara
entre ella y Lily y sonriera arrastrándola del brazo.
El destello la cegó por un momento.

El mundo se detuvo.

Era como estar otra vez en medio de una batalla.

El destello fue la bomba explotando en los terrenos

de Hogwarts y el calor arrojándola de espaldas
contra una pared, una de las únicas que logró
mantenerse de pie mientras el resto caía encima de
Percy Weasley y ella no podía moverse, solo
escuchaba. él gimiendo de dolor, pidiendo ayuda y
sin poder moverse, con la cabeza sangrando. Tonks
la encontró y casi la llevó hacia el Gran Comedor.
Madame Pomfrey había sanado su cabeza y pronto
volvió a correr tras la batalla, pero cuando llegó a
Percy, él ya estaba muerto.

De repente, la sangre estaba en sus manos

nuevamente y no estaba segura si era suya
después de rascarse tratando de quitarle las
piedras o si la sangre era suya. Sus ojos se
clavaron en el techo, sin vida, como la leche. Sus
costillas se estaban hundiendo donde se habían
roto y destrozado sus pulmones. Nadie vino a
salvarlo. Ella estaba sola. Solo. Solo. Solo.

Anne estaba de pie en medio del compartimento en

un segundo.

"¿Ana?" —Preguntó Lily, confundida.

"¿Ana?" Repitió Marlene al no responder,

preocupada.

“Necesito... necesito ir al baño”, respondió ella.

"James me está buscando".

No esperó a que ninguno de los dos respondiera,

simplemente salió corriendo del compartimento que
parecía demasiado pequeño. Era como si ella fuera
la que yacía debajo de todas las rocas esta vez,
suplicando ayuda y esperando que alguien a quien
amaba viniera y la salvara; la esperanza murió con
ella lentamente mientras se ahogaba con su propia
sangre.

Anne se topó con alguien que la mantuvo en su

lugar.

“Cuidado por donde caminas”, refunfuñó la

persona.

Severus Snape la miró y sintió que su corazón se

detenía por un momento. Anne estaba
enfermizamente pálida, parada frente a él con los
ojos inexpresivos y todo el cuerpo temblando,
incluido el labio inferior. Tan pronto como sus ojos
se encontraron, los de ella se llenaron de lágrimas
y su nariz se ensanchó.

"Lo siento", gimió ella.

Torpemente, Severus simplemente se quedó allí,

sosteniéndola por los codos en confusión y
preocupación. Si él la soltaba, ella parecía muy
capaz de caer al suelo y suicidarse por accidente.
No sería reconocido como el culpable de matar al
nuevo amigo de James Potter.

"Está bien", dijo. "Vamos", ordenó, tirando de ella

por el brazo.

Anne lo siguió en silencio, haciendo todo lo posible

por contener las lágrimas y los miedos. Severus no
estaba lo suficientemente cerca como para saber la
verdad todavía y ciertamente no merecía consolarla
y recibir algo a cambio cuando había estado
creciendo cada vez más en las filas de los
Mortífagos. Necesitaba asegurarse de que él
cambiaría de bando antes de decirle una sola parte
de quién era ella realmente.

Severus sorprendentemente la llevó a los baños y

se detuvo en la puerta.

"Lávate la cara, cálmate".

“Ya te lo dije, decirme que me calme no me calma”,

respondió ella.

“Por eso te dije que te lavaras la cara. El agua está

fría y el choque de temperatura congelará lo que
sea que esté sucediendo dentro de tu trenza y te
hará volver a caer”, respondió poniendo los ojos en
blanco. "Vamos chica. Estaré de guardia”.

Se apoyó contra la puerta mientras la empujaba

hacia adentro y cerraba la puerta antes de girar
hacia el pasillo y cruzarse de brazos con su mejor
cara de aburrimiento, aunque ciertamente le
preocupaba qué pasaría si la chica simplemente se
desmayara dentro del baño y se golpeara la cabeza
en alguna parte. .

Anne hizo lo que él le dijo: se lavó la cara y el

interior de las muñecas. Había vuelto a tener razón.
El agua estaba tan fría que apenas podía respirar
una vez que el primer chapoteo golpeó su rostro,
pero cuando se estaba lavando la nuca, se había
calmado lo suficiente como para dejar de llorar.
Todavía estaba temblando y sus músculos todavía
estaban débiles y dolían por toda la tensión que
había puesto, pero ciertamente se sentía más alerta
y consciente de dónde estaba realmente y de lo que
sucedía a su alrededor.

Quizás tardó demasiado, porque la puerta se abrió

en el acto.

"Oh, estás vivo", dijo Snape.

"Intenta sonar un poco más feliz, por favor",

refunfuñó Anne, mirándolo a través del espejo
frente al lavabo.

"Hm", lo hizo. "Ahora, escucha, hice lo que me

dijiste".

Ella parpadeó. "¿De qué estás hablando?" Estaba

mejor, pero su mente aún no estaba al 100%,
estaba confundida. “¿Qué te dije que hicieras?”

Severus, molesto por su lentitud, suspiró.

"¿No querías hablar con Nott?" preguntó. “Si

cambias de opinión, se lo dirás tú mismo. No soy
un maldito búho.

"Oh, Nott, sí", dijo, asintiendo cuando el recuerdo

surgió. “¿Aceptó hablar conmigo? ¿Quiere verme
ahora?

"No sería muy discreto, ¿verdad?" él dijo. “No, él

quiere hablar contigo durante el verano y te
escribirá para decidir un mejor día para que
ustedes dos se reúnan en algún lugar y hablen de
negocios. Quiere saber dónde te alojarás”.

"Potter Manor", respondió ella. "Cobham".

“¿En Surrey?” preguntó.

"Sí", murmuró. "Él puede encontrarme allí".

"Está bien", dijo Severus. "Te acompañaré al

compartimento de Potter".

Realmente no le gustaba la idea de volver con Lily y

Marlene, tendrían preguntas y sabía que no podría
responder la mayoría de ellas. Si iba con James y
sus amigos, el único que haría preguntas sería
Peter y alguien lo interrumpiría de inmediato. Se
sentía segura con los niños, aunque normal con las
niñas; en ese momento, estar segura era más
importante que ser una niña feliz y normal.

Severus parecía saber de alguna manera dónde

estaban los chicos.

“Siempre toman el mismo compartimento”, explicó

cuando Anne pareció un poco sospechosa. “El
tercero a la izquierda en este vagón. Por eso
siempre tomo otro vagón”.

"Mantienes un registro de dónde están para poder

esconderte", asintió, comprendiendo. "Yo haría lo
mismo".

"Si sabes cómo son, ¿por qué sigues siendo amigo

de ellos?" Preguntó Severus, la pregunta sonaba
amarga.

“Porque yo también sé cómo eres, Snape. Sé que

no eres ningún santo y esto no es acoso, es una
competencia entre rivales y nada más; tú también
habías hecho cosas terribles y las anuncias con
orgullo a tus… amigos, quizás compañeros de
trabajo sea la mejor palabra para describir esa
relación, pero aún así, no soy estúpido, sé lo que
eres y sé lo que eres. tú haces."

“¿Me estás acusando de algo?”

“No, no estoy acusando”, dijo, sacudiendo la

cabeza. “Simplemente compartir conocimientos.
Escuché que el Sombrero estaba muy confundido
cuando viniste y no sabía cómo decidir si irías a
Slytherin o Ravenclaw, así que supuse que estarías
agradecido por compartir conocimientos, ¿no es
algo que deberías hacer? ¿gustaría hacer?" ella dejó
de caminar y se volvió hacia él. "No te odio y creo
que eres inteligente y, en el fondo, tal vez una
mejor persona de lo que le permites al otro ver por
alguna razón que no puedo imaginar, pero eso no
significa que no te romperé la maldita cara a cara si
hablas mal de James o de cualquiera de mis amigos
y si vuelves a llamar a Lily 'sangre sucia', te mataré
y me reiré todo el camino hasta Azkaban.

“Violento, como cualquier otro Gryffindor”,

comentó.

“Protective, as any other Gryffindor,” she corrected.

“And as any other Slytherin and any other
Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw – they’re mine. My family,
my friends; in the moment you mess with any of
them, you messed with me as well.”

“Am I supposed to be scared?” he asked, smirk

growing.

“I’d be I were you,” she answered.

And for a moment, Severus Snape was afraid as he

looked into her eyes. It wasn’t a child’s eyes; it
wasn’t something he had seen in any person in his
class or with the silly younger children he would
sometimes tutor for extra credit in Potions – he
would see those haunted eyes in the mirror
sometimes when he woke up from a nightmare
where his father was holding his ankle and
dragging him away from protection of his mother’s
arms once more.

She had seen empires raise and fall, death and life.
She had the whole world behind her eyes and
underneath her skin.

“Thank you for the warning, then,” he answered,

not wanting to completely accept he had been
made uncomfortable just by staring a girl smaller
than him. “But we’re here.”

The third compartment on the left of the wagon.

He opened the door without knocking and waited,

but no curses or screams came. Inside there was
only a very confused and sleepy Remus Lupin
looking at Severus with worry.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” he asked.

He had dropped the book he had been holding onto
while he as asleep as he sat down a bit better,
leaning away from the wall and the window he had
been against.

Anne appeared from behind Severus.

“Snape was just kind enough to show me where
you would be,” she explained. “Thank you, Snape.”

Cerró la puerta sin responderle.

Anne observó a través de la pequeña ventana con

la cortina bajada la sombra de Severus vacilando
por un momento antes de alejarse de la puerta y
dirigirse hacia su propio compartimento, lejos de
ese vagón.

"Ana, ¿qué pasó?" preguntó Remus. "Te pareces a

la Muerte".

"Gracias", refunfuñó.

Se sentó pesadamente al lado de Remus y cerró los

ojos, apoyándose contra él. Le pasó el brazo por los
hombros y la acercó a él.

"¿Qué pasó? Díselo a tu padrino y me ocuparé de

quien haya hecho esto”, añadió, sonriéndole un
poco.

Anne logró soltar una risita.

“Sólo el flash de una cámara”, respondió ella.

“Nunca pensé que los flashes de las cámaras
pudieran parecerse tanto a bombas, pero lo
hicieron y me asusté un poco. Me escapé, me lavé
la cara y Snape me encontró. Él me trajo aquí
cuando pregunté por James”, miró a su alrededor,
ignorando el pequeño cambio en su historia y su
verdad. "¿Donde está todo el mundo?"

“Salieron a comprar unos dulces”, respondió.

"¿Necesitas algo?"

"Solo tú", respondió ella.

Ella escondió su rostro contra su jersey y él la

abrazó más cerca, acariciándole la espalda
ligeramente como si tratara de adormecerla.

Sorprendentemente, funcionó muy bien y Anne

terminó durmiendo sin pesadillas ni recuerdos que
la persiguieran.

Regulus Black estaba preocupado por Anne después

de que Severus comentara a la ligera que se había
sentido enferma. Los otros Slytherins se rieron y
dijeron que esperaban que fuera una maldición,
pero Regulus había visto verdadera preocupación
detrás de los ojos de Severus mientras se reía.

No vio una excusa o el momento adecuado para ir a

buscarla a través de los vagones a ciegas o un
momento para preguntarle a Severus a dónde
había ido, así que todo lo que hizo fue intentar lo
mejor que pudo para parecer como si su terrible
humor no fuera nada más. de lo normal él no
deseaba volver a casa y ocuparse de sus padres
todo un verano y toda la planificación de la boda de
Narcisa.

Cuando el tren finalmente se detuvo en el andén,

prácticamente saltó de su asiento, tomó su bolso y
salió del tren justo detrás de un primer año
llorando que corrió hacia sus padres sollozando y
hablando de nostalgia.

Afuera del tren, fingió arreglar su bolso mientras

sus ojos recorrían el andén buscando un cabello
pelirrojo entre la multitud. Encontró a su madre
parada junto a su padre al otro lado de la
plataforma. Walburga le levantó la mano, tratando
de llamar su atención, por lo que él asintió con la
cabeza para demostrarle que ya la había visto y
que estaba en camino.

Quizás, Anne ya había llegado a los Potter y...

Sirius Black casi chocó contra él cuando corrió hacia

la pareja que abrazaba fuerte a James Potter. Si
James estaba en algún lugar, Anne no se quedaba
atrás, lo había aprendido en tan solo un mes que
habían estado juntos.

"¡Maldita bolsa!" alguien maldijo con exasperación

y con un gemido frustrado.

He didn’t even have to look to know it was Anne

struggling with getting her bag down from the
train, but he turned anyways and put his bag to the
side, ignoring that his mother was still watching
him.

“Anne,” he greeted.

“Oh, Regulus, hi,” she said, sounding surprised

between her pants.

Regulus nodded at her.

“May I?” he said, pointing at the bag.

She looked between him and her bag before

blinking a few times and nodding, taking a step
back from the situation and watching as Regulus
stood in front of it and very easily pushed the bag
back out and turned to the side a bit before getting
it out without locking it against the doorways.

“I should’ve thought about that,” she mumbled,

embarrassed for her lack of logical thought.

He chuckled as he put her bag down.

“You have a good summer, Anne,” he said.

“You too, Regulus. And remember… what we talked

about, about being careful with decisions,” she
said, a low voice.

He looked at her, taken aback that she had brought

up the conversation again. But he nodded at her
anyways, very close to promising to remember her
words.

“ANNE!” Sirius screamed, hurrying her up.

He received a weak slap on the back of the head by

Mia, but all he did was groan and laugh after it.

Anne looked at the scene before nodding and

turning to Regulus again.

“Thank you,” she said. “For the bag,” she added.

“Oh, yes, you’re welcome,” he dismissed, getting

his own bag. “See you in next year.”

“See you next year,” she agreed.

Arrastró su bolso detrás de él quizás con un poco

más de gracia de lo habitual, sin que sus tobillos
quedaran atrapados en las ruedas ni una sola vez.
Sus ojos estaban fijos en su madre, pero sus
pensamientos estaban en la chica dentro de los
brazos de Potter.

Aún así, tuvo que volver al presente una vez que

vio a su madre parada allí con una blusa blanca y
faldas largas negras estilo A con su padre con una
túnica negra mágica de todos los días parado a su
lado.

“Madre, padre”, saludó.

Su padre apartó la mirada de la persona que había

estado mirando y miró a Regulus.

"Has crecido", comentó con voz fría.

Regulus esperaba que fuera verdad. Se sentía más

alto y le gustaba ser alto, las niñas y los niños lo
mirarían con más respeto y tal vez con un poco
más de deseo. Aunque las relaciones nunca
estuvieron en su mente, le gustaba ser querido y
deseado por personas que sabían que él nunca
podría ser suyo. Quizás por eso deseaba tanto a
Anne, porque sabía que ella nunca recurriría a él.

"¿Quién era esa chica con la que estabas

hablando?" Preguntó Walburga, con los ojos fijos en
ella.

"Anne Sage", respondió. “Mi compañero de

Pociones, el pupilo de Dumbledore. Aparentemente,
la adopción más reciente de Potter o algo así, un
primo lejano suyo.

"¿Su estado?" preguntó su padre, finalmente

mirando a Anne parada frente a Euphemia Potter y
dando una vuelta para mostrar las túnicas mágicas
en color púrpura amatista y negro.

“Un mestizo”, respondió Regulus, concentrándose

en mejorar el agarre de su bolso para no dejar que
sus padres vieran sus ojos.

“Oh”, dijo su madre, decepcionada. "Qué corriente

de su parte".

Sin mirarla, Regulus respondió. "Creo que ella es

bastante sobresaliente", ni siquiera lo había
pensado, las palabras simplemente se le habían
escapado de la boca.

Su padre ahora lo estaba observando

cuidadosamente antes de mirar a Anne aceptando
la ayuda de Sirius con su bolso y dejando que el
niño se lo llevara mientras sostenía la mano de
Euphemia y se reía de algo que dijo la mujer
mayor.

"Ella es bonita", dijo Orión.

Walburga miró a Orión sorprendida.

“¿De verdad lo pensaste? Creo que una pelirroja es

simplemente uno de los castigos más divinos,
absolutamente patético”, dijo Walburga.

"Ella es bonita", repitió Orión, descartando la

opinión de Walburga de inmediato.

"Ella es excelente en Pociones, tercera es la clase y

acaba de llegar a Hogwarts el mes pasado", dijo
Regulus. "Ha sido educada en casa la mayor parte
de su vida y todavía está sólo medio punto por
detrás de Severus y su extraña mente".

"Tú, otro amigo mestizo", refunfuñó Walburga.

“Anne no es mi amiga”, aunque era mentira,

esperaba que sus padres no pudieran verlo a través
de él.

"Bueno, amiga o no, la llamas excepcional", dijo

Orión. "Quiero conocerla. Asegúrate de que suceda;
Para una cena, un almuerzo, un brunch o un cóctel,
quiero conocer a esta chica”.

Capítulo 21 : Capítulo veinte

Resumen:
El primer día de verano de Anne
en su verdadero hogar.

MANSIÓN DEL ALFARERO

Potter Manor era una de las casas más grandes que

Anne había visto en su vida, era más grande que
Grimmauld Place, pero más pequeña que Malfoy
Manor. Tenía jardines increíbles al frente y
enredaderas en las paredes como si no hubiera
habido gente viviendo allí en años, era hermoso y
etéreo. El patio trasero también era increíble,
tenían kilómetros de patio trasero, pero solo se
usaban los primeros dos kilómetros: había un
campo de Quidditch y un pequeño arroyo que
separaba esos dos kilómetros del resto de los
kilómetros que alquilarían a la gente. La casa
estaba completamente cubierta con barreras de
sangre, protección contra muggles y contra malas
intenciones. Cada parte de ese lugar parecía
segura, para sorpresa de Anne.

Nunca se había sentido tan segura en un lugar que

no conocía tan rápido. Quizás podría echarle la
culpa al hecho de que la casa también era suya en
ese momento y que todas las personas dentro de
esa casa conocían su verdad y apoyaban su
decisión.

Pero la mayor sorpresa fue cuando Euphemia la

llevó a un dormitorio.

"Esta es tu habitación", dijo. "Puedes guardar tus

cosas aquí".

"Oh, Merlín", murmuró Anne sorprendida.

La mansión era claramente vieja, pero todo en la

habitación era nuevo.

La gran alfombra estaba en el centro de la

habitación. La cama tenía su cabecera contra la
pared y del lado derecho de la puerta, estaba
cuidadosamente cubierta con sábanas color crema
y un edredón color crema con bordados dorados;
Las cortinas alrededor de la cama eran altas y
también eran de color crema, aunque no tenían
bordados. A los pies de la cama había una tumbona
de color crema amarillento. A ambos lados de la
cama tamaño queen había pequeñas mesas con
velas apagadas. Aún así, la parte más sorprendente
de la hermosa habitación fue la ventana: tenía un
mirador con un asiento largo acolchado blanco
frente a la puerta, al otro lado de la habitación
había una pequeña mesa circular cerca y algunos
lirios dentro del pequeño jarrón y un juego de té.

En la pared al otro lado de la cama, al otro lado de

la habitación, había estantes vacíos para libros
encima de un escritorio con un vestidor grande y
vacío a la derecha, un pequeño tocador a la
izquierda y otra puerta al lado de la habitación.
armario.

"¿Qué es?" Preguntó Mia, preocupada. “¿No te

gustó?”

“¡Por supuesto que me encantó!” Dijo Ana. “¿Quién

más duerme aquí?”

"Nadie, Anne, solo tú".

"¿Todo esto? ¡¿Sólo para mí?!" preguntó ella,

sorprendida.

Ella siempre había compartido habitaciones. Ya sea

con Harry o con sus compañeros de dormitorio, ella
nunca había tenido una habitación para ella sola.

Euphemia observó por un momento, la tristeza

apareció antes de que ella sonriera.

"Todo para ti, y solo para ti", estuvo de acuerdo

Mia.

Anne casi corrió hacia el dormitorio, mirando a su

alrededor con mucha más atención ahora que
entendía que todas esas cosas eran suyas, no de
otra persona que le había permitido dormir con
ellas.

She peeked out of the window to see the gardens,

she peeked into the closet and…

She froze.

The other door led to a whole different room. A

medium sized bathroom with a bathtub right beside
the window that was a whole foot above the
bathtub, a toilet to the right of the door and a
beautiful sink of white marble.

“This bathroom too?” she asked, looking over her

shoulder.

Mia nodded.

“Did you like it?”

“Yes! I’m going to unpack right away! Oh, this is

beautiful, thank you so much!” she almost
squealed.

“I’ll leave you to it soon, dear,” Mia said. “Just let

me finish: the door across the corridor is James’
bedroom and the one at the end of the hall is
Sirius’. On the second floor, it’s my room and you
come to me if you ever need anything.”

“Alright,” Anne agreed.

“Do you want help to unpack everything?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

Mia kissed the top of her head and left the room.

Alone, Anne almost screamed out of pure

happiness. She had her own room! She felt so adult
and, surprisingly, not lonely. And there was a
beautiful chandelier with candles that did not burn
out that would turn on by wand command; she was
in heaven, or so she was almost sure.

It was a bit after lunch, so she spent most of the

afternoon putting her clothes away. Underwear in
the drawer, clothes on the hangers. Her books were
put on the shelves and her textbooks on the other
shelves.

By the time she was done, the sun was setting and
there was somebody knocking on her door.

“Yeah?” she called out.

“Dinner!” Sirius exclaimed.

Saltó del lugar sobre la alfombra blanca dentro del

vestidor donde había estado guardando sus pocos
pares de zapatos en los estantes del nivel del suelo
y corrió hacia la puerta para abrirla, tratando de
recordar dónde estaba el comedor.

"Sirius", llamó cuando lo vio dirigirse hacia el otro

extremo del pasillo, hacia las escaleras. "¡Espérame
por favor!"

Sirius lo hizo mientras veía a Anne tropezar hacia él

sin zapatos, con pantalones cortos de mezclilla con
puños en los extremos y una camisa amarilla de
manga corta. Estaba vestida muy muggle, se dio
cuenta rápidamente, recordándose a sí mismo que
era la hija de su mejor amigo y que mirarla había
estado prohibido, aunque tenía que admitir que era
una chica bonita con un cuerpo bonito ahora que
había ganado un poco de poder. peso.

"No sabes dónde está el comedor, ¿verdad?"

bromeó. Ella sacudió su cabeza. "Tu memoria y
sentido de orientación son de Lily, asegúrate de
ello".

Ella se rió, lo siguió escaleras abajo y giró, atravesó

el salón y finalmente llegó al comedor, donde Mia y
un elfo doméstico colocaron la mesa en su lugar,
James salió de la cocina con algunas tazas y sonrió
emocionado cuando Vio a Sirius y Anne parados
uno al lado del otro.

"¿Cómo puedo ayudar?" Ana preguntó.

"Hemos terminado aquí, cariño", dijo Mia, mirando

por encima del hombro. “Coco, ¿por qué no vuelves
a llamar a Monty? Debe haberse distraído una vez
más en su estudio”.

Coco, el elfo doméstico, asintió, se inclinó ante ella

antes de mirar una vez más a Anne antes de ir al
último nivel de la casa para sacar a su abuelo de su
estudio y alejarlo del papeleo del dinero del Jefe de
la Casa. y tierras con las que Anne no tenía idea de
cómo lidiar.

"¡Ana, siéntate aquí!" Dijo James, esperando que

ella se sentara a su lado.

Aparentemente, la gente tenía sus propios asientos,

porque Sirius automáticamente se sentaba frente a
James. Las cabeceras de la mesa se mantuvieron
vacías hasta que Mia se sentó al lado izquierdo de
Anne de James, la otra cabecera de la mesa
ciertamente se mantuvo para Monty.

Se sirvió la comida mientras Monty bajaba las

escaleras.

"Oye, más vale más tarde que nunca", dijo Mia.

"¿Qué te tomó tanto tiempo?"

Monty se sentó en la otra cabecera de la mesa

como Anne esperaba y puso un pequeño paquete
sobre la mesa, mirándolo como si esa hubiera sido
la respuesta a la pregunta de Mia. Miró a Anne
antes de empujárselo sobre la mesa.

“Esto ocurrió mientras estaba saliendo”, explicó.

"Es para Anne".

“Acabo de llegar”, comentó.

Había una persona que sabía dónde estaba:

Severus Snape. Le habían dicho que se lo dijera a
Nott, pero ciertamente Nott no enviaría
simplemente un paquete antes de intercambiar
cartas con ella. Quien le había escrito, le había
enviado algo lo suficientemente pesado como para
que Monty la mirara expectante.

"No es tan sorprendente, era Regulus Black", dijo

Monty.

Régulo. Le dio la vuelta al paquete y vio el nombre

garabateado con tinta roja.

She caught the package and opened it by tearing

the brown paper apart in hurry, worried about what
was in it, but not being patient enough to go out of
the room to open it. But it was nothing much; it
was a book and a letter packed with it. She smiled
as soon as she saw the title: Tamino. She opened
the book to the first page, but there was nothing
scribbled there, there was just a letter folded
beside it.

She opened the letter.

“What’s wrong?” Sirius asked.

Greetings, Miss Anne Sage,

En esta carta le invito en nombre de Casa Negra a

petición de Walburga Black a una cena en el
momento que más le convenga. Mi madre desea
conocerte. Sin embargo, puedo entender
completamente si no te sientes completamente
cómodo viniendo a nuestro Hogar Ancestral y
conociéndola, dada tu historia con las creencias de
mi familia y encontraré una buena excusa para
sacarte de ella. En tu lugar yo tampoco vendría.

Pido disculpas, en primer lugar, por la atención que

parece haberles prestado nuestra pequeña
interacción iniciada por mí en la plataforma. Sabía
muy bien que no querías atención, pero mi deseo
de desearte un buen verano y ser amable contigo
ha salido mal porque te causé daño a ti y a tu
causa.

Para que las disculpas sean un poco más

aceptadas, te he enviado el libro por el que has
expresado interés ese día en Hogsmeade. Tamiño.
Espero que te guste y me respondas con una
respuesta a la invitación y tu opinión sobre el libro.
Deseo comprar el libro yo mismo, pero prefiero
tener tu opinión antes de hacerlo. El regalo no es
mucho, lo entiendo; En cualquier otra situación te
habría comprado joyas, pero no conozco tu gusto
por algo tan personal así que decidí no regalarte
algo que no te gustaría.

También espero que no te importe el hecho de que

le pregunté a Severus dónde estabas. Espero que
tu verano sea bueno en Potter Manor.

Atentamente,

Regulus Arcturus Negro.

"¿Qué ocurre? ¿Le pasó algo? Preguntó Sirius, con

la voz un poco temblorosa.

“No”, respondió ella, sacudiendo la cabeza con una

pequeña sonrisa ahora que el miedo abandonaba su
cuerpo al comprender que Regulus estaba bien y a
salvo. "Solo me invitaste a cenar durante el
verano".

La mesa cayó en un silencio de conmoción.

"¿Cena?" —preguntó James. “¿Te está invitando a

salir a una cita?”

Anne miró hacia arriba y comprendió cómo había

sonado.

"Oh", lo hizo. "No en realidad no. Justo en

Grimmauld Place, su madre desea conocerme por
alguna razón.

No quería echar la culpa por su repentina atención

al pobre Regulus que había hecho todo lo posible
por ser educado, pero había cometido el error de
interactuar con ella en público, donde la mayoría de
las personas eran sangre pura y también lo
conocían a él y a su familia. bueno, si su madre no
los había visto juntos, alguien se lo había contado.

“¿Walburga desea conocerte? ¿Un mestizo

conocido? repitió Sirius, confundido. “¿Es eso lo que
dijiste o simplemente aluciné durante toda esa
conversación?”

"Sí, supongo que ella realmente quiere conocerme",

dijo. “Me envió un libro para disculparse por ello”,
se rió entre dientes. "Eso funciona."

“Mi hermano tiene un gusto terrible por los libros”,

dijo Sirius, “absolutamente aburrido. Ya me
disculpo por ello”.

Anne se rió un poco y guardó la carta dentro del

libro. "No es necesario", respondió ella. "Él tomó
ese libro específicamente porque vio que lo quería
en Hogsmeade, pero no tenía dinero para él, así
que me lo compró".

Mia miró a James. “¿Por qué no le diste dinero?”

"¡No sabía que lo necesitaba!" James se defendió

rápidamente. "Ella estaba fuera con Marlene y Lily,
si me hubiera acercado a ellas, ¡Lily me habría
maldecido antes de que pudiera decir una sola
palabra, mamá!"

“And that’s on you,” Sirius teased.

“Oh, shut it, Pads,” James groaned.

Monty would’ve laughed, but he looked a bit

worried.

“Anne, since when have you been friends with

Regulus Black?” he asked, eyebrows raising.

“Hm,” she thought for a moment. “We… Well, I

annoyed him enough that he tried to talk to me
with Narcisa Black to know what I was lying about
or something like that and I managed to convince
Narcisa to get off my arse, but Regulus didn’t really
believe it, so he just stuck around. Then he became
my potion’s partner and we talked to each other for
a bit in a party, now we’re here.”

“Now, that’s a way to tell a story,” James teased.

Anne glared at him.

Monty thought that her glare and Mia’s glare were

very similar, both being very done with James’
jokes.

“You are aware that –” Monty started.

“That he’s a Black and they believe in pureblood

values and all that,” Anne said with a sigh. “I know.
But I also know when he’s going to die and how’s
he’s going to die; if he’s on our side, he certainly be
more valuable than any of you understand.”

Monty and Mia exchanged a look, but kept

themselves in silence as they understood that they
certainly wouldn’t understand completely, they
didn’t know the future. They knew, however, that
Anne knew how and when they were going to die
and she wanted to change that too. She had a lot
on her back and they shouldn’t just go and put
more weight as family disapproval for something as
silly as a friendship choice.

“Then eat,” said Mia. “Write him an answer when

you’re done and find a date for the dinner. I’ll teach
you everything you need to know to meet Walburga
Black and her hellish family in their hellish house.
You’re going to need help if you want to survive
and come back to us, honey.”

Sirius scoffed in agreement, shivering with

memories.

Chapter 22: Chapter Twenty-

One
Summary:
For something as important as a
dinner in a house that most
people hate her at, Anne has to
take her time preparing for it.

Notes:
If honest, this is a bit of a filler
chapter, but I just had a session
of chemo, so I think that's good
enough for now, guys. I'm sorry
for any mistakes.

PREPARATIONS

Mister Regulus Black, the most formal person I ever

met,

I, Anne Sage, accept your wonderfully thoughtful

gift and your mother’s request to meet me
disguised as a polite invitation for dinner.

Now, allow me to actually start this letter without

teasing you or your formal and odd pureblood
ways. I actually really got excited when I saw the
book with your letter and tried my best not to
squeal mid-lunch or read the book on the table,
otherwise I’d be scolded for lack of basic etiquette.

Euphemia Potter said she’s going to teach me all

about pure-blood manners and table etiquette so I
don’t embarrass you as your guest. Do tell your
mother that I’ll be quiet until somebody actually
talks to me (this is a joke, please, do not tell her
that, we both know that I’m not capable of that,
and by ‘that’, I mean shutting up for long enough
to make your mother not completely despise me).

For me, any day is good, I have nothing planned

during the summer. I’m too new to England to
actually have a social circle outside of school, so
bear with me if I keep writing to you; you’re my
only contact.

Your informal half-blood friend,

Anne Sage.

The letter had been short and direct, but

completely clear to its meaning. It was sent to
Regulus ten minutes after it was written and sealed
with the Potter House Coat of Arms to make the
letter look more important and formal in case that
he received the letter with his mother or father
nearby.

Anne was hoping that her titles would be enough

for her to travel silently inside the Black family. She
wasn’t a Lady and she had no money of her own,
but she was Anne Sage – one of the only children
the Sages had in that new generation,
Dumbledore’s protegee and a half-blood with great
connections with the family Potter. If she knew how
to travel with it, she could be safe.

Still, her confidence disappeared when Walburga

Black sent her a letter with an official invitation to
dinner three days after the letter being exchanged.

The next three days were filled with nothing but

clear and genuine despair of Anne trying to learn
every single moment of etiquette out of Mia and
Sirius.

“Bow lower,” said Sirius.

“I can’t! My knees just don’t go that way!” she said.

“Low your head down, then,” Mia said. “Pretend

you’re shy and not wanting to meet their eyes.”

“I don’t want to meet their eyes indeed. My

Occlumency might be strong, but that lot scares
me,” Anne admitted.

“If I lived there sixteen years and I survived, then

you can do that for a single night, Anne, stop being
dramatic,” Sirius said, receiving an offended look
from Anne, who could only think of how terrible she
must be at the moment for Sirius to call her
dramatic. “Cissy and Reggie are going to be at your
side, you crazy woman. For some reason, you
managed to make them like you, which I couldn’t
do.”

“You never tried, darling,” said Mia, petting his

back gently.

“Fair enough,” he groaned, sitting on the piano

bench, back to the instrument. “Merlin’s Coat,
Anne, your posture is absolutely ridiculous!” he
added once she sat on the sofa in front of him,
tired.

“And that’s all me,” she said. “Mum has a great

posture and Dad’s a Quidditch player, his posture is
impeccable and – shit.”

She had called James by ‘dad’ again and, this time,

it was pretty clear that the two people in that room
had noticed it and were looking at her with as much
surprise as she felt herself after letting it escape
again from her mouth. Anne knew it was inevitable,
that at some point it would happen and it was
better when it was just the people she trusted
nearby, but still it was embarrassing being caught
like that: accidently.

“Dad?” Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Is he not my dad?” she asked, pretending not to

care, shrugging.

Mia’s lips were fighting her smile the best they

could, but they lost before Anne could even finish
that sentence. She looked prouder than ever before
in her life.

When she had James, older than most women

usually have children, she had not thought much
about the future, being completely in love with the
little man that was on her arms, looking at her in
awe and admiration, her husband beside her,
completely in love with her and James at once.
After James grew a bit, melancholy and fear hit her
straight to the chest as he went to Hogwarts the
same year her menopause finally had taken over
her body after years struggling against it – she
understood that she had lost a lot of things by
waiting so much, wasting time. At that point, she
had the terrible feeling that she wouldn’t meet her
grandchildren, and if she watched her son getting
married, she would’ve been a very lucky woman.

But there she was, against all Healers’ thoughts,

watching her grandchild looking just as much as a
woman as her own son looked like a man. Grown,
strong and completely terrified of the world outside.

“It could be worse, you could’ve called him Daddy,”

Sirius said, smile appearing on his lips.

“Oh, don’t! Ew, Sirius!” Anne said.

“Well, perhaps you don’t want to know, but Audrey

was more than happy to call him that last January
–”

“Sirius, stop!” Anne screamed.

“Yes, Sirius, stop!” agreed Mia at once.

Sirius laughed, blushing a bit once he remembered

Mia was still in the room.

“Mia, I’m her uncle, it’s my duty to embarrass

James in front of her and tell her all the terrible
things he has ever done while she wasn’t there to
see,” Sirius said.

“Well, you can do that, just not in front of me,” Mia

said.

“Oh, thanks, Mia, for throwing me under the bus

here,” Anne said.

Mia kissed the top of her head, walking away and

leaving Sirius explaining the forks and knives order
to Anne. She looked over her shoulder to see him
making big movements with his hands to explain a
bit better.

Monty was already on the kitchen when she got

there to make some sandwiches since she didn’t
feel like preparing lunch, even with the help of the
domestic elf. He smiled as her when she walked in.

“How’s the training?” he asked, almost laughing.

“You say that like that because you have no idea

how difficult it really is,” Euphemia said to her
husband. “Your parents barely taught you any
manners at all, even less the ones that are
unimportant for the rest of the world.”

Monty did his best to pretend to be hurt, but he still

laughed at what his wife had said. It was true after
all, he had no table manners and absolutely no
bowing-and-useless-stuff (by Sirius’ words)
etiquette and he was fine with that, but Euphemia
had insisted on teaching him before they got
married so he could impress her parents; he did,
after all he did manage to get their blessing to
marry her.

“Alright, then,” he said, forcing his brow to furrow

as he tried to look serious. “How is the training?”
he asked again, voice deeper.

Euphemia giggled like a schoolgirl, but answered,

“Is going well. She’s a good student and keen to
learn.”

“For the sake of learning, or…?” he raised his

eyebrows.

“The ‘or’, I’m almost sure,” Mia confessed. “Though

she doesn’t seem to be aware of that herself.”

“That’s dangerous,” he sighed, “especially for

someone in her situation.”

Mia nodded, sighing as well.

“The best, for now, it to let her be,” she said.

“She’s smart, she’ll understand what’s happening
and certainly will make a good decision. She knows
what she’s doing, Monty, and that’s the only thing
comforting me for the moment.”

“Good,” he said, nodding once.

She moved to the pantry.

“Where’s James?” she asked over her shoulder,

changing the subject to try and get a bit lighter.
“I’ll go out to Diagon Alley after lunch to get Anne’s
some dresses and I think he’ll want to go with us;
Sirius already says he wants to go.”

“More dresses?” asked Monty. “Poor girl, Mia, you’ll

drown her in fabric!”

“She needs a fitting dress for an occasion such as

dinner in Grimmauld Place with the main branch of
the most ancient family in British Wizarding history,
don’t you think?” Mia laughed. “I’m joking. She
asked me to go with her to get a new dress. She’s
scared of making Regulus embarrassed of her.”

“That’s sweet,” he admitted. “Well, get her

something in white. She looks pretty in white.”

“And make her look like a bride, Monty? Please,

we’re trying to prove to Walburga she’s no danger
and you’ll go and try to sell her off to them,”
laughed Mia. “She’ll wear green or some neutral
colour such as black.”

Anne encontró un hermoso vestido corto asimétrico

color burdeos que la dejó boquiabierta e hizo que
Mia la llevara a la estación de pruebas solo para
asegurarse de que fuera su talla, pero habían
pasado menos de veinte minutos en la tienda y
estaba claro que la elección había sido buena.
hecho.

"Cuando hayas terminado, sal aquí", dijo Sirius

desde el otro lado de la cortina.

Sirius y James se habían recostado en el pequeño

sofá que la estación tenía en el medio donde
normalmente se sentaban maridos, novios, padres
e hijos, luciendo aburridos y completamente
molestos.

Mia entró con ella para ayudarla a vestirse, aunque

Anne no lo disfrutó mucho.

Tan pronto como se quitó la ropa, Mia se quedó

completamente en silencio, viendo finalmente
algunas de las cicatrices que Anne había logrado
ocultar. Su espalda era la que más llamaba la
atención, una larga línea desde el centro de la línea
de sus hombros hasta el final de su zona lumbar.

"¿Puedo preguntar?" -murmuró Mía.

"Muggle hecho, cuchillo", fue su respuesta. “No fue

demasiado profundo; el cuchillo estaba un poco
oxidado. Mi primo lo hizo, aunque estoy bastante
seguro de que no pretendía lastimarme, sólo
asustarme”.

“¿Y nadie hizo nada?”

“Mi tía se aseguró de que no muriera”, dijo,

sonriendo a Mia a través del espejo. “Para ella eso
es mucho”, concluyó la conversación. “Aunque eso
realmente no me importa. Siempre lo olvido”.

Realmente no le importaba, especialmente en la

forma vanidosa, pero sí le importaban las miradas
de lástima que generalmente seguían a la aparición
de la cicatriz.

Aún así, se vistió sin ruido y Mia se ató las correas

de la espalda, dejando su espalda mayormente
expuesta y la parte asimétrica mostrando una parte
más grande de su muslo derecho que el izquierdo.
A ella le gustó cómo se veía en el espejo. La hacía
parecer más adulta, más fuerte y más atrevida.

"¿Le gustó?"

"¡Absolutamente!" Ana respondió.

"Entonces, mostrémosles a los chicos", dijo Mia,

abriendo la cortina.

Sirius saltó cuando se abrió la cortina, deteniendo

la pequeña charla que había iniciado con la chica
sentada a su lado esperando a su hermana. James
también se levantó, aunque no tan emocionado
como Sirius; No le importaba la ropa tanto como a
Sirius.

"Oh, Merlín, te ves..." comenzó Sirius.

"Cuidado con tus próximas palabras, amigo",

refunfuñó James.

"¿Qué? ¡Se ve genial, James! ¡Deja de ser una

decepción! dijo Sirio. "¡Anne, gira!" Ana lo hizo.
"¡Asombroso! Espectáculo de parada." Anne se rió,
sintiéndose un poco nerviosa, pero Mia le dio el
visto bueno a Sirius y Sirius le devolvió la sonrisa.
"No te preocupes, mamá, ¡tú también te ves genial
y como siempre!" le guiñó un ojo.

Mía se rió. "Siempre encantadora", puso los ojos en

blanco.

James suspiró.

"Se muestran muchas cosas ahí, cariño, ¿no lo

crees?" comentó. “No sé sobre ese. Me gustó el
negro que compraste primero; el largo.”

“Lo que hay que cubrir, está cubierto”, dijo Anne,

girando una vez más, esta vez más lento. "¿Ver?
Estoy decente y el lado más largo casi toca el inicio
de mi rodilla. Parece decente, ¿no?

"No parece basura, ignora a tu... James", dijo

Sirius, salvándose en el último minuto, mirando a la
chica sentada al lado de donde él había estado
sentado. "Ahora. El vestido es increíble, pero
¿sabes qué más te pondrás?

“Mi abrigo negro…”

"Aunque siempre usas ese abrigo", dijo James.

"Consigue ese blanco".

"Y hará que parezca que va a una fiesta de

Navidad", dijo Sirius. “Mía, tu abrigo negro, el de
botones dorados…” hizo una línea en medio del
pecho donde estarían los botones.

"Oh, sí", dijo Mia, asintiendo. "¡Gran idea! Puedes

usar mi abrigo”.

"Gracias", dijo Anne.

"Y ciertamente usarás uno de mis aretes", dijo

James. “Los pequeños, los dorados”.

Sirius se volvió hacia James.

“¿Usas aretes?” preguntó, confundido. "Nunca te

había visto usándolo antes".

“Because I bought in case that I wanted to piece

my ears, but I… well, I decided to wait a bit more,”
he said. That was his way of saying that he had
gotten scared of the needle and stopped himself
from piercing the ears. Sirius nodded, clearly not
believing him. “I’m telling the truth!”

“I never said you weren’t,” Anne said.

James glared at her, but Mia laughed and led Anne

back into the curtains to help her get it off to put
her normal jeans and shirt back on, leaving once
the dress was off and going off to pay it.

She heard movement and felt the curtain move as

she sat down on the small bench on the corner of
the cubicle and watched as Sirius poked his head
in, eyes closed and clearly not trying to see
anything that wasn’t meant for him.

“Anne, I –”

“I’m decent,” she said. “Just open your eyes,

Sirius,” she rolled her eyes once Sirius’ eyes
opened at once. “What is it?”

“You would tell me if there was something going on

with my brother, right? Like, if he was in danger or
something,” he said.

“Of course I would, Sirius,” she said, sighing as she

put her other sock on. “I care about Regulus too. If
he was in danger, I’d find a way to help him.”

“To get out?”

“Or to endure,” she said. “Regulus isn’t one to run

away from things, and he made that very clear
when he insisted on staying when you left that
house. I’ll help him with whatever he needs help for
to survive.”

“Even if that hurts other people?” Sirius asked.

“As long as it follows my goal, yes,” she said. “You

must have realized at this point that I don’t care
what I’ll have to do to make sure Voldemort is dead
before he can kill my family, right? I’ll save them.
I’ll save as many people as I can, but I won’t dwell
on those who don’t want to be saved.”

“That means?” he asked.

“That means that if someone hesitates, I’ll follow

alone,” she explained.

Sirius smirked.

“Good thing you’re in Gryffindor this time around,

then, Anne. We don’t hesitate at all,” he joked.

Anne wasn’t so sure that was as good of a thing as

Sirius made it out to be.

Chapter 23: Chapter Twenty-

Two
Summary:
Anne is smart, but so is Orion
Black, maybe a bit more than
Anne had expected...

Notes:
Oh, the antecipated chapter is
here! Please, comment and tell
me what you all think about this
chapter. I took me a while to get
it to my satisfaction.

GRIMMAULD PLACE DINNER

July, the first – a new month, a new adventure.

How fitting, Anne thought as she stood in front of
the fireplace in the Visit Room in the Potter Manor,
readying herself mentally to go off have dinner with
the people that would want her dead, had they
known her true intentions.

Though she had her main sentences rehearsed and

memorized with amazingly charming smiles and
word-games, her knives and forks figured out and
her allies in clear order in her mind, Anne couldn’t
help but think as she waited for the clock to chime
seven o’clock that she would fail, much like her
ankles seemed to be failing to hold her weight on
those stupid high heels that made her legs long and
pretty. All of that was nervousness, she recognized
it, but it didn’t make it any better.

Anne wasn’t completely sure of who would be in

that dinner besides the main part of the family,
most likely just the Black Sisters (or the two
remaining ones, at least) and their parents; if she
was completely unlucky, Bellatrix’s and Narcisa’s
fiancées would be there as well.

“Don’t worry, dear,” Mia said, kissing the top of her

head. “You’re going to be alright. James and Sirius
went out to get some cake for you when you come
back to celebrate, remember that whenever things
are getting hard out there.”

She nodded.

“I’m going to be fine.”

Mia smiled, nodding at her.

“Go on, then,” she said. “Seven o’clock.”

Anne took a deep breath and walked into the

fireplace, the fire not burning her as she fixed her
back and cleaned her throat.

“Grimmauld Place, number 12!” she said, throwing

the floo powder.

The sight of the familiar green flames would’ve

made her uncomfortable, but all Anne could do as
she was swallowed away and thrown towards the
next fireplace was try to stand without falling down.

She found herself hunched on the fireplace of the

parlour of the Black Ancient House, getting out of
the small place to stand completely.

There was someone waiting for her. It was Regulus,

smiling gently at her in white blouse and black
trousers.

“You came!” he said, sounding almost surprised.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” she asked, trying to

smile back through her nervousness.

“Well, I certainly thought that you’d hesitate to

come,” he admitted. “I’m glad you’re here. Come
on. Everybody’s here already, they’re waiting for us
at the dining room.”

“Am I late?” she asked, worried.

“Not at all, they were early,” Regulus dismissed.

“I’m really sorry for getting so much attention
turned to you. It was never my intention.”

“Don’t worry, I know,” she said. They started

walking towards the dining room; the way was
familiar, but she didn’t say anything. “Anything I
should know about that situation we talked about?”
she raised her eyebrows at him in searching for
honesty.

Regulus stopped walking and took a deep breath,

nodding once.

“I have no way out this summer,” he said.

He didn’t need to explain anything to her, she knew

very well what he meant by that. The Dark Mark
would be on his arm either he liked it or not by the
end of the summer and he would go back to school
as a Death Eater.

“I thought you wouldn’t,” she mumbled. “You are

aware of your options, aren’t you?”

“Do I have options?” he scoffed. “I thought we’re

having this conversation because I didn’t have any
other option.”

“You do have options, I just think we both know

you won’t choose the safest one,” Anne said. “If
you want out of here, I can find a way to get you
out, but we both know you don’t want to leave.”

Se miró los zapatos y puso las manos en los

bolsillos, las mangas sueltas se juntaron alrededor
de sus brazos sobre la tela del bolsillo.

"Ana -"

Las puertas dobles del comedor se abrieron de

inmediato y Regulus lo miró alarmado, pero Anne
apenas hizo un movimiento mientras observaba a
la mujer en la puerta mirarla y observarla
lentamente; Discretamente, ella hizo lo mismo.

Walburga parecía más joven que el cuadro. Su

cabello todavía era completamente negro y los rizos
estaban un poco más domesticados ya que estaban
recogidos en nudos y giros confusos y complicados
y su piel todavía tenía muy pocas arrugas alrededor
de sus ojos, pero tenía una cicatriz que tomó a
Anne por sorpresa al principio. lado izquierdo de
sus labios, pero no pudo mirar allí por mucho
tiempo, porque los ojos azules eran tan fríos como
una piedra y la miraban fijamente.

Anne se inclinó, inclinó la cabeza y miró la alfombra

impecable debajo de sus talones.

"Lady Black", saludó.

"Madre", dijo Regulus, finalmente recuperando el

control de su voz. "Esta es Anne Sage, mi
compañera de escuela".

"Señorita Sage, encantado de conocerla", dijo

Walburga.

"Ídem", dijo Anne.

Walburga Black apartó la mirada de ella, finalmente

mientras Anne seguía mirando al suelo, aunque
esta vez de pie.

“Estabas tardando demasiado, Regulus, pensé que

tu compañero de escuela había llegado tarde”, dijo
la mujer.

“En absoluto, madre. Anne es muy puntual, sólo

nos detuvimos para charlar”, dijo Regulus,
ignorando la mirada intensa de su madre ya que
estaba muy acostumbrado. "Anne me estaba
contando una historia asombrosa sobre la vida con
los Potter".

"¿Oh?" Dijo Walburga, volviéndose hacia Anne y

levantando las cejas.

“Comentando lo tranquilo que es tener un huerto

cerca del Manor, donde yo crecí no teníamos uno”,
explicó rápidamente con una mentira. "Me gusta
más la naturaleza y la tranquilidad del Estado."

Walburga asintió, claramente no quería continuar la

conversación con ella, pero dio un paso atrás para
permitir que los dos adolescentes entraran.

Anne tuvo que admitir que Grimmauld Place en su

clímax de vida era ciertamente muy diferente de la
moribunda casa en la que había estado cuando
tenía quince años. Estaba impecablemente limpio y
completamente ordenado hasta el último detalle;
era luminosa y parecía y se sentía como una casa
real y no como un museo abandonado de traumas y
recuerdos. Quizás fueron las varias personas
sentadas en la mesa, riendo y hablando entre ellas.

La niña observó la mesa y reconoció a tantas

personas como pudo.

Orión. Walburga. Régulo. Narcisa; aquellos que

conoció de inmediato. Se tomó un momento para
reconocer a Lucius Malfoy sentado seriamente al
lado de su mujer, mirándola con ojos curiosos.
Bellatrix también fue fácil de reconocer una vez que
comenzó a soltar su fuerte y horrible risa, el
hombre a su lado era claramente Rodolphus
Lestrange, aunque su hermano no estaba a la vista.
La pareja mayor son probablemente los padres de
los primos de Regulus: Druella y Cygnus.

Hizo una profunda reverencia mientras entraba a la

habitación.

“Cálmese, señorita Sage”, dijo Orión con voz

relajada. “No deseamos una cena formal. Es sólo
una reunión y deseaba conocerte después de que
Regulus nos contara un poco sobre tu talento con
las pociones”, miró a su hijo, parado unos pasos
detrás de Anne. "Siéntala".

Regulus se apresuró a guiarla para que se sentara a

su lado, justo frente a Narcisa, quien le sonrió.

"Hola", murmuró Narcisa.

"Hola", saludó ella en un susurro.

Orión observó a los dos.

“¿Ustedes dos se conocieron?” preguntó.

“Oh, sí, tío”, dijo Narcisa. “Anne y yo hemos

hablado antes. Severus Snape vino a quejarse de
ella, diciendo que lo superaría en Pociones, así que
fui a hablar con ella, por supuesto.

"Oh, ¿y tú?" Preguntó Orión.

"No, Lord Black, no lo hice", dijo rápidamente Anne.

“Solo porque permaneció en la escuela solo un mes

y la suma de grados fue un poco diferente para
ella”, dijo Narcisa.

Estaba tratando de ayudar, Anne podía ver eso,

estaba tratando de asegurarse de que Anne no
fuera menospreciada, pero no tenía idea de lo
terrible que podía ser para el rojo la atención que
se estaba asegurando de que Anne captara. -niña
con cabeza. Anne necesitaba descansar un rato
después de terminar la cena.

Regulus intercambió una mirada con Anne, ambos

creyendo lo mismo.

"Anne Sage, ¿correcto?" -Preguntó Bellatrix.

Anne sintió que se le retorcía el estómago al

recordar los gritos de Bellatrix bajo su varita
después de la muerte de Sirius. Crucius , toda una
maldición. Anne sonrió, los gritos resonaban en su
mente mientras miraba el rostro disgustado del
superior.

“Sí”, respondió ella. "Hola, Bellatrix Black, un

placer".

Bellatrix la miró de arriba abajo.

"No he oído nada sobre el regreso de un Sage a

Inglaterra", dijo.

“No fue planeado”, fue todo lo que respondió Anne.

"Pero aquí estoy, y extrañé mi hogar, si soy
completamente honesto".

"¿No extrañamos todos nuestro verdadero hogar?"

Dijo Lucius suavemente. “¿Pasaste mucho tiempo
fuera? Puedo ver que tu patriotismo sobrevivió”.

“La mayor parte de mi vida estuve fuera, pero aquí

estoy en casa”, admitió.

La charla terminó cuando el elfo doméstico

chasqueó sus flacos dedos y toda la comida
preparada para la cena estuvo sobre la mesa. Anne
vio al elfo doméstico y sonrió un poco,
reconociendo a Kreacher mientras regresaba
discretamente a la cocina para dejar a la familia en
privacidad.

Entre una pequeña charla y un rápido recordatorio

de qué cuchillo usar, Anne logró servirse ella misma
y educadamente fingir que no estaba temblando en
lo más mínimo. Regulus apenas la miró mientras le
servía una copa de vino sin preguntarle si lo quería;
claramente lo necesitaba mientras le sonreía
gentilmente a su tío Cygnus, quien la estaba
mirando.

"Señor Black", dijo, en voz baja y mucho más

femenina de lo que Regulus estaba acostumbrado a
oírla usar. “Leí tu increíble investigación sobre la
reacción de las pociones para dormir cuando se
mezclan con cianuro, quedé asombrado. ¡Nunca
hubiera pensado que las pociones para dormir
pudieran actuar como antídoto! Qué mente tiene
usted, señor.

Cygnus le sonrió divertido. Todavía tenía dudas

sobre ella, pero podía ver que ella estaba más que
tratando de encajar; estaba tratando de conseguir
aliados en la mesa, lo cual fue inteligente de su
parte. Ya se había dado cuenta de que Walburga se
había vuelto contra ella y Cygnus no era lo
suficientemente ingenuo como para esperar que
Bellatrix fuera en realidad una aliada de un
mestizo, y si Bellatrix estaba contra ella, entonces
ciertamente su esposa haría lo mismo. mismo.

"Estoy completamente horrorizado de que esté

interesada en investigar, señorita Sage", dijo,
devolviéndole la sonrisa. "Me dijeron que fue un
golpe de suerte".

“¿No fue la cantidad de pociones que se

encontraron? Por prueba y suerte, me refiero”, dijo.

"¿Le gusta probar y cometer errores, señorita

Sage?" —bromeó Walburga, sonriéndole
falsamente.

Regulus held his breath, expecting a response from

Anne, but all that the girl did was smile, “I believe
making mistakes is part of human nature and, as
long as I can fix them, they’re not important
enough to take the reins in my life.”

Walburga’s jaw locked and Orion glared at her in

warning, clearly not wanting her to attack the girl,
but not even her husband could make her stop
once she had started.

Orion went back to watching Anne talk politely to

Cygnus and raised his eyebrows when Cygnus took
the wine bottle to serve the girl’s cup once more
after she took a few careful sips. The man looked
away, taking one look to see Lucius narrowed eyes
as he watched Narcisa jumping into the
conversation and giggle at something that Anne
joked about to understand that the girl knew where
she was playing. More than anything, his eyes
stopped on Regulus eating his food slowly, glancing
every now and again to Anne.

“Oh, Anne,” Cygnus said, using her first name and

making the girl smile at him, looking up at him
through her eyelashes, blinking a bit in her doe-
eyes. Orion almost laughed; oh, the girl knew how
to play his cousin. “Forgive me, but what House did
you get into in Hogwarts?”

“Oh, sir, why don’t you try to guess?” teased Anne,

raising her eyebrows with a smirk.

Orion’s eyes caught Regulus’ smirk.

“Ravenclaw?” Cygnus guessed.

Anne giggled and shook her head.

“Gryffindor,” Orion guessed. Anne looked at him

and smiled, nodding. “I should’ve seen it coming by
the dress. Which, by the way, I’ve been meaning to
say that you’re wearing a wonderful dress.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s a Ryan Wyane’s

creation, the new collection.”

Narcisa gasped. “The new collection?! I knew I

recognized the asymmetry from somewhere.
Wonderful designer!”

“And expensive,” Walburga added, eyes narrowing

as her smirk grew. She had found a weapon. “A
gift, I’d say. Who bought you this?”

“Me, ma’am. I have family money,” Anne quickly

answered. “Though I love getting gifts. I got an
amazing one a few days ago: a book I’ve been
wanting for a while, but when I managed to find it,
I had left my money in the dorms.”

Regulus lips tugged up.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he said.

She turned to him and smiled, trying not to laugh.

“I’ll send you my opinions once I’m done with the

book and I’ll be sure to send you something back,”
she said. “I’ll find a new copy of my favourite
book,” she glanced at Walburga, smile still on her
lips, “wizarding books, I promise, ma’am. I’m not
trying to be a bad influence to him.”

Walburga took a deep breath, making sure not to

let her anger burn through her skin and choke her
in front of the rest of the family.

Narcisa gave a warning look at Anne as if to tell her

not to tease.

“Anne, I’ve been talking to Lucius about the

wedding and everything,” Narcisa said. “And we
agreed on something.”

“Oh?” Anne said.

Everybody on the table turned to the couple, trying

to understand what was happening since they
barely ever talked about the wedding plans on
public, only with the women in the family, who
were actively trying to help them organize
everything.

“We would want your presence to our wedding,

Miss Sage,” said Lucius cordial as ever. “If that isn’t
a problem to you. A few friends of mine have
expressed interest in meeting Narcisa’s new…
interest. It’ll happen in August, 15th at Malfoy
Manor.”

Anne smiled, but Regulus managed to see how her

lips trembled for a moment. He tensed up. Was she
having a vision? Was she about to faint once more?

Regulus touched her back, much to everybody’s

surprise there.

“Anne?” he called.

She blinked.

The truth was that she had been thinking of a

reason to tell Narcisa that she could not go to her
wedding politely. She wasn’t sure she could
manage to get herself through a whole night inside
the Malfoy Manor where so many terrible things
had happened to her and her friends, after all she
had been tortured for hours on the drawing room.
But then a memory took over – Lucius already had
Tom Riddle’s Diary at that point, he had received it
at 1974, at his very last year of Hogwarts as his
initiation into the Inner Circle and greatest honour.
It would be one of her only chances to get it
without calling too much attention to herself.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“Another vision?” Regulus mumbled back.

“Vision?” Lucius asked. “What did you see?”

Anne looked up. She had to find an answer – a

good answer, a believable one.

“A child. A boy,” she answered. “It’ll be hard for

both of you, but… you’ll have a son,” she said, the
face of Draco Malfoy crying on the bathroom as
Anne tried to calm him down came to her mind.

Lucius’ last suspicion and dislike of the girl

disappeared as she said that they’d have a male
heir, the greatest honour to a pureblood family.
Narcisa’s eyes watered in genuine happiness; she
had always wanted to make her family proud and
have a boy to take care of everything once Lucius
was dead, though they didn’t love each other, a
wedding needed to have a good base and a child
could be it.

“Thank you,” Narcisa said. Druella touched her

daughter’s back, comforting her. “You are coming,
then?”

Anne smiled.

“Yes, of course. Thank you for the invitation,” but

still it didn’t sound sincere to Regulus.

The wine had taken a lot of Anne’s body as she

stood after dessert, thanking Walburga for the
invitation with a bow and saying her cordial
goodbyes to everybody, though Regulus held her
hand after she shook it for a second too long by the
way Orion Black had been watching her.

“I’ll accompany Miss Sage back home,” he

announced. “She came through the floo,” she
looked at him confused to why he would need to
accompany her back home. “Our floo has a small
problem, Miss Sage, there’s no way out of the
house after nine o’clock and our conversation has
been so entertaining that forgot to allow you out of
the house. I hope your family won’t be upset about
curfew.”

“I don’t have a curfew, my Lord, don’t worry,” she

said, smiling, though she knew he was lying.

He had not forgotten anything and the floo had no

problem at all. They always locked the floo after
eight-thirty because it was when Sirius managed to
run away, just after dinner while everybody was
drinking brandy and talking on the drawing room,
away from the parlour.

“Good girl,” Orion said.

Regulus took a step forward.

“I can take her home, Father,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s be a good idea, Regulus. Stay

with your cousins,” Orion said in a cold voice.

Anne nodded once at Regulus, almost as if she was

calming him down, announcing to his tense body
that she could take it. Anything Orion threw her
way; she could deal with it without as much as
blinking.

She was wrong, she found out soon enough.

Once they were out of the non-apparition zone,

Orion took her arm carefully and smiled before
taking his wand. The tugging was familiar and she
didn’t throw up, though she didn’t feel quite as
gracious as him once their feet touched the grass in
front of the manor and she stumbled to the side,
only not falling because Orion held her as he
chuckled.

“My, my,” he said.

“Not nearly as smooth as I hoped it’d go,” she said

back, chuckling as well.

“It happens,” dismissed Orion. “How old are you,

Miss Sage?”

“I’m sixteen, sir,” she answered.

“You’re very smart for someone who’s simply

sixteen, years ahead of your time, in my opinion,”
he said, letting of her and putting his hand behind
his back as he watched her step back to see his
face a bit better. “So I believe you will understand
a lot better than I first thought you would when I
saw you on the platform, talking to Regulus.”

And there it was, Anne though. She had been

expecting for the talk of ‘stay away from my son’ to
come.

“Yes, sir?” she said, making her best doe-eyes.

He smirked, but ignored her innocent expression.

“You understand how our family has kept our grace

and our power after so many generations, correct?
We keep ourselves pure to make sure our power
continues in our hands and not somebody else’s.
It’s a sacrifice a lot of us have to do before we learn
how to actually live,” he said. “With Regulus, it
won’t be any different.”

“So I guessed, sir.”

“Good. Then, you understand that whatever your

intentions are, I cannot guarantee you will get what
you want, correct? If you manage to get into his
arms and into his bed, you will not get into his
heart. You cannot,” he said, voice firm enough to
make Anne feel scared. “This is what you will
always be: the fun girl, the side-girl. He’ll have to
step away from you at some point and sacrifice
whatever childish feelings he might think he has for
you once the time is right for him to get married
and have children to continue the actual Black line,
and no bastards can exist.”

“Sir, Regulus and I have nothing of that sort of

nature going on,” she said.

“But it won’t take long before you do have

something like that going on,” he said. “I know my
son and I know girls like you, Miss Sage, I had girls
like you before in my arms and I know my son
won’t be different. Men will always be men, you can
change the regime and the time, but the lust and
interest never stops. Though you said you like
getting gifts, involving yourself with us will not get
you many.”

Anne felt like throwing up. She was sure she would
throw up – all over herself, all over the man
standing in front of her. ‘Men will always be men’, it
was like standing in front of Uncle Vernon all over
again as he laughed and watched her cry, sitting on
the toilet and taking her pictures as she tried not to
cry too loud.

“I don’t –” she started, but she stopped herself,

locking her jaw in hopes of keeping the bile inside
of her.

“You’re a half-blood, my dear, you’ll never be part

of the family,” he said.

“Forgive me if this sounds rude, sir,” she said a bit

too quick. “But I do not wish to be part of your
family. I’m rather satisfied with my own,” she
leaned towards him. “I have problems with them
enough, I do not wish to go off hunting for more in
someone else’s.”

The smirk disappeared from Orion’s face. He had

never heard someone out loud saying that his
family had problems, especially with that burning
look in their eyes. That girl was… weird, and he
wanted to know more.

“Smart,” he admitted. “Now, if you don’t want

problems involving us, you keep your legs closed.”

The whooshing sound of someone coming out of

the warded area made both of them look towards
the noise to see Sirius Black marching towards
them with a burning fire in his eyes that almost
matched Anne’s.

“What did you just say to a sixteen-year-old kid?”

he asked, voice loud. “What the hell did you just
say to her?!”

“Sirius,” she said, going towards him to try and

push him back into the wards.

“No. Anne, how dare he say those things to you!”

he said. “You’re underage! If he wants to talk as if
you were a whore, he’ll go and talk to his whore of
a wife.”

“SIRIUS!” she screamed, pushing him harder,

clearly not wanting him to get in trouble.

But Orion was much more controlled than

Walburga, because no screams came and no curses
were thrown.

Still, Anne was relieved when Euphemia came out

of the wards with James right behind her. James
ran to Anne, hugging her mumbling that he needed
to make sure she was alright when she was late to
come home. Sirius was held back by James when
he tried to walk to Orion, but Euphemia was faster.

“Lord Black,” she greeted coldly. “May I inquire

while you were using such terrible accusations
against my protegee?”

“Well, Lady Potter, I was just making sure she

knew her place,” he answered.

“Her place is where she wants to be,” Mia quickly

answered. “Something that I learned about Anne
here, Lord Black, which you should learn as well is
that she always gets what she wants, either you
support her or not. If I were you, I’d be on her
side, not against her; I’ve seen what happened to
the ones that go to the other side, and it wasn’t fun
at all.”

“Is that a threat?”

“An advice,” Mia said. “Now, goodnight and thank

you for bringing her home back.”

She did not wait for an answer, just turned around

and led the three teenagers into the wards again,
away from Orion, who stood there, unable to see
them, but knowing he was being watched on the
other side of the dome.

Orion apparated away.

Anne sighed in relief.

“What an arsehole!” Mia said.

“Mum!” James scolded.

“What? He was,” Mia said, rolling her eyes.

Sirius laughed, adrenaline falling slowly.

Anne sighed.

“I think I need that cake I was promised,” Anne

said. “Sugar would be nice right now, because I feel
like I’m going to faint.”

Chapter 24: Chapter Twenty-

Three
Summary:
The aftermath of the desastrous
dinner takes a tool on both
Regulus and Anne in very different
ways.

Notes:
Trigger warning: very solid
explanation on Anne's sexual
trauma during a conversation on
the second part of the chapter -
do be careful while reading this
chapter.
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

SHAME

Regulus felt the crippling shame burn his stomach

inside out as he almost started crying in his bed
after his father came to his room, warning him that
he had already shared a conversation with Anne
about her ‘place in his bed, but not in his heart’. He
wanted to simply die so he wouldn’t have to see
anyone ever again, but he had been quite happy
when Severus Snape came knocking on his door
with the excuse that they had agreed on training
some potions, which made his mother allow the
half-blood into her house once more.

The Black boy whimpered on his pillow once more

as Severus, sitting on the floor of his bedroom
using his very expensive potion ingredients to make
a new potion he had been training to show
Slughorn to allow him to be his apprentice.

“What happened?” Severus asked, finally tired of

his wordless complaints made of whimpers and
groans.

“I want to die,” Regulus screamed against his

pillow.

Severus nodded slowly. That was something he had

felt before several times in his life, but…

“Why?”

“Because my father has gone absolutely mad,” he

said, raising his face from the pillow and slipping to
the floor, sitting beside Severus. “Anne came here
to have dinner yesterday after my mother wanted
to meet her –”

“Wait? What?” Severus asked. “All you said you

needed her address to send her a book she wanted.
I was trying to help you flirt with the girl, not bring
her to meet your parents; that’s messed up!”

“Well, that was the plan until my mother made sure

I invited her,” Regulus said. “That’s not important
at the moment. The important part is that
everybody liked her – well, at least the men and
Narcisa – and then my father went to take her back
home, and I tried to get in between, but it was too
late.”

“What did he do?” Severus asked, rolling his eyes

at Regulus’ drama.

“He made sure to tell Anne that if she ever came to

my bed, she would never get any ring on her finger
because she wasn’t good enough to marry me,”
Regulus said. “I never even gone out with the girl
and my father already made sure she knew she
won’t ever even think of marrying me.”

Severus winced a bit.

“That sounds bad,” he admitted.

“Oh, thanks,” Regulus grumbled.

“Have you talked to her since yesterday?”

Regulus’s eyes widened to him, shaking his head.

“Have you gone absolutely barking mad as well,

mate? We both know she’ll never talk to me again!”
Regulus answered. “I can’t write her. She must
absolutely hate me right now. I can’t even think of
looking at her ever again, I’d rather rip my eyes
out.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

But that was not something that the Blacks seemed

to be able to do. They had a flare for the dramatic
in their blood, Severus was sure of all that; he had
grown close to Regulus and he had hated Sirius
with the same intensity.

“Severus, I really don’t want to see anyone ever

again,” Regulus said.

“Sage is a smart girl, she surely understands you

have nothing to do with it,” Severus said. “I can
ask, if you want me to?”

Regulus looked up at him alarmed.

“Ask her? You talk to her?” he asked.

“Well, no, but I need to send her word about a

meeting she requested with Nott for something,” he
said. “I can just ask her when I write if something
happened or if she’s not feeling alright. I’ll be
discreet.”

Regulus nodded, eager. Severus knew how to be

discreet, perhaps sometimes too discreet that not
everybody could see understand the real question
he had been meaning to ask. Still, he was standing
beside Severus and reading over his shoulder as he
wrote a short, but direct letter to Anne.

Anne Sage,

I’ve been told to pass the date Nott would most

likely be free to meet you and help you get
whatever you need, which is the fifth of this very
month at 10 o’clock in the morning on the pub The
White Wyvern in Knockturn Alley. However, I can
write back to him if you don’t feel up to it after
such a tiring night that I heard you had.

Best regards,

Severus Snape.

Severus then turned to Regulus.

“Good enough?” he asked.

“Good enough,” he agreed, nodding to his friend,

though he still felt his cheeks burning in shame.

Despertarse tocando la ventana ciertamente no

había sido la forma en que Anne había querido
despertarse después de pasar gran parte de la
noche acostada en la cama, avergonzada y
tratando de tragarse otro ataque de pánico por la
forma en que Orion Black había hecho surgir sus
recuerdos. y asfixiarla en la oscuridad, pero se
levantó de cualquier manera para ver al pequeño
búho marrón mirándola.

Abrió la ventana y le dio algo de comida a la

lechuza antes de tomar la carta del animal, quien
no se fue volando, solo la miró fijamente esperando
que respondiera a su dueño lo antes posible.

Confundida por la urgencia, leyó la carta y se rió

exasperada.

Por supuesto, Severus Snape ya se había enterado

de su vergonzoso encuentro con Orion Black, qué
maravilloso. Aún así, sonrió para sí misma mientras
tomaba un pergamino para responderle, sabiendo
que si él le había preguntado al respecto,
significaba que se había estado preocupando por su
reacción ante todo. Era amable de su parte, que
era más de lo que podía decir sobre muchas de las
cosas que el adulto Severus había hecho por ella.

La respuesta no se hizo esperar: ella estaba bien, el

quinto estaba bien y el bochornoso encuentro se
iba olvidando poco a poco. Ató la pata de la
pequeña lechuza y la soltó, pero no esperó
respuesta.

“Ya sabes”, dijo mientras la lechuza comenzaba a

prepararse para volar. "Tu dueño es lindo cuando
quiere serlo".

La lechuza movió la cabeza, pero no emitió ningún

sonido antes de alejarse volando y dejando a Anne
sola.

Ya despierta a las nueve de la mañana, fue al baño

y se lavó los dientes, pero no se cepilló el cabello.
Salió de su habitación todavía en pijama y caminó
hacia la habitación de James, tocando la puerta
ligeramente, pero cuando no recibió respuesta,
simplemente suspiró y caminó hacia Sirius, tocando
allí también.

"Adelante", dijo la voz apagada.

Anne abrió la puerta y sonrió.

"Buenos días", dijo.

"Buenos días", refunfuñó en respuesta desde

debajo de las sábanas. "¿Ya almorzaste?"

"No", dijo ella. “Son las nueve y pico. Sólo vine aquí
porque no puedo volver a dormir y quiero
compañía. ¿Puedo pasar el rato aquí?

Sirius la miró de arriba abajo antes de suspirar y

deslizarse hacia un lado de la cama, dejándole algo
de espacio en su cama. Ella sonrió, sabiendo su
respuesta. Anne cerró la puerta detrás de ella
ahora que estaba dentro de la habitación y se
deslizó entre las sábanas, acostándose junto al
somnoliento Sirius mientras él suspiraba molesto
cuando sus pies fríos tocaron su pierna.

"¡Estás helado!" el se quejó.

"Y estás caliente", respondió ella, acercándose a él.

“¿Eso es algo canino? Remus siempre es cálido
también. Nunca pude."

"No, simplemente tenemos una circulación

sanguínea normal, mientras que creo que no hay
sangre en los pies", dijo. "Merlín, niña, ¿quieres
unos calcetines?" Ella se rió entre dientes,
reclinando su cabeza sobre su pecho una vez que él
la acercó para calentarla. "Oye, yo... lamento lo
que hizo Orión".

"No es tu culpa", dijo.

“Still, I should’ve done something about it and told

him you had a boyfriend or something,” he sighed.
“I know you hate needing protection and all,
especially coming from a man, and I shouldn’t have
jumped into it without your permission, you can
defend yourself. But… Anne, you looked pale like
Death, I thought you were about to throw up or
faint, or both if I was unlucky enough.”

“I’m fine now.”

“But you weren’t at the time,” he said. “I should’ve

done something. I don’t know what he said to make
you like that –”

She took a deep breath, pulling away from him.

Sirius had always been someone she trusted and

now that he was younger that was something that
didn’t change. He was impulsive and all, but he was
loyal to a fault and that was something that Anne
could count on.

“Sirius,” she started. “If I tell you something, this

cannot leave this room.”

“If it’s important –”

“It’s not important to the story or to the future, it

was just… something that happened and that I
can’t change,” she explained. “Something that, in
the future, I told you before. You just didn’t get
your revenge because your life would’ve been in
danger if you tried anything at the time.”

“Is that about your uncle?” he asked, voice so low

that she almost didn’t hear. “The one you said that
beat you and did other things that you could
survive.”

“Yeah,” she answered, nodding. “I… When I was

fourteen or fifteen, I looked less like a child and
more like a woman and he… thought it was a good
idea to take pictures of me.” Sirius watched, not
seeing the problem yet. “He’d make me take my
clothes off and –” she swallowed. “One day, taking
pictures was not enough and he decided touching
was good as well.”

“Did he –?” he stopped, just looking at her, looking

greenish.

“He didn’t. I left home soon after, but I think that if

I stayed for longer, soon enough touching wouldn’t
be the only thing he would want to do,” she
explained. “It’s hard for me to just… be comfortable
with this type of thing or conversation, so when
Orion implied that I was to be a bed-warmer, I just
couldn’t breathe. I usually can take it and even joke
around, but I guess it was the idea of being alone
with such an older man in the dark, talking about
those things and not having the tongue to answer
as I usually do.”

Sirius went silent.

He knew how it felt to be sexualized, he had been

sure to ignore his parents, but they had tried their
best to make him see women as horses – which
was better to give children, which one of them
would open their legs for him. At first, James and
him had several rows about it because Sirius just
couldn’t help himself but to talk shit about women
and James would cut him off and tell him that if he
ever said something like that again, they wouldn’t
be friends anymore. Now he saw it was just
another response to his own trauma.

Though Anne’s response was different from his, it

didn’t make it any less valid.

“I see,” was his answer. “Did you ever do anything

after it all?”

Anne thought for a moment.

“Do kisses count?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then, yes,” she said.

“But never more than that.”

“Once, but,” she shrugged. He looked at her and

raised his eyebrows.

"¿Qué significa 'esto'", se encogió de hombros, "?"

“Significa que antes me acosté con un chico, pero

realmente no lo disfruté”, explicó. "Era incómodo y
sólo quería ir a casa, acostarme en mi propia cama
y decirle a Ginny que se fuera a la mierda después
de que ella me convenciera de darle una
oportunidad".

“¿Ginny? ¿La novia de tu hermano? Preguntó Sirius,

tratando de no reírse.

Anne se rió con él, haciendo que Sirius resoplara.

"Sí", admitió. "¿Yo se, verdad? Extraño."

"¿Quién fue? Ahora tengo curiosidad”, dijo,

volviéndose completamente hacia ella y poniéndose
la mano bajo la barbilla para levantarse. “Dame un
nombre y una descripción, cariño, y quiero saber
qué salió mal. Oh espera. ¿Esto te hace sentir
incómodo? Podemos dejar de hablar de eso”.

Ella se rió y sacudió la cabeza.

“Está bien, Sirius. Si me sintiera incómodo, diría. Y

fue más la forma en que Orión me habló que lo que
me dijo. Normalmente trato de evitar hablar de
eso, pero lo haces sonar divertido y todo eso; si
surge algo y lo hace raro, te lo diré, no te
preocupes”, dijo. "Ahora, su nombre no es
importante, lo que sí necesitas saber es que él era
terrible en eso y yo acababa de cumplir dieciséis
años".

"Oh, vamos, dame un nombre", dijo, haciendo

pucheros.

Ella se rió de nuevo, escondiendo su rostro

sonrojado en su pecho. “Su nombre era Dean
Thomas, un mestizo de la clase de mi hermano.
Muy buen chico, muy estilo Gryffindor, aunque no
es realmente mi tipo”, dijo. “Él era gay y realmente
no lo había admitido ante sí mismo, así que yo era
su experimento, al igual que él era el mío. Aunque
después estuvo genial; fue como si nada hubiera
pasado. Terminó encontrando un gran novio en su
mejor amigo. Eran agradables juntos”. Levantó las
cejas hacia Sirius.

"¿Estás tratando de decirme algo?" preguntó,

entrecerrando los ojos.

“Si el zapato te queda bien, úsalo”, murmuró.

"¿Se trata de Remus?"

"¿Quién dijo algo sobre Remus?" preguntó, riendo.

"Como dije antes, si el zapato te queda bien, úsalo,
Sirius".

Notas:
Estaré fuera de casa por un par de
días, eso significa que mis
capítulos tardarán un poco más en
publicarse, así que tengan
paciencia y comenten por favor.
Estaré en casa el lunes.

Capítulo 25 : Capítulo
veinticinco
Resumen:
El lado político de la historia ha
vuelto, al igual que Theodore Nott.

Notas:
Volvamos a la trama política,
amem. Estaba empezando a
preocuparme un poco de que me
dejaran atrás si me centraba sólo
en el lado romántico de esta
historia. Lo prometo, el amor
romántico está creciendo de
manera constante aquí, pero
respire hondo porque este proceso
de combustión lenta es muy lento.

CALLEJÓN DE KNOCKTURN

Anne was a great liar, but Euphemia was much

better than her, so Anne truly believed that she
believed her when told her that she was going out
with some friends in Diagon Alley until Monty left to
go to work, James allowed himself to sleep longer
and Sirius didn’t get back home after a date with a
boy. That was when Euphemia stopped in front of
Anne before she could get the floo.

“Where are you really going?” Mia asked.

Anne looked up at her, heart skipping a beat in

surprise.

“To Diagon Alley,” she answered.

“Oh, please,” Mia said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t lie to

me. Where are you really going?”

“I’m going to Knockturn Alley,” she admitted. “I’m

going to meet Nott from my class, he’s able to get
me some things from the ‘dark side’. It’ll deal with
my problems without me having to put my life in
danger.”

Thought Mia wasn’t completely sure of Anne meant

by that, but she nodded, surely happy that Anne
wouldn’t be throwing herself on harm’s way.

“Black Market?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” she agreed.

“Alright,” Mia sighed. “Those are really expensive

things, like, really expensive. And they like being
paid straight away. Do you need money for that
type of thing?”

“How expensive normally?” Anne asked, suddenly

feeling a bit less confidant.

She had thought, yes, that Nott would like to be

paid straight away, especially for something as
illegal and hard to come by as Balisk’s teeth and
information as ancient as Fyendfire’s control and
anti-charm.

“Perhaps a bit too expensive, if you had not

thought of it already,” said Mia. “Do you need me
to go to Gringotts for you?”

“Not really,” she said, smiling a bit. “I have an idea,

don’t worry about it, Mia.”

The way her eyes glinted and her smile became a

smirk mid-sentence made Mia not want to ask
about her idea at all. If she was completely honest,
sometimes Anne managed to scare her a bit with
those thoughts she usually kept to herself.

“Alright, then, dear,” Mia said, eyeing her

suspiciously. “How long are you going to take?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “Nott is not very

known for his punctuality, so I might have to spend
lunch there, waiting for him. If anything happens
and it takes more time than expected, I’ll send you
word, don’t worry.”

“Okay. Be careful,” she said, nodding and giving

her the small pot full of floo powder. “Be back
before dinner.”

She smiled at her grandmother and nodded, taking

a step into the fireplace and filling her lungs with
air with the awful name of the pub.

“The White Wyvern!”

The green flames swallowed her whole once more,

spinning her away from home and towards that
god-forgotten pub that smelled like urine most of
the time and where she was the only woman. She
stepped out of the fireplace with a glare and frown
in place as she warned the man behind the counter
that she was waiting for someone to come and talk
to her – talk business, she had specified as she sat
on the table furthest away from the fireplace and
closest to the door, but away from the window.

Anne couldn’t be seen or recognized.

Her hair was pulled back in a very low ponytail tied

up with her own hair pulled from the side of her
head. She had wizarding black robes with golden
details on her shoulders and end sems over her
muggle clothes, so she could pass unnoticed in
Knockturn Alley, but easily take it off to go into
Muggle streets if actually needed. She didn’t seem
to be calling too much attention for any other
reason than for being a woman in a place filled with
men.

The pub was small and it smelled like they used the
bloody beers to wash the floor and clean the tables;
everything in that place seemed to be stinking
beer. To get in the mood, she made a signal,
throwing a coin to the man and getting a pint in
return.

Anne sighed and took a sip, trying not to frown too

much. She didn’t really like beer, but she was
bored and could totally use the comfort of the
familiar bitter taste of pints in a dark pub
somewhere she shouldn’t be.

“You know,” said a voice. She looked up with the

coldest look she could. “Someone as young as you
shouldn’t be drinking so early in the morning.”

The man was almost as old as Monty, but he smiled

in the same way Sirius did when he was flirting.

“You know,” she answered, a false grin on her lips,

“someone as old as you shouldn’t talk to young
girls without being invited to. It’s creepy.”

He opened his mouth to say something once more,

ready to snap at her for the rudeness, but someone
touched his shoulder.

Theodore Nott wasn’t someone Anne really wanted

to think of as her knight in shining armour, but he
certainly looked the part with his deep-set eyes
that looked lazy and bored, the blue glaring at the
man with such ice that he seemed to shiver. The
honey-blond hair was pushed back, but his curls
were starting to appear once more. He was wearing
white shirt and black trousers, but his wizarding
lilac-coloured robes were open to show them off as
if he had dressed himself half-awake.

“I’m sorry, Miss Sage, I just got back home from

my friend’s birthday party,” he said, not even
looking at her, still glaring at the man. “I hope
Mister Ellis has not bothered you while you waited.”

‘Mister Ellis’ surely hoped he hadn’t by the way he

stared at Anne with pleading eyes, begging for a
mercy he knew he would not find in Nott.

“He has been bothering me,” she answered. “But I

can deal with him myself after we’re done here.”

Nott finally looked at her, lips tugging in a smile.

“Of course, Miss,” he said, cordial. “Now, Mister

Ellis, why don’t you go and get me a pint as well? A
pretty young lady such as Anne Sage shouldn’t
drink alone, I’m sure, so I’ll accompany her during
our deal. Put it on my father’s tab.”

Oh, so that was why Mister Ellis was shaking, not

because of Theodore Nott, but because of Anthony
Nott; smart man, at least. Even Anne was a bit
scared of Anthony Nott and his horrible deep eyes
dragging memories from the back of one’s mind to
the surface.

Nott sat in front of her on the booth, watching as

Mister Ellis got a pint and took it back to the table
before walking away as fast as he could back to the
counter, where a few men were laughing at him as
if they had warned him not to go talk to Anne.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” he answered, looking back at her.

“I thought you’d be one to go for light beers, not
Guinness.”

“I like dark beers,” she lied. “Now, I’m sure you are
interested in why I required an audience with you.”

He nodded once, but raised his finger.

“Hold on there, one moment,” he said, leaning to

his bag and taking three parchment pieces. “We
need to blood-sign –”

“Blood sign?” she asked, taken aback.

“I know, it sounds horrible, but it’s for our own

safety, I assure, Miss Sage,” he said, putting the
pages on the table and sliding them towards her.
“In this one we agree not to discuss our business
talk to anyone that might put the other in danger,
such as the aurors or parents; they are never a
really great mixture in business,” he showed the
second one. “This one is to make sure we both
agree that this meeting is two-sided and not one of
us calling the other for a trap. And this last one is
to make sure these papers are only seen by us – as
soon as the three of them are signed, only us will
be able to read it.”

“Because it’s our blood,” she completed.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Amazingly smart, Mister Nott,” she said.

He smiled at her.

“How wonderfully kind of you, Miss Sage. Now,

shall we begin?” he took a quill from inside his bag.
“This is a blood quill changed to not leave a scar. I
hope you don’t mind the burning.”

“Not at all,” she said, not wanting to tell him that

he had used that quill before in her life and gotten
rid of the scar with dark magic a few weeks before
getting to the past. “You sign first, of course.”

He smirked, but said, “of course,” as if he had been

expecting her to say that.

He signed the three parts of the parchment before

giving the quill to Anne, who quickly scratched her
name and signature to the three parts of the
parchment in a hurry to get on with the
conversation already.

By the time she was done, her hands were shaking

a bit for the pain, but she seemed alright in
general.

“So,” he started. “Why was I called here under the

influence of Severus Snape?”

“Not all that surprising, I heard that you are the

one I should look for if I wanted something that I
wouldn’t be able to find easily in other parts of the
town. Besides, you’re the only one I trust to sell me
actual artifacts, and not shallow imitations,” she
responded.

“Smart girl,” he complimented. “Though, I must ask

where your heard it from. I just started my side
business this year.”

“Well, Hogwarts loved gossip,” she dismissed,

smiling at him in hopes he wouldn’t ask for a name.
He made a movement with his hand as if to tell her
to continue talking. “Well, I wanted three things in
general.”

“Three expensive things, I’d guess by your face,”

he commented.

"Lo más probable es que no", estuvo de acuerdo.

"Estoy seguro de que esto no saldrá de esta mesa y
mis motivos no serán cuestionados".

“Para nada, señorita. No es asunto mío”, dijo. "Lo

único que quiero es el dinero y tu satisfacción como
cliente".

Ella asintió, bastante aliviada. Habían firmado los

papeles, diciendo que ella no quería que salir fuera
suficiente para impedirle decirle algo a nadie.

“Ahora comenzaré con lo más fácil de mi lista:

necesito un diente de Basilik, con veneno y todo”,
dijo.

Las cejas de Nott se alzaron en absoluta sorpresa,

los labios se movieron entre sonreír y moverse sin
emitir sonido por un momento.

"Si esto es lo más fácil de su lista, señorita Sage,

me temo que no estoy tan seguro de poder
conseguir lo que desea", confesó.

"No te preocupes", dijo. “Esto es lo más importante

para mí; Las siguientes dos cosas son más bien un
segundo plan si algo sale mal con el primero. Lo
que necesito es una manera de controlar Fyndfire y
un hechizo para extinguirlo cuando termine de
usarlo”, explicó. "Lo sé, es difícil conseguir
información ya que el hechizo es muy antiguo, pero
pensé que tal vez conozcas a alguien que lo sepa".

"Está bien", suspiró.

Tenía un pequeño cuaderno en la mano, su pluma

se movía rápidamente mientras escribía con su
sangre algunas anotaciones que Anne no podía ver
desde donde estaba sentada.

"Me imagino que será caro".

“Mucho”, admitió. “Un diente de Basilik en cualquier

lugar de esta calle cuesta, al menos, 40.000, pero
voy a estar un poco más relajado contigo ya que
me gusta ver la cara molesta de Severus y las
risitas de Regulus son divertidas. Diré 30.532
galeones”.

Un solo diente – 30,532; Ahora, eso era mucho

más de lo que había imaginado, pero logró
mantener su expresión en una de simple
concentración, no de sorpresa e incredulidad. La
última vez, el diente había sido pagado con la
sangre de su hermano, esta vez se estaba pagando
con algo mucho más divertido.

"Está bien", dijo ella.

“La información va a ser un poco más difícil para

asegurarte de que sepas una cantidad exacta,
pero…” vaciló. “Diré 10.000 y 10.600”.

"¿Y ese es el mejor precio que puedes ofrecerme?"

ella preguntó.

Nott suspiró, claramente fingiendo que le

importaba, pero al menos lo fingió.

“Lo es”, dijo.

En otro momento, Anne se habría reído de su falsa

compasión, pero en ese momento simplemente
tomó su pinta y tomó su último sorbo, escondiendo
su sonrisa dentro de su taza mientras fingía pensar.
No le importaba cuánto iba a ser, si era
completamente honesta, después de todo, no iba a
ser ella quien pagara por ello.

Todavía sonriendo, le quitó el cuaderno y la pluma,

ignorando la quema mientras escribía el número de
cuenta.

“En esta cuenta encontrarás el dinero. Envía una

carta y te enviarán el dinero”, dijo.

“¿De quién es esta cuenta?” preguntó,

reconociendo claramente el número, pero sin estar
seguro de dónde. "¡Esperar! Es esto -"

“¿La de Dumbledore? Sí”, dijo. "Tengo permiso, no

te preocupes".

No lo hizo, pero lo conseguiría muy pronto.

"No soy. Una vez más, no es asunto mío”, dijo,

pero sonreía un poco. "Eres muy valiente".

“I’m a Gryffindor,” she grumbled, grabbing his pint

and taking the last sip from it as well. “I’ll see you
around then, Mister Nott. I have several things to
do right now, and thank you very much for meeting
with me here.”

“You’ll get your products around the 10th,” he said

as she walked out of the pub and towards the stairs
to go to the streets of Knockturn Alley. “Write me if
you need anything else, Miss Sage.”

“Of course, Nott!”

She didn’t plan on writing him again, but she could

feel his eyes on her back as she walked out.

Anne didn’t look back at she held her hands in front

of her body as if she was just another pureblood
lady walking by after some shopping, eyes down to
the ground and head down as well, trying not to let
herself get too much attention.

She held her breath when someone brushed

against her, but walked by without a problem as
she followed them with her eyes, still suspicious of
the way the man walked by her a bit too slowly.
She sighed in relief when she noticed the man was
walking slowly because he was old, not because he
was a pervert trying to feel her a bit better.

Too early for relief.

“Anne Sage?” someone said right in front of her.

She looked up to find Lucius Malfoy standing with

his hands behind his body and surprised face
looking down at her. He was wearing the
comfortable and expensive satin wizarding robes in
the richest burgundy she had ever seen. She
blinked at him, trying to find her tongue to answer
him something that wasn’t silly, but of no luck.

“Lucius Malfoy, sir, nice to see you again,” was

what she managed to say.

He looked at her in suspicion for a moment before

looking around to see if there was someone else
that he knew around, but his eyes didn’t stop on
anyone as he put his hand on Anne’s shoulder and
led her out the way.

“Is everything alright? A girl as young as you

shouldn’t walk these streets alone,” he said,
sounding more worried than he really was.

Lucius didn’t care, she was pretty sure. Lucius

wasn’t worried for a half-blood walking around in
Knockturn Alley, he was worried for the reason she
was there – it was no secret Anne was involved
with quite a few people on the other side of the
war; Dumbledore, especially, was a force to be
reckoned with, especially for people like Malfoy.

“I’m here on business and on my way out, Mister

Malfoy, don’t you worry about me, sir,” she said,
voice overly sweet.

He knew she knew he didn’t care by the way his

eyes sparkled at her, but he smiled at her anyways.

“Business went well, I hope,” he said kindly.

“But of course, sir,” she answered. “I can make

some mistakes, but my businesses are treated very
carefully.”

“Good to know someone in Gryffindor has good

morals in those parts,” he complimented.

“This has nothing to do with Houses, sir, just plain

common sense,” she said. “Though, I suppose
some of housemates might have some trouble in
finding their own common sense,” she smirked at
him.”

He smiled back at her, looking around him once

more.

“Well, Miss Sage, I’m not alone today, Regulus is

with me and we also came here for business,” he
said. “Mine are finished just now while his is
supposed to take a few more minutes. We are
supposed to meet at Virginia Jefferson’s.”

“Forgive me sir, but I don’t think I know that

name,” she said. “Miss Virginia Jeff –”

Lucius’ chuckle took her by surprise as he tried to

muffle it with his hand, moving his cane to the
other hand to cover his mouth with his left hand.

“Forgive me, miss, I don’t wish to laugh at you, I

know you’re new in England,” he said. He cleaned
his throat and then came back to himself. “It’s not
someone’s house, it’s a restaurant by the end of
Knockturn Alley, near muggle London. I’m trying to
invite you to come take lunch with us… unless you
have somewhere else to be, of course? I’m sure I
can fill your time with silly talks of my wedding.”

She couldn’t blow someone like Lucius off easily. He

was interested in her by the way he had watched
her every movement on dinner; he saw something
he wanted in her and she certainly needed to find
out what he needed from her to get him on her side
if she could as soon as possible, perhaps even
before the wedding. Still, the idea of having lunch
with him and sit down, waiting for Regulus to come
to the table was certainly something that made her
anxious.

The answer seemed clear.

“Of course, sir, it would be an honour,” she said.

Lucius’ grin made her regret it, but she just

accepted his arm once he offered it to her to
accompany her down the street.

Beside Lucius Malfoy, she was untouchable to the

people around her in the alley, but all eyes were on
her at that moment, and she had to keep her chin
raised high and pretend there were no fears behind
her eyes.

The restaurant was still inside the Knockturn Alley,

but one of its walls with windows had the view to
Muggle London, though the muggles could see
nothing but very old and disgusting looking pub
that not even the most avid of alcoholics would
dare go in. But inside, for wizards, the beautiful
marble on the floor and the wonderful chandeliers
were completely mesmerizing.

Lucius seemed to like to watch Anne looking up,

watching the flame of the candles trembling as the
wax would float around it, not falling to the spotless
floor.

“You never came here?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I don’t get out much of the house.”

“Oh, yes, it was said you are living at the Potter

Manor,” he said, sounding genuinely curious. “How
did that come to be?”

“With my family being intertwined, Dumbledore

thought it would be safer to be with them than
staying with him,” she smiled at the lie. “I suppose
I’m rather happy with it, the idea of living alone
with someone so eccentric as him certainly worries
me.”

“Not a fan?” he teased.

Anne just looked at him and smiled, not answering.

He would get the answer he wanted from her
silence, and that was certainly something that
would get him a bit more open to her, especially
now that she could feel him trying to get into her
mind, but it was closed off and his eyes went
confused before curiosity came back.

“Well, Mister Malfoy, as we wait for Regulus, why

don’t you entertain me with some ideas Narcisa
seem to want to use in the wedding? Perhaps I
might help you here or there. I helped with my
brother’s wedding.”

“Brother?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I had an older brother,” she half-

heartedly explained. “And I planned with wedding
with his mother-in-law’s help.”

The way her eyes went foggy for a second made

Lucius smirk fall, it was not the look he expected
from someone so young or someone so closed off
and cordial during a dinner with the Black, those
eyes were of old queens and wise kings. Whatever
Anne knew, whatever she had seen, he doubted he
would want to see the same.

“Well, she has been wanting to do the ceremony

outside,” he said. “We have a very old oak tree
near the entrance of the house and she thinks
marrying in front of it might grow her chances of
having a child – but you said she’ll have a boy,
therefore I’m not worried, Miss Sage. The party,
however, will be done inside.”

“Good idea,” she said, perhaps too fast. He looked

at her, eyebrows raising. “I have a feeling it’ll rain,”
she lied.

Lucius raised his eyebrows even more to her, but

didn’t say anything about the odd look in her face,
because Regulus Black walked into the restaurant
still reading the parchment in his hands with
attention.

“Regulus!” Lucius called out, voice controlled as he

raised his hand.

Regulus looked up, finding Lucius out in the tables

rather quickly, but hesitated on his next step as he
saw the girl sitting in front of his friend. He walked
to them and Anne got up, greeting him with a
smile.

“Hi!” he said, chuckling, a bit breathless. “What are

you doing here?” he asked.

“Oh, I met Mister Malfoy outside and he invited me

to join you for lunch, of course, only if you don’t
mind my presence,” she said, still smiling at him.

“No,” he said, “of course, I don’t. Do sit down.”

Anne sat back down and Regulus sat beside her

with a look of curiosity to Lucius, as if asking why
he had asked Anne to join them, but still Lucius
only shrugged as if saying it had been done in a
whim.

“We should order now,” Lucius said, looking around

for a garçon. He raised his hand once he saw the
young man walking out of the kitchen. “Here we
go.”

As Lucius talked to the waiter, telling him what they

all would want, Anne glanced at Regulus, feeling
herself being watched by him. Regulus had flushed
cheeks and looked away as soon as her eyes met
his.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

Anne raised her eyebrows.

“For what?”

“For my father’s very indiscreet ‘warning’,” he said.

“I didn’t know he would do that; I didn’t think
they’d assume I was interested in your like that. I
had expected questions, of course, but never
something like a talking.”

“Is alright, Regulus, is not your fault,” she

dismissed, shaking her head.

“Still,” he insisted. “I was so embarrassed that I

couldn’t even think straight when my father told me
he had already talked to you. And Narcisa didn’t
help our case much by inviting you to the
wedding.”

“Regulus, I said yes because I want to go,” she

said.

“Where?” Lucius asked, finally dismissing the young

waited. Regulus shook his head, quickly dismissing
the conversation. “Excuse me for a second, I need
to go to the toilet.”

Lucius got up, fixing his robes before walking away

from the table with long steps that made a few
people watch him walking. His confidence was
intoxicating, that much Anne had to admit, even if
just to herself.

“I know you don’t want to go,” Regulus said. “You

looked so uncomfortable. You don’t need to go just
to make Narcisa happy, she’ll understand that you
don’t feel comfortable and all that.”

She hesitated.

The table was far away from the other tables and
they were sitting side by side. The conversation
was private, she was sure.

“Lucius has something I want,” she explained in a

low voice. “And the wedding might be my only shot
to get it without being suspicious. I need it to
defeat Voldemort, and that’s why I’m here as well.”

“To talk to Lucius?” he asked. “He won’t walk away

from this. He’s excited to serve the Dark Lord, I
tried talking to him already and he dismissed me
without a second glance. He won’t listen to you,
Anne.”

“No,” she said, smiling at him, “but thanks for the

warning anyways. I was here to talk to Theodore
Nott from our year, I asked of him a Basilik’s tooth
to try and get this all over with. You know what I’m
talking about?”

He didn’t seem to know at first, as he thought of

anything for what Basilik’s teeth could be used, but
nothing came to mind for the moment. Until her
eyebrows raised, urging him to think – an old book
on the corner of his family’s library made its way to
his mind, suffocating him with the knowledge that
Voldemort was using Dark Magic to deal with his
mortality and take it out of the way.

“Lucius has it?”

“One of them,” she answered.

His heart skipped a beat.

“How many?”

“By what I know, five,” she answered.

Five pieces of that man’s soul were open to the

world and nobody had any idea of how dangerous
they can be.

“Theodore might not get the teeth,” he said,

worried. “Basiliks are hard to find and even harder
to get something from. Do you have a second
option in case it doesn’t work? You need one.”

“I do, but it’s even more dangerous.”

“What?”

"Fyendfire", murmuró.

Lucius se acercó a la mesa, sentándose y

sonriéndoles a los dos.

"Asi que el dijo. “¿De qué estamos hablando

todos?”

Capítulo 26 : Capítulo
veinticinco
Resumen:
Un pequeño intercambio de cartas
entre amigos con un objetivo
común.

AYUDA

Querida Anne Sage,

Lamento mucho informarle que no he podido

localizar ni conseguirle un diente de Basilik, el único
del que logré oír hablar se encuentra actualmente
en Rumania y bajo la muy cuidadosa vigilancia de
sus agentes del orden. Intenté encontrar una
manera de salir de la situación, pero no encontré
nada.

Sin embargo, he podido localizar los dos hechizos

que me pediste que encontrara. Como sabes,
Fyendfire es un hechizo muy difícil de dominar,
pero el otro hechizo es mucho peor. El
encantamiento Fyendfire es 'infinitum infeernum',
'u' larga; Sin embargo, el movimiento de la varita
no es difícil, simplemente mantén la varita en alto,
pero es posible que tengas problemas para realizar
el hechizo, se necesita una gran cantidad de poder
y una gran cantidad de ganas de quemar el mundo.
El Anti-Charm es aún más duro, 'extinguas ignem',
y el movimiento de la varita es levantarlo en el aire
y luego tirarlo hacia la derecha de un solo
movimiento, muy rápido, pero sé firme con él.
Espero que eso te ayude.

Como disculpa por no haber recibido el producto

que te prometí, te devuelvo el 30532 con el veneno
de Basilik con la esperanza de que pueda ser
suficiente para ti de alguna manera; Es gratis, no
se preocupe, señorita Sage.

Con mis mejores deseos y esperando que vuelva a

hacer negocios conmigo,

Theodore Nott.

La decepción hizo que a Anne se le volviera pesado

el estómago y simplemente no podía desayunar
mientras leía el libro, tratando de no llorar en la
mesa mientras James y Sirius la miraban de vez en
cuando, ya que tenían órdenes de cuidarla.
mientras sus padres salían a hablar con
Dumbledore.

"¿Ocurre algo?" preguntó Sirio.

“El mundo”, respondió ella, tratando de sonreír y

bromear. “Y necesitaba algo que ni siquiera el
Mercado Oscuro pudiera encontrar por mí,
aparentemente demasiado peligroso. Mi próxima
buena opción es dominar una de las maldiciones
más duras y peligrosas jamás creadas en forma
mágica”.

"Podemos ayudar", dijo James, dejando el tenedor

y olvidándose de sus gofres. "¿Qué necesitas?"

“Nada que puedas darme”, respondió rápidamente.

“Nada que nadie pueda darme. Creo que tendré
que matar yo mismo a ese maldito Basilik.

El tenedor de Sirius cayó al plato con un fuerte

ruido mientras él la miraba en completo shock.

"¡Puedes hablar en serio!" él dijo.

"No, por supuesto", dijo. "Sólo era una broma."

If honest, she was being half-honest. She needed

to find a way to deal with the problem that raised.
Killing the Basilik wasn’t something she wanted, but
it certainly was an option she needed to keep in
mind in order to have always a way out, but it
might more dangerous than she was prepared for.
She could also take a page out of Harry’s book and
get Gryffindor’s Sword, but it called too much
attention, it was too big and too difficult to deal
with – it might not even obey her, after all she
wasn’t all that sure she could belong to Gryffindor.
Besides, she didn't know if Dumbledore's stubborn
Phoenix would come and help her out, she could die
without that animal.

“Is this to destroy the Horcruxes?” James asked. “I

know you’ve been going all around our library and
Hogwarts’ for research about it. Did you hit a wall?”

“Sort of,” she answered. “I asked Theodore Nott to

get me a Basilik’s tooth, it’s the easiest way to deal
with the whole thing, but he can’t find it anywhere.
with the whole thing, but he can’t find it anywhere.
He sent me some of the poison, but it’s useless.”

Sirius sipped his water, but answered, “Well, you

could buy an absorbent knife.”

“Whatever the hell is that?” Anne asked, frowning.

“Is a very old type of knife that a lot of pureblood

women used in the Middle Ages,” Sirius answered.
“It’s very hard to find nowadays and they’re
expensive as fuck,” James grumbled about his
language, but was ignored. “They can get poison
and they keep the poison in their blade for virtually
forever, the cheapest one holds on for at least a
century or so.”

“That could work,” she said, nodding, excited about

the new information. “Any idea where I can find it?
Need I write to Nott again?”

James shook his head.

“Not a good idea to ask Nott, he might put two and

two together,” James answered. “Any other ideas,
Sirius?”

Sirius thought for a moment.

“Well, you could ask a few pureblood families when

you’re back to school, say you’re doing an essay on
it for extra grades. They’ll be more than happy to
show it off to you if they have it,” Sirius said.
“Those are usually passed through generations and
hardly ever get out of the family name.”

That gave Anne an idea and she jumped from her

chair, ignoring James and Sirius asking her to come
back. She had the best idea she could probably
have around that time of the morning; rather than
wait until classes started again, she could write to
the only pureblood family she had managed to
sneak into.

The Blacks certainly would have something.

She thought of writing Narcisa, but she would ask

too many questions, so Anne just sat down and
wrote with the calmness of someone writing to any
other friend.

“Dear Regulus,” she mumbled.

Dear Regulus,

Once more, I remind you that I have no friends

other than you and thank you for your friendship
and understanding through the small part of the
year we had contact.

Now, I surely hope nobody but you reads your mail,

because it might raise way too many questions that
I could never answer without putting myself and
others in trouble. But something was brought to my
attention about the conversation we had at the
restaurant: one of the items are not easy to be
found at the moment and I really need it right
away.

As a graceful apology, I was given Basilik’s Poison

in a small vial, which would be useless without
someone that like you to help me.

Once I brought up the subject on the breakfast

table, Sirius made a very smart and interesting
remark – I know, try not to act too surprised, dear
friend, but Sirius can be smart when he wants to
be. Something about knives that can take the
poison in its blade and keep it alive. Do you happen
to know anyone that might sell one of those to me?
I’m in dire need of assistance of someone I can
actually trust in, and Nott isn’t that person.

Thanking you since now,

Anne Sage, your conspiring friend.

Even with something as silly as a short letter, Anne

seemed to make Regulus smile, amused by her
choice of words and playful atmosphere in general.

No one other than her and her strong beliefs and

conspirations would ever make him do what he was
doing as he reread the letter for the third time in
the middle of the night after writing back at her a
small letter, making sure he had not forgotten to
comment on anything she wrote, trying to keep the
same light tone as she had managed to do so in
such a heavy subject.

He had his favourite dagger in hands, looking back

at the collection he had gathered over the years
inside the glass box on the table.

There were four other daggers in there, but the one

in his hand being carefully packaged was his
favourite and he hated himself how easy it was
being to send it off to Anne without receiving
anything in return.

It had been the first dagger he had ever received

and the only meaningful gift he had gotten from his
father for his birthday. He had been eleven and it
was the first time he talked to his father alone in
the room with him, no mother telling him what to
say or what to do to make the man happy.

He kissed the blade of it. One last goodbye. One

last look to his terrible childhood.

He put it on the small black box, the satin involving

the knife inside of it. He closed the lid and tied the
white cotton bag on the big owl’s leg, tying the
small letter on parchment to the other leg.

“To Anne, at Potter Manor, as fast as you can,” he

said, sending the owl off through his room’s
window.

It was almost one in the morning, but he was

completely awake, he had been worrying about
Anne all night long ever since she had written him
warning that her first plans had gone wrong. He
knew the Dark Lord poorly, but he knew him
enough to know that Anne would be killed in her
very first mistake, exposing her plans and identities
to everybody around her. He could only protect her
so far without a Dark Mark on his arm and a false
loyalty vow to the man he wished dead.

He walked out of the bedroom, going down the

stairs without much noise and walking into the
kitchen. He jumped, however, when he found that
the kitchen wasn’t empty as he had expected by
the hour.

Kreacher was there.

“Is young Master Regulus having difficulty

sleeping?” the house-elf asked, jumping out of the
seat he had taken as he waited for the water that
he had put on the fire to boil. “Mistress Walburga
asked for tea.”

“No, I came here for some water,” he said.

Kreacher moved, getting the cold water and putting

it on a glass before giving it to Regulus’ hand. He
smiled at Kreacher a bit, jumping to sit on the
counter, bored and not sleepy enough to go back
into his room.

“Kreacher,” he called, the elf turned around to look

at him, ready for his next orders. “You might notice
one of my daggers is missing, the Rabisu, but make
no comment to anyone of this. They can’t know it’s
gone.”

“Did someone steal it?” Kreacher asked, eyes

widening.

“No,” Regulus said, almost chuckling with the pure

horror in Kreacher’s eyes. “I gave it to someone
else.”

“Is you favourite knife!”

“Yes, but… Anne deserves it,” Regulus said, raising

his eyebrows to Kreacher.

“The half-blood?” Kreacher asked.

Regulus sighed, sipping his water slowly. He knew

Kreacher was only repeating what he had been
taught to do and believe, but Regulus felt
uncomfortable with the idea of someone judging
Anne like that. It took him a moment to notice that
it wasn’t just Anne he had thought about – if
honest, he had been worried for other half-bloods
as well, such as Severus and a few Ravenclaw kids
he had tutored the year before. He couldn’t help
but think that they were harmless.

“Anne is not be called any of those awful names,”

Regulus ordered. “She’s to be treated with respect
and obedience whenever you’re around her,
understood?”

Though Kreacher wasn’t all that excited to answer

that order, he sighed and nodded, unable to
disobey anything Regulus had said. Kreacher
glanced over his shoulder to Regulus once more as
they waited in silence.

“Is Miss Sage to be Mistress Black soon?” Kreacher

asked.

Regulus choked on his water, coughing loudly as

his eyes closed tightly in complete horror for how
casually Kreacher had asked that question.
Breathless, he tried to answer ‘no’, but what really
came out of his mouth was not the answer that had
gotten to his mind.

“None of your bloody business!” Regulus said,

widening his eyes.

Kreacher jumped, never having heard Regulus

using such a vulgar word.

“Yes, Master Regulus,” he answered.

Still dizzy and breathless, Regulus stumbled out of

the kitchen, trying to take a deep breath.

Dearest Insurgent friend,

I am genuinely sorry about the newest

development on your plan, I had wished nothing
more than for you to get all you wanted, but I
suppose the universe disagreed at the moment.

The idea Sirius has given you is indeed a good one,

though quite hard to come by. You’re lucky,
however, that I have a passion ever since I was
eleven for any type of blade – I have knives,
daggers and even swords with me, carefully
displayed around my room, all new, but functional.
Fortunately, I have one specific blade that might be
able to help you with your plans.

This dagger is called Rabisu, after a very old god

Ancient Mesopotamian Religions, dated even before
the 8th century. It’s been in the family for many
years and it’s usually given to the first male son – it
came to me since Sirius didn’t seem to be
interested in it at all, leaving it all around the house
and not taking care of it. It’s my favourite dagger,
so please, take good care of it.

I hope that it’s able to help you somehow.

I hardly call my obsession over collecting those

beautiful and pointy things as aichmomania, but
still, I sign away.

Your aichmomanian friend,

Regulus Black.

Regulus could be really funny and witty when he

wanted to, Anne had to admit that as she chuckled,
opening the lid of the black box inside the package.
She could barely think of Regulus as someone that
collected knives, but it made an awful amount of
sense that he had such a calmly dealt with hobby;
she surely couldn’t think of him doing any other
sports other Quidditch and he certainly didn’t seem
to enjoy moving around a lot – she had noticed him
always with books or music sheets, never playing
around with his friends as they wrestled like crazy
men.

Inside the box, the shine of the blade made her

gasp as she understood why it was Regulus’
favourite.

It had a round golden, smooth pommel with two

thin black rings separating it from the black leather
grip with a golden ferrule with snake bodies carved
in the gold, circulating the whole circumference of
the grip, but the heads of the two snakes came up
through the crossguards, both edges of it being
their heads with open mouths, ready to attack. The
blade itself was long and shiny, double edged and
extremely sharp. Regulus certainly took care of it
methodically or had someone do so for him while
he was away for school.

She smiled as she carefully took it out, sitting on

her bed and looking at her reflection on the blade.
The dark eyes looked like they were shining way
too much.

She blinked, looking away and getting up from the

bed to put it back on the box, putting it on the
table, closing the lid and putting the poison vial on
top of the box as she sat on the chair and took her
parchment, writing a very indelicate and short
letter to Dumbledore, telling him she was ready for
the next step of their plan.

Knocks on the door as she tied the parchment on

the Potter’s owl made her look.

James was standing on her doorway, opening the

door slowly.

“Hey, you’re awake,” he said, sounding surprised.

She smiled, letting the owl go.

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you need anything?”

“No, I just came to check on you,” he said, blushing

a bit. “I do it every night when I wake up for the
restroom or something. I come to check of you’re
not having nightmares or something like that.”

She smiled at him.

“I’m fine,” she dismissed. “But thanks.”

“May I?” he asked, looking into her room.

She nodded and James walked into the room,

closing the door behind him.

“Your nightmares seemed to have gotten better, or

are you silencing the room all nights?” he asked.

“I’m silencing it, but it did get better,” she said,

going back to her bed and sitting on it. James sat
beside her, touching her back carefully. “I think it’s
because there are no memories for me here. It’s
new, and it’s good – I really like it here.”

“And I’m so happy you agreed to come home with

me,” he said, smiling at her. “I know it’s hard for
you to trust people, I noticed you keep so much to
yourself, but I mean it – Anne, if you need
anything, you can come to me. No matter how silly
it sounds, no matter how dangerous it is; I’m here,
all the time.”

She could barely control herself before she threw

herself against James, hugging him tight as James
hugged her back, but gently.

“I love you,” she mumbled.

“I have no doubts of it. I love you too,” he

answered.

Chapter 27: Chapter Twenty-Six

Summary:
The first Horcrux.

KENOPSIA

Much to James’ despair, Anne insisted on going

alone to Hogwarts once she received a time to
meet Dumbledore in there. He knew they were
aiming to destroy a Horcrux, and James wished
nothing more than to follow her and protect her.
Euphemia had to hold him back and Monty had to
scold Sirius for trying to jump on the green flames
as Anne span away.

Tenía la palabra perfecta para describir lo

terriblemente afectada que se sintió una vez que
salió de la chimenea de la oficina de Dumbledore.
En el libro que Regulus le había dado, habían usado
una palabra interesante: kenopsia; la extraña
sensación de ver un lugar normalmente lleno de
vida y ocupado, de repente vacío y silencioso.

No había libros alrededor de la mesa, estaba

extrañamente ordenada y a través de las ventanas
podía ver el terreno vacío y más verde que nunca.

"Una vista extraordinaria durante el verano",

admitió Dumbledore, bajando las escaleras desde el
último piso de su oficina. "Una de las cosas que
realmente extraño cuando estoy fuera de la
escuela".

"Pensé que vivías aquí", admitió.

Qué tonta e infantil de su parte, no poder pensar en

sus profesores y el director fuera de la escuela.
Quizás Remus había sido su única excepción. Ella
trató de ocultar su sonrisa tímida, no queriendo que
él viera que estaba avergonzada por sus
pensamientos.

"Viví aquí durante algún tiempo, hace apenas unos

años conseguí una casa en las afueras de
Hogwarts", dijo. “Recibí tu palabra y quería
escucharla de tu boca: ¿estás realmente listo para
comenzar a cazar?”

"Sí", dijo ella. "Sé dónde están o dónde estarán

todos y cada uno de ellos pronto, aunque será
difícil acceder a la mayoría de ellos".

"Dijiste que hay uno de ellos en Hogwarts", dijo

Dumbledore.

“Sí, sí”, dijo. “Donde van todas las cosas perdidas,

ahí es donde se esconde la diadema de Ravenclaw.
Puedo encontrarlo si me das acceso a los terrenos
de la escuela, entonces lo destruiré”.

Dumbledore la miró por un momento.

"Te ves mejor", dijo, sin tener ningún sentido.

“Ahora a veces pareces un niño normal. Subiste de
peso y no parece que vayas a quedarte dormido si
hablo demasiado tiempo”.

“Bueno, tener un buen ambiente logra eso”,

respondió bruscamente.

No quería que Dumbledore asumiera cosas sobre su

vida o sobre lo que ella estaba pasando con su
mente y su cuerpo. Ya tenía suficiente gente
preocupándose por ella de verdad, no necesitaba
que el viejo fingiera nada por ella. Anne estaba bien
sola.

Era difícil dejar que le importara cuando la había

engañado una vez. Ella creció escuchando 'si me
engañas una vez, la culpa es tuya; Engáñame dos
veces, la culpa es mía', y ella no estaba dispuesta a
caer en el mismo truco en el que cayó cuando era
una niña pequeña sin nada más que ingenuidad en
sus frentes para lidiar con el mundo.

“Voy contigo”, dijo. “No puedo conscientemente

dejarte lidiar solo con un Horrocrux, me han
aconsejado que no haga lo mismo durante mi
investigación. Uno nunca podrá entrar en esas
cosas por sí solo”.

Y por eso murió Regulus.

El repentino pensamiento oscuro y torcido que vino

a su mente hizo que Anne se estremeciera, sin
siquiera tener la reacción de pedirle a Dumbledore
que se fuera a la mierda.

Dumbledore fue el primero en moverse hacia la

puerta, instando a Anne a seguirlo con un solo
movimiento de su mano. Ella lo siguió, aunque
realmente no le gustó, varita en mano y lista para
lidiar con lo que tuviera que enfrentar.

“Déjame ir al frente”, dijo. "Yo sé donde está."

“Donde van todas las cosas perdidas”, repitió.

"Hablas de la Sala de Desapariciones, ¿estoy en lo
cierto?"

She looked at him. “You know about it? We called it

Requirement Room, you can get whatever you want
if you ask for it and go through the corridor three
times.”

“Yes, I had a small accident of being extremely in

need of a bathroom when I was younger, but
couldn’t find it – the castle had been great to
helping me find my way,” he told casually, barely
acknowledging that not many people knew of the
second most dangerous room in the whole
Hogwarts’, losing only to the Chamber of Secrets.

She didn’t answer and just kept on walking,

Dumbledore kept on walking as well, in front of her.

It was barely past ten in the morning, but still Anne

was completely awake and very much excited to kill
one part of Voldemort’s soul. She shoved her hands
into the sleeves of the muggle pullover she had
stolen from James and walked faster, the jeans’
tight against her – it was the jeans she had gotten
to 1976 with, now clean from blood and vomit.

It took a while for them to get to the Requirement

Room on the seventh floor, but once they were
there and the door finally appeared on the wall, all
excitement disappeared and nothing more than
anxiety was choking her.

“Let’s go inside,” Dumbledore said, opening the

door.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, not taking one step forward.

The headmaster waited for her inside the

Requirement Room, holding the door open for her.

Looking inside at the several mounts of lost things

made her stomach churn. If she focused enough,
she could easily smell the burning flesh of Goyle,
the kid she grew up with, the person that started
the fire. He was dead. She could still feel him trying
to get to the top of a mount to try to survive,
holding onto her leg when she got on a broom and
almost fell off of it – trying to regain balance, she
moved her leg; Goyle fell to the fire.

She stepped inside, hands shaking.

“Let’s start looking for it,” Anne said.

“Any idea where it is?” he asked.

“No, Hermione was the one to find it, I was on the

other side of the room,” she said. “I only came
when I heard screaming when Harry was trying to
destroy it.”

“Let’s start from the left and go to the right slowly,”

Dumbledore said.

Anne nodded, following him, wand tighter than

before in her hand.

Even in two people, they took more than a whole

hour to actually find, on the very top of a mount
and on the very middle of the room a diadem.

“Professor, I found it!” she announced, looking up

in delight.

It was just like she remembered it. It was like a

tiara, though it didn’t end in a half-circle, it was
complete and it was silver, the wonderful blue
stone on the middle of the front part.

Anne jumped on a chair, climbing up with a few set

backs since she wasn’t all that sporty.

“Careful!” Dumbledore warned when she slipped

once more.

“I’m alright!” she dismissed, not even looking back.

She wasn’t all that scared of heights, but she

certainly did want to look down as she took the
diadem and jumped down on a table that
regretfully moved once she was on top of it with
her whole weight. She yelped as she tried to hold
onto anything, but the table fell and she only didn’t
follow because she managed to hold her weight
with the broken piece of wood being held in place
by a few stones and metal pieces; had she not hold
on, it would have certainly cut her.

“Fuck, I’m not alright anymore!” she said loudly to

Dumbledore. “Help me down!”

Her feet kicked, trying to find something to step on,

not wanting to let go of the diadem. There was
nothing underneath her, just air. She still was at
least twelve feet on the air and she wished nothing
more than to get down.

“Let go,” Dumbledore said, the calm voice making

her annoyed. Couldn’t he see the danger she was
in? “You’re not going to fall. Let go.”

She looked down to glare at him, but let go after he

raised a single eyebrow, blue eyes shining on the
other side of the half-moon glasses. She didn’t fall.
She was ever so slowly and gently put on the
ground as if she had been carried by invisible
wings.

She sighed a “that was close.”

He didn’t answer her, just put his hand forward. He

wanted the diadem on his possession, that much as
clear.

“You give that to me, my dear, I can deal with it,”

he said.

Anne just looked at him, holding onto the diadem

tighter, putting her wand back on her trouser
pockets and looking at him.

“In a moment, sir,” she said. “Why don’t we make

our way back near to the door? It might be safer in
case we have to run.”

And in case she had to run away with it, leaving

Dumbledore and his old bones back on that bloody
room. The Horcrux would not be used against her,
she needed to see them all being destroyed.

Still, Dumbledore seemed to agree, quietly making

his way behind her as they walked towards the exit
of the room. Three metres away from the double
doors, Anne stopped and looked at him.

“We’ll destroy it now,” she said, voice as firm as

she could.

Anne was already starting to feel the horrible

effects of having a Horcrux too near would make
her feel. The pain on between her eyes, behind the
bone, itching as if she had vermin eating its way
out. The way her eyes were tired and seemed to be
too dry. She was starting to become annoyed and
her thoughts were faster than ever – she couldn’t
think in words nor images, it was just feeling after
feeling; falling, anger, crying, loneliness.

“We’ll destroy right away, Anne, my girl, don’t

worry,” he said.

“Don’t call me ‘my girl’,” she grumbled, shoving the

diadem towards him.

Dumbledore caught it before it even reached his

chest, clearly having better reflexes and swiftness
than Anne had anticipated. The man sat on the
ground, putting the diadem on the ground and
looking at it in curiosity before turning to look at
her.

“I’m ready,” he said.

She put her hand on the back of her trousers,

taking the knife out and untying the cloth around
the already poisoned blade.

“Careful,” she mumbled, giving it to Dumbledore.

She knew not what she was talking about.

Dumbledore should be careful with himself and the
dangers of horcruxes? Dumbledore should be
careful with Regulus’ favourite dagger? Whatever it
was, it sounded genuine enough for Dumbledore to
take a second look at her and smile, clearly trying
to calm her down.

Anne took a few steps back, closer to the door,

thinking nothing but the fact that Horcruxes fight
back. They always did.

Dumbledore held the dagger carefully, raising it

above his head and he made sure the diadem was
on the right place.

“Albus? What are you doing, brother?” asked an

unfamiliar young voice.

Anne, startled, pulled her wand out and looked for

the culprit.

A young girl was walking from behind one of the

mounts of rubbish and lost objects. She had blonde
hair and sweet curious, but worried eyes – Anne
recognized her after a moment and after
Dumbledore froze in place, looking up at the little
girl as if she was the scariest thing he had ever
seen.

Ariana Dumbledore.

“It’s not real, Professor,” Anne said. Dumbledore

looked at her, startled as if he had forgotten she
was there at all. “Not real.”

His lips moved, tasting the words ‘not real’ without

a sound, but he looked back at the young girl.

“Brother, what do you think you’re doing? It’s not

yours, therefore you shouldn’t destroy it. Mother
taught us that,” the young girl insisted. “Albus, why
aren’t you talking to me? Are you scared of me?”

“Not real,” Dumbledore mumbled to himself.

Anne took a step forward.

“Kill it,” she urged.

His hand raised once more, dagger shaking.

“Is this because I died because of you?” Ariana

asked.

The whole room seemed to go cold, frozen in time

as Dumbledore didn’t even phantom a way to look
at Ariana once more, all he wanted was for
everything to disappear and to be left on the dark,
regretting every single move he had ever made in
the world.

“She didn’t die because of you. Grindewald did it,

you know it,” Anne said. “Focus, Albus,” she said,
louder.

His first name brought him back to reality and he

looked at Anne once more. Was he looking for
validation? She nodded, raising her eyebrows to
emphasize he needed to move straight away.

Dumbledore moved at once. The dagger stabbed

the Diadem.

La figura de Ariana se dobló como si hubiera

recibido un puñetazo en el estómago, un fuerte
grito espeluznante hizo que Anne se estremeciera y
Dumbledore levantara la vista. La joven estaba
gritando y gritando, arrodillándose en el suelo y
mirando a Dumbledore con la mirada más
traicionada que Anne jamás había visto en los ojos
de alguien.

Desapareció en humo negro, sin dejar nada en el

suelo.

El anciano no podía apartar la mirada de donde

había estado su hermana pequeña unos momentos
antes.

“No era ella”, dijo Anne cuando notó que el hombre

todavía estaba en el suelo. “Sabes que no fue ella.
Y usted sabe que Ariana no le diría esas cosas si
fuera real, señor.

"Ya sabes", dijo.

"Sí", estuvo de acuerdo. "Tu hermano me lo dijo

antes de la guerra, cuando ya estabas muerto".

“Me pregunto si la encontré del otro lado”.

“No puedo responder a eso, señor”, dijo. "Lo siento,

pero estoy seguro de que si ella se saliera con la
suya, estarías a su lado en el momento en que
pasaras al otro lado".

No le gustaba y no confiaba mucho en Dumbledore,

pero confiaba en el dolor de alguien que perdió a
un hermano, porque hubo algunos días en su vida
en 1976 en los que sintió que estaba sobreviviendo
por despecho. Podía confiar en su ira hacia
Voldemort usando los recuerdos de su hermana en
su contra.

Podía sentir su ira cuando la miraba.

"A veces me recuerdas a ella", admitió. Anne lo

miró sorprendida. Eso era nuevo. “La ira en tus
ojos, la determinación de demostrar que eres más
de lo que la gente espera de ti. Ella hizo lo mismo,
todos los días y todas las noches se trataba de
cómo podía mejorar”.

"No soy tan buena persona", se quejó Anne,

extendiendo la mano.

Dumbledore tomó su mano y se levantó.

"Si hubiera obtenido control sobre su magia y

hubiera ido a Hogwarts, sin duda sería una
Slytherin", admitió. “La chica más dulce que he
conocido y, sin embargo, la más ambiciosa, sin
duda. Veo la misma ambición en ti, aunque creo
que tu dulzura desapareció antes de que pudieras
demostrarla.

"Quizás", dijo. “Creo que nunca fui dulce. Creo que

nací amarga y salada, expulsada del mundo mágico
antes de que pudiera decir una sola palabra, sola y
asustada en una casa donde la mayoría de la gente
me odiaba; nunca tuve la oportunidad de ser dulce,
profesor. "

"Como dijiste, el ambiente adecuado puede ser

milagroso", le respondió, sus ojos tristes se
encontraron con los de ella con una mirada
preocupada que nunca antes había visto en él.

Una parte de ella se odiaba a sí misma por empezar

lentamente a caer en sus trampas, dejando sus
emociones expuestas para que él las usara como
palanca. Entonces, en ese momento, rápidamente
se aisló de él una vez más, sin atreverse a parecer
una niña pequeña por más de lo necesario.

“Necesito volver a casa, señor”, dijo.

Anne salió de la chimenea, aún manteniéndose

firme, pero tan pronto como entró en Potter Manor,
se dobló hacia adelante y vomitó sobre sus propios
zapatos y en el suelo.

"¡Ana!" James gritó, sorprendido por su situación y

corriendo hacia ella. "¿Qué ocurre? ¿Qué está
sucediendo? ¿Estás herido?"

“James, déjala respirar”, dijo Monty, corriendo

hacia ellos nuevamente, pero vacilando con el
vómito. Odiaba el vómito. "Está bien", murmuró
para sí mismo. "¡Desaparecido en combate!" Él
gritó.

Pero Mia ya estaba en camino, corriendo hacia el

salón antes de que él pudiera terminar de gritar
llamándola y corriendo hacia Anne tan rápido que
resbaló por estar en calcetines. Ella saltó
rápidamente fuera del camino una vez que Anne
volvió a lanzarse.

"Ew", dijo Sirius cerca de la puerta.

"¡Sirio!" regañó Monty, aunque también había dicho

'ew' mentalmente.

Anne se permitió sollozar.

Uno de cada cinco, había obtenido uno, pero ese

sentimiento de aferrarse al horrocrux todavía
estaba en su mente, el sentimiento de
desesperanza y puro odio por todo lo que la
rodeaba e incluso por ella misma. No había nada
que pudiera quitar ese sentimiento de su pecho y
de su mente.

James la tomó de los brazos, levantándola una vez

que sus rodillas se doblaron y la llevó hacia el sofá
mientras Monty hacía un rápido hechizo de limpieza
y miraba a Sirius mientras él entraba a la
habitación también, con ojos cuidadosos y
preocupados.

"¿Qué pasó cariño?" —preguntó James.

"¡Papá, fue horrible!" gritó, abrazando a James.

Esta vez, completamente concentrado en ella y sus

palabras, James entendió la palabra.

Anne levantó la vista, con los ojos muy abiertos a

pesar del enrojecimiento y las lágrimas. Estaba lista
para huir de la vergüenza cuando vio los suaves
ojos de James hacia ella.

"Lo sé, cariño", murmuró, acariciando su espalda

en el abrazo. “Lo sé”, repitió.

Él no se burló de ella y ciertamente no parecía

sentirse incómodo e incómodo con eso, su pecho se
había hinchado de orgullo y el sentimiento de puro
deseo de proteger a Anne se hizo más fuerte de lo
que nunca antes había sentido.

Cuando James se aburría antes que Anne, pensaba

en el futuro. Se imaginaría a Lily en su cama,
admirando su anillo de compromiso mientras se
reía; se la imaginaba con un vestido blanco, se
imaginaba a sí mismo cargando a un bebé en
brazos... y esa era la sensación, abrazar a Anne
contra él y dejarla llorar con todo su corazón le
daba la misma sensación que tener a su hijo en
brazos durante mucho tiempo. la primera vez.

James sintió más que una protección familiar hacia

ella al igual que hacia Sirius. Ese momento fue
cuando comprendió que, antes que nada, Anne era
más que su responsabilidad: era su hija.

Sirius se sentó al otro lado de Anne, abrazándola

también, acariciando la espalda de James en
discreta felicitación.

Los ojos de Mia se llenaron de lágrimas mientras

abrazaba a Monty; habían ido en contra de todos
sus propios pensamientos y de todos los
pensamientos de los médicos, viendo crecer lo
suficiente a uno de sus nietos. Estaban felices y
satisfechos.

Capítulo 28 : Capítulo
veintisiete
Resumen:
Regulus realmente quiere hablar
con Anne y encuentra la
oportunidad una vez que sus
padres se van de la ciudad.

Notas:
Realmente estoy pidiendo
comentarios en este capítulo. Me
gusta recibir comentarios y este
capítulo es realmente importante
para la trama, aunque no lo
parezca. Este capítulo cambiará
muchas tornas en general.

Por cierto, espero que disfrutes la

aparición de Narcissa, me encanta
escribirle.

TÉ

Anne Potter había pasado por un evento

traumatizante de destruir parte del alma de un
hombre malvado a ser simplemente una chica
nerviosa por asistir a té con alguien a quien ya
consideraba su amigo por un tiempo, lo que a
Euphemia le pareció muy divertido ya que insistió
en ayudarla a conseguirlo. Se vistió para ello, como
si Anne no fuera capaz de decidir por sí misma la
ropa que usaría, pero como se sentía insegura, dejó
que su abuela la ayudara.

"Es sólo té", insistió Anne.

"Lo sé, es sólo té", dijo Euphemia, pero algo en su

voz hizo que Anne entrecerrara los ojos.

"¡No estoy mintiendo!" ella dijo.

“No estás mintiendo”, repitió la mujer.

Anne se arrojó en la cama, exasperada por las

miradas maliciosas de su abuela cuando la pillaron
leyendo la carta de Regulus en la sala de música,
tratando de pasar desapercibida, lo que la hizo
sospechar aún más ante los ojos de Euphemia.

"Cariño, sé que probablemente no soy yo de quien

quieres escuchar esto, pero puedes divertirte", dijo
Euphemia, poniéndose un vestido azul claro. “Estás
tratando de minimizar los resultados de una guerra,
lo cual no es algo que alguien de tu edad debería
hacer. Sal con un chico, besate un poco...

"¡Desaparecido en combate!" Gritó escandalizada

mientras se arrojaba para sentarse nuevamente en
la cama, con los ojos muy abiertos mirando a su
abuela.

"¿Qué? Es la verdad”, dijo Mia. “Se lo dije a tu

padre y a tu tío. Y te lo repetiré: mantente seguro y
recuerda que las acciones tienen consecuencias. Si
estás listo para lidiar con ellos, entonces estás listo
para cruzar el punto de besuqueo. Entonces,
mientras no vuelvas a casa enferma o embarazada,
no haré más que apoyo”.

"Mia, te juro que no hay nada de eso entre Regulus

y yo", dijo Anne. "Somos amigos y nada más".

Eufemia negó con la cabeza.

"He visto la forma en que te miraba en la

plataforma, incluso si solo son amigos, dudo que
ese sea el caso por mucho tiempo", respondió ella.
“Ahora, tuvimos nuestra conversación y sabes que
puedes acudir a mí para cualquier cosa; pociones
de embarazo y hasta puedo enseñarte los
encantamientos. Mantenlo en secreto para tu
padre, de lo contrario creo que nunca te perderá de
vista en tu vida”.

Anne suspiró y arqueó las cejas en señal de

acuerdo. Ya había sido bastante difícil hacer amigos
con James siguiéndola todo el tiempo en la escuela;
si él sabía algo acerca de cómo ella había estado
pensando en tratar a los niños como niños, no
como armas peligrosas, nunca la dejaría estar a
más de dos metros de distancia de él.

"Es sólo té", dijo Anne una vez más.

“No seas ingenua, Anne, es impropio de tu parte.

Te invitó a su casa cuando sus padres están fuera
de la ciudad”, dijo Mia.

"Dijo que podía traer a James si quería", añadió.

Mia arqueó las cejas y dejó que una sonrisa

apareciera en sus labios mientras preguntaba:
"Entonces, ¿por qué no?".

“¡Porque no quiero que Regulus piense que no

confío en él lo suficiente como para estar a solas
con él! Es el hermano de Sirius y conocemos a
Sirius lo suficiente como para saber que
ciertamente lo tomaría como algo personal incluso
si dice que no lo haría. No quiero lastimarlo”, dijo.

Y era verdad. Pero no era toda la verdad: si Anne

era completamente honesta, le gustaba pasar
tiempo con Regulus y era lo suficientemente
inteligente como para saber que él sería otra
persona cuando lo observaran, cuando estuvieran
solos; sin embargo, él era mucho más suave y su
rostro Las expresiones eran abiertas. No necesitaba
traer a James sólo para que fuera más difícil de lo
necesario leer sus expresiones.

Aún así, Mia le recordó que Regulus la había

invitado a tomar el té en su casa vacía hizo que se
le helara el estómago. No estaba segura de que
fuera miedo o simplemente ansiedad. Se sentía lo
suficientemente segura con Regulus y tenía
suficiente confianza en sus duelos y peleas físicas
en caso de que él demostrara que sus sentimientos
estaban equivocados, lo cual esperaba que no
hiciera.

"Muy bien, ya que es solo té", dijo Euphemia,

levantando el vestido azul claro. "Esto debería ser
suficiente".

Estaba bien confeccionado en algodón y era

modesto. Seguramente se sentiría como si fuera a
ir a la iglesia con ese vestido, pero se lo puso de
todos modos, negándose a abrocharse el último
botón porque le ahogaba y arregló el cuello con
cuidado.

Parecía una típica adolescente de los años 70. A

ella le gustó.

La sorpresa, sin embargo, fue cuando llegó a

Grimmauld Place a las tres y cuarto de la tarde y
encontró a Regulus vistiendo pantalones negros y
una camisa azul exactamente del mismo tono que
su vestido, lo que lo hizo reír mientras saltaba del
sofá en el habitación.

"Ana", saludó. “¿Me has estado espiando?” bromeó.

"Oh, por favor, tú eres quien debe espiarme,

Regulus", se cruzó de brazos frente a sus pechos,
parpadeando exageradamente en inocencia. "Mal,
mal, Reggie".

Regulus pareció desconcertado por el repentino

apodo que ella le lanzó, pero de todos modos le
sonrió.

"Tienes buen aspecto", dijo. "Esperaba que hoy

pasara por mi chimenea una chica mucho menos
alegre".

"No te preocupes, todo mi mal humor y pánico

quedaron atrás anoche", descartó.

Lo dijo casualmente, pero había pasado la noche en

la cama de James, sollozando como una niña
pequeña hasta desmayarse por el cansancio. Se
sintió patética y dramática cuando despertó, pero
ciertamente sintió que estaba a punto de morir
cuando James la abrazó durante toda la noche,
tratando de calmarla.

Regulus no parecía tomar en serio su víctima,

porque tenía ojos preocupados recorriéndola,
tratando de encontrar algo malo físicamente. No
encontraría nada, se dio cuenta rápidamente, pero
eso no significaba que no estuviera tan preocupado.

“Vamos, le pedí a Kreacher que enviara té a la

biblioteca una vez que esté listo, podemos llevarlo
allí. Es la parte más tranquila de la casa, ni siquiera
se oye el ruido de la calle”, dijo, guiándola aunque
ella conocía el camino. “Podemos aprovechar el
tiempo que el té no esté listo para que me cuentes
cómo te fue. Me muero por saberlo”.

Abrió las puertas dobles.

"Estuvo bien, en general", dijo Anne, entrando a la

biblioteca y observando cómo cerraba las puertas.
De todos modos, Kreacher no tendría que abrirlos
para pasarlos. “Bastante aterrador, pero nada que
ponga en peligro la vida ni sea demasiado
peligroso, solo… psicológico, en realidad. Pero esta
vez no contra mí”, soltó una carcajada. "Al menos
estamos intentando variarlo", bromeó.

"¿Director Dumbledore?" preguntó, confundido.

Acercó la silla cerca de una de las mesas redondas
para ella y sonrió cuando ella le agradeció,
sonrojándose un poco a cambio de su amabilidad.
"¿Qué pasó con él?"

Ana vaciló. Sabía que sería una tontería contarle la

historia de Ariana a Regulus, incluso si no le
importaba ser una idiota muy a menudo; solo
pensó en cómo a Harry ciertamente no le gustaría
que alguien hablara sobre cómo Anne había
muerto, si ha estado en el lugar de Dumbledore.

"Su pasado volvió para atormentarlo cuando estuvo

a punto de destruir el primer Horrocrux", explicó.
"Comenzamos con la diadema de Ravenclaw".

"¿El perdido?" preguntó Regulo. "Lo encontraste así

de fácil".

No, el fantasma le había dado un pequeño empujón

en la dirección correcta a Harry y Hermione lo
encontró: Anne simplemente siguió sus pasos y
pretendió saber exactamente lo que estaba
haciendo todo el tiempo; ciertamente se tomó
"fingir hasta lograrlo" más en serio de lo que la
mayoría de la gente debería para su propio
beneficio.

Se salvó de tratar de parecer modesta y encontrar

una mentira que contar cuando Kreacher entró en
la biblioteca, con una bandeja de plata en la mano
con un hermoso juego de té blanco y azul y lo puso
con cuidado en la mesa redonda entre ellos.

“Maestro Regulus, señorita Sage, el té”, saludó.

"Gracias, Kreacher", dijo Anne, sonriéndole.

En su época, le había tomado bastante tiempo

hacer que Kreacher se sintiera a gusto con ella,
incluso si Harry había comenzado a agradarle una
vez que encontró una manera de ayudar al elfo a
cumplir su promesa a Regulus. En ese momento, el
elfo todavía tenía toda su mente y no era una
víctima traumatizada, susurradora y quejumbrosa;
era simplemente Kreacher, quien parecía
terriblemente sorprendida de que ella hubiera
hablado con él.

Regulus sonrió.

“Gracias, Kreacher”, repitió, alzando las cejas como

si dijera: '¿ves?'.

Kreacher hizo una reverencia tan baja que su nariz

casi tocó el suelo antes de desaparecer con otro
fuerte pop.

"¿Qué fue eso?" preguntó Anne, tratando de no

reírse.

"Creo que le gustas a Kreacher", explicó Regulus,

sonriendo un poco. “Ahora, volvamos a la
conversación real. Sé que estás tratando de pensar
en algo que decir, pero la verdad será suficiente
para mí... Dos azúcares para ti, ¿verdad?

Anne miró su regazo mientras Regulus tomaba la

tetera y les servía cuidadosamente a ambos,
observándola de vez en cuando mientras ella
asentía, poniendo sus ideas en orden antes de
comenzar a hablar.

"La diadema perdida estaba en Hogwarts, así que

decidimos empezar con esa", dijo Anne. “Como
probablemente sabes, los Horrocruxes
contraatacan, pero ese fue muy… profundo. Algo
del pasado del profesor Dumbledore surgió y nunca
antes lo había visto tan horrible. Merlín, Regulus,
fue horrible verlo, pero no puedo ni imaginar cómo
fue vivirlo, ¿sabes? Apenas podía respirar hasta que
llegué a casa. Necesitaba alejarme de Hogwarts y
necesitaba a mi familia”.

Regulus la escuchaba con atención, la preocupación

hizo que su mandíbula se cerrara mientras algo
crecía desde su estómago hasta su pecho. Anne era
fuerte, él lo sabía, y para que entrara en pánico
como parecía haberlo hecho, algo realmente malo
había sucedido.

“¿Cuál es entonces el siguiente paso?” preguntó.

"Bueno, todavía nos quedan cuatro", dijo,

sorbiendo su té y tarareando encantada por el
sabor. "Esto es bueno", murmuró. Regulus le
sonrió. "Bueno, algunos de ellos van a ser más
difíciles de conseguir que otros, pero tengo una
idea para conseguir el siguiente".

"¿Cuál?"

"El que te hablé, el que está en la Mansión Malfoy",

respondió ella.

“¿Cómo puedes estar seguro de que se lo dio a

Lucius? Es nuevo en el Círculo Interior. Pensaría
que le daría algo tan importante como eso a
alguien como los hermanos Lestrange”.

Ella lo miró y alzó una ceja.

“Él sí les dio algo”, respondió ella. “Está en su

bóveda. Ese será uno de los más difíciles de
conseguir”.

“Si quieres, puedo…” vaciló, deteniendo la frase.

Podría intentar conseguir esas cosas, pero aún
así...

"No lo hagas", dijo, sacudiendo la cabeza. "No

pongas en peligro tu tapadera, dijiste que no te
irás, así que trata de mantener la cabeza gacha
cuando estés aquí".

Regulus apartó la mirada de ella, apartando sus

rizos hacia atrás, lejos de sus ojos mientras bebía
su té también.

“Ayer me pasó algo”, dijo, haciendo que ella lo

mirara. Él volvió a mirarla a los ojos. “Esta vez no
tendré salida, tendré que aceptar ser seguidor este
verano”.

Trató de no mostrar su miedo o su lástima,

sabiendo que Regulus no estaría tan agradecido por
esos sentimientos que salían de sus ojos hacia él.
Era un hombre orgulloso y deseaba apoyo
amistoso, no tristeza.

“Ya lo había pensado”, admitió. "Podría ser algo

bueno".

Regulus volvió a colocar su taza de té en la bandeja

con un poco más de fuerza de la necesaria,
haciendo un tintineo.

“¿Cómo puede algo así ser remotamente bueno,

Anne?” preguntó, frunciendo el ceño. “Es más que
ser seguidor de alguien, sé cosas sobre ellos que
desearía no saber, ¿sabes? Las torturas que están
planeando, los asesinatos que les entusiasman.
Esas cosas no son cosas en las que quiero
involucrarme”.

“Puedo ayudarte”, dijo. "Puedo sacarte".

“No puedo hacer eso”, dijo. “Sabes que no puedo.

Mi padre cuenta conmigo para mantener viva a esta
familia el tiempo suficiente para que él pueda
descansar en paz y mi madre no sobreviviría
perdiendo otro hijo. Puede que no sean buenos
padres, Anne, pero tengo un deber para con ellos.

“¡Regulus, no les debes nada! Ya hiciste demasiado

por ellos”, dijo, poniendo también su taza de té en
la bandeja. “Eres tu propia persona. Si crees que no
puedes soportarlo, dímelo y te sacaré”.

“No entiendes…” dijo, levantándose de su silla.

“¿Qué es lo que no entiendo?” preguntó,

cruzándose de brazos.

"Eres como Sirius, él se escapó y tú también", dijo

Regulus. “No puedo irme, Ana. No tengo adónde ir
y ciertamente no puedo permitir que este peso
permanezca en mi conciencia. Si me voy, mi familia
caerá en desgracia. Dependen de mí ahora. Ahora
soy el Heredero y no puedo dejar que se pudran”.

“Nunca hicieron nada por ti, Regulus”, dijo,

descruzando lentamente los brazos y levantándose.

“Me dieron la vida”.

“¿El que te amenazan con quitarte si no haces lo

que ellos quieren?” ella se burló. “Si no quieres irte,
está bien. Entiendo lo que es sacar cosas por deber
o proteger a alguien a quien amas. Pero no me
digas que no entiendo cosas cuando después no
sabes nada sobre mí.

Regulus se tapó la boca con la mano y se rascó el

labio antes de apartar la mano. Tomó un respiro
profundo.

"Si me voy, mi familia caerá en desgracia y estarán

demasiado involucrados en todo este lío como para
estar a salvo", admitió. “Sé que quizás me odies
por esto, porque todavía los amo. Son míos,
siempre serán míos, al igual que Sirius; no importa
cuánto diga lo contrario, Sirius es mi hermano y mi
familia. Si mi nombre sale de tu lado, matarán a
mis padres; Si mi nombre sale de este lado, Sirius
me odiará. No se que hacer."

“¿No te irás?”

"No", dijo, mirándola profundamente a los ojos.

"Entonces quédate, no esperaba que vinieras

conmigo", admitió. “Regulus, sobrevive, ese es tu
deber por ahora. Toma la Marca, sobrevive, entra y
sale de esta situación. Ayúdame cuando puedas, así
te ayudaré cuando lo necesites”.

“Un quid pro quo”, bromeó.

"Más que eso", dijo, sacudiendo la cabeza.

"Amistad."

Hizo lo mejor que pudo para no demostrarlo, pero

la palabra lo tomó por sorpresa y sus ojos se
llenaron de lágrimas; Contuvo las lágrimas, sin
dejar que rodaran por sus mejillas, pero Anne
parecía haberlo visto, porque al segundo siguiente
estaba parada justo frente a él, abriéndole los
brazos.

Regulus dudó, pero pronto caminó hacia adelante.

Sus brazos se curvaron alrededor de su cintura

mientras los de ella hacían lo mismo con los de él
antes de levantarse un poco para acariciar su
espalda suavemente.

A hug was not something he was very used to. His

mother wasn’t physically affectionate and his father
certainly did not wish to touch anyone at any time
of his life if not his wife when absolutely necessary.
His friends weren’t all that affectionate either, they
didn’t tell each other how much they liked each
other and hugging was just out of question. Still, he
was surprised when he didn’t feel uncomfortable in
Anne’s arms, he felt safe as if something as simple
as that would’ve been enough to protect him or
even distract him from the problems piling up on
the back of his mind.

Regulus was surprised with the fact that he liked

being touched.

“I’ll protect you,” she promised in a whisper just

below his ear. “I’ll do everything in my power to
make you survive.”

Regulus held on tighter on her and Anne also

tightened her grip on him.

Quizás fue por eso que no escucharon nada, porque

estaban muy concentrados el uno en el otro. Todo
lo que escucharon fueron las puertas dobles de la
biblioteca abriéndose y tacones altos caminando
hacia ellos.

Saltando lejos de Anne, Regulus se arregló la

camisa, pero ya era demasiado tarde.

Narcisa los había visto y tenía la ceja izquierda

levantada.

"Ahora", comenzó, mirando entre los dos

adolescentes. "Es una vista sorprendente".

“No es lo que piensas”, respondió rápidamente

Regulus.

“Decir eso te hace parecer más culpable”, dijo

Anne. "Créame, he estado allí".

Regulus la reprendió en silencio con la mirada, pero

eso sólo la hizo sonreírle un poco, completamente
tranquila. Le tomó un momento comprender que
Anne realmente confiaba en Narcisa para cualquier
tipo de amistad que tuvieran.

"¿Qué está sucediendo?" -Preguntó Narcisa.

"Madre y padre están fuera", dijo Regulus. "Invité a

Anne a tomar el té".

"No te ayudas en eso, Reggie", dijo Narcisa.

"¡No me llames Reggie!" él dijo.

"Te llamé Reggie", refunfuñó Anne.

“Pero estuvo bien, porque era una broma”,

respondió Regulus. “¿Qué estás haciendo aquí,
Narcisa?”

"Vine a averiguar por qué no fuiste a Lestrange

Manor hoy, todos están ayudando a poner las cosas
en orden", dijo Narcisa. Se volvió hacia Ana.
"Bellatrix se casará mañana", explicó antes de
volverse hacia Regulus una vez más. "Ahora, tu
madre dijo que estás enfermo pero te ves bien".

“No me gusta Roddy”, fue su explicación.

Lo más probable es que Roddy fuera Rodolphus

Lestrange, uno de los hombres más crueles del
mundo, Anne estaba segura. Aunque su futura
esposa era mucho más aterradora, al menos en
opinión de Anne.

Narcisa puso los ojos en blanco.

“A nadie realmente le gusta Roddy, ni siquiera

Bellatrix... ni siquiera su madre, estoy bastante
seguro. ¿Se trata de la charla que Lucius y él te
dieron anoche? -Preguntó Narcisa. Anne
intercambió una mirada con Regulus; los dos
habían sido los que reclutaron al joven. Regulus fue
el primero en apartar la mirada, pero ya era
demasiado tarde, porque Narcisa también se había
dado cuenta. "¿Le dijiste? ¡Regulus, eso es
peligroso!

Regulus suspiró, tratando de pensar en algo que

decir.

"Él no me lo dijo", saltó rápidamente Anne. "Ya lo

sabía."

Rápidamente, Narcisa sumó dos y dos, creyéndose

el malentendido sin pestañear. Por supuesto, pensó
que la chica había visto, nunca creería la verdad si
se la contaban.

Regulus intercambió otra mirada con Anne, la

pregunta estaba clara en sus ojos. Anne vaciló,
pero luego asintió.

"Ella vino aquí para advertirme contra esto", dijo.

Narcisa echó un buen vistazo a cualquiera antes de

decir: “Bueno, esto no es asunto suyo. Es familia”.

Sorprendentemente, no hizo ningún comentario

sobre el estado de su sangre. Había esperado al
menos un 'cállate, mestizo', pero Narcissa parecía
bastante a la defensiva en lugar de lista para
atacar.

"Cissa, escucha", dijo Regulus. “Van a pasar cosas

malas si seguimos adelante sin hacer preguntas.
Tienes que creerme."

Narcisa se dirigió lentamente hacia la tercera silla

cerca de la mesa redonda. Como era negra,
Kreacher no había anunciado su llegada y no le
había prohibido entrar a la casa. Ella se sentía
cómoda allí; también era su casa. Se sentó sin su
habitual postura perfecta, encorvándose mientras
escuchaba a Regulus.

"¿Qué quieres decir?" ella preguntó.

“Te dije que ibas a tener un hijo”, dijo Anne,

sentándose nuevamente en la silla en la que había
estado. "¿Recuerda eso? ¿Recuerdas que te dije
que tal vez te tomaría un poco de tiempo quedar
embarazada, pero que lo lograrías?

“Sí, por supuesto”, dijo Narcisa, asintiendo.

"Nacerá en 1980, pero su alma morirá en 1994 si

dejamos que el Señor Oscuro gane suficiente
poder", dijo Anne. “Él no es quien dice ser, Narcisa.
Su verdadero nombre es Tom Riddle y es mestizo
como yo. Si gana poder, las cosas serán horribles
para ti, para Lucius y para tu hijo.

"¿Cómo puedo saber que no te lo estás

inventando?" -Preguntó Narcisa.

“Take one good look at him the next time you see
him, search in his eyes for the cruelness, I know
you saw it already,” Regulus said. “Even if you
don’t agree with me or with Anne, you need to keep
his conversation hidden away. You’re a good
Occlumens, you can do it. Vow to me you will do
it.”

“I vow on my magic that I won’t tell anyone

without permission,” she said. “But what will
happen?”

“Serás prisionero en tu casa y tendrás que permitir

que sus seguidores hagan lo que quieran contigo y
con tu casa. Tu hermana se pudrirá en la cárcel.
Lucius se ahogará en el trabajo y el alcohol porque
no puede soportar mirarte y ver lo que te provocó a
ti y a su propia familia por una decisión que tomó
cuando tenía diecisiete años. El alma de tu hijo
también será prisionera, lo amenazarán, lo
golpearán y lo torturarán para asegurarse de que
cumpla con sus misiones, y tú también serás usado
como arma contra él; "Te torturarán porque él
quiere protegerte, porque siempre serás una buena
madre", dijo Anne. “Esto es algo en lo que
cualquiera puede estar de acuerdo, Narcisa. Debes
ser una buena madre”.

Los ojos de Narcisa se llenaron de lágrimas.

“Hablas en serio”, eso no era una pregunta, era un

lamento.
“Desafortunadamente”, respondió Anne.

Regulus sirvió más té en su propia taza antes de

dársela a Narcisa, ignorando cómo siguió el molesto
ruido metálico ya que Narcisa temblaba mientras
intentaba tomar un sorbo del calmante y caliente
té.

“¿Entonces entiendes por qué estoy tratando de

cambiar las cosas?” Dijo Regulus. “Nunca quise ser
parte de esto, sin importar la filosofía en la que
crea. Cualquier cosa en la que crea; ninguna
violencia es una buena respuesta”.

“¿Qué pasará contigo?” -Preguntó Narcisa.

“Me moriría”, respondió con sinceridad.

Las lágrimas de Narcisa rodaron ahora por sus

mejillas, incontrolables. Tenía problemas para
respirar, pero observaba a los dos adolescentes con
gran atención. Parecía intentar encontrar algo para
que pareciera mentira, pero no lo era.

“Necesito tiempo”, dijo.

"¿Qué?" Preguntó Regulus, sorprendido. Había

esperado que ella se lanzara al tren de
pensamiento rebelde, pero allí estaba ella, sentada
y temblando como una niña pequeña. "¿Por qué?"

Anne le tocó el hombro y él se detuvo, una vez más

sorprendido por el toque.

"Está bien, Narcisa", dijo Anne suavemente.

“Tómate tu tiempo, respira hondo. Todavía
tenemos tiempo”.

Ella dudó.

“Mi promesa sigue en pie”, dijo.

"Lo sé", respondió Anne.

Narcisa respiró hondo antes de levantarse de la

silla, lista para desaparecer de ese lugar y quedarse
sola para pensar.

"Regulus, si yo fuera tú, encontraría una manera de

hablar con Severus Snape, esos son tus verdaderos
pensamientos", dijo Narcisa. “Él podría unirse a ti.
Él también tiene dudas sobre tomar la Marca por lo
que me dijo Lucius”.

Los ojos de Ana se abrieron como platos. Severus

podría estar ya de su lado; no necesitaba el
pequeño empujón de proteger a Lily para tener
dudas. Severus no tenía una Anne en su pasado,
ahora tendría que tomar sus palabras y escucharla.

"Lo haré", dijo Regulus. "Gracias por el consejo."

Capítulo 29 : Capítulo
veintiocho
Resumen:
Peter Pettigrew es joven, ingenuo
y tiene esperanzas dentro de ese
caos de la Casa Potter.

Notas:
Oye, fue divertido leerlo, un poco
divertido antes de que las cosas
empiecen a ponerse serias
nuevamente y después de un
capítulo tan pesado como el
anterior. Principalmente relleno y
vínculo familiar/amigable. Espero
que les guste a todos. ¡Comenta
tu opinión, por favor!

EL CORAZÓN DE PEDRO

Quizás lo más divertido que Anne había visto fue la

cara de disgusto de Sirius en la portada de los
periódicos a la mañana siguiente, viendo la imagen
en movimiento donde Bellatrix saludaba con la cara
inexpresiva a las cámaras y su esposo a su lado,
luciendo más feliz que ella. con mucho.

"¡No puedo entender!" decía Sirius, se había estado

quejando durante casi diez minutos. “¿Cómo puede
alguien siquiera pensar en casarse con Bellatrix?
Quiero decir, mírala bien y lo entenderás.
¡Desagradable! Absolutamente un 10/10 para
hacerme vomitar”.

"No hablemos de vómito en la mesa, Sirius", dijo

Monty, frunciendo el ceño con disgusto.

"¡Lo siento, pero es verdad!" Insistió Sirius,

mostrándole la portada al hombre a su lado como si
aún no hubiera leído todo el periódico. “¡Mírala!
¡Está loca! Absolutamente loca y encontró un
marido que realmente parece feliz de estar con ella.
¡Es más que increíble, es completamente ofensivo
que yo esté soltero cuando ella no lo está!

James siguió riéndose, quejándose de no poder

comer ante la incredulidad de Sirius de ser tan
gracioso. Anne también se reía, pero no se
sorprendió, después de todo, Narcisa le dijo que
Bellatrix se casaría.

"Simplemente estás enojado porque aún no

atrapaste a Remus", dijo James.

Sirius se congeló antes de girarse para mirar a

James.

"¡¿Qué carajo?!" Él gritó. "¿Por qué dirías eso?"

"¡OK cálmate!" Dijo Euphemia, poniéndose una

mano en la cabeza, le dolía la cabeza.

“Oh, come on, Sirius, we all noticed at this point,”

James said. “And you came out last year,
everybody has been gossiping you two would look
great together. Why do you think I called him over
so soon?”

Euphemia giggled, receiving a dirty look from Sirius

as he tried to make her stop acting like teenage
girl. Still, he now understood why Remus’ things
were to be moved to his room and not James’ when
Peter and him get there later that afternoon.

It was the day after the full moon of July, so it was

certainly expected for him to be exhausted, so
Sirius had already made his bed to let Remus sleep
in it while he, James and Peter could make a mess
outside, away from him so he could rest.

Sirius, trying to change the subject, turned to

Anne.

“Are you going out today?” he asked.

“No,” she answered shortly, sipping her orange

juice. “Why?”

"Porque queremos ir a un pub", respondió James.

"No te preocupes, no te dejaré beber demasiado".

"No lo sé", murmuró, mirando a Mia.

Mia asintió, instándola a irse.

Euphemia era la única que sabía que tenía un lugar

donde estar esa mañana. Regulus y ella habían
acordado reunirse con Severus en la librería de
Hogsmeade ya que el dueño era amigo de Regulus
y ciertamente discreto, llegando incluso a albergar
a Regulus el día que necesitaba un lugar donde
quedarse después de haber sido golpeado por su
madre.

"No es tan temprano, pero debes partir mañana por

la mañana", dijo Euphemia. “Simplemente no te
quedes fuera hasta tarde y estarás bien. Sólo
recuerda eso si vas al pub, querida.

Monty arqueó las cejas.

“¿Saldrás mañana por la mañana? ¿Necesitas

algo?" preguntó.

“No, sólo voy a la librería, no es gran cosa”,

descartó.

Sirius no dejó que la conversación transcurriera tan

fácilmente, una sonrisa apareció en sus labios
mientras entrecerraba los ojos hacia ella, sintiendo
un pequeño cambio en el humor de la chica y listo
para analizarlo.

"Estás actuando raro", comentó.

"No, no lo soy", respondió ella demasiado rápido.

Qué gran mentirosa era en cosas que no eran para
nada importantes... por qué podía mentirle a
Dumbledore sobre la vida y la muerte, pero no
podía evitar sentirse nerviosa con Sirius
interrogándola.

James sacudió la cabeza y añadió. “No, estás

actuando raro. ¿Qué está sucediendo? ¿Qué vas a
hacer en la librería? ¿Se trata de la investigación?
Porque podemos ayudarte. Podemos deshacernos
de Peter y...

“No, sólo voy a la librería porque necesito más

libros para divertirme”, dijo. "No es gran cosa."

“¿Entonces podemos ir contigo?” Bromeó Sirius.

“¿O ya esperas compañía en la librería y por eso
estás tan nervioso?”

Euphemia contuvo la risa, usando su mejor voz

maternal para regañar a Sirius. "Deja en paz a la
pobre niña, cariño".

"¡No no! ¡Quiero saber!" Dijo James, sus ojos

saltando entre Anne y su madre. "Mamá, ¿sabes
algo sobre esto?"

"No seas dramático, James", dijo Mia, poniendo los

ojos en blanco hacia su hijo. “Como ya dijo Anne,
no es gran cosa. Ella solo va a la librería con unos
amigos, ¿no puedes dejar vivir un poco a la niña?
No la veo quejándose cuando Sirius no regresa a
casa después de una cita o cuando te escapas.

"¿Escabullirse?" —Preguntó Anne, sorprendida.

“Papá, ¿te estás escapando de casa pensando que
nadie lo sabe? Por supuesto, Mía lo sabe. Eso es
patético”.

“Oh, young lady, don’t get witty now,” James said,

narrowing his eyes at her. “By what Mum said, this
is a date. Who is it? When are you coming back – if
you’re a single minute late, I’ll pick you up and I’ll
start swinging, I swear to –”

“James!” Monty scolded; his voice was stronger

than Mia’s making the whole table go quiet. “Anne
is the same age as you, she can do whatever she
wants and she has the right to choose not to tell
you everything about her life. Respect her privacy.
I taught you better than that.”

James’ pale skin turned pink in a second as he

looked down at his hands, clearly embarrassed by
his little jealous outburst, though it was
understandable that he was worried about his
daughter.

“Is not a date,” she said, calming everybody down.

“I’m just going to the bookstore with Regulus and,
depending on the hour we’re done browsing, have
lunch and then I’m coming back home.”

“It sounds like a date to me,” Sirius said. “And

that’s weird. My niece is going out with my
brother.”

“I’m not your blood niece, which is far better than

your parents can say about themselves,” Anne
attacked. “And I’m not going out with Regulus,” she
added soon after, but it sounded like an
afterthought.

“Oof,” Sirius sighed, putting an over dramatic face

on his heart and pretending to faint, as if somebody
had punched him in the stomach. “Alright, point
taken, Annie.”

Anne smiled at the nickname. She had never had

actual nicknames besides the ‘Lia’ her brother
would call her ever so often because of her middle
name ‘Lily’; of course, there were the people calling
her ‘An’ as if her name was too long for them to
dare to speak, but she didn’t like to be called that.
It was silly, but she felt even more like part of the
family because of a single letter added to her name
– they were not shortening her name, they were
saying it just in a sweeter way.

“Don’t talk like that to your uncle,” Monty scolded.

“He attacked me, I’ll attack him,” Anne defended

herself quickly, pointing at Sirius.

“Well, she didn’t lie, did she?” James defended her

as well, receiving a quick punch on the ribs by
Sirius, but that only made him smile.

“You’re mean,” Sirius said. “I should go back to

dear old mummy.”

Anne se rió un poco fuerte por la sorpresa, pero se

disculpó con Sirius una vez que él dejó de quejarse
de todo lo que ella hizo para lastimarlo,
dramatizando cada palabra que le dijo con la
esperanza de hacerlo parecer la víctima.

Peter Pettigrew llegó a Potter Manor sintiéndose

simplemente más nervioso que la primera vez que
llegó para visitar a su amigo en su segundo año
mientras agarraba su bolso de la semana. Hubo un
cambio allí; Anne estaba allí ahora y la casa en sí
misma parecía más feliz, es decir, si las casas
pudieran tener sentimientos, pero él podía ver las
luces más brillantes, las rosas floreciendo más rojas
y la hierba más verde. Pensó que coincidía bastante
bien con sus pensamientos. Ese era el efecto que
Anne parecía tener en la gente, dándoles un
impulso de energía con una sola sonrisa.

Remus Lupin estaba a su lado, habiéndolo llevado

en el auto de su padre a la Mansión y saludando a
su padre mientras se alejaba. Su madre se asomó a
la ventana, gritándole que tuviera cuidado como si
no le hubiera dicho eso todo el tiempo en el
camino. Remus no parecía nervioso en absoluto;
estaba completamente a gusto, como si esa casa
también fuera suya.

"Vamos, Pete, llamemos a la puerta", dijo,

acariciando suavemente la espalda de su amigo
mientras pasaba junto a él.

Peter lo siguió hasta cerca de la puerta principal

cerrada y sostuvo su bolso con más fuerza cuando
Remus llamó tres veces.

"¡Próximo!" Una voz femenina gritó desde el

interior.

El aliento de Peter quedó atrapado en su garganta.

Era la voz de Anne.

La puerta se abrió de golpe cuando Anne tropezó

después de correr desde el patio trasero hasta el
salón para guardar un libro cuando escuchó los
golpes y corrió hacia la puerta. Llevaba un vestido
normal de color amarillo y parecía cómoda sin usar
zapatos.

"Hola, muchachos", saludó.

"Anne, querida", saludó Remus. "¿Cómo estás?"

"Estoy genial. Confío en que te sientas bien”, dijo.

"¡Por supuesto!" Respondió Remus.

"Oh", dijo, de repente dando un paso hacia un lado.

“Qué grosero de mi parte. Entra, por favor. Sirius y
James están afuera jugando Quidditch”, le sonrió a
Peter. “Te pusieron una escoba a un lado, Peter, te
están esperando para jugar también. Necesitan un
portero”.

Peter asintió en silencio, no muy seguro de que su

voz funcionara. El vestido de verano era bastante
corto en general y hacía que sus piernas parecieran
largas incluso si estaba descalza en la casa.

Entraron a la casa, dejando las bolsas en el piso del

salón mientras Coco se dirigía hacia las bolsas,
saludando a los invitados con una gran sonrisa y
brillantes ojos marrones.

“Remus, te quedarás con Sirius. Peter, te quedarás

con James —advirtió Anne. “Solo para que sepas
cuándo quieres ir a dormir. ¿Realmente te sientes
bien, Remus? Sirius ya preparó la cama para que
tomes una siesta si así lo deseas.

Remus cambió su peso, repentinamente incómodo.

Odiaba cuando la gente le preguntaba si estaba
bien después de la luna llena, lo hacía sentir
culpable por preocuparlos, pero aún así, estaba
bastante agradecido de que Anne se preocupara
por él.

"Estoy bien por ahora", dijo. "Pero no jugaré

Quidditch".

Ella le sonrió, riéndose un poco.

"No esperaba que lo hicieras", dijo. "No te

preocupes, tengo algunos libros rusos para que los
leamos afuera, a la sombra".

"¡Brillante!" exclamó Remus.

Anne miró por segunda vez a Remus por alguna

razón, Peter notó que su sonrisa amenazaba con
salir de sus labios por un momento, pero luego
pareció ignorarla y se puso a divagar sobre los
libros muggles que había alineado para ellos.

Peter deseó, por un momento, que le gustara leer y

que supiera de qué hablaba Anne porque sonaba
inteligente y quería tener algo en común con ella
también. James tenía su familia. Sirius tenía esa
actitud bromista y juguetona. Remus tenía algo
dulce y reconfortante, pero él era Peter Pettigrew,
al final no había nada que pudiera hacer para
conseguir a la chica.

Sabía que James era su familia, su primo o algo así.

Pero Sirius y Remus no lo estaban y, aunque
dijeron algo acerca de que ella estaba fuera del
alcance de todos en los dormitorios, todavía
parecían girar alrededor de ella como si fuera el
maldito sol y ella sonrió, jugó y bromeó con ellos,
haciendo que Peter se sintiera feliz. pequeño y
excluido.

"Oh, Sirius dijo que tienes una cita", dijo Remus de

repente mientras caminaban hacia el patio trasero.

Peter tropezó con su propio pie y cayó al suelo con

un ruido sordo, lo que hizo que Anne saltara hacia
él.

“Oh, Merlín, Pete, ¿estás bien? ¿Estás herido?"

preguntó, frenética mientras lo levantaba del suelo,
con los ojos muy abiertos por la preocupación.

"Estoy bien", descartó él, soltándose de su agarre

una vez que estuvo de pie por sí solo. Sintió que
todo su cuerpo ardía de vergüenza, odiaba que
hubiera sucedido frente a sus amigos. “Tú – ¿Con
quién vas a salir?”

Anne parpadeó, ciertamente no esperaba que él

volviera a esa conversación.

"Sirius necesita aprender a mantener la boca

cerrada cuando está siendo un inconveniente y un
mentiroso", se quejó. "No es una cita, solo voy a
salir a la librería y almorzar con un amigo, nada
más".

Los labios de Remus se torcieron en un intento de

sonreír; Los músculos de su cara todavía parecían
temblar un poco cuando los forzó después de toda
la noche de gritos y gemidos a la luna.

"Suena como una cita", no estuvo de acuerdo. Y

además muy buena. ¡Señala hacia él!

"Puntos a --? ¡Remus, se suponía que debías estar

de mi lado aquí! ella se quejó. "No es una cita".

"Pero ciertamente desearía que así fuera",

respondió Remus en un susurro bajo.

Como animago, Peter logró escuchar eso, pero

Anne no pareció tener tanta suerte, simplemente
abrió las puertas de vidrio del patio trasero y sonrió
cuando James aterrizó justo frente a ellos,
saludándolos.

"¡Niños!" dijo James. “Finalmente estás aquí.

Vamos, Pete, ven a jugar con nosotros. Eres el
mejor portero de los Merodeadores”.

Peter intentó sonreír, pero sabía la verdad. Remus

no voló. Sirius era un golpeador. James tenía
material para ser capitán. Él fue el que se fue y el
único que aceptó ir a portería. Le gustaba que
James y Sirius a menudo intentaran hacerlo sentir
incluido, porque Remus ciertamente no lo intentaba
mucho; a Remus no parecía importarle que lo
dejaran de lado, así que no veía nada malo en que
Peter lo obligara. compañía en silencio mientras leía
o algo así, aunque a Peter ciertamente no le
gustaba en el fondo.

Pettigrew trató de no parecer demasiado triste

cuando Anne tomó la mano de Remus y lo llevó a la
manta de picnic sobre la que había estado acostada
con algo de comida y algunos libros.

“¡Pedro!” Sirius saludó con un grito desde arriba.

“¡Mi pequeño amigo, estás aquí! ¿Cómo estuvo la
prueba de tu madre?

Peter parpadeó, sorprendido de que Sirius hubiera

recordado que su madre había intentado tomar el
examen para obtener una licencia de conducir
desde que su padre murió el año anterior. Se subió
a la escoba y tomó vuelo, tomando su lugar cerca
de Sirius para hablar un poco mejor con él.

“Ella… Ella salió bien”, dijo, sonriendo. "Ella

consiguió un auto y esas cosas".

"¡Impresionante, amigo!" Dijo Sirius, sonriéndole.

“Ahora, ¿qué tal si comenzamos este juego de
inmediato? Necesito recuperar mi dignidad desde
que me expulsaron del equipo principal el año
pasado”.

"¡Lo merecías!" Remus gritó desde el suelo, todavía

los escuchaba incluso desde arriba. “¡Me había
olvidado de La Broma, bastardo!”

"¡Oh vamos!" Se quejó Sirius. "¡Concéntrate en tu

aburrido libro, Moony!"

Moony pareció tomárselo bien, mirando a Anne

antes de abrir el primer libro a su derecha,
murmurando algo que la hizo reír en voz baja.
Peter lo observó por un momento antes de volverse
hacia Sirius, pero Sirius ya lo estaba mirando con
las cejas levantadas mientras esperaban que James
regresara de la casa.

"¿Qué?" -Preguntó Pedro.

"Amigo, estábamos hablando completamente en

serio cuando dijimos que Anne estaba fuera de los
límites", dijo Sirius, con el rostro en blanco. “A
James no le gustará en absoluto la forma en que la
miras a ella y a Mooney cuando te atrape, y te
atrapará. No me mires así. No eres estúpido como
quieres que creamos todo el tiempo, Wormy,
ambos sabemos que te atrae, pero a James no le
gustará y a Anne tampoco.

"No lo sabes", se quejó Peter.

"Por lo que noté en ella, no creo que le guste en

absoluto la atención de ningún hombre", dijo Sirius.
“O de niña, además. Le gusta estar sola, no busca
nada ni a nadie. A ella le gustan las cosas como
están ahora y debes saberlo antes de que te
rompan el corazón”.

“Ella no me rompería el corazón”, dijo.

"Ella lo haría", dijo Sirius. "Y dudo que ella siquiera

se dé cuenta de que lo está haciendo".

"Ella es inteligente."

"Pero ella está concentrada en otras cosas", agregó

rápidamente Sirius. “Ella… ha pasado por mucho,
Pete. Deberías dejar esto pasar mientras ella
intenta lidiar con ella misma. No puedes esperar
que ella te mire cuando apenas puede mirarse a sí
misma”.

Peter realmente no entendía lo que Sirius estaba

diciendo, pero por la forma en que sus cejas
estaban bajadas y sus labios presionados en una
delgada línea, sabía que realmente estaba tratando
de mantener a Anne alejada de él por alguna razón.
Sabía que Sirius era su amigo y que, si había dicho
que Anne le rompería el corazón, probablemente
tenía razón en todo; No tenía motivos para dudar
de nada que saliera de la boca de Sirius, aun así la
pregunta apareció en su cabeza.

“¿Es esto porque crees que le gusta Regulus?” -

Preguntó Pedro.

Sirius resopló, claramente tomándolo como una

broma.

"Regulus desearía que le agradara a Anne",

descartó Sirius, echando un vistazo a Moony, quien
lo miraba y sonreía. Observó cómo James salía,
masticando algo y sonriéndole a Anne con la boca.
“¡Gracias a Merlín, Potter, pensé que te habías
ahogado en la cocina! ¿Por qué tardaste tanto?

Peter miró hacia abajo y bajó, con el corazón

destrozado al instante mientras observaba la pluma
de Anne en su mano mientras escribía con su mejor
caligrafía: "Querido Regulus". Forzó una sonrisa a
Sirius, pero Sirius no pareció darse cuenta,
simplemente pasó su brazo sobre el hombro de
Peter, apurando a James hacia el juego.

Capítulo 30 : Capítulo
veintinueve
Resumen:
Incorporar a alguien al círculo
interno de una organización no
oficial fue mucho más fácil de lo
que Anne esperaba.

Notas:
Me encantaron los comentarios del
último capítulo! ¡Publicar este
como un regalo entonces!

ABRIR COMO UN LIBRO

Debido a que los chicos se quedaron fuera hasta

tan tarde en el pub, Anne se despertó antes que
todos ellos y se despidió de Monty y Mia antes de
tomar la red flu hacia Las Tres Escobas.

Era extraño ver Hogsmeade durante el verano,

después de todo ella estaba más que acostumbrada
a las diversas capas de nieve, aunque había ido con
Lily y Marlene y no había nieve a la vista en ese
momento. Pero no fue más extraño que el hecho de
que cuando salió de Las Tres Escobas, Severus
Snape la estaba esperando frente a la librería con
jeans muggles y un suéter negro. Sí, querido lector,
de hecho, es una visión bastante sorprendente para
Anne, pero no tanto como Regulus Black también
usando jeans y una blusa blanca.

Ella los saludó con la mano. Severus asintió, pero

Regulus le sonrió un poco.

"Buenos días", dijo.

"Buenos días", respondió Severus. “Me dijeron que

querías hablar conmigo. Podrías haberme escrito tú
mismo en lugar de pedirle a Regulus que fuera tu
mediador”.

“Difícilmente lo que hice”, dijo. “Estábamos

hablando de algo y nos dijeron que tal vez querrías
escuchar esa conversación también. Regulus tuvo
la amabilidad de invitarte a un lugar que le gustaba
y yo también fui invitado”.

"Pensé que traerías a Potter", dijo Severus.

"Estoy bien por mi cuenta", respondió ella.

No necesitaba que nadie la protegiera,

especialmente de Severus, quien le enseñó la
mayoría de las cosas que sabía. Por supuesto, él no
lo sabía y lo más probable es que la estuviera
mirando como si fuera una niña estúpida.

"Vamos", dijo Regulus. "Entremos."

Abrió la puerta y la sostuvo mientras Anne entraba,

soltándola poco después y haciendo que Severus lo
mirara una vez que tuvo que sostener la puerta
para entrar sin la nariz rota.

Dentro de la librería, el aire ciertamente no era tan

cálido e hizo que Anne suspirara de alegría. Odiaba
el verano, tal vez porque era entonces cuando tenía
que regresar a Private Drive, tal vez porque no
podía soportar bien el calor y la luz del sol que
quemaría su piel demasiado blanca. Pero allí
dentro, con la dulce brisa de un hechizo, no lo odió
tanto como solía hacerlo.

"Señor Orgue, ¡hola!" Dijo Regulus, acercándose al

mostrador y apoyándose en él para ver qué pasaba
en la parte de atrás.

El anciano vino desde atrás con blusa blanca y

pantalones marrones.

“Señor Black, es un placer verlo de nuevo. Gracias

por la carta que me envió”, dijo el hombre. "Señor
Snape y..." vaciló. "Señorita Anne Sage,
¿correcto?"

“Sí, señor”, respondió ella, sonriéndole. "Encantado

de conocerte."

"Así es, querida", dijo, sonriéndole.

El señor Orgue miró a Regulus como si estuvieran

intercambiando información en silencio y eso hizo
que el joven se sonrojara un poco, pero se volvió
hacia los dos.

“Vamos”, dijo Regulus.

Condujo a los dos colegas a la parte trasera de la

tienda, a una habitación que parecía un jardín de
invierno con una pequeña mesa redonda hecha de
hierro y un juego de té decente, aunque parecía un
poco viejo y no en un estilo pintoresco y antiguo. .
Había algunos bollos, lo que hizo sonreír a Anne
porque sabía que a Severus realmente le gustaban
los bollos, aunque siempre hacía una mueca cuando
ella intentaba hornearlos para él, pero se comía
más de uno.

"¡Mira, Severus, bollos!" Dijo Regulus, sonando

falsamente emocionado.

“Oh, cállate”, respondió el niño.

“¡No seas grosero! Por supuesto, no lo sabes, Anne,

pero un día Severus vino a nuestra celebración
navideña y comió tantos bollos que terminó
vomitando sobre la túnica de mi padre”, dijo
Regulus.

Severus parecía estar sonrojado, pero la mirada

fulminante hacía difícil saber si era por vergüenza o
por ira. Anne no dijo nada, solo sonrió, pensando
que, si tuviera la oportunidad, también apuntaría su
vómito a Orion Black o, mejor aún, a Walburga.

“¿Podemos simplemente sentarnos y tener la

conversación 'seria' que se suponía que debíamos
tener? Tengo lugares donde estar”, dijo Severus,
sentándose con claro disgusto por la historia que
había sido compartida.

Si él quisiera que fuera directo y breve, Anne

podría ser directa y breve.

“Si tomas la Marca Tenebrosa, morirás”, dijo con

una cara en blanco de molestia y una voz
monótona.

Severus palideció, sin atreverse a apartar la mirada

de ella.

"Buen trabajo al suavizar esta conversación, Anne,

¡un comienzo excelente y sólido!" Regulus
refunfuñó, irónico. "¡Mira su estado!"

"¿Qué? ¡Dijo que tiene lugares donde estar! ella

respondió.

"No seas mezquino ahora, es impropio", respondió

Regulus. “Severus, amigo, ¿estás bien? ¿Quieres un
bollo?

Severus lo miró de reojo antes de ver a Regulus

empujar el plato de bollos más cerca de él.

"Mantén esos malditos bollos lejos de mí",

respondió con una mueca de desprecio. Queridos
lectores, Anne estaba segura de que volvería a ser
su alumna por un momento mientras observaba a
Severus empujar el plato sobre la mesa. "Sabio,
¿qué diablos fue eso?"

“La verdad”, dijo. "Sé lo que te pasará si vas a los

brazos del Señor Oscuro y te permites subir de
rango y a nadie le gustarán los resultados".

"Cómo -?" se detuvo. "Sabio", repitió. Claramente

no estaba hablando con ella, el nombre parecía ser
la respuesta a su propia pregunta. “¿Y cómo es que
supiste que te escucharía?”

"Porque eres un Slytherin y espero que tengas

mejores deseos de autoconservación que mis otros
amigos y tal vez desees estar de mi lado cuando
derrote al Señor Oscuro", dijo. "Mira, sé que
parezco completamente loco", se burló Severus
porque eso era un eufemismo, sin duda, "pero hay
verdad en mis acusaciones que caerán y yo seré la
razón para que esta advertencia se haga realidad.
Ya destruí uno de sus Horrocruxes”.

Severus se tomó su tiempo sirviéndose un poco de

té mientras Regulus observaba claramente
preocupado, sus manos temblaban un poco, pero
por lo demás parecía sereno mientras respiraba
profundamente e intentaba lo mejor que podía para
calmar sus golpes.

"¿Uno de?" preguntó, sólo para asegurarse de que

aún entendía la conversación y que la sobrecarga
de información no lo había vuelto loco.

"Uno de cinco", estuvo de acuerdo. “Los otros son

mucho más difíciles de controlar. Este primero fue
dentro de Hogwarts, así que Dumbledore y yo nos
encargamos de ello”.

La mención del nombre del anciano hizo que

Severus se burlara una vez más, claramente
disgustado por la aparición del director en la
historia. Severus en el futuro probablemente
regañaría a ese adolescente y le daría una palmada
en la nuca para mantenerlo respetuoso con el
mago, pero al presente no le importaba en
absoluto. Después de todo, este adolescente aún
no había necesitado la protección de Dumbledore y
aún no estaba lo suficientemente desesperado
como para hacer algo en su nombre.

Malditos Slytherins, siempre haciendo el trabajo

sucio para los héroes vacilantes.

"¿Y qué te hace pensar que querría estar de tu

lado?" preguntó Severus.

“Las cosas se van a poner feas esta vez, Severus.

Ambos lo sabemos”, dijo Regulus. “Ninguno de
nosotros puede escapar a la meta este verano y
sabemos la violencia que seguirá. Y no quiero eso
para nosotros: no quiero ver niños pequeños
suplicando por sus vidas y madres llorando
acunando a sus hijos muertos. Y sé que tú tampoco
quieres eso”.

La compasión no estaba funcionando muy bien con

la cara en blanco del futuro maestro de pociones.
Necesitaba un pequeño empujón y sólo había una
cosa además de la autoconservación que ganaba
para los Slytherin: sus seres queridos.

"Él matará a Lily", dijo Anne. Esa era información

nueva para los chicos nuevos y ambos se giraron
para mirarla con los ojos muy abiertos y la piel
pálida. "Puedes entrar y ascender en las filas,
puedes suplicar y suplicar, pero en el momento que
tenga la oportunidad, lo hará sin dudarlo porque no
tiene en cuenta a nadie más que a él mismo".

“¿Es una suposición fundamentada?” preguntó

Regulo. "Ana, esto es serio".

"Lily tendrá un hijo mestizo", dijo Anne. "Ese niño

tendrá una profecía sobre él en el momento de su
nacimiento y en 1981, tanto Lily como su marido
morirán, dejando a su hijo atrás y convirtiéndolo en
otro Horrocrux".

Los ojos de Severus se entrecerraron.

"No eres tan cercano a Lily", comentó. Lo sabía,

eso estaba claro por la forma en que tenía la
mandíbula en forma de medallón y parecía a punto
de vomitar, pero no había comido ni un solo bollo.
"Si nos estás diciendo la verdad, viste algo que no
estaba destinado a ser sólo el futuro de Lily",
asintió una vez, instándolo a continuar. A Severus
le gustaba pensar en voz alta para poner sus
pensamientos en orden, algo que ella nunca
entendió ni le gustó, pero aceptó cuando en tercer
año lo escuchó divagar. "También es de Potter".

“Sí”, respondió ella.

Regulus respiró hondo y se llevó la mano a la boca.

"¿Y has estado aferrándote a él por cuánto

tiempo?" preguntó Regulo.

"Si soy honesta, no me he estado escondiendo",

dijo. “James, Sirius y Remus lo saben. También el
profesor Dumbledore, Euphemia y Fleamont, por
supuesto, después de todo, me acogieron después
de que llegué aquí”.

“¿Pettigrew?” preguntó Regulo.

“No es seguro”, descartó. “Y él será una de las

personas a las que necesitaré que vigiles una vez
que obtengas la marca, Regulus. Podría ir tras él él
mismo”.

"Cifras," refunfuñó Severus. "El débil Peter

Pettigrew corre tras un mago poderoso, eso es lo
que ha estado haciendo desde su primer año".

Severus casi esperaba que Anne saltara en defensa

del joven, pero ella parecía estar muy lejos de allí,
mirando su taza de té con ojos distantes. Sin ver,
aunque estaban abiertos.

"Necesito saber qué querrás hacer", le dijo Anne al

niño. “¿Querrás quedarte y pelear con él, quedarte
allí y pelear conmigo, o venir conmigo y estar lejos
de él?”

"Tres opciones", murmuró Severus. “Y aquí pensé

que tendría sólo dos. ¿No es eso lo que todos en su
Cámara han estado diciendo? Sólo hay dos lados;
Oscuridad y Luz. Pareces conocer muy bien tu lado,
Sage. No pongas eso delante de mi cara.

"No voy a colgarte nada en la cara, Snape, estoy

tratando de protegerte", respondió rápidamente,
mirándolo claramente herida. “Y antes de que
recurras a mí y me digas que no necesitas
protección; Ambos sabemos que lo haces. No
puedes huir, al igual que Regulus puede
desaparecer de su lugar: puedes estar en la
Oscuridad con el Señor Oscuro, puedes estar con el
Señor Oscuro pero en el lado de la Luz o luchar
abiertamente en el lado de la Luz”.

"Todas las alternativas significarán mi muerte", dijo

Severus.

“En dos de esas alternativas, me tendrás a tu lado”,

dijo.

"¿Por qué te importa? No somos amigos. ¡No puedo

pagarte nada de lo que haces por mí!

“No necesito pago. ¡Lo necesito muerto! Ella

exclamo.

Se hizo el silencio en la mesa.

"Tu penumbra no te protegerá por mucho tiempo",

dijo Severus. "Cuando llegue el momento, Sage,
tendrás que encontrar tu lado".

“Penumbra”, repitió, bastante decepcionada con la

palabra. “No seas tonto, conozco mi lado. Sé cuál
es mi situación y me gusta estar aquí. Estoy aquí
para ofrecerte una salida si las cosas se ponen
demasiado feas, un lugar al que acudir en busca de
protección. Si no lo quieres, continúa, mátate y
mira si me importa. Eres un chico inteligente, estoy
seguro de que puedes calcular las posibilidades de
salir de la guarida por tu cuenta. Regulus ya lo
hizo, por eso vino a mí, y como se preocupa por ti
casi tanto como por sí mismo, vino a mí para hablar
contigo también”.

Claramente, Anne fue un poco dramática con sus

palabras, tratando de asegurarse de que Severus
se sintiera responsable de los sentimientos de
Regulus o tal vez lo suficientemente conmocionado
emocionalmente como para escuchar sus palabras
con más atención sin la mueca de desprecio en su
rostro. Le tomó un momento, pero el vacío volvió y,
en el fondo, Anne suspiró aliviada.

“¿Cuáles son mis opciones entonces? ¿Él, ser un

espía o un soldado?

“Serás un soldado en las tres opciones”, suspiró

Regulus. “Simplemente encuentra aquello por lo
que estás luchando. Pelea con él y entenderé lo que
quieres. Lucha conmigo y protegeré lo que
quieres”.

“¿Qué quiero entonces?” preguntó, poniendo los

ojos en blanco hacia su amigo.

"¡Crees que no lo veo!" Se quejó Regulus. “No soy

absolutamente estúpido. Sé que estás haciendo
esto porque tienes miedo de estar solo. Sé que
llamaste a Evans un fango—” se detuvo, mirando a
Anne para ver si ella se dio cuenta, ella fingió que
no lo hizo, “un insulto… porque te atrevieron a
hacerlo para ser presentado al mismísimo Señor
Oscuro. Así fue como ingresaste al Círculo Interno,
humillando en público al hijo de muggles más
inteligente de tu año. Vi como Lucius se reía; Vi
cómo Roddy te acariciaba en la parte de atrás de la
Sala Común. ¡Puede que sea más joven, pero no
soy un niño!

“Las cosas no son tan fáciles…”

“Tienes miedo de estar solo y crees que estar de

acuerdo con todo lo que dice la gente, permitir que
se burlen de ti y te arrastren son las únicas formas
de agradarle a la gente”, insistió Regulus. “Pensé
que sería así para mí también, porque así era como
mis padres me hacían sentir. Si era lo
suficientemente callado, lo suficientemente
agradable, entonces le agradaría a la gente, y si
dejaba que me golpearan sin quejarme, entonces
me dejarían en paz por un tiempo. Así fue mi
primer año, y cuando llegaste a mí, fue cuando te
acercaste y te aseguraste de que los niños mayores
me vieran como tu pupilo más que nada. Se
burlaron de ti, te golpearon, nunca más me
miraron”.

"No te hicieron nada porque eres el Heredero de

Black", dijo Severus con frialdad.

"Yo era el repuesto", corrigió Regulus. “Hasta que

fui lo único que quedó”.

Anne tomó un sorbo de su té en silencio, sin querer

entrar en la conversación a la que claramente no
estaba invitada, aunque los entendía bastante bien.
Recordó lo rápido que era para permitir que la
gente le tirara del cabello y se reía de ella por ser la
sombra de Harry cuando era más joven, porque ella
siempre había sido la sombra de Harry y sabía que
no debía ser nada diferente, por eso estaba tan
perdida cuando pasó un año entero en la escuela
muggle sin él, y luego, en Hogwarts, ser la sombra
de Harry era realmente genial o realmente
estúpido, no había un área gris, pero Anne era una
Slytherin y le gustaba operar en un área gris, ahí
donde Fue el más cómodo. Luego, de vuelta en
casa, el tío Vernon estaba esperando que ella
regresara, y cuando lo hizo, le permitió hacerle lo
que quisiera con la esperanza de que se fuera más
rápido.

Deja que las aguas te lleven, querido, mira hacia

abajo y acéptalo; eso fue lo que Anne aprendió en
su primera vida, en esa segunda, sin embargo,
estaba aprendiendo cómo defenderse y cómo
abrirse camino a través del mar.

"Lo pensaré", dijo Severus. “Tienes mi promesa

sobre mi magia de que esta conversación nunca
existió fuera de nosotros tres, pero… tengo que
irme. Papá se despertará pronto y me querrá en
casa.

Severus se levantó y salió del jardín de invierno sin

siquiera mirarlos o despedirse, simplemente
alejándose de ellos con claro disgusto por sus
propios pensamientos y sentimientos.

Anne entendió que Regulus tenía a Walburga, ella

tenía a Vernon, pero Severus tenía a su padre
también esperando para atormentar sus pesadillas.

“Debiste haberme dicho”, susurró Regulus dentro

de Las Tres Escobas mientras se sentaban con sus
cervezas de mantequilla y pescado con papas fritas.
"Potter y Evans se casarán, eso no es tan
sorprendente, pero... mantener ese tipo de cosas
lejos de alguien, debe haber sido difícil para ti".

"Otros lo saben", desestimó, bebiendo su cerveza

de mantequilla y mirando el pescado. No tenía
hambre, se le revolvía el estómago al pensar que
su hermano le decía que podía oír a su madre
suplicar. "James lo sabe, ¿y sabes lo que hizo?"

"Me emocioné porque significa que tiene una

oportunidad con Evans", adivinó Regulus,
permitiendo que una sonrisa llegara a sus labios.

La sorpresa hizo que Anne le sonriera bien, alzando

las cejas antes de reírse para sí misma.

"¡Sí!" ella respondió. "¿Si, como lo sabías?"

"Porque está enamorado de ella desde su segundo

año, cuando ella lo abofeteó", dijo Regulus. "Y él le
propuso matrimonio el año pasado, otra vez, y le
dieron una patada en el..." se detuvo, mirando a
Anne y pensando en una buena palabra.

"¿Cojones?" Ofreció Anne, pensando que su

vacilación era divertida.

“Estaba a punto de decir que te agaches, pero

claro”, respondió, tratando de no reírse. Negro o
no, Regulus era un adolescente y la simple palabra
'tonterías' lo hizo reír un poco, incluso si no estaba
tan orgulloso de ello. "Anne, realmente no quiero
ser una persona terrible y un aliado molesto, pero
necesito la verdad".

“Yo no –”

"No, espera", dijo. “No se trata de guardarte esa

parte para ti. Dejame explicar."

"Está bien", murmuró.

"No quise sospechar ni nada de eso, sé que lo que

sea que te haya hecho venir aquí y te haya hecho
tan conocedor de la situación política actual
ciertamente me hace sentir agradecido, pero
estaba mirando las líneas de sangre pura que pude
encontrar, " él empezó. Anne sintió que todo su
cuerpo se enfriaba. "Revisé cada parte de la familia
Sage, incluso las que están lejos de la rama
principal de la familia, pero... no hay Grangers ni
Anne Sage de las que comenté cuando empezamos
a hablar, ella está muerta desde 1973".

Los ojos de Regulus estaban fijos en los de ella y

ella simplemente no podía apartar la mirada de él,
fingir que no pasaba nada o quedarse mirándolo a
los ojos.

“Mi nombre es Ana”, dijo. "Pero no soy un sabio".

La mandíbula de Regulus se cerró y respiró hondo,

claramente controlándose para no asustarse o
hacer demasiadas preguntas.

“No viste nada. No eres un vidente”

“No, no lo hice”, dijo. “Pero sé lo que sucederá de

cualquier manera. No mentí sobre eso. Todo lo que
te dije y todo lo que le dije a Narcissa y Severus,
esas cosas son verdad”.

“¿Cuál es la verdad sobre ti entonces? ¿Sobre qué

mentiste? Preguntó Regulus, apartando la mirada
de ella. Tomó un sorbo de su cerveza de
mantequilla, pero Anne no respondió. "Anne, por
favor, no estoy enojada y tú estás a salvo".

Ana parpadeó.

“Puedes estar enojado”, dijo. "Espero que lo

hagas".

"No lo soy", dijo con firmeza. “Entiendo en general.

La gente tiene que mentir para sobrevivir. Mentí
varias veces para sobrevivir, aunque no me gusta
la idea de que me mientas como lo haces con todos
los que te rodean.

Ella hizo una mueca. Estaba acostumbrada a que la

llamaran mentirosa, después de todo, ella era una
mentirosa, lo admitiera o no. Mentirle a personas
que no se preocupaban profundamente por ella
siempre había sido uno de sus mejores talentos,
aunque no era tan buena mentirosa en las cosas
más pequeñas: se ponía nerviosa cerca de un chico
y todos podían ver, ella Pon los ojos en blanco
sobre algo y todos lo sabrían, pero ella podría hacer
una vida completamente nueva y nadie más que
Regulus parecía sospechar tanto de su historia.

“No puedo decirte la verdad”, dijo.

Dejó la taza sobre la mesa, tal vez un poco brusco,

porque Anne se inclinó hacia él en su silla y se
cruzó de brazos. Desvió la mirada, concentrándose
en arreglar la pinta para que el mango quedara en
el lado derecho y no en el izquierdo como antes.

"¿Por qué?" preguntó, todavía mirando lejos de

ella.

“No puedo decirte la verdad todavía”, especificó.

“Quiero hacerlo, de verdad, pero… aquí no, no es
seguro y temo que me trates diferente si lo hago.
Mentí mucho, Regulus, y estoy empezando a
convertirme realmente en tu amigo y...

No podía perderlo, pensó, pero no habló. Ella

simplemente lo miró, esperando que él pudiera ver
el sentimiento en sus ojos y entender lo que quería
decir con el sentimiento desesperado que crecía en
su pecho.

“¿Por qué debería tratarte de manera diferente?”

preguntó.

“Porque la verdad es… difícil de creer”, dijo.

"Es difícil creer en ti", sonrió. "Nadie puede ser tan

inteligente y estar en Gryffindor".

La pequeña broma la hizo sonreír, agradecida de

que él pareciera querer mantener el aire a su
alrededor ligero. ¿Vio cómo ella se asfixiaba
lentamente frente a él? ¿Era demasiado obvia
cuando se ahogó en miedo?

“Quiero decírtelo”, insistió. “Ahora no, necesito algo

de tiempo, pero… Habrá una velada de verano en
día
Potter Manor el 20 . Eres más bienvenido a
venir, al igual que Narcissa. Allí podremos hablar un
poco mejor y tomarnos nuestro tiempo para
entender todo lo que cambiará cuando te lo cuente
todo”.

Sus ojos sospechosos la miraron de arriba abajo.

"¿Y hablaste con Sirius sobre eso?" preguntó.

"No", dijo ella, encogiéndose de hombros. "No es

asunto suyo, te estoy invitando, y Euphemia
también, ella insistió bastante en que me asegurara
de traerte esto".

Anne puso su mano en el bolsillo de su pantalón y

sacando un pequeño papel de allí, con una rápida
mirada a su alrededor, hizo un hechizo sin varita y
volvió a su tamaño original. Regulus la miró; La
magia de menores de edad no era exactamente
rara, pero alguien que la probaba tan abiertamente
ciertamente era valiente o simplemente estúpido.

Anne le acercó la invitación, sonriendo. Lo tomó y

lo leyó, limpiándose la garganta para que sonara
más formal.

"Lady y Lord Potter te invitan, Regulus Arcturus

Black, a nuestra velada de verano con la gran
expectativa de tu presencia y con la esperanza de
que tu amistad con Anne sea suficiente para
convencerte de que nos reúnas formalmente", dijo.
"Siento que me reclutaron para ir, es casi como una
maldita carta del Ministerio".

Ella se rió entre dientes.

“Simplemente están molestos porque fui a conocer

a tu familia y tú no fuiste a conocerlos”, explicó.
"Aparentemente, fui grosero al no invitarte a cenar
con nosotros en el momento en que llegué a tu
casa".

“¿Le explicaste que no tenías otra opción?” Él se rió

de la pregunta.

"Hice. Ahora no te dan otra opción”, bromeó. En el

breve momento de silencio en el que Regulus puso
la invitación en su bolsillo y bebió su cerveza de
mantequilla todavía medio sonriendo, Anne respiró
hondo. "Podemos hablar ahí. Y no te preocupes,
mantendré a Sirius alejado de ti si así lo deseas.

Regulus se encogió de hombros, puso los ojos en

blanco y dijo. “Mi hermano vendrá a mí si quiere
venir a mí. No podrás detenerlo y yo no podré huir.
Me guste o no, ese chico tiene más agallas que
cerebro y está feliz de usarlo cuando le apetece”.

Anne se habría reído si no fuera tan cierto. Aunque

Sirius era inteligente, ciertamente era un tonto.

día
"Ven a mi casa en el 20, y estas otras dos
invitaciones se las dejaré en la mano a Severus
Snape, porque parece que no quiere hablar
conmigo en este momento, y esta a Narcissa, pero
yo Estoy aterrorizado por tu otra prima, así que te
pido que se la entregues directa y discretamente a
tu mejor prima”.

Regulus casi se rió. También estaba aterrorizado

por Bellatrix.

“Claro”, dijo, tomando las otras dos pequeñas

invitaciones que aún necesitaban el hechizo para
hacerlo crecer.

Él le sonrió y ella le devolvió la sonrisa.

Regulus se tomó un momento para ver sus labios

curvarse y las manzanas de sus mejillas crecer y
hacer sus ojos más pequeños, pero parecían más
brillantes cuando sonreía. Su garganta estaba
abierta a su vista y podía ver el movimiento allí
mientras ella se reía entre dientes de su bigote de
espuma de cerveza de mantequilla.

Ella se inclinó, murmurando algo que Regulus no

pudo entender por el ruido de su propio corazón
que ensordecía sus oídos.

Anne tenía manos suaves, se sorprendió al

respecto, se había imaginado que tendría manos
más ásperas por la forma en que sostenía la varita
con tanta fuerza. Ella le limpió el labio superior y se
echó hacia atrás, todavía sonriéndole.

"Espero que puedas venir", dijo con voz dulce y

suave.

La parte baja del estómago de Regulus parecía

haber sido tirada, casi como si se estuviera
apareciendo sin previo aviso.

Se dio cuenta de repente de que tal vez, incluso

con la mentira y hasta con la sospecha, no podía
ignorar lo espantosamente hermosa que era y no
había manera de que pudiera ignorar el hecho de
que no solo pensaba que ella era una chica
atractiva , pero también que pensaba que ella era
una chica agradable, dulce, valiente e inteligente.

Lo comprendió de inmediato, aterrorizado de sí

mismo en la nuca, que tal vez se sentía más que
atraído por Anne.

Regulus Black estaba enamorado de Anne.

Capítulo 31 : Capítulo treinta

Resumen:
Potter's Summer Soiree es famosa
por el calor de la temporada y por
el hielo de las bebidas. Regulus no
está seguro de cuál estaba
sintiendo.

CALOR DE VERANO

Ser consciente de sus propios sentimientos hizo

que Regulus se sintiera tan cohibido que Narcissa
llegó a su casa mientras sus padres estaban fuera y
él todavía no estaba listo, tratando de decidir su
ropa después de terminar con su cabello,
caminando solo con su mejor ropa. pantalón negro.

"¡Usted debe estar bromeando!" Dijo Narcissa,

abriendo la puerta y mirando al chico sin camisa
parado en el medio de la habitación. "¡Regulus,
llegaremos tarde!"

“No sé qué ponerme”, respondió rápidamente. “¿Me

veo bien con colores claros?”

"Cómo iba a saberlo, solo vistes de negro la mayor

parte del tiempo", se quejó Narcissa. “Cielos,
Regulus. Elige uno de los varios conjuntos que hay
en tu cama desordenada y ¡vámonos! Anne se
enfadará si llegamos muy tarde.

Regulus volvió a dejar que sus ojos recorrieran sus

blusas, camisas, chalecos y abrigos de vestir sobre
su cama desordenada, tomándose casi dos minutos
más observando antes de suspirar y tomar el único
que nunca había usado antes: una blusa blanca con
mangas fluidas y un Chaleco de color crema
amarillento con diminutas flores de lavanda. Tomó
su mejor abrigo negro cruzado y se volvió hacia
Narcissa.

"¿Sí?" preguntó.

"Vamos."

"Cissa, ¿me veo bien?" insistió en preguntar.

Ella se giró hacia él en lo alto de las escaleras, lista

para bajar y lo fulminó con la mirada.

“¿De verdad crees que te dejaría salir de esta casa

sin lucir bien? Regulus, me avergonzaría tener un
miembro feo en mi familia y me niego a
reconocerlo en público”, dijo. "¡Ahora, ven!"

Regulus se aseguró de que sus zapatos todavía

estuvieran bien lustrados y siguió a Narcissa al
salón, donde la chimenea estaba lista y Kreacher
estaba parado cerca de ella, con una urna en sus
manos, sosteniéndola para que los dos primos
siguieran adelante.

"Kreacher, voy a ir a la velada de verano con

Narcissa, Severus y Anne, si mis padres me lo
preguntan, sin embargo, debes decir que estoy con
Severus y Narcissa solo haciendo una aparición en
la fiesta de Potter por cortesía y luego iré". A la
casa de Severus”, ordenó Regulus. Kreacher
pareció dudar. "Y Anne me envió una carta
pidiéndote gracias por el té del otro día, le gustó
mucho".

Anne no había escrito nada por el estilo, pero

Kreacher ciertamente parecía bastante orgulloso de
ello mientras asentía, deseoso de seguir esas
órdenes ahora que Regulus había acariciado su ego
lo suficiente.

"Lo estoy acompañando, no te preocupes,

Kreacher", se rió Narcisa, burlándose de Regulus.

El chico la miró fijamente.

“No necesito una niñera ni un acompañante en este

momento. ¡Pronto cumpliré dieciséis años! Insistió
antes de poner los ojos en blanco.

"Joven Maestro, ¿volverás a pasar la noche?"

Preguntó Kreacher, vacilante.

Regulus dudó en la respuesta. Tenía que hablar con

Anne, y sabía que Anne podía tardar mucho, mucho
tiempo en detalles muy pequeños al contar una
historia, además iba a haber una fiesta y
ciertamente no podía quedarse a su lado todo el
tiempo. No estaba seguro de poder regresar a casa
antes de la mañana en la forma en que esperaba
que ella hablara.

Narcissa lo miró con los ojos muy abiertos.

"Regulus, ¿no volverás a casa esta noche?" ella

preguntó.

"No estoy seguro", murmuró.

¿Ane te pidió que...? ella se detuvo.

"Por supuesto que no", dijo Regulus, rápidamente

defendiendo su honor. "Es más bien el hecho de
que probablemente pasaré la noche en casa de
Severus", añadió a la mentira.

"Bien, porque tu madre sólo te permitió aparecer

en la velada de verano durante unas horas y luego
irás a la casa de Severus como dijiste, y sólo
porque yo iré allí", dijo. "No hagas que me
arrepienta de haber asumido la responsabilidad de
esto, por favor".

Él entendió muy bien lo que quería decir, pero solo

puso los ojos en blanco y tomó un poco de polvo flu
antes de entrar a la chimenea sin responderle o
incluso mirarla mientras llenaba sus pulmones y
decía: "¡Manor Potter!"

Regulus disfrutaba viajar por red flu, la sensación

no era tan horrible y ciertamente le gustaba lo
majestuoso que había aprendido a salir de la
chimenea, limpiando su abrigo con la mano
mientras arreglaba su postura. Con su mejor cara
inexpresiva y superior, miró a su alrededor.

El salón de Potter Manor estaba lleno de gente, en

su mayoría personas mayores con sus mejores
ropas y con champán en sus copas, riéndose de los
chistes terribles de los demás y sonriendo ante sus
horribles opiniones con la esperanza de que el
dinero al final del dinero fuera mayor que el mes
anterior.

Narcissa salió y Regulus tomó su mano para

equilibrarla mientras limpiaba su vestido
suavemente.

“Regulus Black”, dijo una voz masculina tranquila.

Fleamont Potter caminó hacia los dos. "Narcissa
Black, felicidades por su compromiso, señorita".

"Oh, gracias, Lord Potter", dijo Narcissa,

inclinándose rápidamente ante él. “Y gracias por
invitarnos a los dos a la velada. Escuché mucho
sobre la edición del año pasado”.

"Apuesto a que sí", se rió.

Todos sabían que había oído cosas terribles desde

que a sus padres les negaron la entrada.

“Lord Potter, es un placer conocerlo finalmente”,

dijo cortésmente Regulus.

"Regulus Black, sí, escuché mucho sobre ti por

parte de Sirius y Anne", dijo el hombre, asintiendo
para sí mismo. “¿Por qué no los acompaño a
ustedes dos donde están todos los de su edad?
Estoy seguro de que la conversación aquí será
aburrida”.

Aún así, la atención de Narcissa ya había sido

captada mientras saludaba discretamente a
Bartemius Crouch, quien la saludaba con energía,
deseoso de preguntarle sobre su futuro esposo y
sus planes políticos.

"Creo que el señor Crouch requiere mi presencia,

Señor", dijo la mujer.

“Por supuesto, querida, siéntete como en casa. Y

consíguete champán, lo acabamos de recibir de
Francia hace dos días. Me gustaría creer que es lo
suficientemente bueno para que lo beba una
verdadera francesa”, dijo suavemente. El hecho de
que él supiera que Narcissa había nacido en París la
hizo sonreír. —Entonces ven conmigo, jovencito,
estoy seguro de que Anne te está esperando. No ha
podido dejar de hablar de lo emocionada que está
por esta fiesta en general”.

Regulus realmente esperaba que ella hubiera

hablado de su emoción de verlo nuevamente, a
pesar de que habían intercambiado algunas cartas
y se habían visto unos días antes en Las Tres
Escobas.

En su opinión, los sentimientos eran terriblemente

complicados. Eso es lo que sucede cuando uno no
ha sido criado para sentir y comprender sus propios
sentimientos, se vuelve completamente despistado
e incapaz de expresarse de otra manera que no sea
su pequeño espacio seguro: una fiesta, algo tan
público, ciertamente no era el espacio seguro de
Regulus. Estar enamorado de alguien que había
llamado tanta atención y había conquistado tantos
ojos y corazones con sólo una sonrisa ciertamente
no mejoraba las cosas para Regulus; tal vez estaba
exagerando, por supuesto, y tal vez no todos
pensaban que Anne era tan bonita e interesante
como él y simplemente tenía miedo de que la gente
pudiera ver ese lado que él había visto de ella, pero
fuera lo que fuera, todavía se sentía nervioso. su.

Le tomó un momento entender que estaba

nervioso, sí, pero no por ella, sino porque no quería
que ella descubriera que le gustaba demasiado.
Siguió escuchando a Fleamont hablar de algo que
realmente no le interesaba mientras guiaba al niño
fuera de la casa y hacia el patio trasero, donde
estaban todos los jóvenes, riendo y hablando más
alto que los adultos que estaban adentro, pero su
corazón estaba en otro lugar; Todo en lo que
Regulus podía pensar era en lo vergonzoso que
sería ser descubierto como si fuera algún tipo de
niño, incapaz de ocultar ningún sentimiento en
absoluto, además estaba detrás de líneas enemigas
claras y su mejor pista era la forma en que Sirius lo
miraba. tan pronto como salió de la casa.

“¡REGULO!” dijo una voz. Se giró justo a tiempo

para ver a Anne corriendo hacia él, soltando la
mano de Lily Evans para detenerse frente a él.
"¡Usted vino! No pensé que vendrías”.

"Bueno, los dejo a ustedes dos", dijo Fleamont,

asintiendo una vez hacia James, quien estaba
parado a varios metros de distancia, observando a
los dos y entró a la casa nuevamente.

James caminó más cerca de ellos, sus amigos justo

detrás de él.

Regulus se preparó para algún tipo de amenaza de

burla, pero James forzó una sonrisa en su rostro.

"Es bueno saber que viniste, Regulus, me

preocupaba que Anne se sintiera decepcionada",
dijo de manera educada.

Su tono cordial hizo que Regulus parpadeara

sorprendido y no pasó por alto la forma en que
Evans miró por segunda vez al chico. Sirius no
parecía tan sorprendido, pero ciertamente parecía
incómodo, con los ojos fijos en sus propias uñas
negras. Remus Lupin puso una mano en el hombro
del Black mayor, pero le dedicó una pequeña
sonrisa a Anne antes de arrastrar a Sirius y Peter
Pettigrew.

“James…” comenzó Anne.

"Está bien, está bien", refunfuñó. “Los dejaré a

ustedes dos solos. Pero no vayas a algún lugar
donde no pueda verlos a los dos hasta que me
digas que todo salió bien”.

"Jaime -"

“Y vendré a buscarte cuando Sniv…” se detuvo.

"Cuando Snape llegue aquí", se corrigió.

Evans ahora parecía estar a un segundo de sufrir

un aneurisma por la confusión mientras agarraba el
brazo de Marlene McKinnon y le susurraba
furiosamente al oído.

"Está bien, entonces", dijo Anne, sonriendo,

notando también la forma en que Lily parecía a
punto de desmayarse. "Estaremos en el jardín
delantero".

"Necesito verlos a los dos", dijo James.

“No, no es así”, respondió Anne rápidamente, con

una fuerza en sus ojos que hizo que incluso
Regulus dudara en decir algo. “Estaremos en el
jardín delantero, en un lugar iluminado y bajo la
mirada de cualquiera en el salón. Estaremos bien."

James vaciló, mirando a sus amigos, quienes

claramente lo instaban a ir con ellos, especialmente
Remus, quien parecía querer dejar a Anne sola con
Regulus de inmediato, pero Sirius parecía casi tan
preocupado como el propio James.

"Iré a ver cómo están ustedes dos cada media

hora", advirtió.

Regulus no dijo nada sobre cuánto podría pasar en

media hora, pero ciertamente quería hacerlo.
James, sin embargo, conocía bastante la expresión
facial de Black, por lo que miró al chico una vez que
la sonrisa contenida apareció en sus labios, pero
ninguna palabra siguió a la broma.

Anne ignoró a su prima y rápidamente agarró a

Regulus por la muñeca y lo arrastró dentro de la
casa una vez más. Mientras pasaba por los pasillos,
tomó dos copas de bebidas, lo condujo hasta la
puerta principal y se sentó en un banco de piedra
frente a la casa.

Ella le sonrió.

"Lo siento por James, puede volverse un poco

protector de vez en cuando", dijo en voz más baja
ahora que estaban lejos de las risas, los gritos y los
cantos de los adolescentes. "Incluso se aseguró de
que no hubiera tomado ni una sola gota de las
bebidas gaseosas que él mismo había añadido",
puso los ojos en blanco.

"Hermanos mayores", comentó, sentándose a su

lado.

Ella dudó.

"Él no es exactamente mi hermano mayor", se rió.

Él la miró.

“Tengo la sensación de que cualquier cosa que

quieras explicarme, tiene algo que ver con esa risa
incómoda que acabas de dar”, comentó.

Anne suspiró y dio un golpe a su copa de champán,

respiró hondo y pensó en qué decir y cómo decirlo
todo. Estaba nerviosa, se podía ver por la forma en
que sus manos temblaban un poco y por la forma
en que miró a su alrededor para asegurarse de que
no había nadie cerca.

"¿Te he dicho que eres demasiado inteligente para

tu propio bien?" ella refunfuñó.

“Sí, lo hiciste”, dijo, sonriendo mientras se apoyaba

contra la pared de la casa detrás del banco. “No te
preocupes, Anne, tienes tiempo. Respira hondo y…
sólo dime lo que crees que debería saber”.

"Ojalá las cosas fueran más fáciles", murmuró.

Regulus dudó y su corazón dio un vuelco cuando

comenzó a mover su mano. Le tomó un segundo
convencerse de que era lo suficientemente fuerte
para hacer lo que pensaba hacer, pero cuando lo
logró, fue como si todo su aliento hubiera
abandonado sus pulmones… pero de una manera
sorprendentemente buena.

Él sostenía su mano libre sobre su regazo.

“Estoy escuchando”, dijo.

Y eso era todo lo que Anne necesitaba saber.

Todos los tutores que tuvo antes de Hogwarts y

todo el tiempo que había pasado en la biblioteca
familiar, estudiando cualquier cosa que pudiera
conseguir, no lo habían preparado para pensar en
toda la teoría del tiempo que las dos horas a solas
con Anne le habían hecho. .

Había pensado que el tiempo era como los grandes

amores de los libros en los que odiaba imaginarse,
creyéndolos imposibles e inmutables. Pensó para sí
mismo que tal vez pensar en el tiempo debería
haber sido algo en lo que podría haber perdido el
tiempo, después de todo, él era un mago y alguien
como él estaba rodeado de historias de terror sobre
giratiempos y varias otras historias sobre la muerte
y su relación con Tiempo.

Y, sin embargo, se sentía como un niño despistado.

“Y tú pasaste por todo eso”, dijo, con la voz

entrecortada mientras agarraba con fuerza su sexta
flauta. Había estado bebiendo mucho para intentar
estar menos tenso y ser más comprensivo. "Merlín,
Ana".

"Ojalá hubiera podido decírtelo antes, pero..."

"Pero no estabas segura de poder confiar en mí",

completó la frase cuando ella se detuvo.
"Entiendo."

“No fue así”, insistió.

"Ciertamente, espero que haya sido así, eres una

chica inteligente, lo suficiente como para saber que
lo entiendo y aprecio que hayas cambiado de
opinión sobre mí, pero no soy tan estúpido como
para pensar que eres ingenua como para
simplemente confiar en mí sin prueba de lealtad y
bando”, dijo. "¡Esto es tan confuso!"

"¿Necesitas algo de tiempo a solas?"

"No, sólo... quédate aquí conmigo", dijo,

reprimiendo el 'por favor' que realmente quería
incluir en la oración.

Su mente trabajaba rápido, tan rápido que ni

siquiera estaba seguro de estar hablando
correctamente.

Estaba pensando en el futuro que Anne sabía que

era suyo: morir solo, asustado y ahogado,
arrastrado por las criaturas que sin duda acecharían
sus pesadillas a partir de ese momento. Estaba
pensando en el futuro de su hermano y en la
decisión de Peter; ahora entendía la vacilación de
Anne a la hora de confiar y el hecho de que ella le
había dicho que lo vigilara una vez que estuviera en
las filas. Su mente estaba en sus padres, quienes
iban a morir antes de 1993 aproximadamente. Su
mente estaba en el horrible destino de Anne.

Pero su mente volvió al presente una vez que se

abrió la puerta principal.

“Regulus, estaba buscando – ¿qué pasó?”

Severus Snape ciertamente parecía arrepentirse de

haber ido tras su amigo después de que Narcissa lo
detuviera tratando de hablar con él y, ciertamente,
tratando de hacerlo vivir. Al principio, pensó que
Regulus se había metido en problemas, pero todos
los Merodeadores estaban hablando tranquilamente
en el patio trasero y cuando lo vieron, Narcissa
rápidamente comenzó a hablar con James. Fue
entonces cuando corrió un poco y encontró el
cabello de Anne moviéndose cerca de la ventana
del salón, así que salió.

El escenario no era del todo prometedor. Anne

estaba sentada claramente incómoda, viendo a
Regulus inclinarse y sentarse en el banco; Parecía a
punto de vomitar o a punto de desmayarse y
Severus no estaba tan emocionado por ninguna de
las opciones.

"Bebió demasiado", respondió Anne. "Nada

demasiado importante, un poco de aire fresco y
estará bien".

Severus no creía en eso en absoluto, pero Regulus

asintió, con los ojos todavía lejos de la
confrontación, pero aparentemente despierto y
alerta.

"Puedo intentar conseguirte una poción para

recuperar la sobriedad", dijo Severus en voz más
baja. "Antes de que Narcissa te vea".

"Estará bien", dijo Anne. “Pasará la noche”.

Regulus se giró hacia ella tan rápido que se sintió

mareado, con los ojos muy abiertos y las mejillas
calentándose, aunque estaba bastante seguro de
que toda su cara se había sonrojado, no solo sus
mejillas. Severus alzó las cejas y se cruzó de
brazos, asegurándose de que su sonrisa quedara
oculta, aunque ambos lo conocían lo suficiente
como para verlo. Regulus podía decir algo, pero
Anne no, simplemente ignorándolo para que no
generara ningún problema. preguntas.

"¿Qué ha pasado?" Severus insistió.

"Tomé sextas copas de champán y estoy nervioso,

eso es lo que pasó", medio mintió Regulus.

No fue suficiente para Severus dejar de pensar en

eso, pero sí fue suficiente para hacer que dejara de
hablar de eso.

“Vamos, tenemos una fiesta para disfrutar. Vamos,

muchachos”, dijo, abriendo la puerta principal.

Severus la miró bien una vez.

"¿Ese vestido es de Lily?" preguntó.

Ella miró hacia abajo.

“No, eso es mío. ¿Por qué?" preguntó ella,

confundida.

"Ustedes dos se parecen cuando están vestidos

así", explicó Severus, entrando a la casa y sin mirar
atrás.

Regulus casi empezó a reír cuando se levantó del

banco y miró a Anne con su modesto pero bonito
vestido blanco con mangas largas y fluidas. Bebió
el resto de su séptima copa de champán y entró
junto a ella.

Sabía que siete copas equivalían prácticamente a

una botella entera de champán. Regulus no era
alguien que bebiera alcohol con mucha frecuencia,
lo que lo convertía en un peso ligero, para su
consternación. Anne tenía cinco vasos y se veía
bastante bien, apenas parpadeando más lento de lo
habitual mientras le sonreía a Regulus y cerraba la
puerta una vez que estuvo dentro.

Los tres entraron al salón para ver a Narcissa

sosteniendo el brazo de James y hablando, un poco
demasiado emocionada, sobre Quidditch.

"¿Jaime?" Ana llamó.

James se giró, claramente molesto con Narcissa,

pero suspiró cuando Anne se acercó.

"¿Estás bien?" preguntó. "Traté de buscarte una

vez que Snape llegó aquí, pero creo que la señorita
Black ha bebido demasiado y..." Severus trató de
contener la risa y Regulus le tocó las costillas.
“Bueno, empezamos a hablar. ¿Estás bien?"

"Estoy bien", dijo. "Regulus y yo estábamos afuera,

hablando".

“Hablando”, repitió en voz baja. "La conversación

fue bien, ¿supongo?"

"Sí", dijo con voz más firme. “La conversación

estuvo bien. Deja de actuar raro. Al igual que
nosotros tres, Regulus, Severus y yo, esta vez
hablaremos en el patio trasero con todos los
demás”.

Tomó el brazo de Regulus y lo condujo afuera con

fuerza, haciendo que Severus se moviera
rápidamente para seguirlos, todavía completamente
confundido acerca de cómo James Potter no se
había burlado de él ni lo había llamado con ese
horrible apodo. Ciertamente, decidió, Anne había
sido la culpable de su reciente decencia.

El chico negro se estaba tomando la proximidad con

un poco de dureza. Anne sostenía sus brazos con
tanta fuerza contra su cuerpo que podía sentir sus
senos, pero no pareció darse cuenta de lo que
estaba haciendo mientras sonreía y saludaba a
Dorcas, quien estaba hablando con Marlene y le
devolvía el saludo a la pelirroja. un poco tímido.

"Nos traeré unas cuantas bebidas más", dijo

Severus, sus ojos se detuvieron en Lily al otro lado
del patio trasero por un momento antes de volver a
mirar a Anne. "¿El champán está bien?"

"Sí", dijo ella. "Gracias."

“¿Regulus?”

“Lo aceptaré, por supuesto”, respondió.

Mientras Severus se alejaba, Regulus perdió un

poco el equilibrio.

Anne le sonrió, pero puso su mano sobre su pecho

mientras lo empujaba contra la pared para
asegurarse de que pudiera seguir de pie.

A Regulus le gustaba estar contra la pared.

“Gracias a Dios te quedarás a pasar la noche”, se

rió.

“Esa será la primera vez”, dijo. Ella lo miró

confundida. “Pasar la noche en casa de una chica”,
explicó. “Con su papá cerca”.

Ella se rió, pero no dijo nada más al respecto.

"Espera, Reggie", bromeó. “Te traeré más alcohol.

Te lo mereces esta noche. Relajarse. Yo me
ocuparé de ti."

Regulus soltó su control de inmediato en ese

momento, sabiendo muy bien que podía confiar en
Anne para que no se avergonzara por la mañana.

Capítulo 32 : Capítulo treinta y

uno
Resumen:
Regulus se despierta y no está en
casa.

Notas:
Un poco de relleno, sólo un
resumen del último capítulo.
Todos necesitamos que Regulus
sea lindo para tener un mejor día.

Algo de Wolfstar, por fin, por

cierto.

MAÑANA DE VERANO

Regulus Black deseó la muerte en el mismo

momento en que su conciencia volvió a su cuerpo y
su cabeza le gritaba por cada error que parecía
haber cometido a lo largo de su vida. Le picaba la
garganta y tenía la boca seca como si hubiera
comido arena, le ardía el estómago y le partía la
cabeza en cuatro.

Pero ninguna de esas reacciones corporales pudo

superar el pánico que sintió tan pronto como abrió
los ojos y dos cosas se dieron a conocer a la vez:
una, no estaba en esta habitación, a salvo de los
regaños de sus padres; dos, había una chica en la
cama con él, y la chica era pelirroja. Saltó tan
rápido de la cama desconocida que su yo con
resaca no tuvo control sobre sus rodillas y terminó
atrapado en las sábanas y cayendo al suelo con un
fuerte ruido sordo y un silencioso grito de sorpresa.

La chica también saltó, sentándose de inmediato en

la cama y buscando al culpable del ruido,
encontrando a Regulus Black en su piso, tratando
de desenredarse de las sábanas con los ojos muy
abiertos.

Regulus quiso decir que suspiró aliviado una vez

que vio que había sido Anne con quien había estado
en la cama, pero eso solo lo puso más nervioso por
no recordar nada de la noche anterior además de la
conversación, el pánico que sintió después y los
varios bebidas que tomó en el patio trasero,
apoyándose en Severus mientras reía y contaba
historias como si estuviera entre amigos. ¿Había
dicho algo? ¿Había hecho algo? ¿Había sucedido
algo para que él estuviera en su cama y no en la
habitación de algún huésped que estaba seguro que
existía en la mansión? Estaba aterrorizado y
avergonzado sin siquiera saber la verdad.

"¿Qué pasó?" preguntó, parpadeando para tratar de

alejar su somnolencia.

“¿Qué estoy haciendo en tu cama?” -susurró y gritó

la pregunta, mirando hacia la puerta con pánico.

¿Entraría James Potter en la habitación para

matarlo? ¿Sirius también intervendría para vencerlo
por quitarle el honor a Anne?

"Estabas a punto de desmayarte borracho", dijo.

“No podía permitir que papá descubriera que
pasaste la noche. ¿Te has vuelto loco? Sólo le hice
aceptar que eres mi amigo. Así que te traje a mi
habitación y cerré la puerta con llave para que no
pudiera entrar como podría hacerlo en cualquier
otra habitación. Sus amigos ya no estaban, así que
no van a simplemente… despertarse en medio de la
noche. Apenas duermen”.

“Entonces… ¿No pasó nada?”

El rostro confuso de Anne antes de estallar en

carcajadas no tenía precio y Regulus esperaba
recordarlo por el resto de su vida. Incluso medio
despierta y con el cabello desordenado, había
encontrado una manera de verse bonita.

"No, Reggie", bromeó. "Estás bien. Tienes tu

virtud”.

Él puso los ojos en blanco.

“No es mi preocupación en absoluto. Eso ha

desaparecido hace demasiado tiempo, Anne —
gruñó, levantándose finalmente del suelo.

"Oh, bueno, entonces el mío también", se rió.

"Vamos, levantate. Hay un cepillo de dientes de
repuesto en el baño, se lo pedí a Coco anoche
cuando tropezaste al subir las escaleras y ella me
ayudó a arrastrar tu cadáver medio muerto hasta
mi habitación. Habría sido una escena terrible si
alguien me hubiera atrapado. ¡Yo sería la chica
horrible que se aprovecharía de ti!

"Oh, deja de hacer eso, Anne", se quejó. “Me duele

la cabeza al pensar”.

Anne se rió de nuevo mientras señalaba el baño,

tirándose contra las almohadas mientras Regulus
iba a cepillarse los dientes.

Era fácil mentirse a sí mismo en ese baño,

descubrió mientras miraba por la puerta para ver a
Anne suspirando en la cama, con los ojos todavía
cerrados y el pelo por todas partes sobre las
almohadas, la cama desordenada mientras se
cubría con las sábanas nuevamente para ver si
podría dormir unos minutos más. Era lindo verlo y
podía imaginarse pudiendo hacerlo todas las
mañanas.

Quería decir que de alguna manera estaba

decepcionado de que Anne hubiera dicho algo sobre
acostarse con personas antes, pero no podía; en
realidad no le importaba, pero ciertamente sentía
más curiosidad de la que esperaba que fuera
aceptable.

“Esto es asqueroso”, se quejaba del sabor de boca,

todavía cepillándose los dientes.

"Vomitaste", dijo Anne desde el dormitorio, todavía

en la cama con los ojos cerrados. “Lo limpié y
preparé una excusa para que se lo dijeras a tus
padres. Le mentí a Narcissa y Severus me ayudó,
estás bien.

“Eso es aún más repugnante. Lamento el

desorden”, dijo. "Supongo que estaba demasiado
conmocionado para pasar la noche sobrio".

Anne suspiró y se sentó en la cama nuevamente,

pateando las sábanas y levantándose de la cama,
con el pijama de aspecto horrible aún puesto: eran
infantiles, camisa blanca y pantalones con varios
conejitos por todas partes.

“Puedo entender eso y por eso te cuidé”, dijo.

“James me dijo que Sirius vomitó, sobrio, después
de que me fui en la noche les conté todo. Al menos
tú tenías una excusa para ello.

Él la miró mientras empezaba a cepillarse los

dientes.

“A veces llamas a tu papá por tu nombre”, comentó

con la boca llena.

Anne no pareció tener problemas para entenderlo,

porque asintió.

“Evito llamarlo 'papá' todo el tiempo por si lo llamo

papá por accidente en público. ¿Puedes imaginar?
Sería vergonzoso”.

El asintió. Sería muy embarazoso y ni siquiera le

gustaba imaginarse en su posición.

"¿Cuál es la excusa?"

Ella se tomó un segundo, pero entendió lo que le

preguntaba.

"Oh, Narcissa fue enviada de regreso a tu casa y

les advirtió a tus padres que te quedaste a dormir
en casa de Severus porque ustedes dos
comenzaron a hablar sobre una nueva poción que
habían inventado y querían probar cuando se
conocieron aquí", dijo. “Narcissa realmente no sabe
la verdad; ella sabe que estabas demasiado
borracho para volver a casa, pero realmente cree
que pasaste la noche en casa de Severus, así que
no arruines mi 'reputación'”, dijo, dramatizando. Él
puso los ojos en blanco hacia ella en el espejo
mientras ella entraba al baño con él y se paraba
dos pies detrás de él para mirarlo a través del
espejo. “Se supone que los niños todavía deben
estar dormidos. Es demasiado temprano para ellos
durante el verano. ¿Te imaginas a Sirius despierto
antes de las diez de la mañana? Oh, por favor, ese
sería el día”.

Regulus escupió en el fregadero, abrió el grifo y se

lavó la boca y la cara.

"Si Sirius alguna vez se despierta solo antes de las

once, me sorprendería", añadió Regulus después de
terminar.

Ana se rió entre dientes.

"No puedo negar eso", dijo. “Bueno, Mia

probablemente sepa que estás aquí. Lo más
probable es que Coco ya se lo haya dicho. ¡Coco es
una chismosa!

"La mayoría de los elfos domésticos lo son", dijo

Regulus, alejándose del fregadero y observando
desde la puerta en la que se apoyaba mientras
Anne empezaba a buscar su cepillo y pasta de
dientes. "Kreacher me cuenta todo lo que sucede
dentro de la casa, y es algo gracioso, después de
todo, me gustan los buenos chismes".

"Oh, cosas de Slytherin", se rió, comenzando a

cepillarse los dientes.

“Bueno, Anne, no puedes decir mucho. Tú mismo

eres un Slytherin, aparentemente y... ¡oh! Ahora
tiene sentido. Cuando dije que no actuaste como un
Gryffindor, tenía razón porque ¡no eres un
Gryffindor! ¡Descarada, casi me hiciste olvidarlo! se
atragantó, todavía riendo y cepillándose los
dientes, pero logró mantener la calma mientras
volvía a cepillarse los dientes. “¿Tu abuela se
enojará contigo porque pasé la noche?” ella sacudió
su cabeza. “Quiero decir, soy un niño y pasé una
noche en tu habitación… en tu cama. Oh, supongo
que tengo suerte de que Potter no me haya visto,
de verdad.

“Divagas cuando estás borracho”, comentó con la

boca llena.

“Oh, ¿dije algo anoche? ¿Qué dije? ¿Fue

vergonzoso? suspiró con disgusto. “Estoy seguro de
que así fue. Oh, Merlín, creo que vomitaré de
nuevo…”

Anne escupió.

"No", se rió, con la boca libre ahora. “Todavía estás

un poco borracho, como puedo ver. Te ríes
tontamente y divagas mucho, aunque no tenía
mucho sentido mientras pudiste hablar. Snape fue
muy amable con tu orgullo y te hizo callar antes de
que pudieras hablar demasiado sobre cómo querías
entender la diferencia entre mi amistad contigo y tu
amistad con él”, se lavó la boca y se inclinó una vez
más para escupir antes de continuar. “Por
supuesto, no entendí nada de lo que decías. Pero
todavía estás un poco borracho, estoy seguro…
todavía estás divagando un poco y tus manos
todavía están frías”.

Ella tomó su mano para sostenerla y él se quedó

helado en la puerta. Ella le sonrió, parándose justo
frente a él como para demostrarle con el calor de
su mano que realmente estaba helado, pero era
difícil no hacerlo cuando no podía respirar en
absoluto.

La puerta del dormitorio hizo clic y luego se abrió.

Anne se apresuró a empujarlo al interior del baño y

salir.

"¿Sí?" ella dijo.

“¿Por qué estaba cerrada la puerta?” preguntó un

hombre.

Regulus contuvo la respiración una vez que

reconoció la voz de James Potter. Eso no podría ser
bueno.

"Porque hay más personas en la casa además de

tú, Sirius y Remus", dijo.

Hubo una pequeña pausa.

“Sé que no debemos confiar mucho en Peter, pero

no creo que sea alguien que simplemente entraría a
tu habitación sin ser invitado, Anne, está
aterrorizado de ti. Tengan al menos un poco de fe
en él”, dijo.

"No estoy hablando de Peter, estoy hablando de los

otros invitados", dijo. "Pero si el zapato te queda
bien, úsalo".

James suspiró, claramente no estaba de humor

para discutir nada con Anne tan temprano en la
mañana después de haber bebido casi tanto como
Regulus.

“Ahora que veo que estás bien, despierto y que no

te estás ahogando con tu propio vómito después de
haber bebido hasta quedar en coma, voy a volver a
dormir”, dijo. "Cuidadoso."

"¿Con que?"

"Con el hecho de que Remus me despertó esta

mañana para preguntar quién estaba en tu
habitación contigo", respondió James. Regulus
estaba a punto de vomitar otra vez. “Sé que no hay
nadie aquí desde que estoy aquí contigo, pero
Remus no se rinde tan fácilmente. Está
preocupado”.

"Remus puede irse a la mierda", dijo. "Tengo

resaca y un dolor de cabeza terrible, así que tú
también puedes irte a la mierda", había una broma
clara en su voz, pero aun así puso a Regulus muy
nervioso por la reacción de James.

James se rió entre dientes. Regulus soltó el aliento

que ni siquiera sabía que había estado conteniendo;
había esperado enojo, incredulidad por su rudeza,
incluso si era una broma, pero nada de eso surgió
de eso, solo un James Potter de buen humor.

“Al menos tenemos eso en común. Vuelve a

dormir”, dijo.

"Tú también", dijo.

La puerta se cerró del otro lado y luego la puerta

del baño se abrió una vez más, Anne preocupada
se asomó al interior.

"Oh, bien, no te hice caer ni te golpeé la cabeza",

dijo, pareciendo demasiado aliviada para la
comodidad de Regulus. ¿Realmente había pensado
que casi lo había matado? “Es una broma, relájate.
Ahora ven. James vuelve a la cama. Te sacaré a
escondidas por la chimenea.

“¿Y los demás invitados?” preguntó preocupado.

"Alguien podría reconocerme y decirle algo a mis
padres".

“Ya se fueron como a las ocho de la mañana,

estaba tratando de sacar a James de aquí”, dijo
poniendo los ojos en blanco. “Vamos, son casi las
diez y media. Monty se fue a trabajar y todos los
demás siguen durmiendo. Vamos."

Anne corrió a su cama mientras Regulus salía del

baño y vio a Anne sacando sus zapatos de debajo
de la cama y llevándoselos. Los sostuvo en su
mano y salió del dormitorio junto a ella con ellos
todavía en la mano para no hacer demasiado ruido.

Aunque todavía estaba mareado y ciertamente

sentía que parte de su alma todavía estaba en la
cama con Anne debido a lo cansado que se sentía,
aun así se dirigió a la sala de estar con la ayuda de
Anne, tirando de su cuello cada vez que comenzaba
a alejarse a trompicones de su.

Sin embargo, en la sala de la mañana, Regulus

sintió un puñetazo en el estómago.

Remus Lupin y Euphemia Potter estaban sentados

uno al lado del otro, hablando en voz baja,
comiendo frutas y bebiendo té.

“Buenos días, ustedes dos”, dijo Euphemia en un

tono cuidadoso pero gentil.

Regulus miró a Anne, esperando ver a la chica

tranquila y serena que conocía, pero lo que vio fue
a un adolescente atrapado en el acto de sacar a
escondidas a un chico. Genial, pensó, estaba a
punto de recibir una paliza y devolverlo a casa para
que su familia también lo golpeara.

"Anne, vamos, te corté un poco de melón", dijo

Remus, empujando un plato hacia un asiento vacío.
"Recuerdo que te gustan las uvas, Regulus, ¿estoy
en lo cierto?"

"Por favor, no se lo digas a James", logró decir

Anne.

"Una manera de hacer que esto sea menos

sospechoso, Anne", refunfuñó Regulus, poco
impresionado.

Anne lo miró fijamente. Fue como ser atrapado en

un abrazo por Narcissa de nuevo, pero los roles no
se sentían tan bien ahora que estaban invertidos.

"Está bien, querida, como dije, puedes divertirte",

dijo Mia. “Siéntense y coman ustedes dos. Regulus
necesita salir antes de que los demás chicos
despierten”.

“No fue así…” comenzó Anne.

Remus sonrió. “No te preocupes, no le diré nada a

nadie”, prometió.

Anne le sonrió mientras se sentaba en la silla,

Regulus la siguió vacilante y se sentó a su lado,
bebiendo la taza de agua frente a él antes de pasar
el jugo por un poco de té mientras Anne parecía
quedarse con el jugo de naranja.

"Entonces... ¿Cómo dormiste?" preguntó Remus.

La pregunta parecía bastante inocente, pero la

forma en que brillaban sus ojos hizo que Regulus
casi se ahogara con su té. Anne ciertamente se
sintió menos avergonzada que él, porque apareció
su sonrisa.

“Muy bien. ¿ Cómo dormiste ? Sé que Sirius puede

ser un poco ruidoso…”

Regulus observó la interacción con los ojos muy

abiertos. ¿Lupin y su hermano? Probablemente no
debería sorprenderse tanto, pero ciertamente se
sintió un poco desconcertado por cómo Lupin se
sonrojó inmediatamente por la frase de Anne.

"Está bien, niños", dijo Mia, riendo. “Ya es

suficiente. Come, Regulus, querido, tienes que
irte”.

Regulus dejó su taza y asintió, se puso los zapatos,

los ató y comenzó a levantarse.

"Arregla tu cabello antes de irte", dijo Remus.

Regulus se volvió hacia él.

“¿Qué le pasa a mi cabello?” preguntó, tratando de

no parecer demasiado herido, pero fue en vano.

"Bueno, tú... tienes el cabello peinado como Sirius",

fue la respuesta del otro chico, levantando las
cejas. "Ya sabes, el cabello de anoche tuve gran
sexo que se maquilla todas las mañanas antes de
salir de los dormitorios".

"Dulce Circe", murmuró Regulus, completamente

disgustado.

Mia le dio una débil palmada en la nuca a Remus.

"Si el niño vomita, serás tú quien lo limpie,

Remus", advirtió Mia. "Ven aquí, Regulus, lo
arreglaré".

Dudó, pero Mia estaba parada frente a él antes de

que pudiera alejarse de ella o pensar en una salida.
Cerró los ojos con fuerza, esperando el dolor que
normalmente venía con los tirones y desanudos que
su madre solía insistir en hacerle en el cabello
incluso cuando estaba bien arreglado.

Pero no llegó ningún dolor.

Abrió los ojos para ver a Mia alisando

cuidadosamente su cabello sin enojo en sus ojos
por tener que hacerle eso, ella estaba empujando
con cuidado parte del cabello desde su frente hasta
detrás de sus orejas mientras los rizos que
usualmente mantenía bajo control se lo permitían.
tener sus propias vidas por un momento.

"¡Tienes buen pelo!" Dijo Mia, sonando casi

emocionada por eso. “Sabes, era horrible arreglar
el cabello de James cuando era un niño pequeño y
tenía un cuero cabelludo muy sensible, por lo que
lloraba cada vez que intentábamos cepillarlo con
demasiada fuerza. Y luego, cuando apareció Sirius,
su cabello era tan largo que no sabía cómo cuidarlo
él solo, así que tuve que enseñarle paso a paso,
ahora lo tiene liso, aunque tiene menos rizos que
tú. .”

Regulus miró a Anne, pero no había sorpresa ni

envidia en sus ojos, solo estaba mirando como si
supiera lo inseguro que Regulus comenzó a sentirse
bajo la forma clara y extraña de preocuparse de
Mia después de todos esos años siendo negra.

"Lo obtuve de mi papá", murmuró.

Mia lo miró, casi como sorprendida de que hubiera

dicho algo.

“Te pareces a tu papá”, dijo, asintiendo para sí

misma. "Pero tienes los ojos de tu madre".

Y Mia dio un paso atrás, como si no hubiera dicho

nada en absoluto, girándose para iniciar una
conversación con Remus y haciendo un gesto con la
mano a Anne, quien se levantó y comenzó a llevar
a Regulus a la chimenea del salón.

“¿Ella siempre es así?” preguntó. “¿Tan…

susceptible?”

"Sí", dijo Ana. “Al principio también me quedé

desconcertada”, se ríe.

Regulus no dijo nada, pero ahora entendió un poco

mejor por qué Sirius huyó de su casa a ésta.

Lo que no entendía era por qué Sirius no lo había

llevado con él, ni siquiera le había pedido que
viniera.

Capítulo 33 : Capítulo treinta y

dos
Resumen:
El cumpleaños de Regulus se
convierte en el punto más
importante del plan de Anne.

Notas:
Esto no fue tan revisado ni editado
desde que estuve un poco
enfermo, ¡pero ahora estoy
regresando a la universidad y
estoy muy cansado! Espero que
esto sea lo suficientemente bueno.
¡Comenta tu opinión, por favor!
Mientras más comentarios, más
rápido escribo, lo prometo jajaja.

Este es un capítulo muy

importante para la historia, ¿de
acuerdo? Cuando Regulus cumple
dieciséis años, el mundo que lo
rodea cambia mucho.

28 DE JULIO DE 1976

Anne realmente pensó que nunca más en su vida

volvería a poner un pie dentro de Grimmauld Place.
Sin embargo, allí estaba ella, agarrando con fuerza
el pequeño y barato regalo que le había comprado
a Regulus, nerviosa a que a él no le gustara en
absoluto.

de
El 28 julio fue el cumpleaños de Regulus Black,
lo que llevó a Anne a usar otro de los vestidos que
Euphemia insistió en que comprara y se paró frente
a Orion Black, quien había insistido en invitarla,
claramente en contra del deseo de Walburga Black,
si la forma en que miraba a la chica y a su marido
era todo un indicio.

“Lord Black”, saludó, inclinándose. "Dama Negra".

"Sí, sí", refunfuñó Walburga, alejándose y hacia

Bellatrix, quien estaba hablando con su madre y
riéndose, aunque la risa se detuvo tan pronto como
vio a Anne parada frente a Orión.

Orión observó a su esposa alejarse con claro

disgusto, pero luego se volvió hacia Anne con una
mirada interesada, entrecerrando los ojos ante el
pequeño paquete.

"Oh, señorita Sage, no necesitaba comprarle un

regalo a Regulus", dijo.

Miró el paquete negro que tenía en las manos y

sonrió tímidamente, pero no dijo nada, sólo trató
de parecer lo más modesta que pudo. Había
comprado algo que a la mayoría de la gente le
parecería tan tonto y era muy barato desde el
punto de vista monetario, pero Regulus lo
entendería: libro por libro; o al menos esperaba
que él lo entendiera.

“Señor, ¿sabes dónde está?” ella preguntó. "Quería

darle el regalo cara a cara".

“Oh”, Orión parecía más interesado que antes, pero

miró a su alrededor. "Está justo allí con Narcissa y
el señor Singh".

De hecho, Regulus estaba cerca de la ventana, de

pie junto a Narcissa y hablando con un hombre
moreno, que estaba más que feliz de responder
todas las preguntas que Narcissa parecía estar
haciendo. Anne lo reconoció como uno de los
mejores fabricantes de anillos del mundo mágico;
debe haber viajado desde la India hasta Inglaterra
sólo para el cumpleaños del Heredero Negro.

"Disculpe, señor", dijo, inclinándose una vez más.

"Siéntase como en casa, señorita Sage", dijo Orión.

Se abrió paso entre la multitud con una pequeña

sonrisa, educada, pero claramente no tan real
hasta que pudo encontrar una manera de detenerse
a unos metros del pequeño grupo que conversaba
sobre el mejor tono dorado para los tonos de piel.
Anne no se limpió la garganta ni trató de llamar la
atención, simplemente esperó hasta que Regulus
estuviera libre para tener una conversación
educada con ella antes de poder encontrar a
alguien más con quien hablar, desapareciendo de la
vista antes de abandonar la fiesta en una hora
educada.

Pero no tuvo que esperar mucho, porque los ojos

de Regulus se detuvieron en ella un segundo antes
de que ella dejara de mirar a su alrededor para
mirarlo a él.

"Oh, señor Singh, discúlpeme", dijo Regulus. "Me

gustaría que conocieras a Anne Sage, una amiga
mía de Hogwarts".

El hombre se volvió hacia Anne con ojos curiosos

cuando ella entró en la conversación, aunque
acababa de llegar allí. Tenía ojos tan oscuros que
no podía ver la diferencia entre sus pupilas y el
resto, su cabello negro era liso y recogido hacia
atrás de una manera que hizo que Anne recordara
al joven Draco Malfoy, lo que casi la hizo reír, pero
solo sonrió. a él. Llevaba una kurta tradicional india
en color rosa salmón y dorado.

Ella le ofreció la mano cortésmente y él se la

estrechó.

“Un placer, señor”, dijo.

"Un verdadero placer, señorita Sage", dijo. "Te ves

mucho más bonita de lo que me hicieron creer",
sonrió cuando ella parpadeó, confundida, pero
manteniendo la sonrisa en los labios. "Sus palabras
no le hicieron justicia, señor Black".

Se giró para mirar a Regulus sorprendida cuando el

señor Singh soltó su mano y le echó el cabello
hacia atrás, aunque apenas podía moverse.

Regulus se sonrojó, Narcissa intentó sofocar su risa

sorbiendo su vino con cuidado, tratando de no dejar
caer una sola gota sobre su vestido color crema.

"Creo que hablé de tu cabello como ejemplo del

color cobre", respondió, forzando una sonrisa.
"Tienes un cabello inolvidable, Anne".

"Lo tomaré como un cumplido", bromeó. “Y gracias

por su cumplido, señor Singh. Creo que leí acerca
de su nuevo tipo de trabajo de transfiguración:
cabello a diamantes, ¡qué maravilloso e ingenioso!
Estaría encantado de comprender un poco mejor su
proceso, señor. Soy algo así como un fan”.

Él rió.

“Me halaga, señorita Sage. Sabes cómo llegar al

corazón de la gente”, bromeó.

“Me lo han dicho, señor”, bromeó ella, con una

sonrisa cada vez mayor.

Miró a Regulus una vez más, quien estaba

observando a los dos interactuar con una pequeña
sonrisa como si hubiera esperado que los dos se
llevaran bien. Anne le levantó una ceja y él se
encogió de hombros como si lo que pasaba por su
mente no fuera nada importante.

"Señor Singh, ¿le importaría seguir contándome

sobre el color plateado? Creo que compraré algo
para mi futuro esposo", dijo Narcissa, dando un
paso hacia la izquierda.

El hombre se apresuró a regresar a la conversación

de la que Anne entendía poco y Narcissa alejó al
hombre de los dos adolescentes, quienes parecían
ansiosos por hablar a solas.

Los ojos de Regulus estaban en el pequeño paquete

en su mano.

"¿Padre no te mostró dónde poner los regalos?"

preguntó.

“No le di la oportunidad”, dijo, sonriéndole. “Quería

darte esto cara a cara. Quería saber qué piensas de
esto”.

Regulus había sido criado con la creencia de que

abrir regalos en público es una señal de alarde sin
sentido, lo que lo haría parecer infantil. Pero
cuando miró a su alrededor y no vio a nadie
mirándolos en la esquina del salón y la sala de
estar, la llevó hacia la sala de estar cerca de la
ventana y se sentó a su lado. Encontró los ojos de
Narcissa al otro lado de la habitación mientras ella
le sonreía, pero desvió la mirada y volvió a mirar a
Anne, tomando el paquete de su mano.

"Oh", dijo, una vez que abrió la parte frontal para

mirar el libro familiar. Casi se echó a reír,
permitiendo que sólo una sonrisa apareciera en sus
labios. "Ana de las Tejas Verdes... es tu libro
favorito".

Ella parpadeó, sonrojándose un poco.

"Sé que no es mucho, pero no sabía qué más

comprarte, así que recordé que dijiste que querías
saber de qué se trataba, así que compré una copia
y..." se inclinó hacia él, abriendo el libro en la
página aleatoria. Había una anotación en la esquina
de la página y, mientras pasaba las páginas, él notó
que había otros puntos de comentarios. “Copié mis
notas para que pudieras saber lo que estaba
pensando cuando las leí”.

Regulus sonrió aún más.

“También escribo en mis libros”, admitió. “Mi madre

a menudo se enoja conmigo por eso, pero eso me
hace pensar mejor”.

"Así es", estuvo de acuerdo. "Espero que te guste.

No sabía qué más comprar, pero si quieres algo
más me lo puedes decir y lo iré a buscar en cuanto
pueda.”

Regulus le puso los ojos en blanco.

“Anne, esto está más que bien. Me gusta, lo juro”,

dijo. “Entiendo que este libro es más importante de
lo que usted admite. Estoy emocionado de entender
un poco mejor qué hizo que te pusieran el nombre
de una chica pelirroja y cabeza hueca”.

"¡Ella no es una cabeza hueca!" Lo regañó, dándole

una débil palmada en el brazo.

Su sonrisa la hizo reír, sacudiendo la cabeza ante el

tipo de bromas que Regulus quería hacerle en ese
momento.

"Mamá no te causó problemas, ¿verdad?" preguntó,

una vez que ella dejó de reír. “Sé que ella le dijo a
mi padre que no te invitara, pero yo insistí. Te
quería aquí”.

"Eso es dulce", dijo, sonriéndole. “Pero no, no lo

hizo, apenas me miró después de que la saludé y
simplemente caminó hacia tu tía y tu prima.
Estaban hablando cerca del comedor la última vez
que los vi”.

"Bien", dijo.

Lejos de ellos, parecía estar pensando y Anne no

pudo evitar asentir en silencio. Regulus supo lo que
estaba pensando por la forma en que la miró y se
levantó del asiento.

"¿Qué es?" preguntó ella, confundida por la forma

en que él miraba a su alrededor.

"Vamos, acércate sigilosamente a mí", dijo. "Dejaré

el libro en mi habitación y, bueno, conoces la casa
lo suficiente como para saber que no podemos
escuchar nada desde allí arriba".

Anne casi se rió. Regulus estaba tomando bastante

bien la verdad que le había compartido sobre
cuando vivió en su casa después de que él ya
estaba muerto. Pero ciertamente no tenía mucha
comprensión de la realidad.

“¿Te has vuelto loco? ¡Tu madre me torturará! dijo,

medio en broma.

"Ella no se enterará", dijo.

"¡Pero lo hará!" ella insistió.

"No si vas a la cocina y le pides a Kreacher que te

lleve", dijo, sonriéndole un poco. Se mordió el labio
antes de dar los últimos sorbos de su vino blanco.
“Vamos, Anne, sólo necesito unos momentos tuyos
y de tranquilidad, de lo contrario perderé
completamente la cabeza. Ya llevo tres horas
hablando con esta gente aburrida. Te llevé cuando
lo necesitabas en la velada”, sonrió, ignorando por
completo el hecho de que ella lo cuidó por el resto
de la noche.

“Entonces me emborracharé”, bromeó. "Si quieres

hablar sobre la velada".

Él gimió, echando la cabeza hacia atrás con

frustración.

“Quédate aquí entonces, no te metas en problemas.

Quédate con Narcissa, ella cuidará de ti”, dijo.
"Cuidadoso. Volveré pronto."

Tener dieciséis años parecía hacerle bien a Regulus,

porque rápidamente se alejó saltando hacia las
escaleras, sin siquiera importarle que algunas
personas lo miraran y se rieran, hablando de que
ya había bebido demasiado. Eso hizo feliz a Anne;
Se veía cómodo y feliz, como debería estar un
adolescente en su propia casa.

Anne era buena para hacerse notar, pero no tan

buena como imaginaba para hacerse invisible. Ella
siempre estaba cerca de las paredes,
manteniéndose alejada del camino de la gente y no
aceptando a nadie que no viniera a hablar con ella.
Tomó una copa de vino rosado cuando pasó una
joven que lo servía, pero no lo bebió hasta que
estuvo al otro lado de la habitación, cerca de la sala
y a unos pasos del pasillo que la llevaría a la puerta
delantera. Sabía que era una tontería y que no
sería atacada de la nada en Grimmauld Place,
especialmente frente a todas estas personas que
claramente trabajaban en el Ministerio; estaba a
salvo, pero eso no significaba que se sintiera
segura, culpar al trastorno de estrés postraumático
o a su simple ansiedad, fuera lo que fuera, hacía
que Anne sintiera ganas de huir.

Tomó un sorbo de vino y agradeció el sabor seco

europeo que la mantenía alerta.

"Si no la conociera mejor, señorita Sage, diría que

está tratando de escaparse", dijo una voz a su lado.

Walburga Black parada a su lado y bebiendo su

propia copa de vino rosado no era algo que hubiera
esperado ver.

“Por mucho que crea que es su deseo, señora,

todavía no”, espetó.

Anne se mordió la lengua. Había sido automático.

Había hablado antes de lo que pensaba desde que
la tomaron por sorpresa.

“Eres gracioso”, dijo Walburga sin reírse en

absoluto. "¿Qué quiere de nosotros?"

Anne se limitó a mirarla.

"No hay nada que puedas darme, Lady Black",

respondió. "No necesito nada de ti".

“No te pregunté qué necesitas, te pregunté qué

querías; Hay una gran diferencia entre esas dos
preguntas”, respondió Walburga.

“No quiero nada de tu familia, Lady Black. Tengo

una amistad con Regulus, lo que hace que seamos
corteses el uno con el otro, nada más, y por el otro,
me refiero a usted y a mí, señora”, dijo. “No soy
alguien que menosprecie la forma en que me tratas
e ignore los ataques a mi persona, normalmente
me defendería, pero como sé que eso es lo que
quieres de mí, estoy callado. Porque no quiero
satisfacerte... y porque respeto a Regulus lo
suficiente como para no discutir con su madre,
estoy protegiendo tu imagen ante tu hijo.

"¡No necesito tu protección, niña!" Ella exclamo.

Esta vez se volvió completamente hacia Walburga,

sin hablarle y todavía mirando a la gente. No, esta
vez estaban cara a cara y Walburga podía mirar a
Anne a los ojos y ver la práctica prisión de acero
frío que mantenía alrededor de su propia mente.
Walburga ya no estaba tan emocionado de ver lo
que había detrás; ese muro era para mantener las
cosas adentro, no a las personas afuera.

Había subestimado a la chica.

“Créala, señora, puede que no lo necesite, pero

pronto lo querrá”, dijo Anne. “Tus órdenes y
argumentos no mantendrán a Regulus agachado
por mucho tiempo, y lo sabes. Por eso me odias
tanto, porque estoy emparentada con las personas
de las que intentaste alejar a tu mayor y
fracasaste, soy el recordatorio de tu fracaso, no
como madre, sino como tirana. Créame, Lady
Black, usted falló como madre hace bastante
tiempo, incluso antes de que yo estuviera aquí para
mostrárselo al mundo.

“¡Cuidado con cómo me hablas!” advirtió con un

silbido.

“No, cuidado con cómo le hablas al hijo que te

queda”, respondió Anne. “No hagas que él también
te deje. Él es lo único entre los buitres enojados de
los periódicos y tú; te quieren, tienen hambre de tu
carne y de tus verdades que escondiste durante
tanto tiempo. En el momento en que entiendas eso
de verdad, comprenderás que me necesitas mucho
más de lo que yo podría necesitarte a ti”.

Walburga la miró y sintió que se le enfriaba todo el

cuerpo mientras tragaba seco.

Ana lo sabía. Anne tuvo que saberlo por la forma en

que miraba. Sabía sobre los crucios y sobre la
magia oscura por la que Sirius había sido sometido,
sabía sobre las cicatrices y los moretones en
Regulus. Ella lo sabía todo y una sola palabra suya
podría terminar con todo por lo que trabajó en su
vida; una palabra suya y todo el poder e influencia
que tenía la familia se evaporaría y la Sede
desaparecería bajo Orión.

Anne miró hacia otro lado, sonriendo dulcemente

antes de beber su vino una vez más como si nada
hubiera pasado.

"Oh, discúlpeme, creo que veo a Severus", dijo

Anne, alejándose.

Anne trató de ignorar la forma en que sus rodillas

querían comenzar a temblar mientras caminaba
entre la multitud una vez más, viendo la parte
superior del cabello negro entre algunos rubios
mientras Severus se encogía para no tocar a nadie
en su camino cerca de la ventana con la que Anne
había estado sentada. Régulo. ¿Era esa ventana el
mejor lugar para todos los que no querían estar
allí?

Severus levantó la vista mientras se tiraba en el

asiento, se veía pálido y de un verde enfermizo
mientras cerraba los ojos respirando
profundamente antes de verla caminar hacia él.

"Sage", murmuró más para sí mismo que para

nadie. "¿Qué estás haciendo aquí?"

Ella lo miró e ignoró lo terrible que se veía. No era

lugar para hablar de eso.

“Fui invitada por Lord Black”, fue su respuesta.

"Y supongo que Lady Black no tenía firma en la

carta", dijo, sonando un poco sin aliento.

"Ninguna en absoluto", estuvo de acuerdo. Ella

echó un vistazo a su alrededor. "¿Sabes dónde está
el baño en este piso?"

Él asintió y se levantó, abriéndose camino entre la

gente antes de desaparecer. Terminó su taza y la
puso en una bandeja antes de abrirse paso entre la
gente para seguirlo.

Apenas tuvo que aguzar sus oídos para nada,

escuchó a Severus jadear desde el pasillo mientras
se deslizaba entre las sombras para esconderse y
forzaba el pomo de la puerta antes de entrar al
baño para ver al chico de rodillas frente al inodoro.

“Ciertamente no bebiste demasiado. ¿Qué pasó?"

ella preguntó.

Y algo que nunca pensó que vería sucedió: los ojos

de Severus se llenaron de lágrimas y su labio
inferior tembló.

Severus finalmente parecía de su edad; era un niño

aterrorizado que no quería nada más que un
consuelo que Anne no podía darle.

“Tuve que ver morir al bebé y no pude hacer nada”,

murmuró, con la voz temblando violentamente. “No
podía hacer otra cosa que simplemente… quedarme
ahí y fingir que todo estaba bien para mí. Ella tenía
cinco años. ¡Cinco!"

Anne cayó al suelo para estar a su lado, no lo tocó

cuando él se alejó de ella.

"Severus, ¿qué pasó?" preguntó ella, con los ojos

muy abiertos.

"Tenías razón", refunfuñó, inclinándose hacia el

baño de nuevo. Tosió, pero no salió nada. “Tenías
razón”, insistió.

"Tienes que decirme qué pasó", insistió Anne.

Severus luchó por respirar, poniéndose de rodillas

antes de volver a vomitar. Anne miró hacia otro
lado, tratando de darle algo de privacidad. Se le
puso la piel de gallina en el cuerpo y se sentía un
poco débil mientras intentaba mantener la
respiración. No podía entrar en pánico – necesitaba
ayudar a Severus; ella sola podría entrar en pánico
después de que él se recuperara.

Tosió, jadeando por aire poco después.

"Muy bien, respira profundamente, aguanta...

uno... dos... tres... suéltalo, lentamente", lo
entrenó Anne. Se arrodilló y agarró el papel
higiénico. “Toma, suénate la nariz. Saca el vómito”.

Severus siguió sus instrucciones, lentamente

volviendo en sí, aunque sostuvo los pedazos de
papel con manos temblorosas. No podía hablar,
aunque tartamudeaba, tratando de decir algo, pero
una vez que notó que ella no podía entender sus
palabras, se subió la manga.

Todo el cuerpo de Anne se quedó helado.

La Marca Oscura estaba en su brazo, la piel estaba

roja e irritada. Acababa de recibirlo.

"Oh", lo hizo, pero fue todo lo que pudo decir. "Oh,

Severus, lamento mucho que esto haya sucedido".

“No podía correr”, logró decir. "Lo lamento."

"Lo sé", murmuró. “No hay razón para que pidas

perdón, no hay nada que pudieras haber hecho. No
había manera de que pudieras haber huido”.

“Anne, iban a matarme, y me quedé allí y la vi

llorar y gritar. No podía moverme”, lamentó.
“Quiero que esto termine ya, por favor, no quiero
hacer esto más”.

Le tomó casi veinte minutos a Severus sentirse lo

suficientemente seguro como para salir del baño sin
temer que volviera a colapsar y Anne tuvo que
hacer tres glamour para hacerlo lucir menos
enfermizo y menos hinchado y rojizo alrededor de
los ojos y la nariz. Pasaron otros diez minutos antes
de que pudiera regresar al lugar cerca de la
ventana y sentarse, tomando una copa de vino
tinto sin un solo sorbo.

Lucius Malfoy había llegado allí con Severus, pero

había comenzado a hablar con Lady Black, Druella
y Narcissa, siendo mimado por el señor Singh y
pronto se le unió un borracho Regulus, quien
claramente solo estaba escuchando la conversación
que estaban teniendo por deber.

“Después de lo que pasó”, dijo Severus de repente,

haciendo que Anne se volviera tan rápido que tuvo
que sentarse a su lado, “Malfoy y… él me dejaron
solo en la Mansión Malfoy por unas horas. Lord y
Lady Malfoy están en Francia en este momento, así
que me quedé en el suelo todo ese tiempo hasta
que pude moverme nuevamente.

Anne volvió a mirar a Lucius. El estaba bien; estaba

tranquilo, sereno y tenía un suave sonrojo en las
mejillas mientras hablaba con su tercera copa de
vino, empezando a ponerse casi tan borracho como
Regulus y Druella. Apartó la mirada del hombre que
ciertamente estaba matando bien a Bellatrix para
encontrar a Bellatrix parada junto a Rodolphus,
mirando a Severus y a ella.

Sintió una puñalada justo entre sus ojos, pero su

escudo mental se mantuvo fuerte por un segundo
mientras elegía el recuerdo más tonto que pudo
encontrar para mostrarlo y hacer que Bellatrix
apartara la mirada: acostada en la cama con Harry,
leyendo debajo de las mantas con lumos; algo
inocente que hacían muchos niños magos, a pesar
de que no se permitía magia fuera de la escuela.

La mujer parecía confundida por el recuerdo de un

niño pequeño riéndose mientras Harry mostraba la
primera magia real que había visto. Anne miró
hacia otro lado, aferrándose a los pocos segundos
de felicidad que el recuerdo podía traerle.

“¿Sabes adónde fueron?” ella preguntó.

Severus negó con la cabeza.

"No dijeron nada más que necesitaba tiempo

para... limpiarme", vaciló.

Anne no necesitaba ninguna introducción al tema,

sabía que la Marca Tenebrosa era una pieza de
magia oscura y extremadamente poderosa y
dolorosa para quien la portadora. Severus se había
orinado encima y no había sorpresa ni juicio en su
mente, todo lo que podía pensar era en lo solo y lo
avergonzado que debía haberse sentido.

“¿No te ayudaron en nada?” ella preguntó.

"Dado que es una casa mágica, logré salirme con la

mía con un tonto hechizo de limpieza después de
que pude moverme".

"Bastardos", refunfuñó.

Volvió a mirar al grupo sólo para encontrar a

Narcissa mirándola esta vez, pero no se le ocurrió
ningún ataque. Narcissa parecía preocupada
mientras miraba entre Anne y Severus, sabiendo
claramente que algo estaba fuera de lugar por la
forma en que Lucius parecía demasiado feliz.

Ana negó con la cabeza. No es el momento.

Narcissa miró el reloj al otro lado de la habitación.

Casi medianoche, faltaban trece minutos.

“Creo que es hora de que me vaya”, dijo Anne. “Tú

también deberías irte, Severus. Puedes venir con...

"No, no voy a ir a Potter".

Aunque la negativa rotunda y la voz fuerte la

inquietaron, pudo entender su versión. Ir con el
hombre que había sido la razón de muchos de los
momentos humillantes de su carrera escolar
tampoco fue la primera idea en su mente – era
como suplicarle ayuda a Draco; aunque estaban del
mismo lado, la pequeña cantidad de orgullo que
había logrado mantener nunca le permitiría hacer
eso.

"Está bien, puedo ir contigo a tu casa", dijo. "Podría

llevarte a casa de Lily".

“Lily nunca…”

“Ella lo entendería si hablaras con ella”, insistió.

“Severus, realmente no quiero dejarte solo. Temo
por tu seguridad si estás solo…” dudó con las
siguientes palabras, pero era necesario decirlas, “y
temo lo que tu padre te hará cuando tu cuerpo es
tan frágil”.

Severus la miró, entrecerrando los ojos entre

vergüenza y enojo, pero dijo con voz tranquila:
"Aunque realmente quiero preguntarte cómo lo
sabes, siento que te lo dije yo mismo...
indirectamente".

“Lo hiciste, y yo lo sé. Los niños como nosotros nos

reconocemos unos a otros”, dijo. Severus asintió,
ella estaba en el mismo barco que él, lo entendía.
“Y es por eso que sé que Lily entendería
completamente si dijera que estoy preocupada por
tu salud. Puede que ya no seáis amigos, pero eso
no significa que ella quiera que os desmoronéis y
muráis.

Severus respiró hondo, pero finalmente asintió.

Sabía que no podría pasar la noche si lo dejaban

solo. Lo más probable es que su madre se hubiera
desmayado borracha y su padre también estuviera
enojado, aunque probablemente estaba despierto y
esperando que regresara a casa para asegurarse de
que su rareza quedara afuera: su autodefensa y su
identidad debían desaparecer.

"Si Lily acepta", murmuró.

“Si no lo hace, yo misma me ocuparé de ti”,

prometió. “Pídele a Kreacher en las cocinas que te
lleve a la segunda chimenea escondida en la
biblioteca, solo díselo a Regulus. Cuando llegues
allí, di 'Potter Cottage'”.

Aunque Severus parecía confundido, lo aceptó.

Severus se alejó tranquilamente y si ella no supiera

su estado, pensaría que no era más que otra
persona cansada de la fiesta tratando de buscar un
lugar para ir y divertirse.

Anne se dirigió un poco menos discretamente hacia

Regulus.

La conversación se detuvo tan pronto como ella se

detuvo junto a ellos. Druella la miró con disgusto,
pero Walburga bajó la mirada antes de mirar a
Anne con sospecha.

"Disculpe, no es mi intención entrometerme, solo

vine a despedirme", dijo cortésmente. “Lady Black,
muchas gracias por su… hospitalidad. Y Regulus,
mientras el día siga siendo tuyo, feliz cumpleaños
una vez más. Espero que te haya gustado tu
regalo…”

"¡Por supuesto lo hice!" dijo, sonando

sorprendentemente emocionado. "Estoy
emocionado de leerlo y de enviarte una carta
bastante larga con mis reacciones sobre el libro y
tus comentarios".

Ella sonrió, sorprendida de lo abierto que era.

Dulce, aunque estaba más borracho de lo que ella
esperaba. Regulus realmente era un peso ligero.

“Entonces lo esperaré pacientemente. Entonces me

iré. Fue un placer conocerlo, señor Singh”.

“El placer fue todo mío, querida señorita Sage.

Escríbeme si alguna vez estás interesado en uno de
mis trabajos y te escribiré sobre la conversación
que tuvimos antes; El proceso de transfiguración es
bastante simple una vez que entiendes su raíz”,
respondió suavemente.

“Usted es el experto, señor, así que si usted lo

dice…” se rió. "Disculpe, entonces."

"Quédate a pasar la noche", dijo Regulus, de

repente.

El grupo quedó en silencio en un segundo.

Regulus necesitaba recuperar la sobriedad

rápidamente.

"No creo que sea una buena idea, Regulus", le

respondió ella. “Te escribiré pronto. Qué tengas
buenas noches."

Él comenzó a moverse una vez que ella dio un paso

atrás y se inclinó, listo para acompañarla a la
chimenea, pero Narcissa se apresuró a soltar la
mano de su futuro esposo para tomar la de Anne,
anunciando que ella sería quien guiaría a la niña. a
su salida.

Anne sonrió agradecida y caminó a su lado.

Caminaban con sonrisas en sus rostros, pero con

las manos sudorosas agarrándose las unas a las
otras en completo silencio.

Ellos sabían. Ambos lo sabían.

"¿Que quieres decirme?" Anne murmuró la

pregunta una vez que estuvieron frente a la
chimenea.

Lentamente y con una sonrisa quieta en su rostro,

Anne se acercó a la red flu como si estuvieran
teniendo una conversación agradable.

"Surrey, a unos pocos kilómetros de Dippenhall",

murmuró, cerrando a cambio la urna de red flu.
“Roddy, Lucius y él. Todos trasladaron algo desde
Londres hasta allí esta noche”, miró a su alrededor
y dio un paso atrás. "¿Debo asumir que sabes lo
que es?" Ana asintió. “¿Debo asumir que cuidarán
bien de Severus?” Anne asintió de nuevo. "Bien. Te
escribiré si encuentro algo más”.

Anne entró en la chimenea, sintiendo que su

estómago se revolvía de miedo, pero murmuró el
nombre para sí misma antes de dejarse tragar por
las llamas verdes, observando a Narcissa poner una
sonrisa inventada pero sincera en su rostro antes
de darse la vuelta para regresar. a la fiesta como si
nada hubiera pasado.

Salió de la chimenea hacia la cabaña de

construcción pintoresca y respiró hondo,
apoyándose en sus rodillas para respirar mejor.
Menos de un minuto después de eso, Severus salió
tambaleándose de la chimenea, haciendo una
mueca de dolor.

"¿Estás bien?" ella preguntó.

"Bien", descartó.

Hizo lo mejor que pudo para no mirar alrededor de

la cabaña, incómodo simplemente sabiendo que el
lugar pertenecía a los Potter.

"¿Ahora que?" preguntó.

"Esperamos", respondió ella.

"¿Para qué?"

El fuerte crujido fue su respuesta cuando un

preocupado Fleamont apareció desde la cocina,
habiéndose aparecido de su casa a la cabaña una
vez que las protecciones se activaron por la llegada
de Anne con un compañero no relacionado con la
sangre; Parecía haber sido tomado por sorpresa,
estaba en pijama, pero lo que la hizo sonreír un
poco fue el hecho de que tenía zapatos diferentes:
el derecho era una zapatilla blanca y el izquierdo
una sandalia negra.

“¿Ana, querida?” él llamó. "¿Qué pasó? ¿Estás

bien?"

"Necesito que nos aparezcas a Severus y a mí en

un lugar", dijo. “No puedo explicártelo, pero
¿puedes hacerme el favor?”

A Fleamont no pareció gustarle mucho, pero

asintió.

Y estaban parados en el callejón del pequeño

pueblo y Anne le dijo a Monty que se quedara atrás
mientras caminaba con Severus por las calles,
siguiendo sus instrucciones, pero fingiendo que
sabía exactamente dónde estaba y qué estaba
haciendo.

Por eso estaba parada frente a la puerta de la casa

de los Evans, empujando a Severus hacia un lado y
quitándole los glamures.

"Quédate aquí hasta que hable con Lily y luego te

llamaré", dijo. “No digas nada estúpido y dile la
verdad a medias: dile que estás enfermo y que no
puedes volver a casa y que yo no puedo cuidar de
ti, pero ella es la única en la que confías además de
mí. Estabas maldecido en la Casa Malfoy y no
sabías en quién confiar en tu propia Casa. Tiene
prejuicios al respecto; ella simplemente asentirá y
lo aceptará”.

Él asintió, apoyándose contra la pared, ya cansado.

Su rostro todavía estaba pálido y todavía sentía
claramente dolor.

Anne se odió un poco a sí misma cuando llamó a la

puerta, sin escuchar nada antes de tocar el timbre,
sintiendo como si estuviera fallando en proteger a
Severus.

El ruido dentro de la casa la hizo contener la

respiración. La gente se movía rápidamente hacia
el interior y había gente hablando. Aunque lo había
estado esperando, aun así saltó cuando la puerta se
abrió y un hombre alto y pelirrojo se paró en la
entrada con un pijama debajo de la bata y un
rostro enojado que se suavizó una vez que miró a
Anne. ¿Había reconocido algo de su hija en ella?
Quizás algo de él mismo, esperó Anne en silencio.

"¿Como puedo ayudarte?" preguntó.

Ana parpadeó. Era galés. El acento era fuerte y ella

quedó desconcertada; nunca supo que tenía sangre
galesa.

“Soy Anne, señor Evans. Estoy buscando a Lily,

tengo una emergencia”, explicó.

El hombre la miró de arriba abajo antes de mirar

por encima del hombro.

“¿Y necesitabas que se resolviera en medio de la

noche?” preguntó, claramente infeliz.

Ella tragó seco. Ese hombre era su abuelo: el pelo,

la nariz; los compartían, ella tenía algo de él en
ella, pero él ni siquiera se dio cuenta. Apenas la
vio, todo lo que vio fue a una chica extraña parada
en la puerta de su casa a medianoche.

"Desafortunadamente, no podía esperar", dijo. Ella

miró a Severus. "Mi amiga está herida y Lily es la
mejor sanadora mágica que he visto en años".

Aunque Anne no podía estar segura de que Lily ya

fuera una buena sanadora, había oído a la gente
hablar de que ella curaba a la gente durante las
batallas. Con un poco de suerte, eso sería suficiente
para mantener a Severus bien durante la noche.

Ese fue el momento en que el señor Evans vio al

chico pálido contra la pared. Lo reconoció como el
chico con el que Lily había sido amiga durante
años, aunque en ese momento ya había
desaparecido de su casa durante aproximadamente
un año. Parecía no encontrarse bien, parecía a
punto de desmayarse.

"¡LIRIO!" gritó.

Se oyeron pasos atronadores. Tres personas

corriendo: Lily al frente, la señorita Evans justo a
su lado y la joven torpemente alta con ella;
Petunia.

Anne se mordió el interior de la mejilla hasta que

probó la sangre.

"¿Ana?" -Preguntó Lily. "¿Qué pasó?"

En ese momento, la rodilla de Severus se dobló y

cayó hacia adelante, golpeando a Anne en el
camino y cayendo encima de ella antes de que
Anne pudiera siquiera responder.

Exclamó el señor Evans antes de levantar al niño

mientras la señorita Evans jadeaba y corría para
ayudar a Anne a levantarse y ver si estaba bien.
Petunia gritó, saltando como si algo estuviera a
punto de explotar, aunque Lily no se movió ni un
centímetro confundida después de que acababa de
despertarla con el timbre.

"¿Ana?" —Preguntó Lily de nuevo.

“Los Malfoy… lo maldijeron cuando era vulnerable.

Intentó huir. No sabía adónde ir”, dijo Anne.
“Severus no puede confiar en nadie, Lily, y no sé
cómo cuidar de él. Dijo que eras el único en quien
confiaba.

Los ojos de Lily se entrecerraron.

"¿Ese monstruo otra vez?" -Preguntó Petunia.

“¿Qué queréis todos de nosotros?” Anne la miró con
tanta fuerza que Petunia se mordió el labio.
"Ocúpate de ello antes de mañana por la tarde,
Vernon vendrá, Lily".

Capítulo 34 : Capítulo treinta y

tres
Resumen:
Se comparte información en una
de las primeras reuniones de la
Orden del Fénix.

Notas:
Ok... entonces, estoy tan
emocionado de escribir sobre
Moody que esta vez ni siquiera me
importaron los comentarios.

EL INICIO DE LA ORDEN DEL FÉNIX

Severus estaba a salvo, aunque las preguntas de

Lily ciertamente habían sido difíciles de responder
para él, especialmente después de que vio la Marca
Tenebrosa, aunque todavía no sabía lo que
significaba, pensando que era sólo un tatuaje, pero
Severus había dicho que era parte de la maldición,
que pareció satisfacerla durante algún tiempo, pero
lo descubriría tarde o temprano.

Anne decidió ocuparse de ello más tarde. Le estaba

sucediendo algo importante y no podía
simplemente pensar en los tal vez y los cuándo.
Después de todo, se acercaba su primer encuentro
con la Orden del Fénix y estaba extremadamente
ansiosa y un poco asustada, para ser
completamente honesta.

Si no odiara a Dumbledore tanto como lo hacía,

estaría sosteniendo su mano mientras caminaba
hacia el pequeño espacio de la sede de la Orden a
medio formar.

La sede de la Orden era el hogar real de

Dumbledore en Godric's Hollow, a solo unas calles
de la casa en la que James y Lily morirían si Anne
de alguna manera fallaba en su misión. La simple
proximidad del lugar enfermaba a Anne cada vez
que dejaba de sentirse nerviosa. El hecho de que
Dumbledore también fuera la supervisión adulta
que Anne había recibido en la reunión también la
hizo sentir mal del estómago.

"¡Ana! ¡El profesor Dumbledore está aquí! Sirius

gritó desde abajo de las escaleras.

Anne suspiró en su habitación, pero abrió la puerta.

"¡Próximo!" ella gritó en respuesta.

James también abrió la puerta, sonriéndole

mientras salía de su habitación.

"Le estaba escribiendo a Remus", explicó. "Sirius y

yo iremos al pub esta noche y Remus volverá con
nosotros".

“¿Y Pedro?” ella preguntó.

“Su mamá le dijo que no podía ir”, dijo James. "¿Te

veré más tarde?"

"Claro", dijo ella, asintiendo.

James besó su cabeza antes de regresar a su

habitación mientras Anne bajaba corriendo las
escaleras. Se giró antes de entrar al salón donde
Dumbledore estaba hablando tranquilamente con
Fleatmont, Euphemia y Sirius estaban al lado cerca
del piano hablando entre ellos.

"Buenas noches", saludó.

"Anne, querida, hola", sonrió Dumbledore.

"Te veré más tarde, Mia", dijo Anne. “Adiós, Monty.

Sirius, tráeme un dulce cuando regreses del pub,
¿sí?

Sirius asintió, claramente incómodo con la idea de

que Dumbledore estuviera en la misma habitación
que él, aunque esta vez no estaba siendo regañado
ni castigado. Además, pudo ver que Anne y
Dumbledore tenían cierta tensión entre los dos.

Dumbledore, al ver la prisa y el nerviosismo en los

ojos de Anne, asintió con la cabeza a Moty a modo
de despedida y llevó a la niña a la chimenea,
abrazándola mientras pisaban la red flu y eran
tragados por las llamas verdes.

Del otro lado, Dumbledore ayudó a la chica a salir y

sonrió.

"Bienvenido a la Casa Dumbledore", dijo

suavemente.

Aunque Anne era consciente de que la familia

mestiza nunca había sido tan rica, todavía estaba
desconcertada por lo simple y humilde que era
realmente la pequeña casa en la que se
encontraba. Era una sala sencilla con dos sofás
justo al lado del comedor con una mesa para seis
puestos y siete sillas; una de las sillas era una
trona... una silla de bebé.

Anne lo miró por un segundo.

"Pensábamos que Molly Weasley vendría esta

noche, pero los Weasley no vendrán", explicó, al
ver que ella estaba mirando la silla. “Ella tiene un
bebé pequeño…”

"Lo sé", dijo Anne. Se escuchó a sí misma y

comprendió lo grosera que probablemente había
sonado. "La vi en la velada", añadió, tratando de
explicar un poco mejor, como si no hubiera sabido
acerca de los varios hijos que Molly tendría en el
futuro.

Dumbledore no respondió, solo tomó su varita e

hizo un pequeño movimiento, la silla alta
desapareció al momento siguiente y dejó otra silla
normal. Siete sillas normales en una mesa de seis
puestos.

"¿Quién viene de todos modos?" Ana preguntó.

"Por lo que sé, Edgar Bones traerá a Caradoc

Dearborn y Mundungus Fletcher con él", comenzó a
escuchar Dumbledore. “Mi hermano y Minerva no
podrán venir, pero Minerva se aseguró de enviarte
sus mejores deseos y recordarte que no te pongas
nervioso. Además de ellos, sé que vendrán los
Longbottom, Frank y Alice; Se graduó el año
anterior a tu aparición. Alastor Moody traerá a
Emmeline Vance, una chica dulce, inteligente, una
auror en formación con un gran potencial”.

"¿Los gemelos?" ella preguntó.

"Fabián y Gideon, sí, siempre vienen", dijo

Dumbledore. "Nunca faltan a una sola reunión".

Aunque intentó no hacerlo, Anne sonrió para sí

misma. Fred y George tampoco se perderían ni una
sola reunión, ni siquiera aquellas a las que no
estaban invitados.

El rítmico golpe en la puerta hizo que Anne se

volviera.

"Ahí están", murmuró Dumbledore, dirigiéndose a

la puerta.

"¡Profesor!" Anne escuchó desde el otro lado una

voz masculina. "¡Abrir!" cantó la voz.

Entraron dos chicos muy familiares; No eran

pelirrojos, pero ciertamente tenían las mismas
narices y las mismas sonrisas torcidas, bajo el
disfraz de cabello rubio fresa y ojos marrones. Sus
ojos se abrieron y su sonrisa desapareció cuando
vieron a la extraña chica parada cerca de la
chimenea con el rostro pálido y los ojos muy
abiertos.

"Fabian y Gideon Prewett, esta es Anne Sage,

nuestro miembro más nuevo", dijo Dumbledore tan
pronto como notó que los chicos se habían fijado en
ella.

"Hola", dijo Fabián.

"¿Cuántos años tiene?" preguntó Gideon, directo.

Fabián lo fulminó con la mirada y le dio una

palmada en la nuca a modo de advertencia.

Ana sonrió.

"Dieciséis", respondió ella.

Fabián parpadeó confundido mientras Gideon se

quedaba boquiabierto.

"Profesor, cuando tenía dieciséis años y le pedí que

me acompañara, fingió que no tenía idea de lo que
estaba hablando", se quejó Gideon, volviéndose
hacia el hombre mayor detrás de él.

"Bueno, cuando tenías dieciséis años, no podías ser

tan útil como lo eres ahora", dijo Dumbledore
suavemente.

“¿Y ella puede?” preguntó Gideon, herido.

Anne se limpió la garganta molesta, haciendo que

los gemelos la miraran una vez más mientras ella
respondía: “Sí, puedo”, se cruzó de brazos. "Soy
más útil de lo que probablemente imaginas,
muchacho".

Fabián se rió para sí mismo. “Chico”, repitió,

empujando a su hermano para molestarlo.

Gideon lo miró fijamente, claramente no le gustaba

la broma.

Lo siguiente que supo Anne fue que tres personas

salían a trompicones de la chimenea en clara
sucesión. El primero fue Edgar Bones, a quien Anne
reconoció por las imágenes que Sirius le señaló, y
los dos siguientes eran hombres que ella no conocía
en absoluto, siendo Mundungus Fletcher el cuarto
en salir.

"¡Dumbledore, mira quién decidió venir!" Edgar le

anunció a su amigo. "¡Diggle!"

Dedalus Diggle, todo un hombre; un hombre

ruidoso y desagradable al que le gustaba vestir de
rojo la mayor parte del tiempo. Hagrid había
hablado de él con Harry, quien a su vez había
hablado de él con Anne, quien no estaba interesada
en absoluto mientras escribía otro ensayo para
Pociones.

Antes de que pudieran hacerse las presentaciones,

más personas llamaron a la puerta.

Anne contuvo la respiración y cerró los ojos por un

momento, sabiendo muy bien que su batería social
no podría durar tanto con tanta gente extrovertida
a su alrededor.

En las fiestas de Slytherin, aunque eran

extrovertidas, la mayoría de la gente ciertamente
sabía cuán profunda se permitía llegar a la
conversación en las fiestas superficiales. Con
personas como esas, de diversas casas y orígenes,
Anne no podía estar tan segura de cómo navegar y
cómo escapar de cualquier situación que pudiera
ocurrir; aunque ciertamente era más segura, esa
reunión ciertamente fue mucho más estresante
para Anne.

Esa fue la razón por la que, mientras la gente

llegaba, ella se sentó en una silla y estuvo en
completo silencio durante la mayor parte de la
reunión, ignorando las miradas curiosas y las
miradas claras que recibió de Moody – quien
todavía tenía ambos ojos en el punto.

Cerca de las once de la tarde, Dumbledore decidió

que era hora de que su silencio fuera cortado
mientras observaba una vez más cómo ella se
mordía las uñas y trataba de respirar sin hacer
demasiado ruido.

"Y esta es Anne Sage, como algunos de ustedes ya

han escuchado", agregó Dumbledore mientras su
discurso de despedida se había alargado demasiado
por la somnolencia en los ojos de Alice Longbottom.
“Y ella tiene información privilegiada”.

Todos los ojos se volvieron hacia ella a la vez.

"¿Qué sabes, niña?" —Preguntó Moody.

Intentó no temblar al recordar los extraños ojos de

cristal que giraban para ver cada centímetro de
ella.

"Sé que Voldemort tiene algo que lo mantendrá

vivo por mucho más tiempo del que merece y tengo
una pista de dónde está escondido", dijo. “Un
Horrocrux. Supongo dónde lo puso y dónde lo
escondió.

"¿Dónde?" Preguntó Fabián. "Podemos ir allí esta

noche y recogerlo, profesor".

"No es una buena idea, señor Prewett", dijo

Dumbledore. "¿Continúas, Anne?"

Ana asintió.

“Una de mis fuentes…”

"¿OMS?" -Preguntó Frank.

Como nuevo auror, le gustaba investigar las cosas

por completo, de pies a cabeza, sin embargo, era
difícil hacerlo cuando la gente pasaba información
sin citar fuentes. No conocía a la chica y
ciertamente no confiaba en ella solo porque
Dumbledore lo hacía; era mucho más inteligente de
lo que la gente creía solo porque era un Hufflepuff.

"No es asunto suyo, señor", respondió rápidamente

Anne. “Mi fuente necesita decir anónimo por su
seguridad y, por lo tanto, mantendré su identidad
en secreto hasta que me digan que haga lo
contrario. Soy leal a las personas que me son
leales”.

Dumbledore miró hacia otro lado, su primera

conversación volvió a su mente mientras intentaba
no permitirse tomar esa frase como un recordatorio
o una advertencia. Anne era leal a su causa, no a
él, como lo eran la mayoría de las personas en esa
Orden; estaban en su casa privada y él todavía se
sentía de alguna manera sumiso a los deseos y
caprichos de Anne, a pesar de que ella todavía no
lo había obligado a hacer nada. No estoy listo para.
Aún así, su información y conocimiento claros
estaban sobre su cabeza y sentía como si la chica
de Slytherin simplemente estuviera esperando el
momento adecuado para usarlos en su contra.

Aún así, Dumbledore no fue el único que entendió

la genuina, pero extraña elección de palabras.
Moody se había cruzado de brazos y entrecerró los
ojos, claramente incómodo con sus palabras y
energía, pero confiando lo suficiente en
Dumbledore como para dejarla terminar.

"Continúa", dijo Moody.

"Recibí información de que después de una

día
iniciación en el 28, donde mató y torturó a un
niño muggle, Voldemort y otras dos personas en las
que confía y que están en su círculo íntimo
trasladaron algo importante del este de Londres a
Surrey, en un pequeño pueblo cerca de Dippenhall.
”, dijo Ana. "Me hacen creer que fue en algún lugar
significativo para su infancia".

Alice miró a Dumbledore. “¿Tiene alguna

suposición, señor?” ella preguntó.

"Algunos, señoritas Longbottom", admitió.

La joven se sonrojó, claramente todavía no estaba

acostumbrada a que la llamaran así, pero le
gustaba completamente. Sostuvo la mano de su
marido debajo de la mesa y sonrió para sí misma
mientras Dumbledore pensaba profundamente.

"¿Qué debemos hacer entonces?" Preguntó

Emmeline, metiendo sus manos en los bolsillos de
la sudadera muggle. “¿Hay muchas opciones de
lugares?”

"En realidad no", dijo Dumbledore. "Yo diría que

Gaunt Shack".

Anne asintió un poco demasiado rápido.

"Absolutamente, estoy bastante segura de que está

ahí", estuvo de acuerdo. "Ese hijo de puta es lo
suficientemente emocional como para hacer cosas
así", sonrió. “¿Crees que lo puso debajo de la cama
como un niño pequeño?” ella se estremeció. "Culo
loco".

Moody parpadeó mientras levantaba las cejas.

"Anne, por favor", suspiró Dumbledore, cansado.

"Tu pupilo tiene razón, Dumbledore", dijo Moody.

Anne lo miró sorprendida. “Somos conscientes de
que Quien-tú-sabes es muy emocional y casi nunca
abandona el área que conoce. Siempre está entre
Inglaterra y Escocia. Quiero decir, creo que nunca
recibí un informe de que él fuera a Irlanda”.

"Tiene sentido, señor", estuvo de acuerdo Frank.

“Si Gaunt Shack significa algo para él y le resulta
familiar, podría haberlo escondido. Quiero decir, lo
más probable es que conozca bien el lugar,
¿correcto?

"Podríamos encontrar un horario para vigilar la

choza", dijo Emmeline. “Hacemos guardias, vemos
si el lugar está siendo vigilado o si tienen
protecciones. Alice puede venir conmigo esta noche
para comprobarlo, ella es la mejor con barreras
aquí”.

Alice se levantó de su silla asintiendo, lista para

actuar.

Dumbledore se volvió hacia Anne una vez más.

"¿Se trasladó en el veintiocho?" preguntó.

“Sí, antes de las once”, respondió ella. "La mayoría

de su gente de confianza regresó a la fiesta antes
de las once y media".

“La posibilidad de una vigilancia es aún alta”,

advirtió Moody. "Frank, ve con ellos".

Emmeline se cruzó de brazos y puso los ojos en

blanco.

"Podemos cuidar de nosotros mismos", siseó

Emmeline. “El hecho de que seamos mujeres no
significa que nosotras…”

"Alice rompe maldiciones y tú eres un auror en

formación que nunca ha participado solo en una
sola misión, ni siquiera en misiones de vigilancia",
dijo Moody en represalia, ignorando por completo a
Emmeline. “Ahora, Frank es el mejor auror del
departamento en años y bajo tu supervisión
directa. Él irá con ustedes dos por eso y por el
pequeño y casi insignificante hecho de que Alice es
su esposa recién casada. No porque ustedes dos
sean mujeres, sino porque ustedes dos no tienen
experiencia. Ahora cállate y acepta lo que puedo
hacer por ti, Vance, o te enviaré de nuevo a
entrenar por el resto de la noche.

Anne sonrió para sí misma. Aunque no era la mayor

admiradora de Moody, tenía que admitir que él era
justo en muchos casos, nunca discriminaba a nadie
por nada más que su poder mágico y su
conocimiento, ni por género, color, estatus
sanguíneo o preferencia sexual. ; le gustaba decir
que "odiaba a todos por igual", algo que Anne
admiraba mucho en su época.

Dumbledore observó cómo el labio de Anne se

torcía antes de que apareciera la sonrisa y se
permitió sonreír también. Anne parecía más joven
cuando sonrió, apartando el ceño para concentrarse
mientras escuchaba los planes y le daba
información que había reunido delante de sus
narices y que él nunca podría haber obtenido por sí
mismo.

"Bueno, entonces esto es todo", dijo Dumbledore,

mirando a su alrededor mientras la gente a su
alrededor asentía. “Sesión desestimada”.

Capítulo 35 : Capítulo treinta y

cuatro
Resumen:
El Anillo de Marlovo es destruido,
pero Anne no estaba presente y
nunca perdonará a Dumbledore
por eso. Aún así, ella sacó algo de
eso.

Notas:
Una vez más, sólo quería criticar a
Dumbledore y escribir a Moody.

Por cierto, más cartas y un

montón de referencias a Ana de
las Tejas Verdes.

Querido Regulus,

Severus me informó que te despertaste con la más

terrible de las resacas el día después de tu
 cumpleaños. Por supuesto, ya me lo había
imaginado en tu estado cuando me fui. ¿Sabías que
me pediste que pasara la noche? Por supuesto, lo
dijiste como una forma extraña de mostrar tu
gratitud por la noche que te permití pasar aquí,
pero tu madre parecía bastante enojada; Espero
que no te haya traído ningún problema.

Como ya sabéis, Severus ha sido llevado al Círculo

Interno, aunque intentó encontrar una salida. Las
cosas también se están poniendo más difíciles para
ti ahora mismo, querido Regulus, y espero que
tengas una manera de afrontarlo, porque Él vendrá
por ti muy pronto y hay poco que pueda hacer
desde aquí.

Me aseguré de que mi imagen pública no estuviera

ligada a Albus Dumbledore y espero que eso
signifique que nuestra amistad no se haya
convertido en un problema.

¿Qué te parece conocernos antes de la boda de tu

prima? No estoy exactamente segura de qué
ponerme para una boda de sangre pura y
tradicionalmente importante. Esperaba que
pudieras ser de ayuda.

De tu amigo despistado,

Ana.

Con los últimos restos de tinta del bote sobre su

escritorio, Anne terminó de escribir la carta, pero
no tuvo tiempo de dejarla secar y guardarla dentro
del sobre, porque un fuerte ruido la hizo saltar de la
silla, sobresaltada. .

Corriendo, llegó a la puerta antes de que se pudiera

escuchar cualquier otro ruido y la abrió,
sosteniendo la varita con fuerza en su mano
derecha.

Mientras asomaba la cabeza por la puerta, Sirius

salió al pasillo en ropa interior, claramente recién
despertado por el cabello desordenado.

"Ana", murmuró. “Vuelve adentro”.

Ella lo fulminó con la mirada, claramente no estaba

de humor para permitirle dar órdenes. Anne salió
de la habitación, se puso la bata sobre el camisón y
cerró la puerta mientras caminaba hacia las
escaleras.

La puerta de James se abrió esta vez y asomaron

dos cabezas. James mientras se ponía una bata y
una chica de cabello negro – Anne miró a la chica
antes de apartar la mirada, ignorando la presencia
de la chica y comenzando a bajar los primeros
escalones.

"¡Ana!" James reprendió desde su lugar. “¡Vuelve

aquí ahora!”

"¡Ana!" Sirius llamó una vez más. "¡Detener!"

Ana siguió caminando.

Se agachó una vez que estuvo cerca del final de las

escaleras, ignorando el hecho de que podía sentir a
Sirius moviéndose justo detrás de ella y podía
escuchar a James instando a la chica a regresar a
su habitación por seguridad mientras él también
comenzaba a bajar las escaleras.

Resultó que Anne no tenía motivos para tener

miedo, porque Monty ya estaba parado en medio
del vestíbulo, con la puerta principal abierta de par
en par mientras él apoyaba a Dumbledore y Mia
apoyaba a Alastor Moody, ambos tropezando hacia
la casa.

"¿Qué carajo?" Ana preguntó.

"¿Qué ha pasado?" Preguntó James, corriendo para

ayudar a su madre. "¿Profesor? ¿Auror Moody?

"Espero no haberlos despertado a todos", dijo

Dumbledore.

"No estaba dormida todavía", dijo Anne.

Sirius no respondió, parpadeando para quitarse el

sueño.

"Sí", murmuró James.

Sirius miró entre Anne y James, rápidamente

incómodo por el hecho de que Anne había visto a
James salir de la habitación con una chica que
claramente no era su madre, pero a Anne no
pareció importarle, después de todo no era asunto
suyo – ella sabía James y Lily aún no estaban
juntos.

"James, quizás quieras sacar a tu chica de aquí",

dijo Monty, mirando a Anne. "Moody y Dumbledore
desean hablar con Anne sobre algo que pasa
desapercibido, alguien fuera de la familia no debe
estar aquí en absoluto".

James dudó, pero asintió antes de volver a subir.

"¿Quién es ella esta vez?" Mia le preguntó a su

marido.

"Creo que su nombre es Cat", dijo Monty, aunque

claramente no está tan seguro. "La pillé
acercándose sigilosamente después de la cena".

"Hm", dijo Mia, asintiendo.

“Katherine Thorn, en realidad, prefecta de

Ravenclaw y todo eso; chica genial”, dijo Sirius,
mirando hacia las escaleras para ver si los dos
estaban bajando. "Bueno, ya no... ella se graduó".

Anne tarareó, sin interés mientras avanzaba hacia

Dumbledor y Moody ahora que estaban sentados en
el sofá como si nada hubiera pasado. Aunque
Moody estaba un poco pálido y sudoroso,
Dumbledore parecía la personificación de la calma.

Sus ojos se entrecerraron una vez que sus ojos

azules se volvieron hacia los de ella.

"¿Qué hiciste?" Ana preguntó.

"¡Ana!" Sirius lo regañó una vez más. Anne levantó

la mano hacia él como pidiéndole que guardara
silencio; se quedó callado.

"Algo que no te gustará", admitió Dumbledore.

Respiró hondo molesta mientras se cruzaba de

brazos y les daba la espalda a los dos hombres.
Tenía que calmarse antes de quemarse sin siquiera
saber lo que habían hecho.

Los tímidos pasos hicieron que todos miraran hacia

las escaleras mientras Katherine con una gran
cantidad de sonrojo en sus mejillas hacía una
sonrisa con los labios apretados mientras entraba a
la habitación, tirando de su vestido y de las mangas
de su suéter sobre su vestido.

"Lo siento", murmuró, moviéndose hacia la

chimenea.

Ana parpadeó.

"Katherine", gritó. Todos se quedaron paralizados,

nadie se atrevió a decir nada cuando la niña se
giró. “Tus zapatillas están desatadas. Deberías
arreglar eso antes de caer”.

Katherine claramente no esperaba que algo tan

cordial saliera de la boca de Anne porque miró sus
zapatillas de deporte en estado de shock antes de
volver a mirar a Anne y asentir, dándose la vuelta
para ir a la chimenea una vez más.

Una vez que Kat se fue, todas las miradas se

volvieron hacia Anne nuevamente.

"¿Qué?" preguntó, levantando las cejas. “¿Puedes

dejar de mirarme así?”

"Solo estábamos... esperando algo más", admitió

Sirius.

Mia intentó ahogar su risa, aunque necesitaba que

Monty le pinchara las costillas para detenerla.

“No es asunto mío”, respondió ella. "James puede

acostarse con quien quiera, aunque creo que tiene
mal gusto; ella es más bien... tiene... dientes de
conejo", Anne frunció el ceño. "Por supuesto, si eso
es lo tuyo... supongo que hazlo".

Moody también frunció el ceño. “¿Están ustedes dos

juntos?” preguntó.

Anne se burló ruidosamente, molesta porque todos

parecían querer preguntar eso sobre los dos desde
que se conocieron, pero no respondió, tampoco
James, simplemente permitiendo que el disgusto
subiera a su rostro.

"¿Por qué estás aquí?" Preguntó Anne, mirando al

auror. “Algo que no voy a disfrutar, según me han
dicho”.

Dumbledore asintió y buscó en los bolsillos de su

túnica.

El anillo destruido estaba en su mano. La parte

superior del anillo estaba intacta, pero la plata
estaba negra y chamuscada: uno de los dos había
usado Fyendfyre, y el hecho de que ambos
estuvieran vivos era un milagro en sí mismo.

Anne jadeó, aunque Monty hizo lo mismo; sólo ellos

dos reconocieron qué era esa cosa. Monty también
había estado en el programa para vigilar la choza,
después de todo, él también era un auror de
confianza.

"¡Profesor!" —exclamó Ana. "¿Qué hiciste?"

"Vimos una oportunidad y la aprovechamos, niña",

dijo Moody, poniendo los ojos en blanco ante su
molestia y sorpresa. “Debes entender cómo son
realmente misiones como ésta; no son como los
libros de misterio que probablemente lees con
seguridad en tu dormitorio”.

"Sabes una mierda sobre mí, amigo, así que

mantén la boca cerrada cuando hable con tu
pareja", dijo Anne, mirando al hombre. “No me
subestimes como si fuera alguien a quien acabas de
empezar a entrenar. Sé mucho más de lo que
crees; y créeme, mucho más de lo que tú quieres”.

Su sospecha creció cuando le devolvió la mirada.

"Anne, entiende, niña, que teníamos la oportunidad

y teníamos que aprovecharla", dijo Dumbledore,
interponiéndose en la discusión mientras se
levantaba del sofá y le ponía el anillo en la mano.
Su puño se cerró alrededor de él. “Las barreras se
rompieron esta noche, uno de nuestros rompedores
de maldiciones logró encontrar un viejo libro de
magia egipcia y rompió la última barrera. Ninguno
de ellos estaba protegido por sangre”.

"Entonces Voldemort no sintió nada", supuso Anne.

Dumbledore asintió.

"Sin embargo, la choza estaba siendo vigilada",

añadió. “Vimos a varias personas bajo glamour y
pociones para ocultar sus identidades, llegando
incluso a vestirse como muggles mientras estaban
de guardia. Logramos entrar en la choza entre
turnos”.

—¿Y quemaste ese maldito lugar? dijo ella,

molesta. "Dumbledore, todo lo que tenías que
hacer era enviarme un mensaje y te enviarían la
daga".

"No se quemó nada allí", dijo Dumbledore,

calmándola. “Nadie pensó siquiera que alguien
además de ellos estaba vigilando la choza. Nos
escapamos en el siguiente turno; tres de la
mañana."

“¿Y cuándo lo destruiste?”

“Encontramos una pequeña roca en el mar”, dijo

Moody, levantándose también del sofá. “Usé el
Fuego para quemarlo; cosa horrible, gritó y chilló”.

Anne lo miró fríamente. Todavía estaba molesta por

la forma en que él le hablaba.

"Sí, los Horrocruxes tienden a hacer eso", dijo, tan

condescendiente como pudo.

Moody se cruzó de brazos, listo para atacarla una

vez más cuando ella apartó la mirada de él y miró a
Dumbledore una vez más.

“Eres el hombre más tonto que existe”, anunció.

Monty le puso una mano en el hombro y la empujó

hacia atrás.

"Está bien, suficiente", murmuró en su oído,

tratando cuidadosamente de calmarla.

“Anne…” comenzó James.

“¡No, pero lo es!” Dijo Ana. “No voy a mentir sobre

eso. ¿No deberías alegrarte de que no esté
mintiendo sobre algo ? Mia, cuéntales lo
aterrorizada que estaba por el siguiente paso. Este
Horrocrux era poderoso, aunque no el más
poderoso ni el más difícil de conseguir, pero ambos
sabemos lo estúpido que es perseguir cosas como
esta solo”.

"No estaba solo", refutó Dumbledore con calma.

Moody asintió y se puso al lado de Dumbledore.
"Anne, entiendo que esto es algún tipo de venganza
y experiencia real que tienes, pero este es un grupo
y trabajamos como tal".

"Oh, por favor", se burló ella. “Te lo advertí antes.

No soy parte de tu maldito grupito, ni de tu
ejército, o como quieras llamarlos. Tengo un
objetivo claro y obvio, uno que ustedes tienen en
común y por eso incluso me estoy permitiendo ir a
reuniones y ayudar a su maldita gente, pero eso no
significa que ustedes puedan tomar esto, ¿cómo
llamaron? eso, venganza de mi parte”.

“Era una oportunidad…”

"¡Uno sobre el que podrías haberme escrito!"

Sirius suspiró y se dirigió a la cocina claramente

angustiado por el acto de mala educación que Anne
había realizado en su enojo. James estaba
observando el intercambio incómodo; No le gustaba
cómo Anne se pondría en contra de Dumbledore,
un mago poderoso y claramente influyente, de
manera tan pública que podría terminar
lastimándose.

Monty todavía estaba agarrada a su hombro y ese

era el único consuelo que tenía Mia, ya que quería
saltar y alejar a Anne de ese lugar que claramente
la estaba poniendo bajo mucho estrés.

"¡Eres una chica grosera!" -exclamó Moody-. “¿Tus

padres no te han enseñado nada?”

El hechizo estupefaciente fue tan rápido que Moody

solo se protegió de él, pero no tuvo oportunidad de
tomar represalias antes de que Mia se pusiera
frente a Anne y Dumbledore empujara a Moody.

“Eso es todo, amigo. ¡Te mostraré lo que me

enseñaron, idiota! ¡Ven aquí! ¡Ven aquí!" Ana gritó.
"¡TE DESGARRÉ LA CARA, COÑO TONTO!"

James agarró a Anne, sacando sus pies del suelo y

Sirius volvió corriendo, dejando su taza de agua a
un lado mientras ella le quitaba la varita a Anne.

El anillo cayó al suelo mientras Anne pataleaba y

gritaba.

Lo que quedó en su mano fue la pequeña piedra

negra.

Anne Potter tenía la Piedra de la Resurrección que

Dumbledore ni siquiera sabía que existía y sabía
exactamente quién usarla cuando llegara el
momento.

La siguiente persona que supo que iba a morir fue

Regulus Black; se le estaba acabando el tiempo y
Anne iba a estar lista.

Para mi amigo no tan despistado,

Ha estado bien informado, como puedo ver. Sí,

tuve la resaca más terrible de mi vida el día
después de mi cumpleaños, peor que la que tuve
después de la velada, que fue horrible, lo admito.
Supongo que fue la falta de despertarme a tu lado,
listo para empujarme bajo la ducha si era
necesario, todo lo que tenía era un Kreacher muy
reprensivo, lo cual supongo que debería haber
esperado, después de todo, él odia el alcohol y se
aseguró de que yo tuviera nada más que sopa de
olor fuerte para comer al día siguiente,
castigándome bastante con la cantidad de veces
que tiré todo lo que había comido.

Anne, mi querida Anne, lo que me salvó de

consumirme en mi habitación por el aburrimiento
después del claro castigo de mi elfo doméstico y de
ser el hazmerreír de mi familia fue el libro que
recibí de ti y tengo que agradecerte mucho por eso.
Debo admitir que no esperaba que fuera tan bueno,
pero parece que Matthew me gusta mucho; Un tipo
bastante interesante, siento que seríamos amigos si
tuviéramos la oportunidad. También debo notar
cuán hilarantemente indiferentes son la mayoría de
tus comentarios, lo que me hace reír lo suficiente
como para sentir hambre después de algunos
capítulos.

Tengo la terrible noticia de que no podré verte

antes de la boda. Me voy al castillo de verano de mi
prima. Lo sé, qué terriblemente aburrido, pero es lo
que tengo que hacer y no tengo opción ni
oportunidad de volver. En ese caso, si necesita
hablar conmigo, envíe la carta a Grimmauld Place y
Kreacher me la entregará siguiendo las discretas
instrucciones que dejé, después de todo, me han
advertido que no deje que ninguno de mis amigos
me escriba porque tengo ' negocios que tratar' allí.

Lo que significa que tienes razón.

Ya no tengo salida, Anne, y no tengo otra opción

que simplemente sonreír, saludar y aceptar el
destino que se me presentará en completo silencio
y sumisión. Que horrible. Qué deprimente. Qué
desesperada me siento. Ay, Anne, cómo desearía
tener la certeza de que todo estaría bien, pero ni tú
ni nadie en el mundo podría darme esto, así que
confío en ti para que me animes un poco.

Las cosas se pondrán difíciles para todos pronto,

Anne, pero espero que puedas aguantar.

También te agradezco por mantener en secreto a

tus aliados y entendimientos ante el público en
general bajo la clara preocupación por mí, pero no
soy alguien de quien debas preocuparte, puedo
cuidarme solo por ahora y te lo diré. cuando ya no
pueda hacerlo, como os he dicho que haría.

Asegúrese de que todo esté seguro con su lado y su

familia.

De tu amigo en espiral,

Régulo Negro.

PD: ¿Te llamo Anne-Girl? Gilbert parece decidido a

hacerlo y Anne, aunque dice que no le gusta del
todo, parece bastante aficionada a su apodo.
Buenas noches, Anne-Girl.

Capítulo 36 : Capítulo treinta y

cinco
Resumen:
El inicio de la boda Malfoy.

Notas:
Hola, recibí uno o dos mensajes
sobre personas que querían mi
tiktok, así que me preguntaba si lo
queréis; así que aquí está:
@aide.campos - Supongo que
empezaré a crear contenido sobre
From Eden, si todos quieren.

BODA MALFOY

El
15 de agosto no trajo más que ansiedad y claro
nerviosismo a Anne el día de la boda de Narcisa.

Sabía que las bodas de sangre pura eran más que

simples bodas, eran marcas históricas; podía verlo
por la forma en que los medios se habían
comportado sobre la boda de Bellatrix. Sabía que
ser invitada a la boda de Narcissa significaba
mucho más que simplemente ser una invitada, ella
fue testigo de una de las alianzas entre casas más
poderosas en años. Todo el Mundo Mágico estaba
eufórico por la boda; Las revistas de chismes
hablaban de ello y los periódicos especulaban lo
que la boda traería para la familia Malfoy y lo que le
quitaría a la familia Black.

Y Anne estaba aterrorizada de cometer un error.

No había pensado que una boda sería un evento

tan observado. Había pensado que era el momento
perfecto para conseguir el siguiente Horrocrux,
pero no más que eso y era terriblemente fácil
quedar atrapada en algún lugar en el que se
suponía que no debía estar y, dependiendo de
dónde estuviera, no podía muy bien. ella acababa
de perderse en esa enorme mansión, especialmente
si había gente en tareas de seguridad, lo cual era
posible con los grandes nombres involucrados.

Aún así, se arregló lo mejor que pudo con la

esperanza de pasar desapercibida como una chica
más en la boda. Anne retorció mechones de su
cabello hacia la parte posterior de su cabeza y trajo
maravillosas piezas de joyería hacia atrás,
atándolas en su cabello, el collar no parecía más
que un tocado. Y con eso, se puso el vestido azul
marino de corte A con hombros descubiertos y
escote y esperó que fuera suficiente.

Bajando las escaleras con el maquillaje listo y

poniéndose los tacones, encontró a Sirius en el
salón, leyendo un libro y suspirando fuerte y
dramáticamente.

"¿Sirio?" preguntó ella, confundida.

Se sentó inmediatamente.

"Anne, pensé que ya te habías ido", respondió.

"Feliz cumpleaños, por cierto."

“Gracias, pero mi cumpleaños es mañana. Pero no,

no me fui. Aún no. ¿Dónde están Mia y Monty? ella
preguntó. “¿Y James?”

"Oh, Mia y Monty salieron a cenar a MacTonshik's",

dijo Sirius. "James salió a una cita, aunque dijo que
volvería a tiempo para celebrarlo con nosotros".

“¿Y lo estás esperando, aunque sabes que llevará

mucho tiempo? ¿Fue su cita tan interesante?
preguntó ella, frunciendo el ceño. Dudó y la
respuesta se hizo clara. "¿Oh? ¿A quién estás
esperando entonces?

Sirius cerró el libro que había estado en su regazo y

respiró hondo.

"Pensé que sería una buena idea traer a Remus

aquí para cuando James y tú volvieran, para que
puedas contarnos cómo fue la caza", dijo. Sirius era
un Gryffindor, no estaba en su mente mentirles a
sus amigos… nunca, incluso cuando quería hacerlo.
Lo intentó, por supuesto, pero Anne lo había
atrapado y lo supo por la forma en que ella le
levantó una ceja. "Le pedí a Remus que viniera",
admitió.

"Eso suena bien", dijo, sonriendo a Sirius, quien

puso los ojos en blanco. "Tendrás algo de tiempo
antes de que Mia regrese y no sé cuándo regresaré
y, bueno, es posible que James no regrese esta
noche".

Los labios de Sirius se tensaron.

"No parece importarte", dijo, sonando divertido,

pero sorprendido.

“Porque no lo hago”, dijo. “Él es mi papá, pero yo

no soy el maldito dueño, al igual que él no es mío.
Él puede hacer lo que sea y yo puedo hacer lo que
sea”.

Sirius se encogió de hombros y cambió el tema al

que realmente quería hablar.

"No es nada serio todavía", murmuró, pero Anne

sabía que era lo suficientemente serio como para
que él ignorara la broma que había allí. “Acabamos
de pasar una noche en la velada. Entonces,
¿podemos dejar esto entre nosotros por ahora?
Sólo hasta que estemos seguros de lo que estamos
haciendo. Por ahora, es sólo… divertido”.

Diversión que Sirius claramente disfrutaba y

deseaba conservar. Diversión con la que Anne no
tenía intención de joder.

"No sé nada, no te preocupes", dijo Anne. "¿Como

me veo?" ella cambió de tema.

Él la miró de arriba abajo.

"Bien", dijo, levantando el pulgar. “Aunque no estoy

seguro de los tacones altos. Negro… suena a cliché,
¿no crees? No llama mucho la atención… ¡oh!” dijo,
dándose cuenta de que esa era la idea una vez que
ella le levantó las cejas. “Entonces me gusta, de
verdad. Y me gusta el maquillaje de ojos oscuros,
muy adulta”.

"Tengo dieciséis años y voy a cumplir diecisiete,

soy una adulta", dijo, poniendo los ojos en blanco.

"Esa fue la forma educada de decirle muy 'sexy' a

la pequeña hija de mi mejor amigo", se rió Sirius.
“Y tú no eres un adulto, yo tampoco. Ahora, lárgate
de aquí. Remus la atrapará en cualquier momento.

Anne terminó riéndose de la forma en que se

levantó del sofá y se arregló los jeans en el cuerpo
antes de llevar a Anne hacia el polvo flu y luego
empujarla hacia la chimenea y saludarla, instándola
a salir lo más rápido que pudiera, lo que Anne hizo.

Viajar a través de la red flu no era lo que más le

gustaba de todos los tiempos, pero ciertamente se
estaba acostumbrando a ello de una forma u otra.
Ser menor de edad, aparecerse simplemente no era
una opción en su mesa durante al menos unas
horas más, y aunque sabía cómo aparecerse,
tampoco era tan reconfortante; sin embargo, le
gustaban los autos, para consternación de Harry,
quien absolutamente Odiaba estar en los coches y
sentía unas extrañas náuseas.

Llegó a la Mansión Malfoy sin un solo tropiezo, en lo

que pensó felizmente mientras salía de la
chimenea, sintiéndose todavía perfecta.

"¡Señorita Anne Sage!" dijo una voz encantada.

Lucius Malfoy caminó un poco más cerca de ella,

alejándose de una pareja con la que había estado
hablando, quienes parecían confundidos sobre
quién era ella y por qué era lo suficientemente
importante como para hacer que el novio se alejara
de ellos, pero se alejaron sin hacer una escena.

"Señor Malfoy, hola", dijo, haciendo una leve

reverencia. Él aún no era un lord, su padre todavía
estaba vivo, pero ella ciertamente necesitaba
agradarle; ser un lamebotas era una de las mejores
cosas que podía hacer para tenerlo a su lado, sin
orgullo dentro de ella. mente cuando estaba a tres
metros de ella. “Un placer volver a verte. Muchas
gracias por invitarme. No deseo nada más que
felicidad y satisfacción para usted y su hermosa
novia”.

"De hecho, señorita Sage, gracias", dijo. "Eres

bueno con las palabras".

Ella sonrió.

"Sólo cuando sean ciertas, señor", mintió, haciendo

que el descarado comentario fuera claramente una
broma.

Lucius sabía que ella estaba mintiendo y le gustó,

así que sonrió.

"Me alegra que hayas podido asistir", dijo.

“Narcissa ciertamente estará feliz de tenerte aquí.
Parece que le gustas”.

“Un gran honor, lo admito”, dijo. "Por desgracia,

creo que su familia no está de acuerdo con ella".

Lucius siguió sus ojos y vio la forma en que

Bellatrix observaba a los dos hablando con una
expresión cerrada mientras bebía sorbos de
champán y hablaba con su marido.

“No hay nada de qué preocuparse, señorita Sage”,

dijo, sonriendo con su mejor versión encantadora.
“Creo que sólo están celosos porque no pueden
captar toda la atención de la habitación para sí
mismos como lo haces tú; con o sin tu apellido.”

Ella se obligó a sonreírle. ¿Qué quiso decir con eso?

¿Lo sabía? ¿Tenía alguna idea de que Anne estaba
lejos de ser una verdadera Sabia? Él no parecía
saberlo, pero su sonrisa intentaba decirle algo que
ella no podía entender en ese momento.

"Es usted muy amable, señor", dijo. "Sin embargo,

halagarme así podría ser peligroso".

"¿Oh?"

Ella se inclinó hacia él, sonriendo lo mejor que

pudo, como si estuviera compartiendo su secreto
más profundo. Se inclinó, tratando de escucharla lo
mejor que pudo en medio de la ruidosa habitación
en la que se encontraban.

“Podría empezar a creerlo”, bromeó.

Lucius se rió, un poco demasiado abierto por la

forma en que algunas personas los miraban, pero
ella se alejó de él, con las manos detrás de su
espalda en una postura educada. Él también puso
sus manos detrás de su espalda, todavía riéndose
un poco mientras comenzaba a decir algo más.

“¿Lucio?” una voz interrumpió.

El hombre que apareció junto a Lucius no le era

familiar a Anne, pero no tardó mucho en decidir
quién era. Abraxas Malfoy era famoso por el mismo
cabello que tenía su hijo y la forma en que sus ojos
de color negro parecían penetrar profundamente en
la mente de cualquiera. Su sola presencia hizo
temblar el escudo mental de Anne, pero ella los
mantuvo en su lugar mientras él la miraba
profundamente a los ojos.

"Padre", dijo Lucius, sonando bastante sorprendido

de estar a su lado. "Esta – Esta es Anne Sage, la
amiga de Narcissa de la que te hablé".

Anne miró entre ellos. ¿Qué había dicho Malfoy?

¿Qué sabía Abraxas? ¿Por qué la miraba con tanto
interés en sus ojos oscuros entrecerrados? Anne
quería desaparecer y olvidar todo sobre el maldito
diario. Estaba en peligro, se sentía pequeña e
impotente en ese lugar y Abraxas sabía
exactamente lo que le estaba haciendo por la forma
en que sus labios se torcían.

"Anne Sage, la chica que te prometió que tu esposa

daría a luz a tu heredero, sí", dijo el hombre, como
si supiera que Anne estaba interesada en los
chismes bajo su nombre. "Es un placer conocerla
finalmente, señorita".

“Yo digo lo mismo, Lord Malfoy. He oído grandes

cosas sobre tu trabajo dentro del Ministerio”, dijo,
permitiendo que una sonrisa tranquila apareciera
en sus labios. No le agradaba Abraxas y tampoco
quería agradarle a él. “Era un gran admirador de
Matthew Carter, maravilloso en política interna en
mi opinión y me encantó el proyecto que ustedes
dos hicieron juntos”.

Matty Carter, el mayor enemigo mestizo de Abraxa

y contundente aliado dos años antes por la
situación económica en la que se encontraba la
mágica Gran Bretaña.

Con gente como Abraxas, no podía usar

argumentos lamidos y dulces sonrisas. Era
peligroso, mucho más peligroso que su hijo y
mucho más peligroso de lo que su nieto jamás
soñaría ser. Si ella le daba alguna idea falsa de
cuánto lo admiraba, él la tomaría de manera
equivocada y ciertamente la usaría en su contra en
algún momento. Ella lo necesitaba lejos de ella.
Necesitaba que él ignorara por completo su
existencia.

Y él hizo.

Decepcionado, murmuró algo acerca de haber visto

a un viejo amigo y desapareció, dejando a Lucius
aún más confundido y a Anne silenciosamente
aterrorizada, ocultando todos sus temblores bajo su
máscara perfectamente dulce de maquillaje y
sonrisas controladas.

Lucius volvió a mirar a Anne.

“Perdóneme, señorita Sage, pero debo hablar con

las otras personas”, dijo cortésmente, aunque sus
ojos se detuvieron en la figura de su padre que
cruzaba el pasillo. "Disculpe."

"No debo polarizarlo, por supuesto, tómese su

tiempo, señor Malfoy".
Lucius se fue en un segundo y Anne se quedó sola.

Con cuidado, miró alrededor del salón de la

Mansión Malfoy, haciendo todo lo posible por no
vomitar al ver el costoso candelabro todo encendido
y funcionando correctamente. Aún así, era
reconfortante que la casa no estuviera tan bien
protegida como imaginaba; No había detalles de
seguridad alrededor, eran simplemente personas
normales, enfocándose en cosas normales en las
bodas.

Mientras miraba a su alrededor, vio los ojos

familiares de Lord Orion Black mirándola y
sonriendo a modo de saludo, pero él no se alejó de
su esposa, quien estaba completamente ajena a la
presencia de Anne mientras se reía y le decía algo
más a Regulus. quien estaba de pie junto a ella,
con las manos detrás de la espalda y haciendo todo
lo posible por parecer interesado, aunque
claramente aburrido.

Hasta que captó la forma de Anne moviéndose

hacia la esquina de la habitación y una pequeña y
discreta sonrisa, ahora ansiosa por encontrar una
manera de salir de la conversación de su madre.

"... así que me aseguré de que usted y la prima

menor de la señorita Parkinson, la señorita
Romanova, pudieran encontrar un momento para
hablar esta noche", continuó su madre. "Si todo va
bien, la próxima boda será vuestra".

"No quiero casarme con una chica rusa que nunca

he visto en mi vida, madre, gracias", respondió
cortésmente.

"Bueno, si hubieras aceptado casarte con la

señorita Parkinson cuando os conocisteis, no
tendría que salir a buscar otras chicas", dijo
Walburga.

“¿Por qué no me dejas ir tras las chicas con las que

quiero casarme? Menos trabajo para ti, madre”,
dijo, haciendo todo lo posible por no poner los ojos
en blanco. “Realmente no me veo casándome
pronto. Tengo que terminar la escuela y ya le
prometiste mi mano al Señor Oscuro, ¿no? el
pequeño golpe hizo que su padre le lanzara una
mirada de advertencia porque su madre tuvo que
tragarse un chillido. Ella no le gritaría en público;
ella no estaba tan borracha todavía. “Pero no me
equivoco, ¿verdad? Tú decidiste que lo seguiré a
donde quiera que vaya; Se parece mucho a tu
matrimonio. Incluso tengo un tatuaje en lugar de
un anillo para demostrarlo”.

“Regulus Arcturus Black, te juro que si tú…”

comenzó Walburga.

"Ve con tu perra ahora", dijo Orión. “Antes de que

te dé una bofetada porque decidiste ser ingeniosa
esta noche. Ve con ella y no vuelvas a enfrentarme
hasta que estés listo para estar en silencio y
completamente listo para ser un negro y no el
amante sangre sucia que tu hermano insistió en
convertirse.

"Ella es mestiza y no es una perra", refunfuñó.

“Ella no es lo suficientemente buena para ti e

insistes en pasar tu tiempo pensando en ella como
si fuera una especie de pervertida asquerosa. Ella
es tu puta y sabe que nunca lo será más, así que
está tratando de obligarte a sentir algo por ella.
Recuerda quién eres, Regulus, recuerda lo que
vales”, dijo Orión.

Quizás si Regulus todavía fuera la misma persona

que era antes de conocer a Anne, habría mirado
hacia abajo y simplemente se habría alejado,
siguiendo las palabras de su padre sin pensarlo dos
veces. Sin embargo, con Anne a su lado, decidió
que era hora de enfrentar a su padre de una
manera que no llamara demasiado la atención.

"No la llames así nunca más", advirtió Regulus. “A

Anne y a mí no nos está sucediendo nada parecido.
Tus suposiciones te volverán a doler algún día,
padre, y yo tendría cuidado si fuera tú. Si fuera tú,
le tendría miedo a Anne, porque es aterradora
cuando quiere.

Walburga miró hacia otro lado, el recuerdo del

enorme y grueso muro rodeaba su mente. El simple
recuerdo todavía la hacía sentir incómoda y Orión
leyó la incomodidad mientras levantaba las cejas
hacia su esposa, preguntándose en qué podría
estar pensando.

Arreglándose la manga izquierda como para

asegurarse de que no se viera nada de su tatuaje,
Regulus se fue sin mirar por encima del hombro.

"¿Qué viste?" Orión preguntó en un susurro una vez

que Regulus estuvo fuera del alcance del oído.
Walburga vaciló un momento, sin saber cómo
responder a la pregunta. "¿Que sabes?"

"No vi nada", murmuró.

Confundido por su respuesta y por su reacción,

Orión miró a su esposa.

“¿Y por qué actúas como una niña asustada?”

preguntó.

“Porque no vi nada”, admitió. “Ella sabía que estaba

buscando en su mente, pero en lugar de alejarme
de los recuerdos que no quería que viera,
simplemente me bloqueó. Ya estaba dentro, había
dos paredes”.

"¿Dos?"

“Uno para mantener a la gente fuera y otro para

mantener las cosas dentro”, explicó. “No porque
esas cosas fueran mucho más acusadoras ni nada
por el estilo; era como si estuviera más preocupada
por mi reacción al ver esas cosas que por las cosas
que podría hacerle si supiera lo que estaba
escondiendo”.

Miró entre la multitud para ver a Regulus tomando

tranquilamente dos copas de champán antes de dar
los últimos pasos hacia Anne, quien parecía
complacida de estar a su lado, saludándolo con una
sonrisa familiar y aceptando la copa con gran
aplomo.

“¿Qué crees que estaba tratando de ocultar?”

preguntó, sin apartar la mirada de su hijo y su…
amigo.

“Sea lo que sea, no quiero saberlo”, respondió.

“Ella sabe cosas, aunque no las diga ni nos acuse
de nada, sus ojos me acusan a mí”.

Él la miró.

“¿Por fin parece que tu culpa te persigue,

Walburga?”

"Lo dudo", dijo, tratando de no discutir con él. “Sus

ojos no son… normales, Orión. Es más que conocer
secretos, era como si ella misma fuera algún tipo
de secreto; por un momento quedé atrapada allí,
entre las paredes antes de ser expulsada y estaba
aterrorizada; No podía moverme y no se me ocurría
una salida, era como si me estuviera asfixiando. Y
luego regresé. Fue tan rápido que apenas tuve
tiempo de parpadear y todavía tuve una pesadilla
después”.

Orión miró una vez más a Anne y sus ojos se

encontraron con los de él.

Ella no apartó la mirada una vez que sus ojos se

encontraron. Anne sonrió, aunque no llegó a sus
ojos mientras tomaba un sorbo de su vaso.

Primero apartó la mirada y decidió saber más sobre

Anne.

“¡Finalmente estás aquí!” Dijo Regulus, sonriéndole

a Anne.

Su vestido con forro en A lo hizo casi audiblemente

jadear una vez que vio la abertura en su muslo,
mostrando su pierna larga y blanca, con los pies
dentro de un tacón alto común y negro. Con el
cabello retorcido, su rostro se mostraba más y sus
ojos viajaban por la habitación con movimientos
más agudos que nunca; se preguntó si era por el
maquillaje de sus ojos.

"Regulus, ¡qué bueno verte!" dijo ella, sonriéndole.

Puso el vaso en su mano derecha hacia ella y ella lo
tomó, murmurando un agradecimiento y al principio
no lo bebió directamente, solo cambió su peso de
una pierna a la otra. "¿Cómo ha sido tu verano
desde la última vez que te vi?"

Sus ojos miraron su brazo izquierdo; pregunta

clara.

Regulus asintió.

“Me quedé en Francia, recibimos algunas visitas

de
importantes, especialmente el 1 agosto. Con la
boda y la planificación fue agitado, pero le hicimos
tiempo”, respondió.

Anne no necesitaba más detalles que eso, sabía de

quién y de qué estaba hablando con esas simples
palabras y sus preocupados ojos grises mirando a
sus padres antes de responder la pregunta, casi
como si todavía pudieran escucharlo desde el otro
lado. del salón de baile.

Odiaba ver claramente que él estaba aterrorizado la

mayor parte del tiempo, incluso cuando estaba a
salvo de la realidad en la que vivía, con ella. Un
niño no debería tener miedo de sus propios padres,
no de las pequeñas fantasías que Anne había
creado mientras crecía.

Haciendo todo lo posible por no parecer enojada,

apartó la mirada de Regulus, respirando
profundamente mientras maldecía a sus padres en
voz alta en su mente.

Se encontró con los ojos de Orion Black, quien hizo

un pequeño movimiento mientras le forzaba una
sonrisa y sorbía su vaso, tratando de ocultar la
forma en que sus labios se curvaron con disgusto
cuando él miró hacia otro lado, de nuevo hacia su
esposa.

“¿Sabes cuánto tiempo lleva un ritual como éste?”

ella preguntó.

Él levantó una ceja.

“¿Nunca has estado en una boda?”

"Lo hice, pero..." ella se encogió de hombros.

"Depende de los deseos de la gente, ¿verdad?"

Intentó no reírse mientras negaba con la cabeza.

“Se supone que una boda tradicional de sangre

pura toma dos horas de ceremonia y el resto de la
noche con la recepción y la fiesta; Por eso se
necesita tanto tiempo para planificar una boda,
cada hora de la noche tiene que estar llena de
entretenimiento”.

Sorprendida, se volvió hacia él por completo.

Regulus dio medio paso atrás una vez que notó lo
cerca que estaban el uno del otro.

“¿La fiesta dura toda la noche?” ella preguntó.

"Suenas emocionado", dijo, divertido.

Y ella fue.

Aunque probablemente no por la razón que Regulus

pensaba que era.

No le importaba el baile que sabía que sucedería en

la recepción y la fiesta ciertamente la cansaría
después de un tiempo, lo que sí la emocionaba era
el hecho de que no necesitaba sentirse tan
apretada alrededor de ella. reloj – tenía toda la
noche para encontrar lo que quería y ciertamente
tendría más de una oportunidad de tomar lo que
necesitaba de la casa, lo cual necesitaría, viendo
cuán grande era realmente la mansión.

"¡Diablos, sí, estoy emocionado!" ella rió. "Ahora,

¿cuándo...?"

Un fuerte silbido la hizo mirar a su alrededor,

buscando el sonido para encontrar a Abraxas
Malfoy con una especie de cuerno en las manos,
bajándolo después de haberlo tocado.

"El ritual está a punto de comenzar", dijo Regulus.

"Vamos, te buscaré un lugar para sentarte".

Ella lo miró, confundida sobre lo importante que

sería tener un lugar donde sentarse, pero pronto
vio, cuando salió de la mansión, que él no podría
sentarse cerca de ella y tendría que sentarse con
sus padres, pero se aseguró. para llevarla hacia
una silla lejos de Bellatrix, pero todavía del lado de
Narcisa en la boda.

"Fawley", susurró Regulus, deteniéndose junto a

Elizabeth. La niña lo miró y sonrió. "Vigila a Anne,
¿de acuerdo?" y se alejó rápidamente.

Confundida, Anne se sentó junto a Elizabeth, que

parecía casi tan confundida como la propia Anne.

Se giró, con el cabello rubio medio recogido y

medio suelto, ojos marrones buscando respuestas a
su alrededor, pero forzando una sonrisa amable
hacia Anne.

“Hola, soy Elizabeth Fawley”, la saludó.

"Hola, lo siento por Regulus, soy Anne Sage", dijo.

“No pasa nada, en bailes y fiestas como estas

siempre se va con prisa a algún lugar. A su familia
le gusta tenerlo bajo control y al alcance de la
vista”, respondió. "Y él no es un gran bailarín, lo
odia, así que trata de encontrar una manera de no
aceptar ninguna de las solicitudes de las chicas".

Anne podía entender eso. Ella no era de las que

bailaban en bailes o algo así; cosas como el vals y
todos los pasos que no tenía idea de cómo ejecutar
la asustaban, pero bailar completamente enojada
en una fiesta era sin duda mucho más interesante.

"Me encantó tu vestido", dijo Anne.

Aunque no era del todo cierto y su vestido era una

cosa vieja y horrible, Elizabeth sonrió, agradecida
de que alguien hubiera sido amable con ella.

"¡Gracias!"

Fue entonces cuando empezó la canción y Lucius

Malfoy empezó a ser el centro de atención. La
atención cambió por completo cuando Narcissa
Black, que pronto sería Malfoy, salió de la mansión
y entró en el área de la boda.

Anne contuvo la respiración en completo shock.

Narcissa, como muchos de los Black, era hermosa,

ciertamente, pero esa mujer caminando hacia el
novio era algo equivalente a una diosa. El
maravilloso vestido que estaba usando hizo que
Anne se preguntara si alguna vez luciría tan bien
vestida de blanco como ella. Las mangas
completamente de encaje blanco eran abullonadas
y maravillosamente ligeras y fluidas, pero el escote
en forma de corazón hacía que sus pechos se
levantaran y se juntaran, se veía tan hermosa con
el cabello recogido también.

Lucius sonrió, luciendo más joven y menos parecido

a su padre en verdadera felicidad.

Anne, de pie junto a Elizabeth, trató de recordar a

Draco sonriendo de la misma manera que lo hacía
su padre mientras miraba a Astoria Greengrass
ayudando a un niño más pequeño a encontrar las
direcciones para llegar a la clase de Adivinación.

Contuvo sus miedos y lágrimas y respiró hondo.

Sorprendida, se encontró con los ojos de Regulus

mientras él la miraba por encima del hombro
mientras Narcissa caminaba junto a él. Ella sonrió y
él le devolvió la sonrisa, mirando al frente una vez
más después de que su prima sostenía la mano de
su futuro esposo.

Capítulo 37 : Capítulo treinta y

seis
Resumen:
Durante la boda, Regulus y Anne
logran escabullirse para encontrar
el Diario de Tom Riddle.

MANSIÓN MALFOY

Anne estaba completamente sobria en medio de

varias personas borrachas y felices justo al
comienzo de la fiesta que se desarrollaba en el
salón de baile, lo que significaba que podía ver
mucho más de lo que la gente pensaba; Eso
también significaba que se estaba divirtiendo
mucho más de lo que probablemente debería
durante una misión muy importante.

De pie cerca de la mesa de dulces, podía ver buena

parte de la pista de baile. Regulus estaba allí,
sosteniendo a una mujer joven, bailando
lentamente a través del salón de baile con la cara
más inexpresiva que Anne había visto jamás, la
chica hablaba mucho, pero Regulus no parecía
responder. Había un tipo muy borracho a unos
metros de Anne y parecía a punto de desmayarse.
Había una mujer borracha riéndose y acariciando el
brazo de Orion Black, claramente tratando de
coquetear para llegar a sus brazos, él parecía
interesado, escuchándola y haciendo bromas cada
vez que se le ocurría algo.

Anne tuvo que admitir que la gente borracha era

entretenida, pero su mente estaba en otra parte.

No sabía cómo moverse por la mansión y no había

manera de que pudiera simplemente andar por ahí,
deambulando como un niño perdido buscando el
baño. No, necesitaba ser rápida y tener una idea de
dónde podría esconderse el diario.

"Si no supiera nada mejor, diría que estás celosa",

dijo una voz a su lado.

Anne se giró y alzó las cejas hacia Severus Snape

que bebía su bourbon con clara incomodidad. Lo
que le había sucedido en la Mansión Malfoy había
acabado por completo con su interés en el lugar,
odiaba estar allí, pero respetaba a Narcissa lo
suficiente como para estar allí por un tiempo más.
Era una amistad extraña la que tenían él y
Narcissa, pero lo suficientemente profunda como
para que él confrontara sus deseos de nunca volver
allí.

"¿Celoso?" ella preguntó.

"De Regulus", explicó.

Se dio cuenta de que había estado mirando el

rostro aburrido de Regulus Black mientras él miraba
a la chica rusa que hablaba con él.

"Oh, sí, se está divirtiendo... qué celoso", dijo,

poniendo los ojos en blanco y dándose la vuelta.
Tomó un trozo de fresa y lo arrojó sobre el
chocolate. "Al menos alguien se está divirtiendo en
este maldito lugar".

"Apesta a Magia Oscura", estuvo de acuerdo

Severus.

"Creo que somos los únicos que no lo usamos",

dijo, comiendo el dulce. Ella masticó por un
momento. “Todos los demás parecen estar bien.
Siento que estoy a punto de vomitar o, no sé, hacer
toda una escena tirándome al suelo y llorando”.

Severus asintió, aunque no dijo en voz alta que era

el mismo sentimiento que él tenía.

Anne miró hacia la puerta del salón de baile. A sólo

unos metros de distancia estaba el salón; los gritos
todavía resonaban dentro de su cabeza – los de ella
primero, luego los de Hermione cuando no dijo
nada importante, luego la sensación de ser
arrastrada por Ron porque apenas podía caminar
sola. La desesperación aún estaba fresca en su
mente, el miedo hundido de morir tirada en el suelo
con Bellatrix encima de ella y los hombres
esperando que su corazón dejara de latir para que
fuera su momento de divertirse, después de todo
no les gustaba cuando las chicas se defendieron.

"Anne", la llamó por su nombre. Severus tenía una

botella de cerveza de mantequilla en la mano,
agitándola para llamar su atención y poder
quitársela. "Aquí."

"Gracias", murmuró, tomándolo.

Luchó un poco, pero logró abrir la botella ella sola y

tomó un sorbo. El alcohol que contenía era tan bajo
que la mayoría de la gente diría que ni siquiera era
alcohólico en absoluto, pero Anne no bebía para
emborracharse, bebía porque el sabor la
reconfortaba, era una bebida infantil.

"¿Por qué estás aquí?" preguntó Severus.

“Me invitaron”, dijo. Él levantó las cejas, instándola

a hablar un poco más, reconociendo rápidamente la
mentira. “Y era mi oportunidad de buscar algo”.

Severus asintió para sí mismo, apartando la mirada

de ella y observando a la gente moviéndose por el
salón de baile, cantando, bailando y bebiendo como
si no hubiera un mañana, todos inconscientes del
peligro que corrían simplemente por estar en ese
lugar.

"Algo con lo que se suponía que Regulus te

ayudaría por la forma en que lo estás esperando",
dijo Severus.

“Bueno, no es muy seguro para mí ir sola”, admitió.

"¿Ir a donde?"

"No estoy segura", dijo, sorbiendo la cerveza de

mantequilla nuevamente.

Él se volvió para mirarla con incredulidad.

"¿Hablas en serio?" preguntó, frunciendo el ceño.

"¿Estás buscando algo que no tienes idea de dónde
está en una gran mansión durante una fiesta de
bodas donde varias personas te matarán sin
dudarlo si te pillan siendo una perra entrometida?"

Anne hizo todo lo posible para no hacerlo, pero

sonrió tímidamente y se sonrojó.

"Bueno, sí", dijo, avergonzada. "Cuando lo dices

así, me hace parecer tonto".

“Porque estás siendo tonto”, dijo, claramente

molesto. "¿Estás tratando de suicidarte o es
simplemente lo que ustedes, los Gryffindors, creen
que es divertido?"

Ella le puso los ojos en blanco.

“¿Puedes dejar de traerlo siempre a mi casa?” ella

preguntó. "Esto es mucho más importante que las
casas de Hogwarts".

Severus suspiró, no queriendo decirle que entendía

y que intentaría evitar hacerlo otra vez, pero miró a
su alrededor. Walburga Black estaba conversando
con Narcissa y Bellatrix, sosteniendo las manos de
Narcissa y murmurando cosas que hacían sonrojar
a la joven. Orion Black estaba coqueteando al otro
lado del salón de baile y Druella había desaparecido
de la vista unos minutos antes con su marido.

"Te traeré Regulus, espera cerca de esa puerta",

dijo Severus. "Parece que necesita que lo salven".

Severus caminó hacia el centro de la pista de baile,

tomando una vuelta cuando la chica llevó a Regulus
a la barra. Se apresuró a entablar conversación con
la chica, quien parecía más que encantada con lo
que estaba hablando, porque Regulus dio un paso
atrás antes de dirigirse rápidamente hacia la puerta
donde estaba parada Anne, poniendo su botella
vacía sobre una mesa vacía.

"Hola de nuevo", dijo. "¿Sabías que Severus sabe

un poco de ruso?"

Tenía una fina capa de sudor en la cara. El salón de

baile estaba cálido, era verano y la chica lo había
hecho bailar mucho más de lo que parecía
dispuesto a hacerlo. Aún así, aunque un poco
sudoroso, se veía guapo con los rizos un poco
despeinados y con un pañuelo, limpiándose la
frente.

"¿Quién es tu amigo?" preguntó, levantando las

cejas.

"Romanonova", respondió. "Creo que su nombre es

Diana o Anya, pero ahora no estoy tan seguro",
admitió. "Mi madre quería que entablara una
conversación, lo hice, pero parece que también me
invitaron a ir a Rusia las próximas vacaciones de
invierno".

"¡Tienes juego!" Ana se rió.

Él puso los ojos en blanco.

"Odio la idea de casarme con ella", dijo.

"Esperar. ¿Casarse?

“Mi madre lo está intentando, pero no quiero

casarme pronto. ¿Recuerdas algo sobre mi
matrimonio? preguntó.

Ella sacudió la cabeza hacia él. "El árbol

genealógico no te conectaba con nadie, estabas
soltero cuando moriste", suspiró, casi sonando
aliviado. “Seguimos adelante, vámonos.
Necesitamos movernos”.

Regulus asintió, abriendo un poco la puerta

mientras Anne salía del salón de baile. Nadie
parecía estar mirando cuando salió de nuevo, solo
Severus, quien le dio una mirada antes de sonreír y
continuar la conversación con la señorita
Romanova. Cerró la puerta y se volvió.

“¿Alguna idea de adónde vamos?” preguntó.

"Este es un artefacto muy oscuro", dijo. “Uno de un

poder que cambiaría la personalidad de alguien y lo
haría poseído si se tocara con él, así que dudo que
esté en los pisos superiores, cerca de los
dormitorios y las salas de estar. ¿Sabes dónde está
la parte más protegida de la mansión?

Regulus frunció el ceño mientras su mente

comenzaba a pensar en la mansión como un todo,
marcando los dos pisos. Quedaba la planta baja y el
sótano.

"Quizás tengamos que dar un paseo por los dos

pisos completos de la mansión", dijo. “No creo que
haya ningún lugar del que me hayan hablado.
¿Alguna habitación que podamos recortar?

“Además del salón de baile… creo que la biblioteca

no sería un lugar donde guardarían algo así,
cualquiera podría conseguirlo si estuviera allí”, dijo
Anne. “Los jardines tampoco están contados, están
demasiado abiertos para que alguien pueda
esconder algo allí. Aún así, creo que el comedor y
la cocina también se pueden cortar, hay
demasiados elfos domésticos cerca”.

Comenzaron a caminar, recorriendo las pocas

habitaciones que pensaban que serían buenas para
esconderse. No había nada oscuro que pudieran
sentir en el vestíbulo o en la sala de la mañana de
la anfitriona, que dejaba el salón y el piso
subterráneo.

Regulus no había pensado mucho en eso, pero su

estómago se revolvió cuando vio cuán pálida estaba
Anne parada en la puerta del salón.

“Ana, ¿qué está pasando? ¿Puedes sentir algo?

preguntó. No sabía por qué estaba susurrando,
pero lo estaba e incluso eso sonaba mal. Si pudiera,
querría hablar con Anne en completo silencio; tal
vez por miedo, tal vez porque se sentía más íntimo.

"Sí", murmuró. “Simplemente no sé si es de ahora

o son solo mis recuerdos. Odio este lugar”, miró a
su alrededor, con los ojos mirando muy lejos de
allí. "Fui torturado aquí antes, escuché a mis
amigos siendo torturados aquí y cuando rogué por
ayuda de alguien que pensé que podría hacer
cualquier cosa por mí, fui ignorado. No culpo a
Draco, por supuesto, él podría hacerlo". Lo
matarían si hacía algo, pero esperaba que al menos
me mirara y no se quedara en un rincón,
negándose a mirarme a los ojos.

"Puedo mirar yo solo si quieres esperar afuera",

susurró, acercándose a ella.

Pensó en tomarle las manos, pero dudó. Estaba

temblando. ¿Quería que la tocaran? ¿Eso la haría
sentir como cuando su madre le ponía la mano en
el hombro y le decía que lo amaba después de
haberlo castigado? Quería ser un toque
reconfortante, un ancla, pero no sabía si era
suficiente.

Anne vio sus manos en el aire yendo hacia las de

ella y luego retrocediendo. Si ella estuviera en
cualquier otro lugar, sintiendo algo más que un
verdadero pánico cansando su cuerpo, habría
sonreído ante su ternura. Ella se consoló un poco
con el hecho de que él dudaba en tocarla, pero le
devolvió las manos y lo miró.

Regulus parecía casi sorprendido de que ella

hubiera iniciado, una vez más, el contacto físico con
él.

"Voy a estar bien", dijo, asintiendo. "¿Puedo tomar

tu mano?"

Regulus asintió, sin tomarse un solo momento para

pensar en ello. Si sostener su mano era el precio
para permanecer en el momento, sobrevivir al
pánico que se acumulaba en su interior, entonces
era un precio realmente bueno.

Comenzaron a moverse juntos cerca de las paredes

y luego hacia las esquinas de la habitación,
tratando de encontrar un final falso en cualquier
mueble. Nada. No había nada en ese lugar.

El miedo de Anne empezó a crecer aún más. ¿Y si

todavía no hubiera nada en ese lugar? ¿Y si se
hubiera equivocado? ¿Regulus todavía confiaría en
ella?

“Último lugar”, murmuró Regulus, llevándola a la

puerta detrás de la estantería.

Bajar las escaleras en la oscuridad era

terriblemente familiar, ella había sido arrastrada
escaleras abajo antes y Draco no había encendido
su varita antes de tomarla. Pero Ana sí. Con un
simple lumos, saboreó el hecho de que era la una
de medianoche, por lo tanto tenía diecisiete años.

Ella se rió entre dientes.

"¿Qué es?" Murmuró Regulus, deteniendo sus

pasos.

“Acabo de cumplir diecisiete años”, explicó. "Es una

tontería", descartó.

"¡No, no es! Feliz cumpleaños, Ana”, dijo. "¿Por qué

no me dijiste que era tu cumpleaños?"

“No suelo celebrarlo”, explicó. "Pero esta noche lo

haré: ¡estoy haciendo magia!"

Él le sonrió.

“Excelente manera de celebrar ser adulto”,

coincidió. "Robando a una de las familias de magos
más poderosas, felicidades".

Ella le sonrió un poco.

Ya no era una niña; ahora podía protegerse sin

dudarlo. Ella es poderosa y no necesita tener tanto
miedo como cuando era niña, protegida por su
sangre y su hermano. Era el turno de Anne de
proteger el mundo y ahora no necesitaba dudar ni
un poco.

Llegaron al sótano.

No había celdas.

"Es diferente", murmuró Anne.

Regulus se volvió hacia ella.

"¿Qué dijiste?" preguntó.

"Es muy diferente de donde traje aquí", explicó.

“Había dos celdas allí y una estantería aquí. Un
agujero en la pared encima... —jadeó. “¡Un agujero
en la pared!”

Regulus parpadeó mientras corría hacia la izquierda

de la habitación, con la mano a unos centímetros
de la pared, tratando de sentir algo sin tocarlo.

"¿Lo que está sucediendo?" preguntó.

"No hay agujeros aquí y no había ninguna razón

para el agujero en mi época, lo que significa que lo
rompieron a propósito... había algo en la pared,
como dentro de ella", dijo. “Creo que puedo sentir
algo, como una vibración o algo así. Creo que hay
un aviso-no-me-aquí,” puso su varita contra él,
murmurando el contra-encantamiento.

Regulus caminó hacia ella.

"¡Las runas!" él dijo. "¡Hay barreras de sangre!"

"Mierda", dijo.

Ella reconoció a uno de ellos. Era el sello de Malfoy,

hecho de sangre con una pequeña barrera de
protección entrelazada; simple, tradicional, pero
difícil de romper de todos modos. El segundo era
más antiguo, tal vez antiguo era la palabra
correcta; era más antiguo que los que ella
estudiaba en la escuela, pero lo sabía porque los
Potter tenían exactamente el mismo dibujado sobre
la puerta de su habitación, sobre la de Sirius y
James. ; si alguien atacara la casa, no podría
encontrar la puerta de los dormitorios, eran
protecciones adicionales que generalmente
involucraban a niños o incorporaciones a la familia,
no realmente involucradas con sangre, sino más
bien un vínculo emocional. Uno que Regulus podría
romper porque significaba que la boda traería la
sangre de Narcissa al hechizo.

“Necesito tu sangre”, dijo.

Él la miró en estado de shock.

"Los Malfoy son una de las únicas familias en el

mundo con las que no compartimos sangre", dijo.
“No funcionará, Ana. Necesitamos retirarnos y
encontrar otro camino”.

“El ritual en la boda, el que comparten sangre.

Narcissa no puede abandonar la sangre de su
familia, lo que significa que solo añadió su sangre a
la de los Malfoy”, dijo. "Es posible que puedas
romperlo".

Sacudió la cabeza.

“Es una posibilidad, sí, pero baja”, afirmó. “¡Ana,

esto es peligroso! ¿Cómo podemos estar seguros de
que funcionará?

“No podemos. Pero tenemos que intentarlo”, dijo.

"Es posible que nunca más tengamos esta
oportunidad".

Regulus miró a la pared. Anne tuvo una buena idea,

el ritual podría haber agregado la sangre de su
familia a la de los Malfoy, lo suficientemente cerca
como para no llamar la atención de los dueños de
la casa. Un primo, casi un hermano. La sangre
estaba bastante cerca.

"Merlín, Ana, ¿qué me están haciendo?" -gruñó.

Buscó su bolsillo trasero y Anne arqueó las cejas

mientras sacaba un pequeño cuchillo de allí.

"¿Hablas en serio?" ella preguntó.

"Al menos es útil", dijo. "Siempre puede ser útil,

por eso siempre tengo uno conmigo".

“¿Llevas un cuchillo contigo en todo momento,

incluso en una boda?” preguntó ella, sorprendida.

“¿No has leído ninguno de los libros mágicos del

mundo? ¿Sabes cuánto puede pasar en una boda
así de grande? ¡No voy a correr ningún riesgo!

Ella se rió entre dientes con incredulidad, pero vio

cómo él hacía un pequeño corte en la palma de su
cabeza, poniendo un poco de sangre en la pared,
justo encima de la runa saltarina, que ardió en oro
brillante por un segundo antes de que se escuchara
un fuerte crujido.

Regulus saltó hacia atrás, tropezando con Anne,

empujándola hacia atrás. No le importó que él le
sujetara la muñeca con la mano abierta y que la
sangre le manchara las manos mientras goteaba
por su muñeca. Pero nada salió mal; La pared se
abrió un poco antes de cerrarse por completo y
abrirse como si fuera una puerta.

"¡JA!" Anne gritó de alegría y se rió para sí misma

mientras se acercaba.

En el pequeño estante, de dos pies de profundidad

y treinta de ancho, yacía olvidado el diario.

“Cuidado”, advirtió Regulus.

"Pequeña perra", siseó al diario. "¡Te tengo!"

"¡Anne, no lo toques con la piel, podría ser

peligroso o estar envenenado!" Dijo Regulus,
acercándose y quitándoselo de las manos,
devolviéndolo al estante. "Toma, usa mi pañuelo
para limpiar la sangre y sujeta el libro".

"Está bien", descartó ella, quitándoselo y limpiando

la sangre. “No funciona así. Sólo contraatacará
cuando esté listo para destruirlo”.

Aún así, Regulus parecía preocupado, mirando el

libro de cuero con sospecha.

“Voy contigo”, advirtió, atando el pañuelo alrededor

de su mano herida.

"Ciertamente no lo eres", dijo ella, mirándolo

mientras él la miraba. "Puedo soportarlo solo".

“Sé que puedes, pero quiero estar allí”, dijo.

“Quiero ver de primera mano cómo funciona esto y
lo difícil que es destruirlos. Entonces puedo
ayudarte la próxima vez”.

“Ya me ayudaste, Reggie”, le sonrió y le guiñó un

ojo cuando le lanzó el apodo.

Regulus se encogió por dentro, esperando la

horrible sensación que usualmente venía con el
apodo, pero solo sentía calor por dentro, incapaz de
controlar el tic en sus labios que lo hacía sonreír. Le
gustaba que Anne le llamara Reggie, descubrió
sorprendido.

Anne tomó el diario y con cuidado le dio la espalda

a Regulus mientras bajaba un poco el vestido.

Regulus saltó.

"¡Merlín, Ana!" dijo, dándole la espalda

nuevamente.

“¿No dijiste que querías ayudar, Regulus? ¡Ven a

ayudar! dijo, mirando por encima del hombro.

Echó un vistazo.

El vestido estaba en su cintura, su espalda

completamente desnuda hacia él mientras tomaba
las ataduras de los bolsillos del vestido y miraba
por encima del hombro nuevamente.

"¿Qué necesitas?" preguntó, claramente

avergonzado.

“Necesito que me ayudes a arreglar esto. No vine

con sujetador para poder atar el libro y no se
notara en el vestido. Necesito tener las manos
libres para salir de aquí”, dijo. “Y, si vienes
conmigo, también lo harás. Puedes deletrearlo para
hacerlo más pequeño o cualquier cosa, el Horrocrux
no lo permite”.

Él sonrió, contento de ir con ella, pero todavía le

resultaba extraño que no llevara nada de cintura
para arriba.

Ella sostuvo el libro apretado contra los pechos que

él se aseguró de que no pudiera ver y pasó la
encuadernación por su pecho y espalda por primera
vez, dándole la encuadernación a Regulus para que
hiciera el resto, agradecida de haber evitado
tocarla.

Ya había terminado, atándolo.

"Subirme la cremallera, ¿por favor?" ella dijo.

Oh, Regulus estaba empezando a temblar,

subiendo el vestido y arreglando su espalda antes
de comenzar a subir la cremallera lentamente. No
pudo evitar tocar su piel cuando abotonó la parte
superior por encima de la cremallera.

Ana se estremeció.

"Lo siento", dijo.

"Está bien", descartó. Se dio cuenta de que él la

había tocado, y no sintió miedo ni asco; había
temblado por otra razón. Apartó ese pensamiento,
tenía otras cosas en las que concentrarse. "Vamos,
salgamos de aquí".

"Está bien", dijo Regulus, alejándose de ella. Ella

extrañaba su calor.

Capítulo 38 : Capítulo treinta y

siete
Resumen:
El diario está destruido.

Notas:
El capítulo tiene algunos temas
sexuales, muy implícitos en abuso
sexual y infantil. Tenga cuidado al
leer esto.

LA VÍCTIMA

El salón le parecía mucho más pesado que antes a

Anne, tal vez era el Horrocrux en su pecho, tal vez
era el recuerdo de haber sido arrastrada medio
despierta, su cabeza a veces golpeaba las paredes
de piedra porque Ron tenía una pierna lastimada,
recordaba el imagen de Hermione tirada allí quieta,
sin siquiera temblar y apenas respirando. Las
paredes a su alrededor parecían más pesadas
cuando la empujaron, dejándola sin aliento y
haciéndola detenerse, apoyándose contra la pared
para respirar profundamente.

Regulus también se detuvo, mirando hacia la

puerta antes de detenerse junto a ella, mirándola
mientras ponía sus manos en la pared y bajaba la
cabeza.

"Anne, ¿lo até demasiado fuerte?" preguntó,

preocupado. "Puedo llevarnos al baño, puedo
desatarlo".

"No, no, está bien", dijo. "Simplemente... no me

gusta estar aquí".

“¿Necesitas ayuda para salir? Apóyense en mí, nos

sacaré de aquí”, dijo.

Antes de que pudiera hacer eso, unos pasos

hicieron que ambos se congelaran y se miraran el
uno al otro. Alguien se acercaba rápidamente, dos
personas: una mujer por el sonido de los tacones
golpeando la madera del suelo y un hombre por los
sonidos más fuertes que siguieron medio segundo
después.

"¿Qué hacemos?" él susurró.

Miró hacia la puerta, su mente trabajando tan

rápido como podía.

Iban a quedar atrapados en el salón, con el estante

recién colocado en la pared y tal vez unos
centímetros fuera de su lugar. Necesitaba encontrar
una manera de desviar la atención del resto de la
habitación.

Ella puso su mano sobre su pecho y lo empujó

contra la estantería que conducía a la puerta.

"Lo siento", dijo.

Regulus había hecho una mueca cuando su espalda

golpeó la madera y estaba a punto de quejarse
antes de entender que ella no se estaba
disculpando por alejarlo. Ella se estaba disculpando
por lo que hizo al segundo siguiente, pegando su
cuerpo al de él, atacando sus labios y tirando de él
por la nuca para que se inclinara lo suficiente como
para que ella se pusiera de puntillas y lo alcanzara.

Sorprendido, apenas se movió, sin estar seguro de

dónde podían ir sus manos y cuánto se suponía que
debía disfrutar el beso. Anne comprendió
rápidamente su vacilación y llevó su mano derecha
a su cintura y la izquierda a su nalga. No fue su
intención, pero hizo un pequeño sonido contra sus
labios.

Hubo risas afuera de la puerta.

Regulus abrió los ojos, mirando la puerta aún

cerrada, todavía concentrado en el beso también,
sus labios moviéndose un poco contra los de Anne.

Se movió, empujando a Anne contra la estantería.

Anne puso su mano sobre su pecho, lista para
alejarlo de ella.

"¿Qué estás haciendo?" susurró, con los ojos muy

abiertos. Parecía tan aterrorizada que Regulus se
sintió mal por su decisión.

“Cubriré tu cuerpo así, nadie verá siquiera la marca

del libro”, respondió él, mirando por encima del
hombro, pero presionando su pecho contra el de
ella.

La manija de la puerta se movió cuando él tomó su

mano con la mano que había estado en su cintura,
sosteniéndola contra su pecho como para decirle
que estaba a salvo y que podría empujarlo pronto.

Al principio ella se aferró a su camisa, claramente

tensa. Regulus se volvió hacia Anne de inmediato,
atacando sus labios contra los suyos esta vez, con
la mano en su trasero bajando un poco para no
sentirse tan incómodo y simplemente tirando de su
pierna, haciendo que se quedara alrededor de su
cintura. Podría haberlo imaginado, pero casi
escuchó a Anne jadear un poco cuando se separó
de sus labios antes de besarlo nuevamente y soltar
su camisa, poniendo su mano sobre su hombro.

Otro grito ahogado llamó su atención, esta vez

masculino.

Miró por encima del hombro, tratando de lucir tan

casual como siempre, pero se le heló el estómago
al reconocer a la persona que los observaba
besarse.

Roddy estaba parado en la puerta, con las manos

en los bolsillos y una hermosa mujer rubia que
Regulus no tenía idea de quién estaba a su lado,
vestido corto torcido y lápiz labial rojo manchado
en el labio, algo en el cuello de Roddy.

"Bueno, bueno, bueno", dijo Roddy, de buen

humor. "Veo que el bebé de la familia se está
divirtiendo esta noche".

“Sí, hasta que llegaste y lo estropeaste. Sal de

aquí”, dijo Regulus con la voz más firme que pudo
dominar.

Roddy era un chismoso, cualquier cosa que supiera

se lo diría a Bellatrix, quien ya odiaba a Anne lo
suficiente como para pensar que podría estar
divirtiéndose un poco con Regulus, poniendo en
peligro su reputación ante las familias.

"No te preocupes, Reggie", dijo Roddy. Regulus se

mordió el interior de la mejilla con tanta fuerza que
saboreó la sangre. "Me voy. No te vi y tú no nos
viste a mí y a mi amigo. ¿Trato?"

Regulus podría decírselo a Bellatrix. Podría matar a

Roddy si quisiera, haciéndolo caer de rodillas frente
a ella para suplicar perdón y por su propia vida, tal
vez incluso por la posibilidad de algún día poder
tener hijos.

No lo diría, no si Anne pudiera correr peligro.

"Trato hecho", respondió.

Roddy sonrió una vez más, le guiñó un ojo y cerró

la puerta.

Regulus soltó a Anne de inmediato, su pierna cayó

al suelo y la dejó descansar contra la estantería y
alejándose de ella.

"¿Estás bien?" preguntó. “Lo siento, sólo quería que

no te viera bien. Espero no haberte hecho sentir...
atrapada.

Anne lo miró, curiosa por su reacción.

“Estoy bien, estaba preparada para el contacto

físico”, respondió. “Simplemente no esperaba el
pequeño cambio. Lo siento si te presioné un poco,
no quise decir nada”.

"Está bien. Lo entiendo”, dijo. “No me gustaría que

alguien más grande que yo me empujara contra la
pared de la nada sin previo aviso. Normalmente,
habría sido una patada”, le sonrió.

Los labios temblorosos de Anne le devolvieron la

sonrisa. No había conocido a ningún chico que
pudiera entender la desesperación de simplemente
la posibilidad o la idea de ser atacada por uno de
ellos, la mayoría simplemente diría que el miedo
debería mantenerse durante el momento en que
ella fuera realmente atacada y no solo el
pensamiento. de ello. Pero Regulus parecía
comprender sus pensamientos y las manos
temblorosas que todavía sostenía su hombro.

"Oh", murmuró ella, soltándolo.

Regulus contuvo su sonrisa cuando ella se sonrojó,

poniendo sus manos en sus bolsillos y mirando
alrededor de la habitación para darle la falsa
sensación de privacidad.

"¿Adónde vamos ahora?" preguntó.

Ella suspiró, claramente cansada.

“Regulus, yo ya…”

“Voy contigo, Anne, ni lo intentes”, dijo. “Necesito

ir contigo. Necesito asegurarme de que ambos
estemos bien al final de esta noche”.

Le había dicho a Dumbledore antes que cazar y

destruir Horrocruxes solo era una cosa estúpida,
pero no podía evitar sentir que necesitaba
superarlo haciéndolo y sobreviviendo. Llevar a
Regulus con ella le quitaría esa oportunidad, pero
se aseguraría de que estuviera a salvo al final del
día; aún así, entre demostrar que tenía razón y
tener su compañía, no podía entender por qué
tenerlo parecía tan importante.

Le encantaba tener razón y le encantaba hacer que

la gente creyera que tenía razón, incluso cuando no
la tenía. Ella simplemente no podía entender por
qué eso había cambiado. Nunca sintió que
necesitara compañía; le gustaba tener a Harry
cerca y Hermione siempre tenía una gran
conversación, incluso Ron tenía sus momentos de
inteligencia emocional, permitiéndole quejarse y
quejarse y escuchar en silencio.

Regulus parecía ser capaz de hacerla sentir todas

esas cosas por sí mismo.

Era un buen compañero, un buen amigo. Un buen

hombre.

"Bien", dijo ella. "Vamos, nos apareceremos".

Él la miró con sospecha.

"¡Será mejor que no me partas!" -gruñó.

“Entonces será mejor que te agarres fuerte”,

respondió, sonriendo para sí misma mientras salía
del salón.

Su pierna todavía ardía por donde él la había

tocado sin que ella guiara su mano, había sido una
buena sensación y se sorprendió de lo diferente que
se sentía al tacto de Dean Thomas y de lo
completamente diferente que había sido del toque
de tío Vernon. La mano de Regulus se sintió más
cálida, como fuego, quemándola a través del
vestido.

Él la seguía a no más de dos pasos detrás, pero se

quejó de lo rápida que era mientras se dirigían a los
jardines.

Los jardines estaban oscuros, la mayoría de las

luces afuera habían sido apagadas, con razón por
los pequeños ruidos que Anne y Regulus podían
escuchar de una pareja que se había escapado de
allí al igual que ellos.

Regulus la tomó del brazo ligeramente antes de

cruzar la ventana del salón de baile.

“¿Adónde vamos, Ana?” murmuró.

"Malham Cove", respondió ella.

"¡Eso es en Yorkshire!" el se quejó. “¿Estás seguro

de que puedes aparecerte allí sin problemas?”

"Estaremos bien, Regulus", dijo, poniendo los ojos

en blanco. "Yo he estado ahí antes. Acampé allí
antes. Es seguro, nadie nos oirá ni nos verá. El
campamento muggle está bastante lejos, a todo un
paseo.

Él asintió y finalmente aceptó.

Anne había pensado en Malham Cove por instinto.

Era su cumpleaños y extrañaba mucho a sus
amigas; ir a un lugar donde habían estado antes
era un reconfortante regalo de cumpleaños,
supuso, pero ciertamente era mucho más que eso:
estaba haciendo su mente más fuerte, más decisivo
contra el Horrocrux en su pecho.

Regulus comenzó a caminar al frente esta vez,

sosteniendo su mano suavemente mientras la
sacaba de la zona de no aparición y parándose
frente a ella, sosteniendo sus manos con fuerza
cuando cerró los ojos con fuerza y se apareció.

Estar de pie con sus tacones altos sobre las

grandes piedras la hizo respirar profundamente, la
brisa ligeramente fría del verano en la cima del
acantilado la hizo sentir escalofriante. No pudo
mantener la paz por mucho tiempo, Regulus soltó
su mano y dio unos pasos hacia el frente, mirando
hacia el acantilado con ojos curiosos.

"El abrigo de Merlín, esto es muy alto", refunfuñó

Regulus, mirando a su alrededor.

Ella lo miró y alzó una ceja.

"No me digas que tienes miedo a las alturas, señor-

yo-juego-quidditch", bromeó.

“No tengo miedo cuando tengo algo que me lleva

encima”, dijo. “Cuando estoy parado sobre piedras
cerca del borde, entonces sí, no me gustan las
alturas, muchas gracias”.

“Entonces aléjate del borde, Regulus, por favor, ten

cuidado”, dijo.

Ella extendió la mano, él la sujetó y ella se aseguró

de que se alejaran varios pasos del borde antes de
alcanzar la parte posterior de su vestido,
desabotonarlo y bajar la cremallera.

“Una pequeña advertencia estaría bien”, dijo

Regulus, dándole la espalda una vez más.

"Es sólo un cuerpo, Regulus, como dijiste antes, tu

virtud desapareció hace mucho; probablemente no
sea nada que no hayas visto antes", dijo.

Se quedó sospechosamente silencioso, ni siquiera

su hombro o su espalda se movían. Estuvo
conteniendo la respiración por un momento.

"No estaba con una chica, así que...", dijo.

A Anne le gustaría decir que no se sorprendió, pero

eso sería mentira. Anne quedó muy sorprendida
con la nueva información sobre su amiga.

"No sabía que te gustaban los hombres", admitió.

“Sí”, dijo. “Pero… no me gustan sólo los hombres.

Supongo que le gusto a quien le gusto, que no es
mucha gente”, intentó bromear, pero por el tono
tenso de su voz quedó claro que había estado
esperando su opinión.

Se sintió horrible de que Regulus hubiera dudado

en decirle eso, preguntándose con miedo cuál sería
su reacción ante algo tan común como una
preferencia sexual, probablemente preguntándose
por más de una noche si él perdería su amistad por
algo así.

"Mi hermano también", dijo, arrojándole las

ataduras mientras se subía el vestido y se cubría
rápidamente. Se giró una vez que golpeó su
espalda, sosteniéndolo con una pequeña sonrisa de
agradecimiento en sus labios. “Traté de
convencerlo de que debería haberle invitado a salir
a un chico que le gustaba, pero se avergonzó y no
lo hizo. Sólo lograba salir con chicas, y eso es
porque le invitaban a salir. Nunca persiguió a nadie
por su cuenta. Era bastante tímido cuando se
trataba de asuntos del corazón”, dejó el diario en el
suelo entre los dos. "Supongo que nos educaron
para creer que las cuestiones de las emociones y el
deseo no debían hablarse ni siquiera pensarse".

Regulus la observó hacer eso.

"Fuiste criado por tu tío y tu tía, ¿correcto?"

preguntó.

"Sí", respondió ella.

No quería pensar en Vernon o Petunia, ni siquiera

en Dudley, pero sus rostros ya estaban en su
mente cuando metió la mano dentro de la abertura
del vestido en su pierna, desató la funda del
cuchillo y apartó la daga de su muslo.

Regulus contuvo la respiración una vez más. No

diría nada en voz alta, pero tal vez eso había sido
más caliente que el beso (no tan consensuado) que
compartieron.

Lentamente, Anne se arrodilló, se sentó sobre los

tobillos y respiró hondo.

“¿Quieres saber cómo funcionan los Horrocruxes?

Entonces prepárate, Regulus, porque la mierda está
a punto de ir mal aquí”, admitió, viendo como
Regulus retrocedía unos pasos para darle espacio
para trabajar.

El diario no había sido usado, la vida de Ginny no

había sido amenazada y su magia no había sido
interferida. El diario era mucho más débil que la
primera vez que un niño de doce años pudo
destruirlo. Pero Anne era mucho más débil
mentalmente que Harry a esa edad: cualquiera
podía ver dónde golpear para derribarla, cualquiera
podía ver dónde patear para no dejarla levantarse.

Estaba jodida en la cabeza de una manera más

profunda que Harry, afortunadamente, no lo
estaba.

Por eso, cuando se quitó la protección que cubría la

espada, la apariencia la hizo contener la respiración
y cerrar la mandíbula.

El tío Vernon caminaba hacia ella, con una sonrisa

en su rostro gordo, sin un solo centímetro de cuello
a la vista, pero el claro disgusto de su propio deseo
escrito en todo su rostro como si la tienda en la
parte delantera de sus pantalones fuera de alguna
manera culpa de ella y no lo había deseado.

“How many times must I say, girl, don’t try being

the hero here. You’re nothing. I raised you! I made
you who you are; call it trauma, I call it character
building,” he said, voice a lot less robotic or weak
than she had expected, it was like he was really
standing there for a moment, getting out of the
space between the trees and coming towards her.
“You are all so proud of yourself, are you not? You
love when people call you strong or when they look
at you with admiration. Do you know where you got
that from? You got that strength because I taught
you how to be strong, I taught you to get out of
your own body to let me do whatever I wanted with
it, I taught you how to hide in your mind. You’re
only strong because of me. You’re nothing without
me.”

She didn’t want to look at him, she didn’t want to

argue or disagree with him. He wasn’t real. Vernon
was nothing more than a young man at that time,
just a fat as that moment, but a lot less
intimidating and had no power over her. She didn’t
need to be scared of him; she didn’t need to be his
victim once more.

But she was. Anne was his victim and looked up at

him, tears blinding her for a moment.

Anne wasn’t as strong as she thought she was, her

biggest weakness standing there, smirking at her.
The smell of the instant photographs filling the air,
making her choke, making her feel small.

“You like when that boy looks at you with

admiration. Do you think of him looking at you with
desire?” the man now looked at Regulus, who
clearly wasn’t seeing what she was. He was
standing there, watching her with confused eyes
and worry glanced around.

“Anne, what’s happening?” he asked.

“It’s attacking me,” she said, voice wavering.

“Are you hurt?”

“Not that type of attack,” she mumbled, almost

without strength. She didn’t look away from Vernon
for a single second.

“Do you know why you like being looked at so

much or why you love the attention men give you?
Because I taught you that. I taught you how to
smile and bat your eyelashes. Those things became
important, didn’t they? Now, now… that’s time for
you to be thankful then. Get up girl!”

“No!” she said. “I don’t need to. I’m done with that.
You’re not here.”

“Am I not?” he asked, grin growing.

“Anne, it’s not real. Look at me!” Regulus said.

Her eyes ran to him, looking for something –

anything – that could make the bile stay inside of
her.

“I can’t,” she whimpered.

Regulus started walking towards her.

“Are you going to need another man to fight for

you? First, it was me – I gave you food, I gave a
roof, I taught you how to be yourself… then it was
Harry, then it was Dumbledore, then it was Snape…
now you have him. How are you going to pay him
back? He’s not family, he won’t do it for free. Are
you going to give it all up to him? Go on, let him
take you in any way he wants.”

“Shut up!” she screamed.

Regulus froze in place, looking to the right where

she had been looking.

“There’s nobody here, just you and me,” he

promised.

“I can do it,” she said. “He’s here. He’s in my head,

even if he’s not here.”

She needed to win that. This time, she had to win

it, not for the others – she could get Regulus to
destroy the Horcrux and throw up everything on
the woods, but this time it was for herself. Anne
allowed herself to be selfish for once, she allowed
herself to fight against herself finally.

“Aren’t you happy that your uncle was the first to

touch you? I hold that first place; I hold your
innocence.”

“You hold nothing!” she screamed. “You did nothing

to me! It’s my body, it’s my decision and nothing of
what you did to me was my fault or is to be holden
against me! You are nothing! You gave me leftovers
of food; you gave me old clothes to wear and you
gave a cupboard to sleep in. You were not my
uncle; you were just a man that took advantage of
my most honest wish to be loved for once in my
life. You used it against me because I was a child
and you let me believe that letting you do that to
me was the closest thing to love I could ever get
from anyone because I was a horrible person,
because I was orphan trash and deserved nothing
more than leftovers.”

“And was I wrong?” he seemed genuinely

surprised. “You were never the first, Girl. You were
the second at school, always behind your brother or
your schoolmates. You were third in the house,
what Dudley didn’t want would go to Harry and
what Harry had no use for would go to you.”

“Liar! Harry gave me all he could, letting himself

starve to make sure I ate!” she said.

“And you allowed it, because you were weak and

couldn’t sacrifice yourself for him. Now, look at you,
trying and failing once more.”

“I allowed it because I was a child! I was five when

I first passed out for not eating. Five!” she said.
Her face was feeling hot, she could barely breathe
and the tears going down her face were cold with
the breeze. The cold seemed to bring him back to
reality. “I am proud of who I am, you had nothing
to do with it. I’m strong because I am my mother’s
daughter, because I am my father’s daughter. You
never had any power over me as you made me
believe. You told me once that I was ruined, but
you were wrong. I’m pure – I’m innocent. What
tainted me was the war, not you. I don’t need you
in my head anymore. And guess what, when I’m
done, they’ll all know my name and love it, no one
will ever remember you existed.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I will not tell my children of what you did to me,

my brother will never meet you and your son will
forget you and hate you for all pressure and abuse
you put him through. Just because it wasn’t
physical, it doesn’t mean that what you did to him
wasn’t abuse. Your name will be forgotten because
I will make sure nothing in your life will ever work.”

He took another step towards her.

Anne tightened her grip around the dagger, raising

it above her head and taking a deep breath.

“You’re done!” he screamed, his voice thundering

around her head.

“You’re wrong!” she screamed. “I’m just

beginning.”

The knife hit the target, a lot screech making

Regulus jump towards her, holding her arms and
dragging her away from the book as it bled black,
making her get to her feet and stumble back.

Regulus was pale, he admits, he was scared, but

Anne seemed like a shell of the person she usually
was, not even the makeup she had on hiding how
half-dead she looked.

“Anne, hi? Are you alright?” he asked. “Do you

need to sit down?”

Anne looked at him.

Genuine concern, tender hands, wide eyes

glistening under the stars and moonlight.

Anne started sobbing, throwing herself into his

arms, eyes closed tight and wails of pain echoing
around as he knees buckled and he guided to sit
down on the ground slowly, not letting go of her for
a single moment.

Uncle Vernon was gone and Anne could finally

breathe, allowing the child inside of her, the one
she had hid away for years, to come out and just
cry out all the fear, disgust and defeat she had ever
felt in her short life. She ignored how she could
remember his hands on her breasts and touching
between her legs, she ignored how well she could
remember his smell and his face – all she focused
on was how Regulus looked nothing like him.

Regulus smelled like moonlight and peppermint.

Regulus was warm against her and he held her
against him as if he was trying to steal away her
pain from her. Regulus hand was moving on her
back, patting it so slightly that she could barely
feel, but felt completely safe with.

Anne allowed herself to feel like a victim one last

time in her life.

Chapter 39: Chapter Thirty-

Eight
Summary:
Regulus and Anne comfort each
other.

STARS

Anne took a deep breath as she watched the stars,

Regulus’ right arm serving her as a pillow, his left
arm folded over his stomach, still hurting a bit from
the Mark. She had stopped crying, though she
didn’t feel like she was back to herself yet, so
Regulus had been rambling about stars for the
past… she wasn’t sure how long they had been
there, all she knew was that he was there, holding
her.

A trick she learned when she was young. She was a

good pretender, so if she pretended enough that
she wasn’t there, she would disappear. Maybe not
physically, as she had wished, that was something
that magic didn’t seem to be able to help her with,
but she would find that darkest and loneliest places
in her mind and stay there, pretending the world
around her and that the horrible thoughts and
words in a loop within her weren’t real.

“…And Sirius used to be my favourite star when I

was a little kid, but then I finally started studying
other stars in Astronomy in school and it was the
best thing ever, I found out I really like it and I’m
really good at it,” he said. “For example, that star
over there, that’s Regulus, the brightest star of
Leo. Soon enough, however, you won’t be able to
see it.”

“Why?” she managed to choke out.

He looked at her, but had no comment about how

she was finally back to their shared world.

“Because for a few days it’ll be too close to the sun

and it’s impossible to see it from here,” he
explained.

“That’s sad,” she sniffed, trying to get her runny

nose under control. “At least I’ll be able to see
you.”

“Whenever you want,” he agreed. “We came back

to England last night, so everything’s already done
with and I’m all yours whenever you want me to
be,” he turned a bit, leaving his arm still under her
head. Anne copied him, turning to look at him,
lying on her side. “Do you want to talk about what
happened?”

She thought for a moment.

She did want to share with him that pain, though

he seemed to know what had happened without her
having to say it out loud, but at the same time, she
didn’t want him to change anything about how he
treated her or how he seemed to see her. She
didn’t want pity nor sympathy, she just wanted
him.

“No,” she answered.

“Alright, then,” he said. “Do you want me to keep

talking about stars? I can change it if you have any
requests. I had a couple of glasses of champagne
and, as you said, I tend to ramble when I tipsy.”

She was surprised when she smiled.

“You’re not drunk,” she accused.

“No, but I can pretend to be if you want me to keep

talking,” he said.

She chuckled, getting closer to him and lying her

head on his chest this time. The arm curled around
her, holding her in place as she heard his heart
speed up a bit under her attentive ear.

“Your heart’s fast,” she commented.

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. They both

could guess why his heart was speeding up and it
was making Anne a lot happier than it could
possibly right.

“What does ‘Anne’ means?” Regulus asked.

“The name? Oh, it means… favoured, I think. Like,

someone that God likes very much, whom he
favours,” she explained. “Quite the opposite, really.
I think God must hate me very much. If he does
exist, he’ll have to beg me for forgiveness for
everything he put me through.”

“God?” he said. “As in the Muggle religion, right? I

read about it before.”

“I don’t believe it, of course, but my mother is quite

Catholic,” she said. “No surprise there, her dad’s
Welsh and her mum’s Irish,” Regulus didn’t seem to
understand the joke Anne had made, but nodded
nonetheless. “What about ‘Regulus’?”

“It’s silly,” he dismissed.

“I want to know!” she insisted.

He hesitated, but Anne looked up at him still lying

on his chest, eyes glistening in anticipation.

“It means little king,” he said. “Or prince, in

general.”

“That’s not silly, that’s really nice!” she said. “’Little

Prince’,” she tasted it. “I like it!”

“No, not little prince, just little king or prince,” he

said.

“I mean it like in Le Petite Prince, the book from

’43,” she said. “Oh, forget about it, it’s a Muggle
book that I used to read in school. That’s the name,
Little Prince.”

“What is it about?” he asked.

“It’s mostly caricatures making fun of the world of

today,” she said. “It’s about an aviator who falls on
a desert and meets a little kid, a little prince. That
little prince asks him to draw a sheep, and he tries
three times, but it’s never to the kid’s standard, so
he draws a box and tells the kid that the sheep is
inside. The prince says then that it was exactly
what he wanted. Oh, and the man also shows him a
drawing that he usually does and most people call it
a hat, but the boy said something else, something
that he used to say when he was a kid himself –
that drawing was a snake that swallowed an
elephant whole.”

“I’m a bit confused,” Regulus said.

“It’s alright, it’s not supposed to make sense,” she

said. “The thing is that the aviator wants to go
home and starts fixing up his plane, which takes, I
think, eight days or something like that. The boy
makes him company, telling him his whole life
story. He comes from a planet known as an
asteroid here on Earth that has three volcanos, two
active and one dormant, and a lot of plants and
says that he wants the sheep so it can eat the
undesirable plants so he doesn’t have to weed it
out himself all the time.”

“Smart kid,” Regulus said.

“Not so smart, because he fell in love,” she said.

“And how is that not a smart thing?” he asked.

“Because it’s a rose.”

“Like, the flower?”

“Yeah,” she laughed.

“Indeed, not all that smart of a kid. Very pretty, but

very pointy plant,” Regulus said. “Dangerous
beauty.”

Regulus looked at her oddly, but she didn’t say

anything about it, just changing the subject by
keeping telling the story.

“The prince starts taking care of the rose; he gives

a lot of water, a lot of food and built a glass globe
around it to keep the caterpillars away. He did that
all that time, always taking care of her and she
never did anything for him, so he decided she was
taking advantage of him and he moved out of the
plant, wanting to explore the rest of the universe.
The rose gets sad, yes, but agrees that she
should’ve shown love a bit better and he says that
he should’ve listened to her actions and not her
words; she asks him not to keep the glass globe
around her, because she wants to defend herself
now.”

Anne looked up at him again when he held her

hand lightly, Regulus was looking at the stars, but
seemed to be listening to her because when she
stayed in silence for too long he looked down at
her.

“And?” he urged.

“He visited other planets,” she said, not looking

away from his eyes. “The first had a king, but no
one else, so he ordered the most obvious of things:
the sun was to come up during the day and down
during the night. The second had a horrid man who
wished nothing but praise for being the only one in
the planet, so he didn’t stay long there. The third
had a man who would drink a lot to forget the
shame he had of drinking. The fourth had a
businessman who could see the stars by what they
are, the embodiment of beauty, and would only go
around cataloguing them so he could own them.
The next one was a very, very small planet, so
small that a whole day would last a minute, in there
existed a lamplighter who would use his whole life
putting the lamps out and the relight it every 30
seconds. Finally, the last planet he visited, there
was an old man, a geographer who would study
and study, but never actually see the things he
would study and had never been anywhere.”

“And then he comes here, to Earth,” Regulus

guessed. “He’s bound to disappointment. All the
grown ups in his life failed him, in here is no
different.”

“He thought so too,” she admitted, looking back

down at their feet side by side. She smiled at the
scene. “But when he got here, he saw no one in the
desert, just a yellow snake who told him she could
get him back home when he wanted, then a
flower.”

“Did he fall in love again?”

“No, he learnt his lesson about falling in love only

for beauty,” she laughed. “But the flower and him
talked and she said that there were a handful of
men in there, she had seen them, but they had no
roots like here and moved around a lot, living a
harsh life. After that, he was alone and he called
out to the empty landscape and the only thing that
answered him was his own echo, he said it was
boring because it was someone just saying the
same things that he did.”

She peeked at Regulus, who was smiling at the sky

now. Was he imagining the little prince like Anne
had done when she was a kid?

“I like echoes,” he admitted. “I used to play with

echoes when I was a kid when Sirius didn’t want to
play with me. The corridor near my bedroom
echoes when you’re home alone, so I used to
scream all the time to hear back to me.”

Anne chuckled trying to imagine a little Regulus

screaming random words to hear them being
repeated to him.

“Well, the Little Prince wasn’t as easily entertained,

Regulus,” she teased. “And to make matter worse,
he found a row of rosebushes that looked just like
his rose! Oh, he was devastated. He had thought
she had been unique, but he was wrong – he felt
like a terrible prince when he compared his planet
to ours and cried and cried. Until a fox came by and
teaches him how to tame her, she teaches him that
his rose was unique because he had put his love
and time on her, therefore she was more precious
than all the other roses.”

“I have to agree with the fox, when you care about

someone, it doesn’t matter who comes along, they
are your person nonetheless,” Regulus said.

“A very smart thought,” Anne admired. “And he

learns that Earth has a lot of smart people. He
meets a railway man who complained about people
rushing around and never taking time to know
where they are, what’s happening; only the
children were smart enough to look out the
window. Then he met a merchant who sold him a
pill that made him able to survive without water for
a whole week, which meant he saved 53 minutes of
his time.”

“Good deal!”

“Terrible deal, Regulus!” she laughed. “Stop

agreeing with the book. You’re not supposed to
agree with the book so much!”

“Well, I do,” he laughed. “There’s nothing you can

do about it. Drinking water is a waste of time in
general.”

Anne laughed harder, closing her eyes for a bit.

“Well, I can say that their life wasn’t all that good
anymore. They were both very thirsty and tired
after eight days in the desert, but the prince saves
them by finding a well. It was not enough, the
prince was already sad and wanted to go home,
back to his rose who was waiting for him and
fending for herself, so he talked to the snake – the
aviator waits and hears the goodbyes of the prince,
but is scared when he says that if he appears to
have died it was because his corporeal body was
too heavy to take with him back home. The
narrator was terrified! He knew what was going to
happen, he was a smart man and he didn’t want to
let the boy leave his side, but the prince says that
all he has to do is to look up at the stars and they
would laugh back at him, like the prince would
laugh to him. Then, the boy walks away and lets
the snake bite him and he falls to the ground. The
next morning, however, there was no body to be
found and the aviators is left there, confused and
worried, before repairing his plane and going home,
still hoping that someday, someone will contact him
about the boy with blonde curls and no answer to
questions asked, just more questions.”

“Wonderful story, but I feel like crying,” he

admitted. “Couldn’t the man take the boy with him
back home? He would’ve been the hugest sensation
in Paris back at that time, blonde curled hair and all
smiles and questions – different from the French,
but certainly cute enough to get attention.”

They stayed in silence for a moment, neither of

them being able to talk.

Anne hated to admit how much Regulus could

remind her of the little prince. The same childish
look at the world, hoping that the world around him
will have a heart as good as his own and being
disappointed that it did not happen every single
time.

“I’m sorry about the kiss,” she said.

“It’s alright,” he dismissed.

“And I’m sorry for enjoying it, too,” she said. “It
was quite forced, I had not right in enjoying it.”

“Then we’re both in the wrong here, Anne,” he

sighed, looking down at her and finding only the
back of her head. “I enjoyed being kissed by you
and I enjoyed kissing you back. If I had some
courage in me, I’d kiss you again right now.”

“You could,” she said.

“I shall not,” he answered. “Not tonight, not when

you just went through fighting a Horcrux; a kiss is
not the way I want to comfort you, I just want to
hold you tonight, listen to you,” he took a deep
breath. He didn’t need her to put the fight she had
in words, he had watched how her body trembled
and fought against the urge to run away from the
empty air. “You scared me tonight,” he confided in
her.

“Why?”

“I had you in my arms, you had stopped crying, but

you weren’t there,” he said. “I was holding you
tight, but you were still slipping away and I could
nothing to stop it, I could just… watch and hope
you’d come back soon.”

“I came back,” she said.

“You did, and I’m thankful for that,” he said.

He kissed the top of her head carefully, not

tightening the grip around her body.

She looked up at him.

“You will kiss me again?” she asked.

“Not tonight,” he said.

“But in the future,” she said. “I don’t want to hope

and wait like the rose, unable to know you’re
coming back to me. I need an answer, a concrete
one.”

He smiled at her.

“You came back,” he said. “I’ll come back to you as

well, that’s a promise. I’ll kiss you again.”

“Good,” she said, pushing herself to sit down. “I’m

not one to stay at home and wait, Regulus.”

“Perhaps, I’m the rose in this situation. I like

staying at home and I can fend for myself, glass
globe or not,” he said, pushing himself to sit down
too, though it took him a moment. His right arms
was dormant after so long under her head.

“Yes, my petite rose.”

“Oh, I walked right into that one,” he laughed.

“Well, since we’re here… I’d like to confess
something before the sun comes up and the
moment slips away from us.”

She leans towards him, trying to appears as

focused as she felt.

“Go on,” she said, worrying a bit.

“The book I got you… I bought it the day we met

accidently in the bookstore, I was going to give you
it some other day, but I saw the opportunity with
the apology and sent it. I was quite embarrassed at
first, I didn’t understand at the moment, but I think
I had crush on you since then.”

And the stars smiled down at them, proud of the

moment of honesty between two liars.

“Hey,” someone said with a heavy accent. “Are you

alright?”

Anne woke up with someone moving right beside

her, making her jump up in surprise, understanding
that the voice wasn’t just a dream. She opened her
eyes in shock to see Regulus slowly sitting down on
the grass they had accidently slept on and looking
around with wide eyes.

There was a man crouched down beside Regulus,

eyebrows frowned in concern. His dark brown skin
had a few wrinkles as he glanced back at the
woman around the same age behind him, she had a
little boy pressed on her side, grabbing at her
colourful pink skirt with golden details.

“I’m sorry?” Anne said.

“Are you alright? Do you need help?” the man

asked.

Indian. Pujabi, most likely, by the accent.

“I’m alright, thanks. We just… fell asleep,” Anne

said. “I’m sorry for scaring you, sir.”

Regulus was looking around, eyes still wide, clearly

not enjoying the fact that he had been caught
sleeping on the grass in the middle of England.

“It’s fine, my son saw you and thought you might

be hurt,” he said. “I’m Sarwan, if you need
anything… A ride home,” he glanced at Regulus.

Anne understood that he thought Regulus might

not be a good company. Regulus seemed to
understand the implication as well, because he
looked quite offended as he looked at the man,
frowning.

“We’re alright,” Anne said. “We came here

yesterday to see the stars and ended up falling
asleep. Our families are nearby,” she lied.

“And probably panicking,” Regulus added. “Your

father must be out of his mind at this point. We
need to go back right away.”

Anne nodded.

“Mister Sarwan, do you happen to know what time

is it?” she asked.

The man looked at his wrist, his watch shining

under the morning sun.

“Nine, fifteen in the morning,” he answered.

Anne almost cursed, but her eyes caught the little

boy’s, holding onto his mother’s skirt. She
grumbled half a curse word before getting up with a
jump from the ground, putting her hand out to help
Regulus up as well.

“Thank you, sir, but we need to get going,” she

said. “Regulus, come on, move your butt!”

“Wait, I’m trying. I just woke up!” he complained.

“I was supposed to go to breakfast with my family,

shoot!” she grumbled.

Regulus raised his eyebrows as he took the diary

from the ground, a few feet away from them.

“Thank you, sir!” he yelled over his shoulder,

running to where Anne was. He started jogging
beside her as they started to make their way back
down the cliff, hoping for an empty place to
apparate away. “Shoot?” he teased.

“There were was a child,” she answered.

He laughed.

Anne glared at him, though she smiled as she took

the diary from his hands and took his wrist,
dragging him into the woods, far away from prying
eyes.

Chapter 40: Chapter Thirty-

Nine
Summary:
Anne's birthday brings a lot more
to light than she expected,
including Lily Evans.

Notes:
PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR
NOTES:
I have a few important news.

Hey! Thank you for the

comments! This is the last chapter
I have pre-written, which means
posting will slow down a bit more
since I still have to write the rest
of the book, so bear with me - I
promise it won't take too long, but
with exams (medical) coming up
and school tests on my arse, I
might be affected by it all.

Now, good news: my tumor

shrunk! So, there's that... We'll do
the rest of the exams to see the
% of how much it's gone, but I
just wanted to say that you all
made me stay in a good mood
through this difficult time, so
thanks again!

BIRTHDAY GIRL

Anne was running as fast as she could into the

house, stumbling like a drunkard, holding her long
dress away from her heel’s way. She felt silly,
irresponsible and childish for being late for her own
birthday.

“Shit!” she said as she almost fell down, taking her

shoes off. “Fuck!” she said as she stumbled onto
the hat-rack on the mudroom. “Holy fucking shit!”
she said as she ran into the house, hoping
everybody was as late as her.

But then somebody cleaned their throat.

Freezing in shame, she turned around with a

sheepish smile to see Monty standing on the
corridor, leaving the music room with raised
eyebrows and crossed arms; she had expected
anger, but not worry as she saw in his eyes.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“I got distracted, I’m sorry for being late,” she said.

“Anne, do you know how worried everybody was?”

he said, clearly angry at her. She winced at the
tone, looking at the ground in silence. “Sirius went
out to look for you, James went out to town for a
telephone to call Lily and Marlene to know if you
were there and Mia was so stressed that she tried
flooing into the Black Household to know if you
there. We thought something had happened to
you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just –”

“Until Severus Snape sent James a letter asking if

Regulus had spent the night here, because he was
also missing,” Monty continued, cutting her off. “He
doesn’t know that, of course, he wasn’t here and
since it was an emergency, I opened the letter. I
thought you two might have been together.”

Embarrassed, she bit her lip, trying not to cry.

“We were,” she admitted.

“Look, I don’t want to be nosy, you’re old enough

to make your own decisions and deal with the
consequences of them, but we could’ve been at
least warned that you wouldn’t come back home
tonight,” Monty said. “Mia just managed to calm
down and I got her into a shower. I’m waiting for
Sirius and James to come back.”

“It wasn’t like that, it wasn’t planned,” she said.

“You can sleep –”

“It wasn’t like that!” she insisted.

She reached inside her dress, throwing the diary at

the ground. The hole in the middle of the leather
cover made sure to show that she had destroyed
the Horcrux inside.

Monty could feel the small remains of dark magic

coming from small book, taking a step back in clear
hesitation. To know that someone as young as her,
as fragile as her, had been the one to destroy it
made it look even more dangerous, contrary to
what he believed it would happen.

“Is that a horcrux?” he asked.

“It used to be,” she said. “I destroyed it, but it

fought back, it made me have one of the worst
dissociations attacks I had in years. Regulus stayed
with me until he made sure I came back; it took a
long time. We ended up falling asleep; fighting
Dark Magic is truly tiring.”

Monty knew that quite well. He was an auror for

quite a long time, he knew how it made the body
shake and the mind go slow. He could understand
and feel compassionate for the way Anne most
likely had almost passed out.

“You could’ve sent word,” he insisted.

“I came here as soon as I woke up,” she said. “I

literally left Regulus a kilometre away from his
house so I could come here as fast as possible. I
didn’t mean to be late; I didn’t mean to make this
mess.”

“But you did,” he said. “You need to learn to be a

bit more responsible, Anne. I know how tiring it is
and how you didn’t do it on purpose, but we’re
family – we got so worried. You are messing with a
lot of bad things, when you don’t come home, we
think the worst happened.”

“I’m sorry,” she said once more.

She looked down.

She never had anyone but Professor Snape scold

her like that, like they expected more from her. It
was a bittersweet thing. It made her feel wanted
and loved, it made her feel like they wanted to her
to be better because they knew her potential, not
because of pure pressure – her grandfather loved
her, he liked having her around and he had been
terrified for her, that’s why he was scolding her,
because he didn’t want to have to do that again.

“I know you are,” he said. “Now,” he took a deep

breath. “You go to my room and wait for Mia there,
ok? She wants to talk to you and then you’ll get to
the shower and get ready for a good brunch.”

She looked up, surprised.

“That’s it?” she asked.

He blinked.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “What were you

expecting?”

“No hitting? No grounding? And I’ll get food

anyways?” she said.

His eyebrows raised.

“How did they punish you before?” he asked.

She blinked, shaking her head.

“Just… not giving me food, Aunt Petunia sometimes

slapped me, but…” she didn’t say anything about
Uncle Vernon, he didn’t deserve to be mentioned.
“I’m sorry. I just didn’t expect it to be so… not
bad.”
“You did it as accident, dear, I understand that,”
Monty said, voice on the edge of pity. “We were
just… worried.”

She hated that she knew that the pity was called
for. To have something like that engraved deeply in
her mind as normal was not something her
grandparents wanted for her, but it was what she
had. Slaps and pinches on the back of her thighs
and neck, trying to get her still or quiet or even to
smile and talk to someone that had asked if she
was being treated well.

“I’m sorry anyways,” she said.

He smiled.

“Go on get ready,” he said.

Anne nodded, going back to running up the stairs,

stopping at Monty and Mia’s bedroom and knocking
on the door and shifting her weight a bit
uncomfortably.

“Who is it?” Mia asked, voice muffled.

“Me, Grandma,” she said.

She hoped the use of ‘grandma’ would somehow

smooth the scolding that would come from her, but
the silence showed that she probably had made the
wrong decision. She should’ve called Mia her
grandmother only when she felt like it was
appropriate; still, the word didn’t feel wrong on her
tongue.

“Come on in,” said the voice.

She opened the door just a little bit, peeking inside

to see Mia standing in her bathroom robe, looking
at her with a blank face.

“Hi,” Anne mumbled.

“Where were you?” Mia asked.

Her voice was firm, snappy. Mia wasn’t one to scold

or even be angry for anything, so saying those
things in that tone of voice made Anne wince. That
wasn’t what she had imagined her first birthday
within family being like.

“With Regulus,” she answered.

“I know that, but where?”

“North. I found another Horcrux, we destroyed it,”

she explained. “I ended up freaking out for a while,
slipping away, Regulus comforted me and… we
ended up falling asleep. We didn’t mean to, really.”

Mia looked at her for a while, taking in the story,

watching her face as if looking for lies or somehow
hopeful. She frowned for a moment as she nodded
slowly, turning her back to a very worried Anne and
going back into the bathroom. Anne glanced at the
door at her back, wondering if that was her cue to
leave the room and go get ready.

“Teenagers never mean to do these things,” Mia

said, voice a bit softer, even if muffled through the
distance. “I understand that, Anne, but it’s
dangerous not to warn us where you are. You are
family, you’re my baby-girl. You shouldn’t do those
things alone and not trust us to send a letter or a
quick message warning that you were going to be
away for the night. I would’ve understood.”

“It wasn’t planned, really. We destroyed it and I

had a huge breakdown; I just needed a moment –
the moment ended up becoming the whole night,”
Anne explained. “We fell asleep watching the stars
and talking about books. I meant to come home,
really, I did.”

Mia walked out of the bathroom, a small box in

hands.

“Here,” she said, opening the book and putting it

on the bed. “Take one of these.”

The small vial of potion was bright red, like blood,

but with glitter. Confused, Anne opened it and took
a sniff, remembering the potion, but not its use. It
smelled truly awful enough to make Anne frown
and put the vial away from her face.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Pregnancy-Prevention Potion,” Mia answered.

Anne almost dropped the small vial, quickly closing

it, corking it tightly.

“I don’t need it,” she said.

“The pull-out method is not –”

“We did not have sex,” she said firmly, putting the
vial on Mia’s hand. “I appreciate the concern and
all, but we didn’t. We just fell asleep.”

Though she had hidden it quite well, Mia looked

quite relieved, putting the small vial back on the
box and sighing as she put the small bolt down,
locking it. Still, she looked up at Anne and gave her
the whole box.

“Well, I’m glad that you’re taking it slow, but…

here, for when you need it,” Mia said.

How Anne could explain to her that she wasn’t sure

she would ever need it? How could Anne even begin
to tell Mia that she was afraid that she wouldn’t
ever be able to need that potion again, especially
after of last night?

Anne took the box from her anyways, nodding,

beginning to walk out of the bedroom, mumbling a
small grateful word and embarrassed looking down.
Anne stopped at the door anyways.

“Grandma?” she called. Mia looked at her, a small

smile appearing.

“Yes, dear?”

“I kissed Regulus last night,” she admitted, biting

her lip lightly. “I liked it. He was very… gentle with
me. He said he wouldn’t kiss me again after my
breakdown when I tried, he said he wanted me in
the right state of mind for it.”

Mia smiled at her.

“Tonight, when all men are asleep, you and I are

going to talk about this down to every detail,” Mia
said.

Anne smiled, trying not giggle as the excited girl

she felt like. She had never had someone she truly
talked about those silly things with; she had Ginny
in Slytherin with her, of course, but when Ginny
mostly talked about her brother, Anne wasn’t all
that excited to hear, besides boys were never a
priority in her first timeline.

To think of Regulus as a priority truly made Anne

blush.

“I can get behind that,” Anne said.

“And ask your friends to come over – this is a talk

your mother should be present for,” Mia smiled
even more.

Anne’s eyes almost welled up, though she couldn’t

stop smiling.

“Alright,” she said.

Anne wasn’t all that surprised when her door flew

open and James ran into her bedroom, Sirius on his
heels, both with wide eyes. James had clearly been
crying and Sirius’ hair was a mess, pulled back in a
messy bun on the back of his neck.

“Hello,” she said, looking at them through the

mirror as she finished applying mascara. “I’m
sorry.”

“You better be sorry!” James said. Anne looked

away from him, not being able to look at him, even
if through the mirror. “Anne, you could’ve gotten
hurt and we wouldn’t have known! How do you
think we felt like? I thought you were dead! Do you
know how it was for me? I thought you were dead!
I woke up and you weren’t in your bedroom and
then my dad said you never came back; the
horrible things that went through my head as I
remembered who you were surrounded with. Anne,
please, don’t do this again!”

He hadn’t been able to stop to breathe, firing all

those words at her at once.

“Mate, calm down,” Sirius said. “She clearly didn’t

mean to.”

“It doesn’t matter, Pads, she could’ve gotten

killed!”

“But she didn’t!” Sirius said, louder. “Come on, let’s

not do this today, alright? Not on her birthday. It’s
her first birthday… here… with us… without them.”

Her first birthday without Harry was bittersweet,

Anne was glad that Sirius could understand and
grasp that from the air. Not that Harry and her
would do a lot of things in her birthday; they’d
mostly just stay inside the house or do the chores
and try to make each other smile a bit more,
nothing more. Being with her father, in a house she
was safe in and truly loved was a lot better, though
she missed Harry either way.

James was quiet for a moment.

“We will talk about this,” he insisted.

“Tomorrow,” Sirius insisted. “When all of us are

calmer and it’s no one’s birthday.”

To see Sirius mediating another argument between

them was quite surprising, but nice.

“Can I speak now?” Anne asked, trying not to

sound too bitter. They looked at her. “Marlene and
Lily are coming over this afternoon to spend the
night. You should invite Remus and Peter as well.”

Sirius’ lips twitched as he tried to hold back his

smile, though James and Anne saw it, but didn’t
comment on it.

“After brunch?” Sirius asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Grandma thought it would be

nice for me to have a girl’s night after last night.”

James looked away, slowly going to sit on her bed.

“What happened last night?”

“James –” started Sirius.

“It’s just a question, not a scolding. I just want to

know,” James said.

Anne put her mascara down and turned around in

her vanity, looking at James seriously and honestly.

“I destroyed a Horcrux and fell asleep under the

stars with Regulus Black, that’s what happened,”
she said. “Nothing else… Just sleep.”

James didn’t explode in an overprotective way as

Anne had expected, he just nodded, looking almost
relieved that not only she was with Regulus, but
that nothing else had happened, not between them,
but to her. He had just been worried over her well-
being, nothing more than that.

“Did it work well?” he asked.

Sirius looked confused.

“My brother?” he asked.

“No,” James said, rolling his eyes. “The destroying

parts.”

“Yeah,” Anne said, smiling a bit as Sirius winked at

her, clearly throwing the joke to make the
atmosphere a bit lighter. “It was fine. Regulus
calmed me down after it, so it was fine. That was
when we ended up falling asleep.”

James nodded, slapping his knees as he got up with

a loud sigh.

“Well, get ready then, because I’m starving, he

said.

Sirius nodded, watching as James left the room,

still a bit annoyed and clearly tired after spending
so much time awake, looking for her. As James
disappeared from the room, Sirius turned to Anne.

“How did it really go? – not the destroying part, my

brother’s part.”

“Regulus was sweet,” she answered, shrugging. “He

understood when I… didn’t want to do something.”

Sirius nodded, looking quite proud.

“Well, there’s something my parents won’t be able

to destroy, then,” he said. “By the way, you should
wear your yellow dress today.”

Sirius smiled, leaving the room and closing the door

slowly behind him.

The brunch went well if ignoring the awkward

moments when Anne didn’t know what to say,
looking around the restaurant and just listening to
Sirius rambling and filling the silence with non-
sensical thoughts and commentaries. James still
looked a bit angry at Anne and Monty was clearly
trying to get James to stop locking his jaw, deep in
thoughts, every five minutes. Mia had been trying
to control the Potter men, who were known for not
controlling their anger very well with light jokes and
clear glares at James and Monty.

Sirius had been quite the friend, pulling Anne into a

conversation about Quidditch and then about
music, listing all the Queen songs he had been
hearing in repeat and wondering out loud if there
would be another famous and nice song of them
soon, as if Anne knew very well all the songs of
Queen; she just laughed, awkwardly trying to
explain to him that she had never been a huge fan,
but that she remembered a few songs in the future.

“I spent last summer in the music room back in

Grimmauld Place, I swear,” Sirius said. “Regulus
had to kick me out after some time because he
couldn’t take my disastrous piano edition of Queen
and ABBA. He was so boring, playing those songs I
don’t know.”

“I’m sure they’re just classical pieces,” Anne

dismissed, trying to steer the conversation away
from Regulus. “You play the piano?”

“Only if I have the sheet, without it I’m a mess. I

was always better at the guitar. I can’t just play it
after hearing it,” Sirius explained. He raised his
eyebrows, clearly noticing what Anne had been
doing. “Regulus can, though. He’s a great composer
as well, by the way, I heard a few songs he did
before – when he was little, he insisted of
presenting them to the family, it was always piano
or violin, though he’s quite the singer as well.”

Anne rolled her eyes, annoyed. Was there anything

Regulus couldn’t do? Piano, violin, singing, dancing,
swimming and he’s quite the good student and
conversationalist. He was the perfect example of
the most amazing breed of Slytherin pureblood and
it made Anne embarrassed of the lack of talent she
had. Lily was an artist. James was a Quidditch
player. Harry had been quite the Quidditch player
as well, though he had called a lot of attention by
his spell-work.

Anne hated how much she didn’t have the chance

of getting anything. Her whole life was survival and
now that she didn’t need to survive all the time,
living was quite hard for her. She didn’t have a lot
of hobbies, she didn’t have a lot of interest or
quirks – she didn’t have leather jackets, funny and
fuzzy socks, a messy hair or anything like that.

Reading, quite boring. That was all she liked to do.

“Do you play any other instruments?” Anne asked.

“Guitar is my forte, but my piano is decent enough.

I guess the clarinet as well, though everybody plays
the clarinet if they’re not good at anything else, it’s
something children learn in pureblood households
to keep them busy and not speaking, mouth
occupied,” Sirius said.

Anne nodded to herself.

“Can you teach me the clarinet?” she asked.

Everybody on the table looked at her.

“Why the clarinet?” Monty asked.

“He said it was the easiest one,” Anne said.

“No, I said that it was what children got taught to

make them stop talking,” Sirius said. “I needed that
one, so it was the first thing I learned.”

Mia shook her head.

“Absolutely not, dear,” she said. “You shall learn

the piano. Look at your hands; those are beautiful
piano fingers; I can teach you.”

Monty nodded excited.

“Has Mia ever told you she gave some kids piano
tutoring when she was younger?” Monty asked.
“During the summers, for some extra cash, she
would go around all the neighbourhood kids in the
wizarding village of Germany where she lived and
taught them.”

“Wait? You’re German?” Anne asked, eyes

widening.

“No,” laughed Mia, slapping Monty’s arm playfully.

“I just lived there. I was born and raised here,
though I lived there when I was seventeen or so
until I was twenty-five or something. My father was
German though, but he met my mum and moved to
Scotland to stay with her; I was born in Glasgow
two years later.”

“That’s so sweet!” James said. “What about you,

Dad?”

“I’m English in all parts of the family, sorry to

disappoint you, son,” said Monty. “Though I’m sure
I have a few cousins in India. I remember visiting
them when I was a kid and then I went with your
mother when she was pregnant with you. You were
born in India,” he smiled. “Though you’re the
whitest kid I ever met.”

“Wait, I’m Indian?” James asked, eyes wide.

“You were born in Delhi,” nodded Mia. "Does that

count as Indian? Birth place."

"I don't think so," Monty said, but he was ignored

by the boys who were too excited now.

“That’s so cool!” Sirius exclaimed. “I'm so boring

compared to you. I was born in Lyon.”

“You’re French?!” Anne exclaimed.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Sirius said.

“Most of the Black children aren’t born in England.
It’s an old superstition that the children need to be
born away from the rest of the family; I think it’s
because the family usually tried killing the baby
because they wanted to be the heir or something.
Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa and I, we all were
born in France. We have a few houses there.”

“And Regulus?” Anne asked.

“Well, Regulus decided to be all different,” laughed

Sirius. “Mother and Father were travelling two
months before the due-date when he came to be
born, so it wasn’t expected. He was born in
Verona.”

Anne blinked, so confused.

“And I was born in Walsall, England, so boring,” she

mumbled. She turned to her father. “Why didn’t
you let me be born somewhere more interesting,
like, I don’t know… Brazil… or Mexico? It's not all
that nice to be British in England, nothing different
about me.”

“That’s not how things work, Anne,” James said,

rolling his eyes.

“She’s the birthday girl, she can believe whatever

she wants today, James,” Mia dismissed, still
smiling at the two. “I’m sure your birth was
somehow very interesting, Anne.”

“Well, we’ll never know,” she laughed.

Though the table looked a bit sad, Anne kept

smiling, not for a moment sad that there were parts
of her life and story that she had missed on and
there was no way she could get back a single
memory.

Lily Evans had been on the Potter Manor before.

She had been invited for the last two Summer
Soirees, though the one a few weeks before had
been the first one she had ever gone to, and only
because Anne had invited her.

Things were different now, though.

The fact that she was about to knock on the door

and spend the night under the same roof as James
Potter and, for the first time, was not annoyed or
weirded out by the thought. James had been so
nice and distant from her that she had wished
nothing more than to ask things to him and bring
him closer. There had been no flirting, just casual
friendly talking and actual conversations. In the
Soiree, she had spent almost two hours talking to
James while Marlene went off to dance with Sirius;
they had talked about so much, she had expected
Quidditch and girls, but James Potter admitting that
he always liked the flower lilies and that he had a
small garden that he kept with his mother full of it
since he was three years old.

It wasn’t weird anymore.

James was a person now, she had noticed as he

laughed later that night, arm around Peter’s
shoulder and shaking his whole body of what Peter
had said, smiling at him proud of his own joke. And
then, to make matters worse, he had called her in
the early morning, terrified because Anne was
nowhere to be seen – her father had picked up the
phone and even scolded her for letting boys call her
so early in the morning, though after the
explanation he was quite proud that Lily was who
the friends turned to, that meant she was loved
and responsible. Her father didn’t even complain
when she said she would sleep at Anne’s house,
even after Petunia said that ‘Potter’ was the
surname of the boy that called, even though Lily
insisted that Anne and James were cousins and that
it was Anne’s birthday.

She knocked, Anne’s face on her mind and being

the reason why she was forcing herself to go
through the idea though she was so nervous.
Marlene was already in there, she reminded
herself; Remus would be there, Anne would be
there, therefore there was no reason for her to be
so nervous.

The door opened.

James Potter was smiling at someone inside the

house, a button up shirt open to the middle of his
chest and jeans.

“Evans!” he greeted. “Come on in, please. We’re all

in the music room.”

She forced a small smile at him, coming in and

raising the small bag she had in her hands to him.

“I got some popcorn,” she said. “Anne mentioned

you guys got a telly, so I bought it.”

“Oh, thanks!” he said, taking it from her hand. “I’ll

put it in the kitchen. My mum and dad went out to
get some pizza, they’ll be back in a bit,” he started
walking towards the kitchen and Lily followed him
in silence. “Marlene got Anne a record player, so
we’re all listening to A Night in The Opera.”

“Queen,” Lily mumbled. “I should’ve seen it

coming.”

“Don’t worry, Sirius got his ABBA records down as

well,” he said, putting the bag over the counter and
walking to the fridge, taking a few bottles of water
from inside. “I know you like ABBA.”

“I do. Anyone with good taste likes ABBA,” she

said. “Do you like it?”

“A bit,” he said. He passed her a water bottle. “It’s

getting hot in there with everybody dancing, you
should drink a bit before going in. You hate the
heat.”

Though Lily wasn’t uncomfortable, she was still

somehow surprised that something so innocent had
been taken notice by James. He seemed completely
relaxed, not nervous and playful as he usually was
when she was nearby.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s just… Anne’s first birthday with

us and without her brother, so I’m trying to make
this perfect,” he looked at her. “I know you and her
aren’t all that close, but I believe she really needs
you tonight, Evans.”

“What do you mean?” Lily asked, frowning.

“There are things that I can’t help her with, things

that maybe men in general cannot give her the
support and understanding she needs. I know you
don’t like me and that you’re here for her, and I
absolutely am grateful for that, but, please… Do
what I cannot do myself.”

“Did something happen to Anne?” she asked.

She didn’t need an answer as her mind made the

most horrible scenarios come to her mind. The
biggest fear of most women embracing her from
behind, making it hard to breathe as she thought of
sweet Anne having to go through the things that
she had feared when she was younger.

“A lot of things happened to Anne,” he grumbled,

leaning against the counter and opening one of the
water bottles. He gave the open bottle to her,
taking the closed one from her hands and opening
it too, but taking a sip out of it this time. “I know
she went to Sirius to talk about it, but Sirius can’t
do much when he doesn’t understand the feeling or
the fear. Tonight, it needs to be good and nice, she
needs to be happy, but after tonight things might
get hard for her and I just wanted to know that you
were beside her for that.”

“Of course,” Lily said. “I’ll be there.”

“Can we get along, even if just for tonight?” James

asked.

“Of course, James,” Lily said, smiling at him.

“Good, then, Lily,” he smiled at her, name rolling

off his tongue with great care.

Lily was surprised that her first name sounded a lot

better coming from him than her last name.

He took another swing at the bottle.

“JAMES, BOHEMIAN RHASPSODY STARTED!”

screamed Sirius from the music room, opening the
door and making the music echo around the house.
“COME DANCE!” there was a loud yelp and a thud.
“JAMES!” screamed Sirius again. “I DROPPED ANNE
AGAIN!”

James sighed, starting to walk towards the music

room. Lily followed him, smiling at Marlene as she
helped a laughing Anne get up from the ground.

Lily watched James jumping around, dancing and

singing with Anne all the songs from ABBA, Queen
and David Bowie on the top of his lungs. He even
gave a mockery of a waltz under the screaming
corrections of Sirius. He danced with Remus and
Peter as well, insisting on getting Peter off the
ground and twirling him around until they both fell
to the ground.

Lily hated how much she didn’t hate James Potter

anymore.

Chapter 41: Chapter Forty

Summary:
Anne gets some time being a
teenager.

Notes:
A bit of a filler again, sorry, but
it's certainly cute with the girls
and a pinch of James Potter

GIRL’S NIGHT

Marlene spilled her strawberry juice back on the

cup as Mia went on details on how she met Monty,
insisting that he was swimming naked on the half-
frozen lake on her family property because his
friends dared him to. Lily laughed loudly, throwing
her head back, her whole body shaking as she
struggled to breathe again. Anne couldn’t stop
laughing either, throwing herself on a lying position
on the ground and holding her tummy.

“I’m absolutely serious,” Mia said. “I screamed as

loud as I could when I saw him through my
bedroom window. My father ran outside with his
wand pointed at him, but he was shaking so much
in the snow that he pitied him and brought him
inside.”

“Did you call the aurors?” asked Marlene.

“No, I just fell in love,” Mia said. “He smiled at me

as he warmed up near the fire with my brother’s
clothes and said that he was sorry that he had
scared me. He wanted to seem cool for his friends
and made a stupid decision. He had been so calm
and relaxed, truly taking responsibility and even
telling my father that he had committed a crime by
trespassing. I fell in love.”

“That’s so sweet!” Lily said.

“That absolutely crazy!” Marlene said. “You fell in

love with a criminal.”

“Well, not an official one, after all the next year he

started auror training and I followed. We were
unbeatable! Everybody was terrified of us. My
father was so angry that I had decided to stop my
career in music, but he was so proud that Monty
was so supportive of me that he didn’t even scold
me. Monty did a lot for me… I got pregnant a few
weeks into the marriage and… that’s when I lost my
first child.”

The silence in the drawing room made Anne’s

stomach drop.

“My mother had a stillborn last year,” Marlene said,

sounding a it hollow. “I can’t imagine how it was to
you. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, dear. It was hard. I had miscarriage

before I even knew I was pregnant; I miscarriage
two more times after that. That’s finally when I got
James. I did everything I could to get him healthy
and strong; I stopped working, I barely ever left
the bed and I only ate the healthiest of things.”

“Perhaps that’s why he’s so spoiled,” tried to joke

Anne.

Mia smiled at her.

“Absolutely!” she said. “I did everything he wanted

all the time. He’s a much better person now,
especially now that you’re here, Anne. I hope you
understand that he got mad at you for disappearing
because he was worried; he didn’t mean to
scream.”

Lily turned to Anne.

“He mentioned that he was scared he had ruined

your day,” Lily admitted. “He really cares about
you.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Anne dismissed.

“They all care about you, we all do,” Marlene said.

“Remus, Sirius, Peter, James. Lily and I. We care,
Anne, and we’re glad you invited us over for
tonight. It must be a hard moment for you.”

“It’s… weird,” Anne admitted.

“Because of your brother?” Lily asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “We used to take some

leftovers from the house we grew up in and sneak
them into where we slept to make our own little
party since we weren’t allowed to celebrate our
birthdays. It’s odd being so open about it now.”

Lily frowned.

“Your parents didn’t allow you to celebrate your

birthday?” she was confused, almost disgusted.

“I didn’t grow up with them,” she explained. “I

grew up with my aunt and uncle, and their son. My
brother and I only had each other since your
parents passed away before I even turned one. Our
uncle didn’t like magic, the thought that we had
those powers disgusted him and he punished us for
the smallest of things, always assuming we had
done magic on purpose.”

“What a terrible man!” Marlene said.

“He’s no longer in my life,” she dismissed. “I told

everyone about my parents and all that because it
was just easier to lie.”

“You don’t need to tell us anything if you don’t want

to, we like you either way, Anne,” Marlene said,
shaking her head. “We’re glad you’re here and safe
with us. That’s enough for us. Your life from before
cannot reach you anymore, we’re here to protect
you from it.”

Anne smiled at her, happy that she thought so, but

sad that it wasn’t true. Her past would always be
there, no matter how much she pretended it wasn’t
– there were memories and triggers everywhere
she looked. She was traumatized. She was a victim
for so long that now that she had survived it all and
didn’t need to suffer through so much again, it felt
odd and unreal. Still, she knew the reality that
there was nothing Marlene or Lily could do to
protect her.

“In this life, now, you kiss boys,” laughed Mia,

changing the subject. “And you blush when
someone mentions it.”

All eyes turned to her and she couldn’t stop the

smile from coming to her lips.

“I suppose,” she laughed.

“Who did you kiss?” Lily asked. “Oh my God, Anne,

tell us! Tell us!”

She blushed.

“I kissed Regulus Black,” she admitted. “But this is

a secret!”

“Oh my God!” Lily screamed.

“What? Why is it a secret?” Marlene asked.

“Tell us everything!” Mia insisted.

Anne laughed, crossing her arms and smiling at

them. That was such a light conversation about a
theme that had haunted her for so long; now, a
kiss felt like just a kiss, just like fun, not a chore,
not a pressure.

“We were in the Malfoy wedding –-“

“Yes, I read about it,” Lily interrupted her. “It

looked wonderful.”

“It was,” Anne agreed. “We were talking, walking

around the manor to get out from the loud sounds
of the party. We ended up alone in the drawing
room and… well, I kissed him.”

“You started it?” Mia asked, eyes widening. “Anne,

this is a huge deal!”

“I know!” Anne said, excited. “I started the kiss.”

“And?” Marlene asked, leaning in, wanting to know

more.

Anne blinked.

“And?” she asked, confused.

“What happened next? Did he kiss you back? Did

he touch you? Where did he kiss you? Did it have
tongue?” Lily shot all the questions. “You can’t just
throw that in the conversation and not give us
anything else, Anne. Come on, tell us, tell us!”

Anne looked at Mia with hesitance.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Mia said, smiling.

“Well, I pushed him against the wall and kissed

him,” she said, hiding most of the reason for the
kiss, still Marlene gasped loudly and Lily giggled.
“But then, he moved and made me go against the
wall, he… well,” she blushed, “he pulled her leg, it
stayed around his waist.”

“Oh!” Lily yelped. “Did you two do anything else?”

“No! No,” Anne said, shaking her head. She looked

at Mia again, nodding as if trying to make sure she
would believe her. “Just a kiss… we decided to stop,
but that we would kiss again soon.”

Marlene made a small whine, like she had seen a

cute puppy. She held Lily’s arm and shook her, a
bit more excited than Anne had expected her to be.
Did friends get this happy when the other get
something nice going on their lives?

Anne smiled big at them. She liked having them

there.

“Now, Lily, isn’t your turn to talk?” Marlene asked,

eyebrows wiggling.

Anne sipped her hot chocolate, raising her

eyebrows in curiosity as Mia nodded, a small grin
coming to her lips as she turned to her future-
daughter-in-law, clearly knowing what Marlene had
been talking about, though Anne was a bit lost.

“What happened? Did you go on a date or

something?” Anne asked.

Lily, however, looked as confused as Anne.

“No,” she answered. “I don’t understand what’s

happening.”

“Can you believe this, Mia?” Marlene asked, turning

to the older woman, who just laughed, still
respectful, though Marlene clearly shook her head
in disappointment. “So distracted, both of our red-
heads. I don’t think Lily herself realized.”

“What?” Lily asked, rolling her eyes.

“Through the whole night, you stared at James,”

Marlene said. “The whole night!”

Lily’s eyes widened as she shook her head, denying

all accusations thrown at her at once. Her eyes flew
from Marlene to Mia, clearly wanting Mia to believe
in her as well. For a moment, Mia could see how
similar Anne and her were, both shook the head
with wide eyes in the exact same way.

“Really?” Anne asked.

“No!” Lily exclaimed. Mia raised her eyebrows,

clearly not believing the girl. “I wasn’t! It was just…
odd, seeing him so careful with you.”

“With me?” Anne asked.

“I don’t think you realize just how much James’

world seems to revolve around you,” Lily said. “He
made sure all the pizzas were well cooked, he made
sure the juice was cold enough and that the gifts
were well wrapped. You have a good cousin.” Mia
looked at Anne, seeming a bit confused; she knew
nothing of that story and Lily seemed to catch on
quickly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Mia said.

“It’s… James and I aren’t cousins,” Anne explained.

She turned to Mia. “It’s alright, we can trust them,”
not with everything, though, she thought. She
wasn’t ready to explain all the truth to Lily and
Marlene, but she certainly could tell a partial-truth,
slowly easing them into the real life of Anne Potter.
“We’re a bit closer than that.”

Marlene looked a bit pale.

Mia cleaned her throat, calling the attention of all

the girls in the drawing room. Anne raised her
eyebrows, not sure of what Mia was about to say.

“Anne and James are half-brothers,” Mia lied. Anne

blinked, surprised. “Monty had an affair while I was
pregnant. James was born in March, Anne in
August.”

She had thrown her husband under the bus by the

way Lily’s mouth fell to the ground.

“That’s why he was so surprised when you came,”

Marlene said. “He didn’t know you existed!”

“No, it was quite the surprise for both of us, that

was,” Anne said, still looking at Mia. “I had thought
my whole life that my parents were dead. My
mother was, I lived with her sister. Apparently, my
father didn’t know I existed, when he found out
then he brought me here and took me in.”

“And I thought there was something going on

between you and James!” Lily said, shocked. “Ew!"

"Ew!” agreed Anne, laughing.

As they all laughed, Mia and Anne out of relief,

somebody knocked on the drawing room door with
three quick knocks.

The girls looked around their makeshift room. The

pillows and covers were thrown around, a small
circle in between all four mattresses where the girls
were sitting in, a rug over the wooden floor to not
let the cold pass. They were having a small
midnight picnic in there; hot chocolate, cake, soda
and even some sweets Marlene had gotten from
Hogsmeade by owl.

“Girls, excuse me!” said the male voice. James

slowly opened a crack of the door, eyes closed and
hands over them. “Am I allowed to come in? I can’t
sleep, Peter’s snoring too loudly tonight.”

Lily gave a quick look to her own body, trying to

see if her pyjamas were too embarrassing to be see
by James. She knew it was childish with the white
trousers and spaghetti straps in yellow, small ducks
over the white shirt. Still, she thought it seemed
decent enough, especially when compared with
Marlene’s bright red short nightgown. Anne wasn’t
far behind, though hers was a clear lingerie
nightgown, with lace and pink, so Anne was quick
to bring her silk robe around her and tie it.

“What is it?” Anne asked.

“Peter is snoring and I’m hungry, so I came by,”

James explained, hands still over his eyes. “I knew
Mum was here too, so… I thought Truth-or-Dare
might be on a decent spot as well.”

“No truth or dare, sorry to disappoint, Potter,” said

Marlene. “You can open your eyes, by the way.”

James seemed rather relieved as he put his hands

down, blinking a few times to get his eyes working
under the bright light of the drawing room, closing
the door without turning to it. His eyes were quick
to stop on the food.

“Cake?” James asked.

“And hot chocolate,” Mia added. “If Anne agrees,

you can have some.”

James’ eyes ran to Anne’s.

“Please?” he said.

“Fine, as long as you don’t harass my friends,” she

said.

“I’m here for the cake and company, not be

annoying, I promise,” he said, quickly making his
way to sit in between his daughter and his mother.
“I like the nightgown, ‘Lene,” he said, already
stuffing his face with cake. “I’m rather found of
burgundy.”

“You hated the dress I had in burgundy,” Anne

said. “The one I wore to that dinner.”

“Because it was too short; that is a pyjama, so it’s

alright being short,” James answered. “Besides,
she’s here – this is home, so… it’s not like she
might get in danger or something, there’s only us
here.” Anne rolled her eyes.

Lily sipped her hot chocolate once more, eyes

travelling between Marlene and James slowly,
trying to pick us any social cues between them.
Marlene had an odd grin at her face while James
seemed so relaxed that Lily wondered if he knew
she was there as well. The fact that he smiled right
at her as he served himself some hot chocolate
made Lily’s stomach have butterflies.

She was surprised that she was liking James when

he didn’t like her.

Chapter 42: Chapter Forty-One

Summary:
SECOND SEASON TRAILER

A few letters between Regulus and

Anne through the rest of the
summer

SECOND SEASON -

BETWEEN AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER

18th August, 1976.

My Anne-Girl,

I have failed deeply to get you a good birthday

present after such an eventful night and morning, I
had no idea it was your birthday. This, however,
brought forth several questions within me; my dear
friend, we seem to know so much and so little
about each other at the same time.

I know your plans in detail, I know your deepest

secrets and fears, and yet, at the same time, I
failed to realise I have no idea of your favourite
food, song, colour, clothes, jewellery or the most
basic thing: your favourite school subject. So, in
this letter, I’m trying to redeem myself and my
poor idea of friendship with asking you to talk more
about yourself.

Once more, lying in bed and thinking of what to

give you as a birthday, I could not think of
something worthy of you. There are not enough
books to give to my saviour.

I give you then a song.

Carrots, I hate to say how quick this song was

made, but I’m proud to announce that it was made
thinking of your friendship. I call it ‘Je Te Laisserai
De Mots’, something similar to ‘I’ll leave you word’
in English, though I suppose I’ll leave you a note is
a much better translation. I did it during my private
French class – I know, how boring and pureblood of
me, but the Blacks are usually born and some even
raised in France, though that was the only tradition
I broke (ironic, isn’t it; the one that obeys the most
broke a rule by being born in the place in the wrong
time).

Underneath, there’s the sheet and the lyrics. I hope

you enjoy it.

{Je te laisserai de mots/ en sous de ta porte/ en

sous de la lune qui chante/ tou près de la place où
te pieds passent/ caché dans les trous de temp
d’hiver/ et quand tu es seule pendant un instant/
Embrasse moi quando tu voudras}

Nothing much, I assure you my dear, but I suppose

I’m rather proud of what I managed to write. I
hope you can understand French.

With great excitement, I wait for your answer,

Your false and much richer Gilbert Blythe.

PS: Mother insisted that I’m not allowed to go

anywhere for the rest of the summer for leaving
Miss Romanova alone. It was worth it.

August 18th, 1976.

Dearest King Black,

I suppose that shall do for now, your name I mean,

because your song was quite beautiful.

Still, I start this letter saying that I do not speak

French by any means and that I can’t play the
piano half as beautifully as I heard you can manage
to do. I have, however, Sirius nearby every now
and then and I managed to convince him to play it
for me and tell me the translation of the song. I
loved it with all my heart, it was one of the most
romantic things anyone has ever done to me –
actually, the most, I’m sure.

I want to see you again soon, I miss you, even if

we saw each other just last week on the wedding. I
know it’s just a few weeks until September 1st and
yet I can’t seem to make time to go by faster – it
dreadfully drags out and I’m bored without your
conversation and your company.

Oh, before I forget, I didn’t tell anyone that song

you made was for me. I wanted to keep that
between you and I, it feels so much like our secret
that it makes me smile just to think about. The
family thinks I found the sheet on Diagon Alley and
wish to know the compositor; they all loved it and
now Sirius will not stop playing it! So annoying! It's
my song and yet he hums is and plays it all the
time.

I wish you could kiss me again. I wish you could

kiss me whenever you want to, just like in the
song.

Do you really think we won’t be able to meet before

school comes? I wish we could just see each other
right away, but your mother won’t let you leave her
sight, if I know her well enough. I hope, also, that
she’s not reading this letter. If she is; well, hello,
Misses Black, you annoying woman that don’t let
me see my best friend and pen-pal, haven’t you
heard that Anne and Gilbert are supposed to be
best friends?

Talking about that Anne, I wonder – how is your

reading coming along? I’m sure I can find the next
book for you if you don’t think it’s safe to go find it
yourself.

I finished Tamino; wonderful book! 9/10,

recommend it – only not 10/10 because it ended
too soon in my opinion.

I sign away, Little Prince, before I fall asleep over

this letter and make a mess of it by drooling away
over my table.

Yours,

Anne.

20th of August, 1976.

My Little Princess,

I suppose this title will ‘have to do’, though I do

think this shall be your name for now on to me, it
fits too well to be ignored.

I miss you too and I do wish to see you before

school starts so we can be free for a little bit more,
but still, I know it won’t be possible. I’m already
under great danger of being found out by telling
Kreacher to pass letters along to owls, hidden away
from my parents. I won’t be able to see you before
school, but at least our letters are safe and hidden
away.

Through my sadness, I managed to talk to Severus,

who was more than willing to help us meet in the
train without attracting too much attention.

I hope you understand why I’m trying to keep our

friendship away from other people’s mouths; we
can be friendly, of course, but I cannot kiss you
every time I want to without putting your life at
risk. The Dark Mark in my arm will protect you for a
while, I’ll do my best to keep people away from
you, though it’ll be hard for me to not be honest
and say that you’re a wonderful, smart and
beautiful woman – you’ll have to be just another
person in Hogwarts and it breaks my heart.

At least our friend Severus supports us enough.

Not only Severus, by the way. Narcissa seems quite

happy that our friendship managed to grow a bit. I
hope you don’t mind that I actually told her that we
kissed, I was too excited to keep it to myself and
Severus heard it and just shrugged it off, I wanted
a lot more than that. I wanted someone to smile
and tell me I did a good job, that I had the most
beautiful choice (which I did, Anne-Girl, you were
the most beautiful girl in the whole ballroom,
though I didn’t say that to the bride, of course, I
have common sense).

I’ll meet you in my dreams once more,

Your Little Prince.

August 21st, 1976.

Little Prince,

You told Narcissa and Severus and I do not mind at

all. To know that I was important enough for you to
share such an intimate detail of your life is deeply
touching to me.

Since you told me and was honest, I will do the

same to you. I told about you to my friends as well;
Lily (I know, weird) and Marlene, also Mia was quite
excited (I hope you don’t mind Grandma knows,
she was the happiest one, for your information and
happiness). Sirius seems to know as well, though I
didn’t directly tell him, but he was proud that you
were understanding of my situation and hesitance
of doing anything at the moment.

Sirius is very proud of you, Regulus, but I don’t

think you can see that. I’ve been talking to him
past couple of days and he told me a lot about
himself; he said that he knows how hard it must be
for you to be there and all that, but that he’s proud
of you for still being yourself and respecting people
around you as you can while still protecting
yourself. He knows your parents cannot be strong
enough to destroy who you are.

Still, I cannot say I’m not upset with him for

leaving. I know, it’s none of my business and I
have no right to judge either of you; him for
leaving and you for staying, but I can’t look him in
the face and hear him talk about you with such love
and then remember that he walked away.

Your very upset friend,

Anne.

25th August, 1976.

My dearest, Anne,

I’m sorry for taking such a long time to answer

you, but I’ve had to go back to France for a
moment. Bellatrix had a miscarriage, which led the
whole family to go to France to help her until she
feels better, not that she seems to be very upset –
I have been forbidden from saying this to anyone,
but I imagine she did it on purpose, which led me
to believe that the child was not Roddy’s. Good, I
think, one less crazy Black in the world.

I wonder if I’ll ever be strong and sane enough to

have children in the future. I fear so much being
like my father or mother. I fear failing a child like
they failed me; so many grown-ups completely
failed both of us, my dear, I can’t think of either of
us being anything other than damaged. Do you
think the war is going to change us? I already don’t
like who I am right now, I don’t know if I’ll be able
to deal with myself after a whole war.

You are the only thing keeping me sane at the

moment. The idea of how I’m going to help you and
actually be useful to your cause makes my mind a
lot more relaxed as I did nothing more than to hear
as much as I can to pass on everything for you.

Now, to business…

The Dark Lord visited as well in France. He talked

alone with Roddy and Bella alone, I don’t know if
that means he was consoling them for losing the
child (I doubt) or it was the thing you told me
about in their vault. Father commented something
with mother about the 1st of September; I was led
to believe that it’s the date they’ll move things to
the vault, but I’m not sure, keep one of your people
with an eye on it.

Your friend, who wishes to one day be called

something other than friend,

Regulus.

26th August, 1976.

Regulus,

The information was passed around and somebody

will keep an eye on it. I have a man inside
Gringotts, they’ll tell me if anything happens. He
thanks you for the tip, though he doesn’t know who
you are.

I’m worried about you, Regulus. I know the Dark

Lord must have heard something about my
presence in your birthday and our friendly
relationship. Severus wrote me and said that he
insisted that he and I had an actual friendship and,
since you two are friends, I would hang around you
all the time. I know, however, that your mother
must have denied it with all her heart – she hates
me so much. Though she’s a lot prettier now, I do
miss being able to shut up her portrait.

Yours,

Anne.

31st of August, 1976.

Carrots,

I’ll see you soon,

Your Little Prince.

31st of August, 1976.

My little Prince,

I miss you,

Your Anne-Girl.

Chapter 43: Chapter Forty-Two

Summary:
Anne gets to the train to
Hogwarts, but the start of the new
year certainly seems to promise a
lot more than she expected.

9¾

Anne hated how she stopped talking as soon as

they got to the Platform, it was like she couldn’t
find her tongue and words, both lost deep inside of
her as she took a deep breath, smelling the familiar
smoke.

It was the first time she was seeing Regulus Black

since the kiss.

And there he was, standing in all his glory talking

to Narcissa, kissing her cheeks before taking a step
back and getting his bag out of the ground. He was
careful to pretend not to see her, but did glance a
second look at her once he was up the train and
waving at Severus. Narcissa noticed, smiling just a
bit at Anne and waving discreetly beside Lucius,
who barely looked at Anne, eyes stuck on Narcissa.

“Annie,” said Monty. She turned, smiling at the

nickname they all seemed to have adopted. “You
have a good year and keep out of trouble, alright?
Focus on school for now. You have time for other
things later.”

“Sure,” she said, shrugging it off. They all knew

that her grades were last on her priority list. “I’ll try
to keep Head-Boy over there out of trouble.”

“You could’ve told me that I was going to be Head-

Boy since you already knew,” James said, elbowing
her ribs. She winced away. “I almost had a heart
attack. And Moony was flabbergasted!”

“Ha! Flabbergasted!” laughed Sirius, shoulders

shaking. “I hate that word. I can’t ever say that
without laughing.”

He had just looked at the family. Anne noticed he

had been watching Walburga and Orion talking to
Regulus through the window of the compartment
he and Severus had chosen in – surprisingly – one
of the only wagons that were shared between
houses. Sirius had been wondering how like
would’ve been if he hadn’t left, that was clear, but
Anne wondered why he would do that to himself.

She pushed the thought away.

“Astonished!” Mia said, a synonym of

flabbergasted.

“I like astonished better,” agreed Sirius.

“Keep the word in mind for essays,” Anne said.

“Oh, Merlin, I need to keep my grades up this

time,” James complained.

“Too much, my dear?” Mia asked. “Head-Boy,

Quidditch Team Captain.”

“And Future-Mister-Evans,” added Sirius laughing.

“At least by the number of letters those two have
been exchanging. He never lets me read them.”

“Because it’s none of your business, and Lily and I

are friends,” dismissed James, fixing his hair a bit.
The sight made Anne laugh – he usually did the
opposite, trying to mess it up. “Just friends.”

“For now,” Anne now added.

Sirius smiled at her, raising his hand for a high-five.

She smiled back, slapping her hand against his as
hard as she could and making him wince away,
glaring at her because of the silly joke and pushing
her away lightly. His smile dropped once he found
Walburga’s cold eyes over him and Anne. He held
Anne by the arm, pulling her to him lightly as if to
tell Walburga to look away without daring to look
back at her.

Sirius hated how scared he was of her still. He had

gotten away! He was safe! And yet her eyes
weighted tons and made him have difficulty
breathing. The trauma she had put inside his head
wouldn’t leave as easily as he had done the
situation.

“Sirius!” said a loud voice.

Remus Lupin was running full force towards him.

Now! It was the time! He knew it by the way

Remus was smiling.

And Sirius was right.

Remus’ lips hit his, a bit too strongly, making him

flinch, but immediately after kissing the boy back.
He didn’t care about the gasps around them or the
giggles and squeals coming from Dorcas, who was
just beside Remus, who had given her a ride to the
station since they were both from the same town in
Wales.

What Sirius did care about, however, was how

James’ jaw was almost touching the floor as they
pulled away.

“You bitch!” said James loudly. “You never told

me!”

“Don’t talk like that to your brother, James,” Mia

said quickly.

“He’s dating Remus and nobody thought it was a

good idea to let me know?” James asked, looking
around as if everybody but him knew. “Did you
know? Did you know? And you? Anne, did you
know?” like everybody else he had asked this, Anne
shook her head no, though she did suspect. “Sirius,
I swear to every hair on Merlin’s head that I’ll get
back to you!”

By the tone of the light threat, Anne wasn’t sure

she wanted to be present when James had his
revenge. Still, she laughed, hugging James
sideways and trying to guide him towards the train,
wanting him to stop bothering the newest
Hogwarts’ couple.

“Deal with you own love life first, James, then you
can take care of other people’s,” Anne said.

He poked her to she would let go of him, which

made her laugh. He stomped away, a bit upset, but
still put his bag and Anne’s up the train on the
baggage compartment without Anne having to do
as much as ask. She knew the joke had been a bit
mean since James’ love life was a mess even before
she got there – her presence seemed to make
things even worse; some people believed them to
have an affair, some people wanted him just
because they wanted to get on Anne’s nerves and
then there were people who were terrified of
getting in the way of Lily Evans and James Potter.
Those three types of people in Hogwarts made his
life a mess.

Anne turned to Mia.

“He’ll be fine,” Mia dismissed. “You be careful there.

Write me if you need anything. The potions are in
the blue bag inside your baggage,” she whispered
the last part.

Still, she seemed to have forgotten that the boy

beside her was an animagus and the other a
werewolf.

“What potions?” Sirius asked.

Anne blushed from the roots of her hair, looking

away and wishing to be swallowed by the ground.

“Sirius,” scolded Remus, “leave it.”

“No, I want to know.”

“Don’t be nosy!” Monty said. “I learnt my lesson.”

“Oh, come on…” whined Sirius.

“Anti-Pregnancy Potions, Sirius,” Mia said in a low

voice. “Leave her alone and if I find out that this
got to James, we’ll have terrible talks, alright?”

“Mia!” said Anne, surprised.

“She’s right,” Remus said, shaking his head. “If

James as much as hears you have those with you
and are taking them to school, he’d freak out
completely. Besides, he trusts the Charm a lot
more than the potion, he’d probably want you to
use the Charm as well.”

“Well, the Charm doesn’t protect women from

things such as infections,” Mia said. “She’s using
the Potions.”

Her tone was so definitive that Anne didn’t even

say anything about it all being about her body. She
didn’t understand a lot of the consequences of sex
besides pregnancy, which got to her mind that
maybe that was a reason to why she shouldn’t be
having sex at all. She knew even less about
magical ways of protection, having heard mostly of
Muggle ones, which were easier to sneak into
school without questions. Even some purebloods
had them on their back pocket every now and
again.

In the 70’s, however, things were different. Sure,

the pill and condoms were there, but the fact that
there was a sexual revolution still in its growing
phase did put a pressure on Anne – she had heard
about the danger, she had grown up seeing the
panic of AIDs and all that on the telly. Still, she
wanted it. She wanted to be brave enough to get
control back of her own body finally.

“I could just get the pill,” she said.

Monty sighed, clearly not wanting to be there to

hear this conversation.

“When you’re out of school, then we’ll get you to a

Muggle doctor,” Mia said.

Anne rolled her eyes, especially after seeing Sirius’

confused face and Remus’ lips tight against one
another, trying to hold back a laugh. Remus threw
his arm around Sirius’ shoulders and shook his
head.

“We need to go now, Mia, thanks,” said Remus.

“Bye,” Anne said.

“Bye-Bye, Mum, Dad,” said Sirius, waving.

They walked towards the train, the boys letting

Anne climb up first, her jean trousers making it a
bit hard since they were so tight, but she got up
there and turned around, Sirius’ leather pants
making a small noise as he climbed up, Remus
following without any restrain, but laughing of the
‘farting’ noise of the leather, which made Sirius
glare at him, though he had a small smile on his
lips.

James had already gone to the Prefect’s area and

Remus was to soon follow, though he insisted on
staying with Sirius just for a minute more.

Anne stood to the side, her heart filling with pride

and love as Sirius laughed at something that
Remus whispered on his ear as she watched. She
looked away soon after, feeling like she was
intruding on something so personal that it made
her blush. Perhaps it was just the reminder that the
look in Sirius’ grey eyes stuck on Remus’ hazel
ones were very… similar to Regulus’ when he was
looking at her. Blushing even more, she bit her
bottom lip to keep herself quiet.

“Go on,” said Sirius as Remus. “We’ll be fine. We’ll

find the girls and sit with them; I’ll try finding Peter
in the way.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you two

there?” Remus asked.

“We’re fine, Remus,” said Anne. “You have work to

do.”

Sirius nodded, smiling a bit at Remus, who nodded,

taking in the sight of Sirius and Anne standing side
by side. He accepted the cue, taking off to the
Prefects’ area of the train, leaving the two alone.

Sirius watched him disappear as Anne crossed her

arms and smiled amusedly.

“Of all the changed I expected coming here, you

two getting together was the most obvious, but still
I’m quite happy, even if I was waiting for it to
happen already,” Anne said.

“Well, since the Soiree things were… different,”

Sirius admitted. “He was different with me then
with the others, something in his eyes.”

“Love?” guessed Anne.

“There was no pity there, only admiration,” Sirius

explained. “That was the closest thing to romantic
love I’ve ever felt before in my life. It was just that
at first, the possibility of it growing on me. And
then I realized I had always loved him in a different
way I had loved James or Peter, or you, for that
matter. He was… deeper.”

Anne grinned.

“I can bet he was,” she grumbled.

“Dirty mind,” Sirius said.

“I said nothing wrong. Your feelings for him were

deeper, that’s all,” joked Anne back.

Sirius laughed, throwing his arm over Anne’s

shoulder and starting to guide her towards the
Gryffindor compartment. She followed him.

“Oh,” she said.

Sirius turned to her.

“Yes?” he said.

“There’s something that you might want to know,”

she said. Sirius frowned, but nodded, hearing with
attention and stopping his walking. The train made
a noise – five minutes on the station and then the
new year was about to start. “You might see
Severus Snape a lot more from now on.”

Sirius’ frown went to a blank face and then to an

exhausted one in a second.

“Are you taking a piss out of me?” he asked, clearly

annoyed.

“No,” she said. “Severus is going to be the middle-

man between Regulus and I, now that I cannot, in
good mind, talk to Regulus as often as I did before
in public. Things are changing for the Slytherin
kids, things are harder for them at the moment and
my presence could make their life ever harder.”

“Are you ever going to tell us everything?” Sirius

asked. “We know your story; we know pieces of
information of the story that’s being created right
now. I’m tired of getting the shattered pieces and
puzzling them together myself.”

Anne sighed.

“I am too,” she said. “I’m tired of lying to

everybody – to the girls, I’m James’ bastard half-
sister and to the world I’m his distant cousin. I am
Anne Sage and then Anne Potter. I’m starting to
get a bit lost in my own web of lies.”

“There’s no way out,” Sirius said, honestly.

“Not yet, you’re correct,” Anne said. “There’ll be

one soon, though. After the year is done and things
are a bit more settled in who I’m able to trust or
not, then the lies and half-truths will stop.”

“One request,” Sirius said.

Confused by how focused he looked; Anne nodded.

“But of course,” she said.

“I get to be there when you tell Lily everything.”

Dorcas had broken up with her muggle-fling the

day before and still seemed upset as she cried on
Marlene’s shoulder while Mary watched, clearly
wanting to disappear at the moment as she had
just finished her book.

The salvation was when Sirius Black walked in, all

confidence, leather and smiles to the girl,
announcing loudly that he had now settled down
and the ring on his finger was the proof of that; as
if none of them had watched the big kiss he shared
with his boyfriend in front of half the wizarding
world. With him, there was Anne Sage; the odd girl
that followed the Marauders, but that Marlene
seemed to like a lot and that Lily seemed to respect
an awful lot as well.

Dorcas and Mary weren’t the ones to judge, but

Anne was truly odd.

They had gotten to that conclusion when Marlene

commented that Anne would wake up several times
during the night and walking around the room or
going to the common room in the early hours of the
morning. Lily had also commented that she seemed
to have a lot of nightmares, which made Dorcas
and Mary a bit hesitant – a normal person doesn’t
have so many nightmares; whatever she had gone
through, it wasn’t good and Anne certainly didn’t
want to share it, so they kept their distance from
her.

Still, with Dorcas becoming closer and closer to

Marlene and Mary coming along, they had to be at
least decently polite with her.

“So…” started Mary, giving a sheepish smile at

Anne. “How was your summer?”

“It was good, what about yours?” Anne asked as

politely as her, though eyes much more distant as
she glanced out of the window; the world outside
was starting to move, the platform was staying
behind. “Anything interesting?”

“Oh, well,” Mary shrugged. “You know, just Muggle

stuff,” Anne raised a single eyebrow. “I went to a
concert in America in the Fourth of July. It was
pretty nice.”

“Hot, I suppose,” Anne said.

“Yes! Very much. I was in California. Where did you

live at when you were there?” Mary asked.

“I lived in Canada mostly, Toronto,” Anne quickly

said, looking away from the window as the trees
started to appear. Her eyes glued to Mary’s as she
forced a small smile. “But I did hear California was
a dream.”

“Too hot for my taste, but certainly pretty,” Mary

said.

With the talks of summer and weather being gone,

there was a small awkward silence between the
girls, filled only by Dorcas’ sniffs, muffled by
Marlene’s hug as she was half-asleep against the
seats.

Sirius cleaned his throat, eyes stuck on the door.

“Anne, love,” he said, touching her arm. She turned

to him, eyes going through the small window in the
door. “I do think I just saw your friend pass by.”

Anne didn’t need a name. She knew the only

person that could make him react as if he had
smelled something truly awful was Severus Snape.
And she was right, she realised as she slipped out
of the compartment in clear distaste for the
atmosphere in there only to see the dark form
inside the shadows.

“Oh, how brooding of you, Severus,” she said.

“Stop that.”

“It was a compliment, I assure you,” she answered,

smiling at him as he stepped out of the shadows,
showing his face to her.

Anne realised his nose was slightly crooked now,

the nose finally being more similar to the one she
remembered him with in her time. He had broken
his nose and it had been set and healed wrong.
That was something magic couldn’t fix without
breaking the bone again.

Self-conscious of her eyes on his nose, he looked

away.

“Father sometimes loses his balance when he’s had

too much to drink,” he explained lightly, as if it was
not such a big deal.

“I’m sure he does,” she said, dismissing his fear of

her judgment. “Am I correct to assume you came
around looking for me in the Gryffindor Wagon?”

“Who else would I look for?” he asked, raising his

brow as if the answer was not all that obvious.
“Now, come along. Regulus is annoying when he’s
waiting for you, jumping around like a puppy.”

“Now, I never thought I’d hear you say the word

‘puppy’, at least not sober,” she admitted.

He looked at her with a small twitch on his lips.

“I’m full of surprises.”

The joke took Anne by surprise as she chuckled,

starting to follow him through the corridors and
walking with her head down just like him, trying to
get as little attention as she could manage.

They changed wagons to the shared ones.

It was easier to move around in those, especially

while she didn’t have her uniform on. People that
went to those compartments didn’t care what was
happening outside, they were usually study groups,
big friend groups that were too loud for the other
wagons to care and couples that went there to
meet in secret.

Anne was surprised about how much she felt like

the latest.

Severus suddenly stopped walking in front of a

compartment, the door was closed and the glass
panel on the door was covered by the small pulled
curtain.

“Now,” Severus said, sounding a lot like a professor

again. “I’ll have a meeting with Burke and Crabbe
right now, we’ll deal with some business for Malfoy
and his… partner,” the hesitation left clear the
unnamed person’s identity for Anne. “You’ll have
around two hours or a bit more before I am back. I
do ask that, by the time I am back, both of you are
decent and in a nice talk I can make part of,
otherwise the chaperoning will certainly be a lot
less pleasant for all of us.”

“Chaperoning?” she asked.

“I will not walk around the train for the four more
hours we have just to leave you two alone,”
Severus said.

Anne laughed.

“Alright, got it,” she said.

“Good,” he looked around. “Now go on, go in. He’s

waiting for you.”

She smiled and nodded, starting to walk towards

the door.

“Anne,” Severus called once more before her hands

touched the handle. She turned to look at him. “Not
too long ago, you gave me a warning about
messing with the people you like and that you see
as family. I do suppose this is my turn: Regulus is
not a normal boy, and we both know that; he can’t
deal with being hurt by anyone else he trust, so if
this… experiment going on between you two is just
another way to get him to do what you want, make
sure to leave it clear. Make sure you both know
what you’re getting into before things go too far for
either of you to regret.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“If you care for him, be serious. There are usually

consequences for loving a Black. Make sure you can
take them on before messing with his mind
completly.”

Chapter 44: Chapter Forty-

Three
Summary:
Regulus and Anne meet again.

SPARK

Before actual fire, there’s a spark in the wood. The

embers are what are in the very bottom, shining
bright, but not warm enough to burn anything yet,
and those embers lead to fires that grow and
comfort people and animals.

The first look that Regulus and Anne shared as she

walked into the compartment was the spark; their
smile, the ember, starting a fire they would never
be able to control in some time.

Regulus smiled.

“Hi!” he said.

“Hello, Little Prince,” she answered.

He opened his arms for her, initiating the physical

contact with her this time, because he walked
towards her as allowed her to embrace him as well.
Her arms were around his waist, his over shoulders,
petting her back gently. Silently, he noticed that
although he could feel her body a lot better against
his when her arms were around his neck, that hug
felt a lot more intimate and he was rather
comfortable with that.

“How was your summer?” he asked in a low voice.

“You know how summer was,” she laughed against

his arm. “You were there.”

“Well, I didn’t know what else to ask,” he admitted.

She chuckled, pulling away from him to look at his

face. She held both of his hands, leading him to sit
next to her, holding his hands on hers over her lap.

“You could ask me if I missed you,” she teased.

He raised his eyebrows.

“And did you?” he asked.

“Very much,” she laughed. “Oh, I’m so glad to see

you again. I was so worried that I couldn’t see you.
Letter are good and all, but it didn’t make me any
more tranquil about your situation. I managed to
talk to Severus, who insisted that you were alright
without me, but that didn’t make things better as I
wished it would.”

“It’s fine, Anne, really,” he said, shaking his head.

“I wasn’t called upon yet, I have to missions to
complete for now, just went to a few meetings
where we talk about possible futures, no more than
that.”

“Meetings?” she asked.

“During the summer, all Saturdays we would meet

after dinner to talk. The Dark Lord has a lot of
plans for the politics inside the Ministry, but you
know that already, and you know that he already
has a foot inside of it – it won’t take long for him to
get more power,” Regulus said, squeezing her
hands in his. “I’m starting to get truly worried
about something…”

Anne pulled her legs up the seat, criss-crossing

them, turning completely to Regulus.

“You can tell me anything,” she promised.

“The child Bellatrix lost… I have the suspicion it

might have been the Dark Lord’s,” he admitted.
“The way the two reacted and the way Roddy
seemed to be holding back, he was so angry and
yet so… quiet. Roddy isn’t quiet, ever, even when
we want him to.”

“It’s a probability,” Anne agreed. “Bellatrix is known

for being more than loyal to him.”

“She’s obsessed!” Regulus said, sounding almost

disgusted.

“You cousin found someone who accepted her

very… odd mentality as something good in Tom
Riddle,” Anne said. “Your aunt tries to hide it; your
uncle tells her to hold her tongue and her husband
was a controlling piece of shit. Tom Riddle saw her
violence and her madness as power; of course, she
was going to cling to him.”

Regulus hesitated.

“You know about my family’s problem.”

“Everybody knows about your family’s problem,”

she said, sounding a bit embarrassed. “Your mother
has hallucinations and anger issues, and your
father is the oddest person I have ever met. It’s no
surprise your cousin got a bit of all that; if I didn’t
know any better, I’d say she was your sister.”

Regulus shivered, making a ‘brrr’ sound in disgust,

letting go of Anne’s hands to smooth down his
sleeves as she laughed of his reaction, throwing her
head back, belly and shoulders moving as her nose
scrunched.

He smiled at her as she started to come back to

him.

Slowly, not wanting to startle her, his hand moved

towards her face. Anne smiled at him, not moving
away as she let him caress her cheek with caution.
She moved as well, a bit faster than him, holding
his hand against her face and closing her eyes in
delight; her hand slipped down to his wrist and
then she kissed the inside of his wrist – the thin
skin burned, Regulus’ heart threatening to leave his
body through his throat.

“Regulus?” she whispered.

Though he didn’t know why they were talking in low

voices, he followed her. “Yes?” he whispered back.

“Will you kiss me now?” she asked.

Regulus didn’t even answer, just leaning slowly

towards her.

The first kiss was not as energetic as the one they

shared in the Malfoy drawing room; the kiss in the
compartment came slowly, a touch of lips without
movement for a moment before Regulus leaned
closer to her and touched the side of her face
again, pulling her face closer to him.

Anne moved closer to him, leaning against him as

well, not wanting him to do all the job, meeting him
half-way. She got to her knees on the seat, Regulus
sitting beside her and having to look up to continue
kissing her.

They pulled away for a breath, an embarrassing

wet noise filling the compartment once they pulled
away.

“Thank you,” she said.

Regulus raised his eyebrows, looking stunned.

“Thank you,” he corrected. He took a deep breath.

“More?”

The way he sounded almost excited by the idea

made Anne chuckle as she slowly walked with her
knees closer to him and threw a leg over him,
straddling him, but not sitting down on his legs.

“More,” she confirmed.

Regulus smiled, tilting his head up once more and

closing his eyes, waiting for the kiss without a
single move. Anne giggled again, leaning down with
her hands on his shoulders and noticing with a
smile that his hands were on the seat, not touching
her.

The next kiss was a lot more intimate, because

although the lips started it and they stayed there
for a good time, but the tongue ended it.

Regulus pulled away as soon as her tongue touched

his closed lips.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s alright, I was just surprised,” he said, shaking

his head. “I don’t mind at all. I was just caught off
guard.”

“I should’ve asked,” she shook her head, blushing.

“You always ask before doing anything. I should’ve
asked.”

“Here’s my very awkward, but explicit permission

to kiss me however you like,” he said, smiling at
her blush.

Anne laughed, throwing her head back at the way

his eyes seemed to shine with the great excitement
and good mood he was expressing. He used that
moment to gently put his hands on her waist, not
forcing her down, just caressing her over the dress
in a chaste, but caring way. She looked down at
him again.

They kissed, neither of them being sure who

started the kiss this time.

So long in each other, they weren’t insecure of

doing anything wrong. It was just the two of them
in the world.

It wasn’t a battle of tongues nor for dominance, it

was just the plain desire of being closer – and
closer – and closer. No matter how close they were
to each other, it was like it wasn’t enough, but still
neither of them crossed the lines. Anne didn’t sit on
his legs and he didn’t try to get her to put her body
closer to him. The kiss had to be enough for the
moment.

They pulled away, foreheads still attached, as they

breathed shallowly.

They needed to behave.

Especially because Severus Snape was back,

standing on the doorway with a deep frown and
disgusted expression.

“You know,” Severus said, “when I said you two

had an exact time to do whatever, I meant that you
had an exact time to do whatever.”

“Hello again, Severus,” said Regulus, helping Anne

throw her leg away from him and sit beside him.
“Good to have you back.”

“I’m sure,” Severus said, narrowing his eyes.

“Hands and lips off each other while I’m here,
please.”

“Yes, sir,” said Anne, rolling her eyes.

Severus peeked at her as he sat down across

Regulus, but once he was in place, he opened his
book and carefully started reading the first page of
the book that made Anne smile at the name; The
Hunchback of Notre dame.

“You know, I really like that book,” mentioned

Anne. “A friend of mine sent it to my birthday.”

Severus looked up, eyebrows arching.

“Another one, Regulus?” he asked.

“Not me,” Regulus quickly said.

“It was a girl from my past life… Hermione. Rather

fond of books, would scream at me when I
annotated them, but still bought me books when
she could because she knew I wasn’t allowed to do
it myself,” she told Severus. “You would’ve hated
her.”

Regulus grinned to himself, knowing that Severus

did hate Hermione and her confidant poise because
she was very similar to Lily, perhaps even to Anne,
though a lot more focused on grades than the other
part of school: the social life. He wasn’t surprised
that Anne liked Hermione so much, they sounded
like good friends ever since Hermione decided that
she was going to take care of Anne on her first year
when Harry was still a bit upset that she had been
sorted into another house. Until her brother started
being a brother again, Hermione was a big sister.
Anne must miss her a lot, he thought, and yet she
was speaking of the girl with a smile on her face.

The truth was that Anne had cried enough.

“It sounds like it,” Severus said. “Annotating books

is the smartest thing one can do, so you won’t lose
your notes.”

“That’s exactly what I think!” Anne said, nodding.

She turned to Regulus and smiled. “That’s why the
book I gave you is very well annotated.”

“So I noticed,” he laughed.

Severus sighed, shaking his head in almost

disappointment.

“I don’t know why you two insist on presenting

each other with books, it’s rather boring for a
couple, isn’t it?” he asked.

Regulus and Anne went quiet.

Were they a couple? Had they decided it? How does

one even decide that they were in a relationship
after all? Neither of them had ever done it and it
did sound quite difficult now that they had stopped
to think about it.

“Are we a couple?” Regulus asked, straightforward.

Anne turned her head to quickly to him that she got

whiplash.

They had been very direct to one another about

their wishes and their experiences up to that point,
and yet the question made her lose the ability to
speak for a second, just opening her mouth like a
fish – gasping in silence.

Anne shrugged.

“If you want us to,” she admitted.

Severus rolled his eyes, going back to his book in

silence, though feeling very out of place in that
compartment. He would’ve left, had he not know
that if somebody saw him they would ask where
was Regulus and why he was alone – to protect the
small secret Anne and Regulus now had, he put
himself through the uncomfortable experience of
pretending not to see the looks and longing.

“I do want us to, but only if you agree,” he

answered.

“Of course, I agree!” she said.

“Oh! Good!” he said, blushing. “Are boyfriend and

girlfriend now?”

Severus held his breath, knowing that Anne’s

answer would dictate Regulus’ mood for at least a
few months.

“Yes, Little Prince, we are,” she said. She looked at

the door. “But…” she turned to Regulus again. “I
got to go, before my… --” she looked at Severus.
“Before James starts wondering where I am since I
told him I’d stay with Sirius.”

“Got it,” he said. “Bye. I’ll see you at dinner.”

She smirked.

“Maybe after,” she teased, opening the door and

winking at him. Severus chocked down his laugh
once Regulus looked ready to faint. “Bye, Severus.”

“Have a good trip, Anne,” he dismissed.

She smiled at him, closed the door and walked

away.

Severus closed his book once more, looking up at

Regulus, who was watching the closed door with a
smile on his face, looking like a silly first year
looking at the ceiling of the Great Hall for the first
time.

“I’m a committed guy!” he announced.

“I’m sure you are,” Severus grumbled.

“Yes, I am!” he said, getting up from his sitting

position and reaching the bag over his head to get
his book from up there. “I have a girlfriend.”

“I got that,” Severus grumbled.

“I am a boyfriend!”

Severus sighed, defeated and exhausted already.

Chapter 45: Chapter Forty-Four

Summary:
Anne crosses a line and takes the
consequence for it.

ARGUMENT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Anne’s grin was certainly a lot creepier than Lily

Evans had expected once she woke up in the
middle of the night and went down to the Common
Room once she saw the bed beside hers empty,
only to find Anne perched up on a chair, legs near
to her chest with an odd grin and a piece of
parchment in hands.

“Anne?” she called out. The girl jumped, smile

disappearing as she turned with her eyes wide. “It’s
three in the morning, you cannot spend the night
reading love letters. Go back to bed. Read them
during the day, please.”

Anne chuckled.

“Not love letters,” she said. “Good news.”

“And it cannot wait?” Lily asked.

“Too good of a news to be ignored, Lily,” she

answered, smiling at Lily this time.

It’s still a bit out of place, the excited smile in the

middle of the night being illuminated by the dying
fire of the Common Room fireplace. The mess of
red hair and white skin blushed out of the heat of
the fire made the situation even weirder.

“What news?”

“Let’s just say that I know where something I’ve

been looking for is,” Anne said. “Now, I only need
to find a way to get it.”

“And you can tell me what it is or where it is?”

“No,” Anne answered sincerely. “If I told you, we

would both be in danger. So, I’ll keep that to
myself and all the danger to myself, thank you.
What I can tell you is that this is good for a lot of
people.”

Lily sighed, going to sit down on the sofa, looking

at Anne smiling at the letter like a maniac.

“It’s late. Come on, let’s go back to bed, okay? I

was worried when I didn’t see you bed. I thought
you had gone to Regulus,” she said, pulling her feet
up on the couch, knees touching her chest.

Anne folded the letter and laughed a bit.

“I don’t think I’m that quick to jump on people’s

bed, Lily,” she said, eyebrows arching to not let her
see the actual hurt that she felt. “I just needed
some alone time. I might go up later, but I don’t
know. I’m not all that sleepy anymore.” Lily sighed
again, head resting on her knees now as she tried
to keep her eyes open. Anne noticed it, of course.
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m going to be
alright, just can’t sleep right now. Go back to bed,
we’ll talk more later.”

“Are you sure?” Lily asked.

She would’ve insisted on staying, making company

to Anne, but she was so tired that her company
would be completely useless. She was about to fall
asleep at any second.

“Yeah,” Anne said, nodding.

Though not so sure, Lily got up from her seat and

went up the stairs again, leaving Anne alone in the
Common Room.

That was the moment Anne got up as well, going

up the stairs, but to the male dorms without
hesitance. She opened the door without knocking at
all, just walking into the very dark room and trying
not to trip over anything as she stumbled towards
James’ bed.

“Dad?” she whispered, opening the curtains just a

little bit. James was completely asleep, mouth open
with drool pooling on his pillow. “Jamie? Dad?” he
made a few noises, eyes fluttering. “James!” she
called out.

His eyes opened at once.

“What? What happened?” he asked, looking around.

His hands were going around, trying to find the

small bedside table where his glasses were resting.
Anne took it and gave it to him with his wand
accompanying it.

“I need the Map,” she said.

“Whatever for? It’s the middle of the night,” he

complained.

“Well, I need to talk to Dumbledore,” she said.

“Can’t it wait?” he asked.

Anne sighed.

“Mum said the exact same thing,” she joked,

crossing her arms. “I just came for it because I
don’t want to get caught walking around. I don’t
want to get detention first things first; I promised
Grandma I wouldn’t.”

James threw himself back to the bed, eyes closing

as he sighed. His hand went under his pillow,
pulling the Map from there and showing it to her.

“Do you know how to use it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t get caught,” he warned. “If you do, I’ll write

home about it.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” she teased,

getting the map from him.

He nodded, almost falling asleep with his eyes

closed. Anne rolled her eyes, leaning in and taking
the glasses off his face. He opened his eyes with
the movement and half-smiled at her, though he
couldn’t really see her. She put the glasses back on
the bedside table and closed the curtains with a
small ‘goodnight’.

Anne didn’t need James’ help to use the Map, she

had done it before, Harry had taught her and the
twins had taught him.

She used the small cheat to avoid walking right

through Mister Filch’s walking zone and made her
way through the castle towards Dumbledore’s
office. She knew he was waiting for her, she could
see his footsteps slowly pacing around the office
ever since she had gotten out of the Common
Room – she even wondered if he had gotten up
from bed because she walked out of the Common
Room and how he had known about it.

She got there quickly, stopping in front of the

gargoyle and biting her lip.

Anne had no idea of the password; she had

forgotten about that small detail. Annoyed with
herself, she huffed.

Before she could do anything else, the gargoyle

moved, turning around and opening the passage for
her. Anne walked through the passage quickly,
vanishing the Map’s contents before shoving the
parchment on the pocket of her pyjamas and went
up the stairs, opening the door of the office without
knocking.

“I suppose you received a letter as well,”

Dumbledore said, smiling a little bit as he sat down
on the chair behind his desk. “Mister Prewett is
rather smart; it’s a pity he used all that intelligence
to cause mischief in the school, much like your
friends.”

“Gideon got good grades and a good job,” she

dismissed Dumbledore’s small joke quickly. “Which
caused us to get this information. The Cup is
already on the Lestrange’s vaults. Now, however,
we have a problem.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, nodding. “They doubled

the security.”

Anne threw herself on the other chair without being

invited.

“With Bellatrix and Roddy –” the nickname caused

Dumbledore to look curiously at her, “in prison, I
suppose they took the security out of the vaults.
There’s very little they could do from Azkaban.”

“You underestimate the power their surname has,”

Dumbledore said.

She rolled her eyes.

“Well, besides the very traditional security system

from upstairs, they only had a dragon, which
helped us escape from Gringotts. Now, they had
three people guarding their vaults, both of them,
besides the dragon – of course, I’m throwing a
possibility, I’m not sure the dragon in there
already, but I’m thinking that Gideon most likely
would hear or see something if a dragon was in
there,” she said.

“The interesting part is… aurors. The three men

working for them are aurors,” Dumbledore said. “I
talked to Alastor, he said they are good aurors,
never bending the rules or anything like that.”

“Do you think blackmail is involved?” she asked,

crossing her legs.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “None of them

have anything on them. Alastor already looked.”

“Then they’re sympathizers,” she said.

“One of them is muggle-born,” Dumbledore said.

That caused her eyebrows to shoot up. That was

unexpected.

“Imperius?” she guessed.

“A possibility, of course,” he said. “Still, a far-

fetched one. You’d think someone would notice
something was wrong about them, after all they
were hired for this, but they still go around town
and all.”

“It’s the only thing we have left,” she said. “I can’t

think of anything else. They’d think about that
before. Do they have families to go home to?”

“No,” Dumbledore said. “All single and have no

children.”

“There we go then, it’s easier to manipulate

someone’s mind if they don’t have any support
system,” she said. She stretched her neck and it
cracked, she winced in pain, but said nothing about
it. “They don’t have anyone to show them reality,
so if someone else tells them that the thing they
are confused about is the reality, they’ll accept it.”

Anne knew she didn’t need to explain it to

Dumbledore, after all he had been the one to teach
her that as she grew up. She had the basics while
she survived in her uncle’s house, but he was the
one to polish her talents – she watched him closely
as she grew up, mimicking his words and his
tranquilness as she learned that it was how he
made everybody trust him. Dumbledore used his
frailness and his fame; Anne used the fact that she
was a child and a girl. Both of them made names
for themselves based on lies, but Anne survived,
she always did; and that was the biggest difference
between them.

“Whatever it is, this makes it harder for us to her

into the vault,” Dumbledore said.

“Yes,” she said, nodding a bit. “We need some time

to think about it, but we can get something to work
out.”

“Any ideas?”

“No,” she admitted. “I believe that just fighting our

way in would not work this time. If Voldemort as
much as thinks that somebody besides his followers
knows what’s those things he’s hiding, he’ll change
everything. He can’t know – if he knows… I won’t
have access.”

Dumbledore whipped his wand, making a single

movement and putting tea and biscuits over the
desk. Anne looked away, not trusting anything he
gave her. Perhaps it was the trauma of having
sipped tea before and throwing up everywhere
because of George’s potion; he took quite a few
slaps from her, but yet it had been embarrassing
enough that she didn’t drink anything straight from
the elves.

“We have two or three more at this point,”

Dumbledore. “We could risk it. Try and get it
anyways.”

“But if we risk it and he finds out and notices that

the others are missing, he might do more. If we
miss another one, we’ll lose again. We know where
the Cup is, we know where the Locket will be and I
need to find out if the snake is already relevant or
not at this point. If the snake is not, we can kill her
before she turns into a Horcrux.”

“You said the snake might be a person,”

Dumbledore said.

She looked up at him.

“Yes, and?” she asked.

“We might save her, if possible.”

“It shouldn’t be a priority,” Anne said.

“Of course it should! It’s a life!” Dumbledore said.

“A life she most likely gave to him willingly,” Anne

quickly argued. “We cannot think of her at the
moment. It’s a liability. If she did go to him so
easily, she might become a spy… or worse, she
might try to destroy us from the inside.”

Dumbledore looked almost disgusted with the lack

of care she had for the lady stuck inside the snake,
but Anne barely blinked. If there was something
that Dumbledore understood, but certainly
pretended not to is that people had other priorities
other than winning the war. He liked to win a war;
Anne liked to save those she cared for… and just
who she cared for.

“Would you kill to get what you want?” Dumbledore

asked.

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Don’t lie. We both know you would. I’ve seen you
do it and we both know you’ve done before,” her
lips twitched between disgust and a smirk. She had
gotten him with the next few words. “Isn’t that why
your brother doesn’t talk to you unless absolutely
necessary for?”

It was rare to him mad.

It was rarer to him lose control.

“ENOUGH!”

A movement without the wand threw Anne back,

chair going to the left and her body flying to the
right against the wall, right beside the window with
such strength that her air escaped her lungs and
made her yelp. She fell to the ground with a groan
too quickly for her to even out her hands on the
ground to try to not hit her face – her nose hit the
marble ground, blood escaping as she coughed and
winced in pain.

She gasped for air, spitting to the side and letting

blood escape once more. She had hit her mouth as
well, her tongue burning with the cut.

Her head went up as she forced herself to sit down.

She had been lucky. A few inches to the side, she

wouldn’t been thrown out of the window.

Anne had made a mistake, she recognized it. She

had used his most traumatising event and family
matters to get him to react to her words, not
allowing him to drill her for more responses into the
uncomfortable situation of Nagini. He had reacted a
bit over what she had expected him to.

She hesitated to turn around, being a bit worried

over her bones, but as she moved, nothing
happened. She gasped for air, lying still on the
ground and accessing her pain in silence – her
back, her chest, her nose and mouth, but her head,
spine and ribs seemed fine.

“Anne!” said the surprised voice of Minerva

McGonagall, running into the office. “What did you
do, Albus?!”

Anne tried to say something, but choked, spitting

to the side.

“How did you get here?” Dumbledore asked.

McGonagall didn’t answer, just ran to Anne,

kneeling down beside the girl and wiping her bloody
lips and runny nose with the sleeve of her robes.

“Are you alright? What’s happening?” she asked.

“How did you know she was here?” Dumbledore

insisted.

“Filch received a tip that there was a student out of

bed, I came to ask you if you knew anything,” the
woman said, looking over her shoulder to the man.
“I see that I was right to come. What would’ve
happened if I had not gotten here? She’s a child,
Albus!”

Dumbledore took a deep breath. He knew that what

he had done was wrong, but the anger was still
there.

“It was an accident,” Anne choked out.

“A man that age doesn’t have magical accidents

anymore, Miss Sage,” said McGonagall. “Let me
see. You have a broken nose. Let me heal it.”

She tried to get Anne up, hand going to her back,

but Anne flinched away from her, wincing with the
pain that the movement brought her. She had been
hurt before, everybody knew that and saw it
coming, but that she was still scared that even
McGonagall was going to hurt her was deeply
surprising.

Anne had never thought that Dumbledore would

hurt her. She hated him, of course, but she
wouldn’t have hurt him physically and she had
expected that a man that age and understanding of
the world would not hurt her either.

She was wrong.

Anne had made a mistake.

Anne had made a mistake that could’ve killed her.

She forced herself to sit down without McGonagall’s

help and rested against the wall behind her. She
was struggling to breathe through the blood and
saliva in her mouth and blood on the nose. Her legs
didn’t seem to be working well, they were shaky
and heavy out of fear and her arms were shaking
as if she was carrying something very heavy.

“My back,” she managed to say.

“I think it’s for the best to take her to Poppy,”

Dumbledore said, shaking a bit as he walked
around the table.

“Do you really think so, Albus?!” McGonagall

exclaimed in anger.

“Let me help you,” Dumbledore started.

“Don’t!” Anne said. “Don’t touch me!”

Minerva glared at Albus as she managed to get to

the side, healing her back with small whispers.
Making a quick movement with her wand without
warning to heal the nose with a loud crack and
painful moment.

Anne’s vision went dark first, her ears going

underwater the next moment.

The light hurting her eyes made Anne groan, neck

moving just a bit to try to escape the sun burning
her face. The movement made her freeze; she had
expected pain for some reason, but nothing came.

Memories of the night before came on,

Dumbledore’s wide eyes looking almost scared and
McGonagall’s angered glares.

“She’s awake!” announced a voice.

She struggled a bit, but managed to open her eyes.

Lily was sitting beside her, eyes running around the

empty-looking Hospital Wing, a small noise coming
from the room adjacent to where they were. Her
green eyes now stopped at Anne, widening once
she met her eyes.

“Anne! Oh, God!” she said, pushing her hair away

from her face gently. “McGonagall came to tell us
you fell off the stairs.” Anne blinked. Stairs? “Do
you remember?” she shook her head. “McGonagall
said you were going up the stairs and felt dizzy and
fell off. Potter sent word for his parents; they’re on
their way and he went to receive them in the front,
so I stayed with you.”

“Thanks,” Anne said.

“Of course, we were all worried,” Lily said. “You

broke your nose and your cervical were a bit…
messed up, not broken, but hurt in general.”

“Yeah, I could feel that.”

Madame Pomfrey appeared from the side-room,

hands smoothing her dress. She had a calm face,
but she seemed ready to scold Lily for talking to
Anne, since she had told the girl to convince the girl
to sleep again since the bones in her back were still
bruised and healing slowly.

“Oh, dear, are you in pain?” Madame asked.

“No, I’m alright, thanks Madame Pomfrey,”

dismissed Anne. “Just a small headache, though.
Anything I can take?”

“Just a second!” she said, quickly moving away to

get the small green potion and giving it to Anne.
“Don’t drink it all –” Anne chugged it at once. “…at
once. I’m sure nothing is going to happen. Just
relax right now. The Potters are on their way. I’ll be
back in a second, dear!”

Once Madame was away, Anne turned to Lily.

“Thank you,” Anne said. “Lils, is James coming with

them?”

“Yeah, Professor McGonagall gave him the day off

to stay with you. I’m here as Head Girl, really, so
I’m glad you awoke while I was here. It’s just after
lunchtime and I’ve been bugging the boys for any
news from you all morning,” Lily admitted. “Sirius is
quite jumpy today and Remus is really snappy. I
think they’re worried.” Anne almost smiled. She
hated that she had made them worried, but it did
mean they cared. “I think you should know,
though, that the Potters stopped at Dumbledore’s
office to have a meeting. Do you know if something
happened?”

“No,” lied Anne.

But the lie came to an end as Euphemia Potter

marched into the Hospital Wing, cursing every
single centimetre of Albus Dumbledore’s anatomy
with colourful words and trying her best not to turn
physically violent with the man that was quietly
moving behind her.

Lily had jumped from her seat, startled by the

curse words and the hatred coming from the
usually calm Euphemia.

“Anne, how are you feeling?” she asked.

“I’m alright,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry? Don’t worry, she says! Can you

actually hear this girl, Dumbledore? Look at what
you did to her and she still tries to protect you; you
are one dumb mother—”

“Mia, please!” Monty said, running into the room

with James on his heels. “Let’s all calm down. I’m
angry too, but –”

“Mum, please, you’re scaring Lily,” James said.

Lily was certainly scared, back against the wall in

clear discomfort. Anne could understand her;
Euphemia was certainly scary when angry and, if
she could stand, she would have her back against
the wall as well.

Euphemia seemed to calm down, seeing Lily’s

green eyes looking around in fear.

“I’m sorry, Lily,” said Euphemia a bit calmer. “Are

you alright?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” she agreed, nodding just a

little bit, back still glued to the wall. “Anne?”

“I’m fine, Lily, go back to class,” Anne said.

Slowly and hesitantly, Lily started to move towards

the door, exchanging a look with James before
slipping away with a single nod as if to say that she
was passing everything to him before going away.
He nodded back as she closed the door.

“Now,” James said, a loud and firm voice. “Can

anyone tell me what’s actually going on?”

Monty put his hand on his son’s shoulder.

“There was an accident last night where Anne –”

“We had an argument and I ended up hurting

Anne,” Dumbledore said.

The honesty was surprising.

James jumping towards Dumbledore, arms open

and hands in claws to hurt him, however, was even
more surprising.

Chapter 46: Chapter Forty-Five

Summary:
Anne is recovering, but Regulus
can't help from afar, so he comes
closer.

WHOLLY POTTER

Euphemia had tried to hit Dumbledore at least

three times during the discussion, Monty had to
hold her and James back throughout the whole
meeting while Anne watched, amused and
emotional, how wonderfully protective they were on
her, especially when Sirius skipped class to make
sure Anne was alright and bringing her the
homework, which he had said he refused to do
himself, still his calligraphy was all over Remus’
notes, adding small details.

Dumbledore agreed not to enter in contact with

Anne unless absolutely necessary or with the
presence of Mia or Monty, if impossible, with
McGonagall.

She had received the day absolutely free and she

had walked to the gardens outside of the castle to
take some sun in and make her back stop hurting.
She had her homework on her lap and sun on her
head when Regulus Black ran to her side.

“What the hell happened?” he asked.

He was panting, clearly trying to hide his presence

by almost entering the bushes that were on the
sides of the stone bench she was sitting on. She
looked around, trying to see if there was someone
nearby.

“Just sit down, nobody can see you from there,”

she said. “Nothing happened.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he insisted. “You don’t skip

classes for nothing. I heard you were on the
Hospital Wing, but Potter didn’t tell me anything.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“You talked to my dad?” she asked.

“I caught him alone in the bathroom, I asked then,”

he said, blushing a bit. “He said you got hurt and
spent the night over there. What happened, Anne?”

She sighed.

“You need to promise me you won’t be rash,” she

said. He looked at her, rolling his eyes. He wasn’t
known for being impulsive. “Dumbledore and I had
a small argument, in which I said something very
wrong and… well, he had a moment of accidental
magic, which threw me against the wall and I hit
my back, then I fell on my face and broke my
nose.”

There was a moment where Anne wondered if

Regulus had understood her at all, his blank face
had no movement as he sat down beside her,
turned to her completely. Then his jaw locked and
his nose flared in clear anger, but he took a deep
breath as he nodded.

“You’d think the old man had control over his magic
at this point,” he grumbled.

“It was my mistake. I stabbed him in the open

wound,” she said. “It was a low-blow, but I was
angry. I should’ve held my tongue.”

“You’re seventeen, Anne. Seventeen-year-olds

make mistakes sometimes, they speak without
thinking sometimes,” he said. “A man more than a
hundred years should know that, especially if he
works with seventeen-years-old for more than a
century.”

“If somebody talked to me about Harry in the way I

talked about Ariana to him, I think I’d have done
the same,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t
blame him completely, but that doesn’t mean I
liked what happened,” she pulled her legs up the
bench, putting her homework to the side. “I’m so
used to hating him and seeing him as less than me
that I forgot he’s a powerful wizard. I learnt my
lesson. I remembered myself.”

That wasn’t a lie.

She had seen Dumbledore as a means to an end for

too long, his power becoming an asset she needed,
not a liability. Now that it was used against her, she
could know for sure that she needed to tread lightly
from that moment on – she couldn’t afford making
another mistake just like that one; coming out of
nowhere.

“Does anything hurt? I can help you.”

The way he said that made Anne remember that

small conversation they had in the stairs.

She smiled.

“No, I’m fine now,” she said. “Though,” she added

once she saw he looked a bit disappointed, “I’d be
happy with a massage.”

His lips pulled up in a grin as he nodded and

kneeled down on the bench, facing her and urging
her to turn her back to him, pulling on her uniform
robes down so the only thing separating his hands
and her skin were her shirt, which he gently
smoothed over before his hands starting palping
around for relief.

She bit her lip once he got to near her shoulders,

thoughtfully breaking the knots slowly so it
wouldn’t hurt as much.

“You should get some muscle relaxing potions,” he

said in a low voice. His voice was so close to her
ear that she shivered, biting her lip again to keep
herself in silence. “Or I could make you one if you
don’t want to go to the Hospital Wing again.”

“That would be nice,” she mumbled.

Her voice came out as a moan.

Regulus chuckled, hands slowing down a bit.

“Is my massage that good?” he asked, laughing a

bit.

“Don’t stop,” she complained.

She reached over her shoulder to hold his hand in

place. He squeezed lightly and she moaned again,
nodding to herself to show that was the place was
hurting. Regulus kept going, laughing a bit, but
mostly in silence.

Once he seemed to be tired, wrists hurting a bit, he

hugged her from behind lightly and bringing her
back to his chest, legs on either side of the bench
to bring her closer to him.

“You worried me,” he admitted. “I hate that I can’t

just go after you and find out what happened.”

“It’s been a single day, Little Prince,” she laughed.

“Can you imagine the rest of the horrid year, then,

Anne-Girl?” he asked, face resting on her shoulder.
“I hate this secret. I want to have you in my arm all
the time and fuck the world. I hate that I can’t
protect you,” he hesitated. “I know you don’t need
protection, but… I wish I could just…”

“I know, don’t worry. I understood what you

meant,” Anne said, reaching over her shoulder
again, but this time petting his hair gently. He
snuzzled against her in silence. “I wish you had the
opportunity to walk with me in your arm, I think I’d
make you look even more handsome.”

He chuckled. “Do I need your help with it?” he

asked, sounding quite convinced of the answer
already.

“Don’t tease me, or I’ll say ‘yes’,” she teased back.

Regulus laughed.

“Go on, I dare you,” he joked.

Anne laughed too, head resting back against

Regulus’ shoulder as his chin rested on hers.

It was a bit of an awkward position, but Anne was

so comfortable and Regulus didn’t want to pull
away from her either. All they wanted as to keep
themselves in that moment, away from the rest of
the world. Sitting on the bench, quiet and
completely protected from the war rapidly growing
and from the hatred burning on the hearts on both
sides.

“Things are going to get hard now, right?” Regulus

whispered after a moment.

“Yes,” she said.

“But we’ll be okay,” he said.

Her head pulled away from his shoulder, turning

just a bit to look at him.

His tone had astonished her. There was no

hesitation, there was no fear. Regulus had
promised completely to the destiny and to them
that they were going to make it to the end and, by
the way they were looking at each other, they were
going to make it to the end together.

“We’ll be just fine,” she promised back.

Regulus slightly leaned in and Anne nodded just a

bit, not opening her lips to say anything.

He kissed her once more, a chaste and calm kiss,

his hands resting on her hips from behind. He
pulled a way a second later, sighing.

“I want to stay here,” he said.

“But you can’t,” she guessed, smiling at him.

“Severus is taking watch nearby. I need to go,” he

said.

That made Anne laugh loudly.

“Taking watch?!” she repeated.

“It’s the closest thing to support he’ll give us,”

Regulus said, pulling his leg to the side and sitting
the right way on the bench, stopping the embrace.
“I think he rather likes us together. He even asked
if I had asked you out yet.”

“Did you tell him that you didn’t?” she asked,

raising her eyebrows and sitting right on the bench
as well.

“I said that I was going to,” he answered. “Next

Hogsmeade weekend, let’s go to the bookshop. I’ll
talk to the owner. We can use the garden again,
nobody to chaperone us, nobody to gossip about
us.”

She smiled.

“I like that,” she said, nodding, trying not to look

too excited, even though her heart was beating on
her throat. “We can meet there.”

“Sure,” he said. He got up from the bench, leaning

quickly to steal a quick kiss, pulling away a second
away. “Now, I really need to go, sorry, Anne-Girl.”

“Fine, go on,” she said rolling her eyes playfully.

“See you later,” he said.

“See you,” she repeated.

He smiled, quickly making his way out of the

garden and back into the castle. Anne stayed there,
watching him walking away with a small smile.

She could barely believe herself. She was fighting

one of the most powerful wizards of history as a
teenage girl, still had time to make friends and
form bounds with her new family and even create a
relationship (a romantic one, at that) with one of
the most handsome and desired boys in school and
keep her grades in a decent scoop. She knew that
Ginny would squeal and want to know more about
anything she was thinking and why her heart felt so
full if she was as much as close to Regulus and she
knew that Hermione would be excited that she had
gone to the last year of Hogwarts, which she
couldn’t do herself. Harry would be proud of her
fighting and Ron would never, ever let her live the
idea that she attacked Alastor Moody down.

Anne, without meaning to, created a whole new

person that the Anne from before would’ve loved.

Those people who raised her had a great grip on

her, but her new family now had a control over her
person that she had never thought she would be
comfortable with someone having. Now she could
see the same eyes as James’ in the mirror without
wondering anything about them, because now she
knew it was more than just the colour, it was the
screaming emotions behind it and the burning ice
that Euphemia had behind hers when she wanted.
She walked the same way Monty did down the
stairs, a small jump on the very last step.

She wasn’t the her from the past, but that girl
hadn’t disappeared.

Anne was a whole new person. Half-future, half-

past; wholly Potter.

Chapter 47: Chapter Forty-Six

Summary:
Anne loves Wednesdays, after all,
there not a single class that
Slytherin isn't at.

WEDNESDAY, 8TH OF SEPTEMBER OF 1976

Anne found herself loving the most hated day of the

Gryffindors: Wednesday. That meant that all her
classes were shared with Slytherin, and more than
that, all of them were shared with Regulus. But that
first Wednesday of the year was hated deeply. It
was the day of the full moon, and Remus was still
in bed, hips hurting so much that he didn’t dare to
get up and Sirius had stayed behind with a note of
McGonagall taking care of him.

Marlene was holding her arm tight, whispering on

her ear about Dorcas’s new socks as the girl walked
by, waving happily after breakfast, going outside
for Herbology with Ravenclaw in her yellow robes.
Anne would’ve never had noticed something as
simple as socks on someone else, but Marlene
seemed very obsessed over the small detail.

“I will marry her someday,” she said out loud.

“I don’t think you can,” James said, walking with

his and Anne’s bag on his shoulders.

“Don’t be homophobic,” Anne said.

“I’m talking about law, Anne, not morals,” James

answered, rolling his eyes. “Look where you’re
walking,” he added when she tripped, Marlene
holding her steady.

Marlene laughed.

“You two are brother and sister,” Marlene

whispered. James didn’t seem to have heard,
barely looking at Marlene since Lily had said
something and he had turned to look at her. He
grabbed Marlene’s arm to make her wait as Lily
leaned down to tie her shoe. “He still likes her,
doesn’t he?”

“I think so,” Anne whispered back. “I think he’s

just… backing off.”

He was doing exactly that under the very clear

instructions of Remus and Anne. Peter had quickly
agreed that it would make her like him more, but
he made his way back to the opinion that he
shouldn’t stop flirting with her completely when
Sirius had said so. Still, James seemed to be taking
Anne’s advice a bit more seriously than she
expected, being the perfect gentleman with calm
smiles, jokes and dismissive attitude altogether,
but not only to Lily, but to all girls in general. He
had said no to two dates in the very first week of
school, smiling at the girls and quickly telling them
names of boys that fancied them.

“I think Lily’s starting to fancy him,” Marlene said.

“No way!” Anne said, this time a bit too loud.

“Fuck!”

“Language!” James said, looking back at Anne.

Anne showed her tongue to him, but smiled at

Marlene.

“I got to go now, guys. I see you all later!” Anne

said, getting her arm unhooked from Marlene’s.
“Good class!”

“You too,” Lily said, getting up. “Come on, Marls,

James.”

As they walked to the left, taking their way towards

the Magical Creatures Care class, Anne made her
way quickly through the right part of the castle to
get to the stairs that would lead her into the
Ancient Runes’ classroom, but before she could get
to the first step, somebody pulled her arm.

Yelping when a hand covered her mouth, she

prepared to fight until she saw the grey eyes
sparkling in mischief. She pushed Regulus harshly
on the chest, making him hit the wall behind him
with a chuckle.

“Holy fuck, you almost gave a heart attack!” she

complained in a hiss.

He smiled, relaxed, back still against the wall.

“I wanted a kiss before we went in,” he said.

“So you pulled me into an empty corridor?” she

asked, raising her eyebrows. “Absolutely stupid.”

“So?” he said, raising his eyebrows and leaning

away from the wall, pushing himself to walk
towards her as she leaned against the wall now,
grinning at him. “No kiss for me?”

“I never said that.”

Regulus smiled completely now, leaning down to

capture her lips quickly. Such a quick kiss was
broken apart by Regulus himself, but as he pulled
away, Anne followed him, refusing to stop the kiss.
She moved her lips to catch his bottom lip, sucking
it gently and holding onto his shoulder; her left
hand went to his hair, pulling him towards her a bit.
Regulus – honest to god – whimpered as his hands
went to her hips, pushing her away so gently that
she knew he had not truly wanted to separate
himself from her.

“We have class,” he said.

“I can skip,” she said.

“No, you cannot,” he said. “Simon Minsky is the

professor this year.”

She pulled away from him, a confused face.

“Who the bloody hell is Minsky?” she asked. “That’s

a horrible surname. I’m sure he suffered bullying
growing up.”

“Is Polish,” Regulus said, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Don’t mock his surname, he’s your grandfather’s
best friend.”

She blinked, shaking her head.

“How do you even know that?” she asked.

“I had class him last year,” he explained. “He spoke

very fondly of your grandfather in class. I’m sure
he would comment if you, whom your grandfather
speaks of very proudly as a niece or-whatever-
story-you-made-up, just didn’t show up in his first
class of the year. He wasn’t here last week.”

She groaned, head resting on his chest as she

complained mentally.

“You’re right.”

“Don’t sound so happy,” he said, ironic. “I have the

ability of being right every now and then, Anne.”

She smiled at him, pulling away and getting her

bag from the ground.

“I know, you chose me,” she teased.

Still smiling, she turned and walked out of the

empty corridor, running into the classroom as if
nothing had happened and smiling at Professor
Minsky standing in front of the desk on the very
front of the classroom. Quietly, she put her bag in
an empty table and walked to the front of the
classroom as Regulus walked into the classroom,
striking up a conversation with Elizabeth Fawley.

“Professor Minsky, correct?” Anne said, smiling at

the grey-haired frail-looking man. Regulus glanced
up at her voice as he threw his bag on the table
beside Anne’s, Fawley sitting on his other side. “My
uncle talked highly of you.”

“Anne Sage, I suppose,” he said, gently. He had a

heavy accent, but a big smile.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Regulus seemed to be trying not to laugh at Anne’s

lie.

“A pleasure to finally meet you. It’s my first year

teaching seventh year runes, but I heard that if I
have any trouble, I can look at you and that you
will teach in my stead,” he said. “Or so Monty told
me.”

“Monty is boasting, nothing more. He overestimates

my understanding of Ancient Runes, sir, I promise,”
she said, smiling again. “Though, I do admit I did
some summer reading on Northern Runes and Old
Scottish Blood Runes out of curiosity. I believe I
read a book of yours?” she lied.

A man that age teaching such an overwhelmingly

old subject certainly had written a book in at least
one of those two; the most famous types of runes.
If Monty was his friend, then certainly he would
have Minsky’s books, perhaps even signed.

“Oh, which one?” Minsky asked.

Anne just smiled, waving at the unknown Slytherin

girl walking in, who confused waved back. Fawley
waved at the girl too, willing her to seat beside her
as well. Regulus looked at the girl, but didn’t wave
when she smiled at him, he just looked at the
books on his table and stayed quiet.

“I’m sorry sir, I’ll let you teach your class now. I’m
sorry for taking your time. Excuse me,” she said,
making her way back. She sat on her chair in
silence.

“Liar,” Regulus mumbled.

“Fuck you,” Anne whispered back.

Regulus chuckled, covering his mouth so not to call

too much attention.

Anne had to run to Charms as fast as she could

after Professor Minsky called her after class to
discuss his own books, making Anne lie her way out
of the situation and complain mentally that he was
such a good teacher, because now she would have
to actually read his books since she was so
interested.

Elizabeth Fawley had dragged Regulus out of the

classroom, insisting that she had a message from
her mother to him, which Regulus didn’t seem all
that excited to hear, but did follow her with the
condition that she would let go of his arm. The girl,
a Parkinson, Anne had learned and cursed herself
by the way that the girl wasn’t known since she
didn’t have the dog-like face that her Parkinson
had, followed them with great flirty grins and
fluttering eyes.

By the time that Anne had gotten to the Charms

classroom, she had to try hard not to laugh.

James was sitting, listening attentively to Lily

rambling about something very passionately by the
way her hands were moving around in quick
movements. Muggle Music, Anne noticed after
James nodded and wrote something down to tell
Sirius later and to share with the class h had Friday
of Muggle Studies.

Marlene was giggling with a very blushed Peter

Pettigrew with crossed arms, who certainly wasn’t
enjoying her laughs. She was probably laughing at
him, Anne understood after a second, not with him.

Sighing, Anne looked around for a seat.

Regulus was very blank in the face Parkinson sitting

beside him and whispering something as she looked
through her bag, taking a journal and opening it to
show beautiful sketches to him, but Regulus
glanced at it, nodded, crossed his arms and looked
at Anne. He looked away soon after, still not
looking at the Parkinson girl.

“She’s trying to get herself engaged,” said a low,

monotone voice.

Severus was sitting with the table beside him

empty. Anne smiled gratefully, sitting beside him
and putting her bag on the ground beside her.

“Who even is she?” she asked.

“Nobody you need to be worried about,” he

answered, not even looking at the girl giggling as
she changed the page to show Regulus a very
accurate sketch of himself. “But, if you’re asking
this, her name is Katya.”

“Any relations to Miss Romanova from the

wedding?” she asked, pulling her books out and
putting them on the table.

“Her uglier cousin,” Severus said. “And the more

annoying cousin as well.”

Anne looked at the girl. She wasn’t ugly. She had

dark hair pulled up on a bun held in place by her
wand, her lipstick was carefully put and her dark
eyes were big and bright. She sounded annoying,
yes, her voice was high and made Anne’s head
hurt, but she certainly wasn’t ugly.

“And she’s aiming for Regulus?” she asked. “Poor

girl.”

“Poor girl, indeed, he’s too focused on you to care

for her,” Severus said, opening his own books and
sighing at the very boring theory they were to
study at that class. “But she’s certainly giving her
best there, that I can say. Somebody said
something about wearing a blue dress to the
wedding and she insisted on going around the
common room to show off her new blue robes as if
she was just ‘breaking in’ new shoes, but
everybody noticed and laughed at her.”

“So mean!” Anne said. Severus rolled his eyes,

turning to look at her and raising his eyebrows as if
expecting something more. “I’d laugh too,” she
added. He nodded; he had been expecting that.
“Now, does Walburga have anything to say about
this?”

“I don’t think she likes the idea. The Parkinsons

have the blood, but nothing more,” Severus said.
“She is losing hope, though. Walburga is looking
around in Brazil for some purebloods, there are few
left there and they don’t care all that much about
blood and all that, but they are… healthier.”

“Fertile, you mean,” Anne teased.

“Yes, apparently so,” Severus said, sounding even

more monotone in his embarrassment. “She even
went as far as looking through Australian wizards.
And you must know how much Walburga hates
Australia.”

“No, I don’t. Why does she hate Australia?” she

asked confused.

Severus’ grin made Anne a bit scared.

“She got married there,” he said, smiling.

Anne laughed so hard by the surprise that she had

to cover her mouth and face not to embarrass
herself as Severus leaned on his seat and crossed
his arms, very proud of the small joke.

Flitwick walked into the room, apologizing loudly for

his lateness as he jumped into the explanation of
all they were going to study that day. Anne held
her laugh through the whole class, always giggling
whenever the joke came back into her mind, and
Severus was proudly sitting beside her the whole
time.

Regulus smiled in relief when Severus sat with

Marlene and Parkinson sat, very against her wishes,
with Fawley when Slughorn insisted on keeping a
few partners that he chose from the last year. The
only change was a positive one: Head Boy and
Head Girl were sitting side by side, working with
each other very well and making Anne very happy.

“They look so good together,” Anne sighed

dreamingly as she stirred half paying attention. “I
mean, look at them, they look positively
disgustingly pretty together.”

“At this point I think you sound rather narcissistic,”

Regulus whispered, taking over the stirring and
glaring at her when she almost dropped a knife to
the ground. She smiled sheepishly, sitting quietly
beside him and trying to focus on the assignment.
“We get it, they made you and you’re pretty. You
can stop kissing up to yourself now.”

She glared back at him, though she didn’t hold

back a smirk.

“Too early in the relationship to call me out like

that, Reggie, hold it for a few more weeks and then
I’ll let you do whatever joke you want,” she said.
She leaned towards him. “But you are right. I am
pretty and they are responsible for my existence.”

He chuckled, putting his hand to the side as Anne,

without speaking, gave him the beetle wings in the
right quantity and he threw it on the caldron.

“I like Wednesdays,” Regulus said. “We can spend

the whole day together.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But I don’t understand why Sirius isn’t here.”

Anne hesitated.

“It’s… a full moon,” she explained.

“Oh, Lupin, yes,” said Regulus nodding. “I forgot

today is the full moon, I thought it was tomorrow.
This explains my Alchemy assignment for tomorrow
actually.”

“Wait, you’re taking Alchemy?!” she said. “That’s so

cool! I couldn’t bring myself to even try. It looked
so difficult.”

“It’s a bit,” he admitted, shrugging. “But it’s nice to

learn all that and, well, it does help you to
understand Dark Magic a lot easier when you know
what those energies are made off. I want to be a
Curse-Breaker, so it certainly helps a lot.”

Anne’s smile dropped.

Regulus had plans.

Anne never had plans.

He had an expectation of a life after school was

over and wanted to do things and work and be
things, while all she ever had in her mind was how
to survive and how to end a war, one that she
wasn’t even alive when it began. She never had the
time to stop and try to think of becoming
something. She never thought of a job, she never
thought past of destroying all Horcruxes and
making sure Harry was happy and living well.

“Anne? You’re pale again,” Regulus said, waving his

wand to get the caldron to stir alone. Carefully, he
put his hands on her waist and pulled her up a bit
more, getting her back against the seat completely.
“Are you going to faint? Are you going to be sick?”

“Mister Black, what’s happening?” Slughorn asked,

quickly walking towards the two. “Miss Sage?”

“My blood pressure, sir, that’s all,” she mumbled.

Her tongue felt weird on her mouth, but she didn’t

feel dizzy, just… heavy. She felt heavy as if her
whole body begged her to lie down and waste all
her tears at once.

“Anne?” James called out, giving the big spoon to

Lily and making his way towards them.

“I’m alright!” she said from where she was, closing

her eyes for a moment. “I’m fine,” she repeated,
though she wasn’t all that sure that he heard the
second part of what she said. She shook her head a
bit, trying to wake herself up. “Just got out of it for
a moment. I’m better now.”

Slughorn, not all that convince, took Anne’s face.

She flinched away with the sudden contact, but
settled down with Regulus’ worried eyes over her
as the professor accessed her.

“If you feel anything, anything at all, you better tell

someone,” Slughorn said. “I was warned that you
hit your head the week before and –”

“A concussion would’ve given sign at this point,

professor, I just felt weak for a moment. I’m alright
now,” she said. “Really,” she added, not looking at
Regulus.

Slughorn narrowed his eyes at her, trying to

understand if she was telling the truth before
nodding and making his way out. James was
standing at the side of the table, looking at her too,
but Anne gave him an ugly look and he made his
way back to Lily quickly, like a child hoping for his
mother’s protection.

Anne sighed, leaning against the table and looking

back at Regulus. He still looked worried.

“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, looking

quite guilty.

“No! No, of course not!” she said, shaking her head

lightly. “I was just caught by surprise by a thought.
It was a silly thing, I promise. And, well, I forgot
lunch. I was laughing with Severus and I got there
late so I barely ate anything, that was all.”

“Want to talk about it?” he asked, stirring the

caldron again, this time changing the direction. “Or
maybe another time?”

“No, it’s fine. I just never thought that I didn’t have

the opportunity to think of a job for after school,”
she admitted. “I mean, I don’t have an ‘afterschool’
life in my mind or in my past. It was always… the
war. I never met a world without it, you know? So
it was quite odd to have somebody talking about it
with such certainty.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No! Regulus, it’s fine,” she said. “You didn’t do

anything wrong. I mean, Harry and Rony wanted to
be aurors and all that, but I was a year younger, so
thinking about those things didn’t come to mind,
you know?”

“Never?” he raised his eyebrows at her as she

started cutting some roots in perfect squares.
“Passing through, but never truly,” she admitted. “I
thought about coaching Quidditch, but I can’t fly for
shit. Then I thought about Potions, but I don’t think
I have the patience to stay the whole day and night
brewing inside a room. Auror was never an option.
I didn’t think of anything other than those things.”

Quidditch, Ginny. Potions, Hermione. Aurors, Ron

and Harry.

None of these ideas, she realised, were hers. She

was just mirroring the people she loved. She didn’t
have an idea for herself even for her own life.

Disgusted with the thought, Anne went quiet for the

rest of the day, cutting and slicing as Regulus
watched and stirring, worried for her.

That day, however, marked the start of Anne’s

hopeful thoughts of a future besides the war as she
allowed a small part of her to go back to the
teenage girl she was supposed to be.

Chapter 48: Chapter Forty-

Seven
Summary:
The small step towards Jily.

LILY EVANS AND JAMES POTTER

“I’m giving up Arithmancy, that’s it,” Marlene

announced as the three girls walked into the
dorms.

Anne glanced at as she walked towards her bed,

throwing her bag to the side and jumping on her
bed, trying to get her skirt out of the way as she
took her shoes off and lied down there, taking a
deep, exhausted breath.

“We didn’t have that class today,” Lily said. “Why

are we even talking about it?”

“Because I want to throw the book on the

fireplace,” Marlene said.

“However much I agree with you, I don’t think

that’s possible. Seventh-year, you can’t let go
classes anymore. Last year was your last chance,”
Anne said. She pulled her hair out of the ponytail,
letting it fall on her pillow. “Now you need to just
hold on for the rest of the year.”

“It’s easy for you to say,” Marlene complained.

“You’re good at it.”

“I work hard at it,” Anne corrected.

“This is why I don’t even try that class,” Lily said,

sitting down on her own bed, untying her shoes and
kicking it away. “Now, Divination, however, is
kicking my arse. Peter has been helping me, but
still it quite makes me annoyed that he’s so good at
it and I can’t see anything.”

“Peter?” Anne asked.

“He’s amazing in Divination,” Marlene said,

agreeing with Lily. “He saw my mother falling down
the stairs three days before she did. Oh, and he did
say I was going to have a baby brother when I was
on the third year when the Muggle doctors said it
was going to be a girl, but he was right.”

“That’s nice,” Anne said, closing her eyes for a

moment.

She was so tired and her head was starting to get

an annoying pain right in between her eyes, but
she wasn’t all that understanding why. She wasn’t
stressed and she had slept surprisingly well that
night. Maybe it was the stress of how quiet
Dumbledore seemed to have gone since their small
argument – he had to yet send her a way into the
vaults, which told her that he wasn’t willing to help
her any time soon, so Anne had tried to think of a
way in herself.

Her mind was working so hard all the time that

Anne was feeling tired.

“Do you not like Peter?” Marlene asked.

Anne opened her eyes, elbows supporting her so

she could look at the blonde.

“I don’t dislike him,” she said.

The fact that she didn’t like him either was obvious
by the silence in the room.

The girls couldn’t understand how Anne mind

worked for that, much like the boys couldn’t do that
either. Peter seemed to have noticed that now the
boys were slightly pulled back from him and he
found refuge on staying on his own, which caused
Anne to feel slightly guilty, but she had too much to
do to care about a teenage boy’s feelings at the
moment. Still, she made sure to make Severus,
Regulus and even made sure to put a seed of doubt
into Narcissa’s mind. If any of them had the slight
suspicion that Peter was involved in all that, then
Anne would know about it quicker than he could
transform himself into a rat.

“He likes you a lot,” Marlene said, sitting on her bed

and taking her heels off, moaning a bit with the
relief. “But he doesn’t seem to know when to stop
staring at you. I talked about it with him today and
he looked a bit upset.”

“Peter is very sensitive,” Lily defended the boy

quickly. “He’s a good boy, just… awkward. Anne’s a
pretty girl, of course, he’s not one to be used to
attention from pretty girls. She’s nice to him, that’s
a lot more than some of the girls around can say.”

“It’s a pity, really,” Marlene said. “Remember that

time when he tried to ask Mary out?”

“Mary? Mary MacDonald from Ravenclaw?” Anne

asked, eyes widening.

“Yeah,” Lily said, looking down a bit sad. “Peter

cried for hours when she said no to him, he didn’t
insist, but he didn’t go to any classes shared with
Ravenclaw for the rest of the week. Got detention
and everything.”

“Poor Peter,” Anne said.

“It was pretty embarrassing,” Marlene said. “Sirius

insisted that he asked her out in public. Mary tried
to be discreet and all that when she said no, but
Peter’s face is very expressive. I don’t blame Sirius;
he really thought Mary liked Peter, there were
rumours all around the school about it. I think he
just wanted to help him.”

“Don’t be naïve,” Lily said. “Sirius Black is a horrible

person.”

“Careful there, Lily,” Anne warned, sitting on the

bed.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not lying. If he knew that Mary

didn’t like Peter, he would’ve insisted Peter to ask
her out in public either way. He’d make jokes about
it even more,” Lily said, turning to Anne.

Anne sighed.

“I like you, Lily, but I won’t stand here and listen to

you shit-talk my friends,” Anne said. “Sirius takes
jokes too far, we all know that, but you don’t need
to call him a ‘horrible person’ for that. He’s
learning. People change and learn from their
mistakes.”

Lily raised an eyebrow at Anne.

“Is that why you have such a big wall up against

Dumbledore?” she asked, a petty tone in her voice.

“No, but that’s why I did become friends with

Severus Snape. He learned his lesson,” Anne said,
getting up from the bed. “You should learn a thing
or two with him.”

Marlene jumped from the bed, taking a few steps

and taking a deep breath.

“Alright, let’s calm down.”

“Oh, really?” Lily asked, smiling in anger. “What are

you trying to say?”

“You still judge James for things he did years ago

when he clearly changed and you know that and
yet I heard you said mean things about him last
night to Dorcas,” Anne said. “You can’t talk about
Sirius being a terrible person and then do
something like that in good conscious!”

“I –” Lily hesitated, blushing.

“Come on, girls, wait.”

“You, what?” Anne asked.

“I talked badly about James because I think I’m

starting to like him and I can’t like James Potter!”
she said, sounding quite loud.

The silence in the room made all of them just stand

there, not looking away from Lily Evans as she
brought herself from sitting on the bed to standing
in front of the door of the dormitory, eyes stuck on
Anne’s. She shoved her hands into the pockets of
her skirt and shifted her weight uncomfortably.

“What?” Marlene asked.

Anne glanced at Marlene before turning back to

Lily.

“So you shit-talk the boy you like?” Anne asked.

“I was embarrassed!”

“Of James?!” Anne asked even louder, anger

making her voice loud, her chest vibrating.

“Of myself!” Lily exclaimed. “For years everybody

saw this side of him, and I took so long to see what
everybody told me they could see. I was
embarrassed that I was taking back so many of my
words and I just… I just tried to go back to who I
was before, you know? Talking badly about him and
making other people laugh about it. I didn’t mean
it.”

Marlene threw herself sitting on Lily’s bed, clearly

confused.

“What the hell?” Marlene asked.

“Is the truth,” Lily insisted.

“I’m not saying otherwise,” Marlene quickly jumped

to answer. “It’s just a bit… surprising. I wasn’t
expecting this –”

“I –”

“Not that you were liking James, that I knew, it’s

just… I never thought you were going to actually
say it loud like this, at us. I thought you were going
straight to him and tell him that in a fight or
something like that, not to us first,” Marlene said.
“I didn’t even think you had realised it yet.”

Anne sighed, blinking several times to calm herself

as she went back to sit at the foot at the bed.

It was happening.

She thought she would still have to work a bit more

to make it happen, but her mother liked her father,
finally. Her father had always liked her mother,
tried to go around with other girls to make the
feeling go away after she said no to him so many
times, but... now things were working for them.

She would’ve smiled if the memory of Harry and

Ginny standing side by side in a winter wedding
wasn’t so fresh on her mind, the big belly under the
white dress made Ginny’s aunt complain about lack
of propriety, but not even Misses Weasley had
cared. They were standing side by side, lovingly
gazing at each other.

Would Anne see that to her parents as well? Would

she survive to see that happen? Would they survive
at the end of it all? Would all her work be in vain?
Would Harry still marry Ginny and love her just as
much if he had been a happy kid?

Anne shook her head, pushing the thoughts away.

“He loves you, you know that,” Anne said.

Lily turned to her, nodding a bit.

“He has been saying that for far too long for me to
believe,” she said.

“If you don’t believe him, then you don’t know him
enough to say that you like him to his face,” Anne
said. “He loved you since the first time he saw
you.”

“He was an annoying child –”

“First year, somebody said something mean to

Hagrid, you jumped to protect him without even
knowing who that giant man was,” Anne cut her
off. “James saw somebody he could trust in you, a
good person; he didn’t fall in love with you there,
but that was the first time he actually looked at
you. I don’t know when he fell in love, but he loved
you then – maybe not romantically, but certainly…
there was love.”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears. She didn’t remember

fighting for Hagrid, but James would’ve loved her
even more if she admitted that to him. That was
something so normal for her that it hadn’t been
important.

Her relationship with Severus had been the thing

that made James love Lily truly. He hated the boy
and he couldn’t understand how somebody so mean
and horrible could have a friend so good as true as
Lily, so when he saw her protecting him like a
mother-lion, James fell in love. The betrayal she
felt when he called her a slur had been felt by him
as well.

James and Lily shared a soul. Anybody could see

that.

That was why they were such easy targets to one

another.

There are two types of love: weakness and

strength.

James and Lily’s love was weakness, no matter how

much they would never admit that to anyone. They
were strong separately and they were strong
together, but if one was in danger, the other was
vulnerable. James would do anything for Lily and
Lily would do anything for James; their love was
pure and true, but it didn’t make it any less
dangerous to be shared with the world. Anne hoped
her love then that, in the future, would be strength.
She was strong. Regulus was strong. She hoped
they were stronger together, because she had no
expectation of anything he would do for her – she
knew that he would do what was necessary to
make the goals first, love could survive being
second… Or so she hoped.

James’ first thought was love. Anne’s first thought

was war. They clearly had different goals in life.

“If you do like him and wish this to become… more,

don’t mess him up, Lily,” Anne said. “Be sure
before you make a move. Watch him, know him
before you love him. He won’t make it being played
with. He can’t make it.”

“I know,” she said.

“James is very sensitive, too, Lils,” Marlene agreed,

finally speaking after so long in silence. “I like him,
and I like you, but we all know who has the high-
ground here.”

“I know, I don’t want to take advantage of his

feelings for me,” Lily said. “It’s just that I saw him
with you, Anne, and it just made something snap.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought at first that I was jealous that he had

put all his attention to you, but it was not jealousy
or envy, it was just the feeling that I knew that the
love he showed you was different from the
attention he gave me and it was still different from
the attention he gave other girls,” she explained.
“He loves you and he desires them. But the things
he did for me, they were different. He looked so
genuine now that I know how his genuine love
looks like.”

“Because it is genuine,” Marlene said. “We all said

that to you before.”

“I know, but it was hard to believe.”

“Not anymore?” the blonde said.

“No… Not anymore.”

Anne pulled the curtain to the side on the bed and

jumped over the body peacefully sleeping.

James Potter gave a yelp before all air in his lungs

disappeared. He gasped for air, pushing Anne
without much strength, but she didn’t move, just
looked down at him and smiled at him.

“You missed class,” Anne announced, still lying on

top of him. He grumbled something, still trying to
wake up completely. “I lied and told McGonagall
that you threw up all night long, so you’re taking a
break today, but she didn’t believe me, so you
better be on the classes after lunch so you don’t
get detention, Head Boy.”

“Too early,” James complained.

“Is almost noon!” Anne complained back, pulling his

covers.

James shivered and grumbled louder, clearly not

wanting to wake up. Sleeping without a shirt had its
good sides, but the cold he felt once the covers
were away from his body was certainly not one of
them.

“Anne, leave!” he said.

“Lily has been asking for you,” she added with a

sing-ish voice. James’ eyes snapped open. “Knew
that you catch your attention,” she laughed.

“Did she really?” he asked.

“No,” she said, rolling away from him and lying

beside him in bed. “But Minerva has,” James
groaned, closing his eyes again. “Oh, come on,
she’s pretty enough to get your attention. Sirius
said that you asked her out before. Besides, Remus
has already gone back to class and Sirius and
Peter, too. You’re the only one lazing around in
bed.”

“I’ve spent the whole night pushing a werewolf

back into the woods, I think I deserve a day off,”
he said.

“I know that, but I don’t think McGonagall does.

And you better wish she doesn’t find out, otherwise
you’re fucked,” Anne said. James kept silent. “No
‘language!’? Merlin, you’re really tired. Are you
hurt? Did you hit your head?”

James sighed and opened his eyes again, sitting

down on the bed.

“Is this how it feels to have a toddler? If so, I’m

rather happy I managed to skip that part,” he said,
slowly getting the covers away from his legs and
putting his legs to the side, feet finally touching the
ground. He hissed with the cold. “I don’t want to
go.”

“You’re acting like Lily in the morning,” she said,

sitting down too. “You two are really the perfect
couple.”

“I know,” he groaned, getting up.

Anne watched him walk to the bathroom in his

sweatpants. He closed the door once he was inside
and she waited in silence, only looking up again
when she heard the flushing. The bathroom door
unlocked and opened, James stood in front of the
sink, toothbrush in hand and sleep on his face.

“Hey, can you let me borrow the cloak tonight?”

she asked loudly.

“Whatever for?” he asked.

She tried not to blush.

“I’m meeting Regulus tonight,” she explained.

“I would, but I already promised Sirius he could use

it tonight,” he said, turning to look at her. “He’s
taking Remus to a date on the muggle restaurant a
few kilometres from here and they’ll need to sneak
back in. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she dismissed, sitting down on the bed.

“I probably will be back before curfew; it was just
in case. But I can make my way back without it.”

“I can try to keep the map,” James said.

“No, it’s fine, really,” she said. She hesitated,

glancing at James as he nodded to himself,
brushing his teeth in silence. “By the way, Lily said
something about you being more mature now. She
seems to like it. She likes when you help the first-
years, too,” James looked at her, still brushing his
teeth, wanting to hear more about Lily. “I’d keep
out of trouble, if I were you. Keep your jokes to an
acceptable level, do your Prefect duties and train
the bloody team as much as you can. You need to
win.”

He spat.

“You say that because you want me to have the

win,” he teased, washing his face.

“Yes, I want Gryffindor to win, I’m sorry if my

house never won the Quidditch Cup,” she said. “It
was always Gryffindor. Now that I’m here, might as
well get into the house pride. I want the cup.”

He smirked.

“And as your dad, I have to give you what you

want,” he guessed.

She smiled at him.

“Exactly. You made me spoiled brat,” she said.

“What can I say?” he said, shrugging it off with a

very self-intitled smile. “I’m the best father in the
world. Even my mistakes with you are good.”

She laughed and pushed herself out of the bed.

“I’m waiting for you downstairs. Lily is down in the

Common Room, so get ready and come down to
meet us,” she said.

“Sure, sweetheart,” he said. “Five minutes.”

“Liar.”

“Ten minutes,” he corrected himself.

“Fine!” she said, getting out of the dormitory.

Still, James took fifteen minutes to come down the

stairs with his uniform on, hair half-tamed and
glasses a bit crooked on his nose as he smiled at
Anne, but grinned at Lily, nonchalantly greeting
her, but throwing his arm around Anne’s shoulder.

“Come on, sweetheart, I have a whole team to train

and I need to get some time in the pitch,” he said.
“To McGonagall!” he announced. “Coming with us
to support the house, Evans?”

Lily looked at him before her lips moved slightly up,

nodding.

“Sure, Potter,” she said, also nonchalantly.

Anne smiled to herself as she made her way

towards Minerva’s office, her parents moving with
her.

Chapter 49: Chapter Forty-Eight

Summary:
James tries to understand Anne is
growing up a lot faster than he
was prepared for and Severus
tries to be a good mate.

Chapter Forty-Eight –

MIDNIGHT TOWER

Regulus’ felt like his stomach was on his throat and

his heart on his stomach. There was something
wrong with his body, he was sure, but he couldn’t
find exactly what was going on with him. He felt
anxious as he waited, pacing in silence, expecting
Anne on the Astronomy Tower.

He knew that all that fear that she wasn’t going to

show up and realise that he wasn’t as good as she
thought him to be was the fear of abandonment he
had ever since he could remember how to be
someone. He knew how to call it after Sirius
brought it up when they were arguing and Regulus
cried with all his seven-year-old lungs that he didn’t
want to sleep alone in his big-boy bedroom because
of the noises the house made sometimes; it started
because he couldn’t control how his mother felt
about him and that he couldn’t make his father stay
at home.

Regulus knew that if he wanted to make his

relationship work, he needed to trust Anne. All his
anxiety needed to go away.

Anne didn’t have anything to do with his mother or

how she always seemed to be angry and ready to
punish him. Anne had no idea how his father was
never there as the support he was supposed to be.
Anne had no fault in why he was so fucked up.

Anne was better than his mother. Anne was better

than his father… He was better than his father. Just
because their relationship was horrible, it didn’t
mean that theirs would be as well.

He heard a noise and stopped walking.

Footsteps approached quickly through the stairs, so

he leaned against the wall, hoping the shadows
could swallow him whole until he sure that it was
Anne or somebody that wouldn’t get him in trouble.
He didn’t need an owl going to his mother, telling
her of his detention in the second week of school.

“Regulus?” called the familiar female voice.

The red hair under the moonlight made Regulus

smile to himself as he stepped out of the shadows.

"Hi,” he said. “How was your day?”

“Thursday sucks,” she complained, smiling at him.

Anne threw herself on his arms without thinking

twice.

Regulus hugged her close. He liked to have her in

between his arms; her heat was comforting against
his cold body from staying up there for so long. If
he didn’t know any better, he’d say that her body
was made to be near his. They fit too perfectly for
it not to be.

“I thought you’d come with your dad’s cloak, the

invisible one you mentioned,” Regulus said against
her shoulder, speaking in a low voice.

“Sirius and Remus are using it to go out tonight,”

she said. She pulled away only enough to look at
him, but kept her arms around him. “We don’t need
the cloak though, Hufflepuff is giving out a party
tonight, a whole lot of people are going.”

“Whose party?”

“Amos Diggory,” she answered. “Pretty boy has

been following Lily all the time and trying to ask her
out, but she said no three times already. She thinks
he’ll move on to try to get me to go out with him.
Can you believe she said she thinks we look alike?”

Regulus chuckled.

“I would never have thought that,” he joked.

“Oh? Don’t we look alike?” she asked, laughing.

“No, not at all!” he said.

Anne laughed, throwing her head back, her weight

being supported by his arms. Her neck was
completely visible to him and he could see the hair
there standing up with the cold breeze from being
on top of the tower.

Regulus couldn’t stop himself. He leaned down and

kissed her neck at once.

Anne made a small movement in his arms, so he

pulled away at once, letting go of her at once.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “Shouldn’t I have done

that?”

“What? Why?” she asked, confused. “I was just

surprised… It felt nice, if that’s the question.”

His lips twitched a bit as he tried to hold back a

smug smile. Still, he leaned down to kiss her lips
this time. Anne chuckled mid-kiss, but threw her
arms around his neck, leading him to rest against
the cold stone wall and bringing her body close to
his. He hissed with the cold on the small patch of
skin exposed when his shirt rode up a bit, the skin
touched the stone.

Regulus had no idea why everything was so funny

and fun, but he chuckled with that before going
back to kissing Anne, and she laughed too, putting
herself closer. His arms went around her waist,
pulling her towards him and getting all her weight
against him.

Tongues were knotting themselves in the space

between them, lips burning in an amazing
sensation of friction. Bodies pressed so close that
they were almost becoming one with the wall.

As they pulled away with a gasping breath, Regulus

leaned down once more, kissing Anne’s cheek,
going to her jaw and then to right under her ear –
she made a small noise, which caught his attention;
he did it again. And again. And again. His tongue
poked at the sweet spot he had found and Anne
made another noise, this time louder and her
fingers went between his hair, pulling at it.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, still against

her neck.

“No,” she said.

“Hm, ‘no’?” he did.

“No, please,” she added in a voice so sweet that

Regulus melted in her hands.

“I won’t then,” he mumbled.

“Good,” she sighed, fingers intertwining harder with

his hair.

He groaned. He liked having his hair pulled, it made

him shiver and his throat close up, threatening time
and time again to let the most embarrassing noises
out. Though he groaned and blushed because of it,
Anne seemed quite proud of what she got out of
him, gasping in response.

Anne pulled him by the shirt as she turned to be

against the wall now, Regulus in front of her, still
kissing and licking her neck slowly. When she
pulled him closer, his left thigh was between her
legs – it wasn’t on purpose, but he was proud of
the response he got from Anne.

A moan.

“Regulus,” she whispered.

“Yeah?” he asked, going back to kiss her lips.

“More?” she asked.

Regulus nodded.

Her hands let go of his shirt, going to the buttons

on it, opening the first one, revealing the start of
his collarbones. Her hands slipped inside his shirt,
gently rubbing his shoulders and neck, her fingers
brushed the collarbones, making him shiver. His
hands raised her shirt just enough to put his hands
on the patch of skin between her school skirt and
the – now – untucked shirt.

Regulus sighed with how hot her skin was under his
hands and Anne pulled him closer. He was also
warm when compared to the cold breeze hitting
them every now and then; being so close was
certainly comforting.

“Hey, I just – Oh, no! No! NO!” screamed a voice.

Regulus jumped away from Anne so quickly that he

stumbled backwards, only not falling on his behind
because he caught his balance back. Anne pulled
her shirt down, covering the little she had showing,
but with wide eyes.

James Potter stood there with the most disgusted

face Regulus had ever seen in his life.
“Dad, I –” Anne started.

Regulus stood there, unsure of what to do. By the

way James refused to look at him, he certainly was
right in staying quiet. Talking wouldn’t make the
situation better for any of them. So, silently, he
fixed his shirt, buttoning it up and tucking it back
into his trousers, hoping that he would be alive by
the end of the night.

“I came here to warn you that there was a change

in the Ravenclaw schedule and they’ll have classes
here in thirty minutes,” James said, face disgusted,
but voice quite numb. “Evans and I needed to come
and check it up here, but I insisted on coming on
her stead… I knew you’d be here with…” he turned
to Regulus, who was just standing there, feeling
every part of his body looking awkward. He was
self-conscious at the moment, “…with him.”

“Yes, I told you I’d be here tonight,” she said.

“Well, I didn’t think I’d find something like this,

so…” James sighed. He looked a bit green in the
face. “You two should –”

Footsteps made all of them turn to the entrance of

the Astronomy Tower to see Severus Snape
sprinting up the stairs, face slightly red and half-
dressed – instead of the uniform, he had black
sweatpants and the school shirt completely open
under his half-buttoned cloak.

“Prefects coming this way, Regulus,” he warned

without even looking.

As he looked up and saw James Potter standing

there about to vomit and Regulus standing there
about to faint. Anne was standing to the side,
trying to disappear into the shadows.

“Yes,” Regulus said. “Thanks, mate.”

Severus thought about going back as if nothing had

happened, but there was no way he was going to
miss James Potter freaking out after catching Anne
and Regulus snogging, for whatever reason he felt
so responsible for the girl standing in silence.

“Now, this is awkward,” Anne said.

“You’re making it worse,” Regulus warned.

“I just never thought this would be a situation I’d

be in,” she explained. “James, Severus, you and me
all in the same room. In silence.”

“No so silent if you’re speaking, Anne,” James said.

“Well, I don’t really like this silence,” she admitted.

“So I’ll just ramble until you all decide to forget this
happened and we never mention this happening
again. You didn’t catch me snogging my boyfriend
and Severus didn’t sprint the whole castle because
somebody told him about the Ravenclaws as well –
you’re a good mate, Severus; that’s nice.”

Regulus sighed and closed his eyes.

“Do I have detention?” he asked.

James’ eyes went to him. He recognized that

expectation on the boy’s face – he meant, will my
mum and dad find out I messed up in school?

“No,” James said. Regulus opened his eyes, looking

at him with surprise. Even Severus looked surprised
as he walked to stand beside Regulus. “If I give you
two detentions, I’d have to give Anne detention as
well and it wouldn’t be fair because I knew she was
here and I came not to let her get caught. You’re all
fine,” he turned to Anne anyways. “But we will talk
about this.”

“Not now, I hope,” she said. “Because right now I

just want to drown myself.”

Regulus turned to her.

“Drown?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Really?

With all the things you could’ve chosen, you choose
that?”

Anne laughed in surprise. She hadn’t expected

Regulus to joke about the way he was, technically,
going to die. James, apparently, hadn’t expected
that coming either, because his laugh was so
sudden that Severus flinched with the loud noise.
Regulus just smiled smugly, rather proud of the
dark joke that his friend certainly hadn’t
understood.

“You two should go to bed, boys,” said James,

walking to Anne and holding her hand. “And you,
young lady, is coming with me and we’re talking on
the way.”

James – honest to Merlin – smiled at Severus and

Regulus before leading Anne away in silence.

Regulus stood there beside his friend until James

Potter disappeared, then he turned to Severus and
laughed.

“You were asleep?” he asked.

“Yeah, woke up with Burke commenting about the

Ravenclaw girl he was with having to go back for
class; I was going to scream at him to go away, but
then I saw your bed empty,” he explained. “So I
ran.”

“No explanation to them, just sprinted away,

dressing on the way?” Regulus guessed.

Severus blushed deeply, pushing Regulus’ head

away.

“Oh shut up,” he grumbled. Regulus laughed. “And

fix your hair, it looks like a rat’s nest, dumbarse.”

James Potter would very much like to have bleach

thrown at his face and eyes at that point, of course,
but that wouldn’t stop him from remembering the
horrible scene he had witnessed. His mind would
forever haunt him and taunt him with the image of
Anne with her head thrown to the side to let
Regulus have access to her neck, hands down his
shirt and lips red and inflamed.

“You know, if I hadn’t expected you to react exactly

like this, I’d have told you about him before,” Anne
said. “You were… not fine, but accepting about our
friendship.”

“Yes, friendship,” James said, hand around hers

tightening as if to calm himself down, reminding
him that his little girl was right there, beside him
and within his reach. “It’s completely different for
you to be his girlfriend, Anne. You know how
dangerous it is and how his family will literally try
to kill you if they know about this. And Snive ---
Severus Snape knew before me! I’m your dad! I
should know before bloody Snape!”

“It wasn’t planned, he was just there when Regulus

asked me,” Anne said.

“Who else knows?” he asked, stopping the walk.

“Officially, just Severus,” she said. “And now you.”

“What do you mean by ‘officially’?” he asked,

letting go of her hand and crossing his arms as he
listening to her with attention. “More people know
that you’re together, but they don’t know the
labels. Correct?” she nodded. “I assume that would
be Lily and Marlene.”

“And Sirius and, probably, Remus,” Anne added.

James’ jaw opened in offense.

“You told them before me?! Am I the last to know?”

“Well, I told Sirius as a warning that he needed to

be nice to Severus from now on and –”

“Good luck with that,” James grumbled.

“And,” she continued, glaring at him, but not

mentioned what he had said, “and he said that he
would try because he is the middle-man between
Regulus and I since we can’t be together publicly. I
know the consequences here if we’re found out.”

“Are you sure you do?” he asked.

“Yes – torture, death; been there, done that,” she

said, rolling her eyes to him. “I didn’t mean to keep
it a secret from you, I was just trying to find the
right moment, but how could I go and tell you this
if I was sure you were going to react exactly like
this. Sometimes, I feel like you’d rather have me
just hook up with Regulus instead of actually
having a relationship with him and that’s odd, I
mean, that’s the contrary of what most dads would
say.”

“Well, most dads are not seventeen,” he said,

sounding quite snappy. Anne took a step back,
surprised by his tone. “And most girls aren’t safer
hooking up and closer to death by fancying a guy.
He’s a Black. If you two are caught, between you
and Regulus, who do you think it’s going to have to
take the fault here?” he sighed, annoyed and
passing his hands over his face before taking a
deep breath. “Not only you’re a woman, but you’re
a halfblood, Anne, they won’t try to protect you if
it’s between their son and you. He’s deep into their
side of the war, being connected with him, publicly
or not, could mess up your life as well.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.

“Then explain it to me!” he said. “Stop the lies.

Stop the half-truths. It’s hard to trust you when I’m
not sure I can trust myself after all you brought up
once you came here.”

She took another step back. Her back hit the

marble handrail of the moving stairs in the very
moment it chose to move to the left. They now
needed to wait until it went back to the right once
more before they could continue their way.

“Did you think your life was better before I was

here?” she asked, voice so low in a whisper that
James took a second to understand what she said.
“I’m sorry.”

“No, Anne, sweetheart, that’s not what I meant,”

he said, quickly bringing her to a hug. “That’s not
at all what I meant, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m tired of lying too,”

she admitted.

“You don’t need to lie anymore, Anne,” he said.

“I just didn’t want to throw everything to you yet,

you know? You all deserve one last year,” she said.
“Next year things will be different and –”

“You deserve a good year as well! You don’t need

to take all of this on and hold it. There’s nothing
happening at the moment, just… lie in wait for the
moment, there’s not need to carry it all around.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” he insisted.

“Just tell me.”

She looked at him and took a deep breath.

“Severus Snape and Regulus Black already took

their Dark Marks and are my spies, and so is
Narcissa Malfoy; they’re not the Order of the
Phoenix’s spies, they are mine and therefore they
are my responsibility,” she admitted. “I need to
keep them alive and safe. I need to take them out
of there once they aren’t safe anymore.”

James had suspected they were all involved, of

course, but he hadn’t expected You-Know-Who to
have recruited underage wizards and he certainly
hadn’t thought that they would agree on passing
information. Helping Anne was one thing, helping
her side of the war was another thing altogether.

And yet, he was proved wrong.

Anne wasn’t the Tower in that messed up game as

Dumbledore seemed to want to believe and
convince his parents as he said he would do
anything to keep Anne out of the danger zone. No,
Anne was the Queen – she was making moves
without the King’s approval or knowledge at that
point. She was moving around the whole board
without hesitation; one side to the other without a
hiccup. Anne wasn’t under the radar because she
wasn’t doing anything, it was because she wanted
it to be like that, he knew that, but he didn’t know
she was so close to the war.

She had exchanged the little time she had left to be

a teenager to be in the frontlines of a war that
didn’t even start yet.

“I don’t care about what my mother wants or what

the Order thinks,” he said in a firm voice. “From
now on, Anne, you put me into your plans. I’ll help
you, too. And when I’m done with school, I’ll be in
the Order officially.”

She smiled at him even through watery eyes.

Her smile was just like Lily’s, making him want to

be a better person just to keep her smiling with
such pride at him until the end of his days.

Again, James Potter grew up to be a better father.

But this time around it was for Anne, not for Harry;
it wasn’t the pride of having a tiny little boy in his
arms, it was the fear that the strong young woman
standing in front of his would break.

“Come on,” he said.

“Dad?” she whispered.

“Hm?”

“Can I sleep with you tonight?” she whispered

again.

James held her hand again, answer clear in the way

he tugged her closer to him and lead her directly to
his dormitory, where Peter was already asleep and
Sirius and Remus had yet to come back to.

When they did, Remus smiled and pointed the two

out to Sirius, who laughed and went to bed,
cuddling with Remus in silence.

Chapter 50: Chapter Forty-Nine

Summary:
Anne fixes up the mess that the
war is in her mind using Chess
Pieces

Notes:
A bit of a filler, but I wanted a
chapter to explain how Anne
things about the parts inside the
war coming. I think it'll be easier
to understand what will happen
from now on.

PIECES

Sirius Black complained all the way to the Quidditch

pitch about it being a Sunday and, for ‘religious
purposes’ (he had no religion), they shouldn’t be
training so early in the morning, though it wasn’t
qualified morning yet when he left the room, but
James kicked him out of the dormitory either way
and Remus, not helping his boyfriend, just lied
there in his bed, laughing and being grateful that
he wasn’t on the team.

Still, his peace didn’t last long.

Anne stormed into the bedroom with a huge smile

on her face.

“Morning, boys!” she said.

Peter raised his head from his pillow to look at the

female voice, groaned and covered his head at
once, not wanting to wake up just yet, even if it
was Anne walking into the bedroom. Though, at
this point, at the end of September, he was already
used to her presence, even if unannounced.

“Come lie with me and sleep just a little more,

Annie,” said Remus reaching his hand out for her.
“I’m not in the mood for getting up and going out
there today.”

She raised a single eyebrow at him, standing at the

foot of his bed.

“Since Sirius’ bed is very much tidy, I don’t think he

slept there. I don’t feel very eager to lie in bed with
you if the messy sheets mean what I think it
means,” Anne said. Peter groaned loudly from his
bed. She rolled her eyes, turning to look at the
small figure under the thick covers “Am I speaking
too loud, Peter?”

“You’re fine,” he grumbled. “Just don’t want to hear

about my best friends shagging, please.”

Anne chuckled.

“I’ll hold my tongue then, don’t worry,” she said.

She turned to Remus again. “Now, I was just
humiliated in front of the whole Common Room.”

That caught Remus’ attention and made him sit

down in bed at once, not caring about his shirtless
state or that he had only boxers on, since his
sleeping trousers were lost at some point of the
night. His sleepiness went away in a second as he
looked through Anne’s body, looking for dirt or
wounds, but there was nothing there.

“What happened?” he asked. “You should’ve started

with that, for Merlin’s sake!”

“I lost to that bloody cow,” she announced.

“Who? What did you lose?” Remus asked.

“Marlene, of course. In chess, I lost in front of

everyone.”

The stunned silence in the dormitory made Peter sit

in bed as well, light blue pyjamas making him look
a bit paler than usual; blue wasn’t his colour, but
he did look rather skinnier since the start of the
year.

“I thought you liked Marlene,” said Peter.

“I do, but she’s a cow when she wins,” Anne

explained, sitting on the foot of the messy bed of
James. “She threw it in my face several times
already and I lost so many times it was pathetic.
Then, Lily tried to play as well, and I lost to her,
too!”

“Lily is horrid in chess,” Peter commented.

“I know!” said Anne.

The fact was that everybody knew that Lily was

horrible at it and Anne losing to her only made her
less excited about the whole public thing.

“You came here before noon in a Sunday to

complain about chess,” Remus repeated what was
happening to make sure he wasn’t missing
anything. Anne nodded. “You are related to James,
indeed.”

“Is he bad in chess as well?” she asked.

“Worse than Lily, for sure,” Peter said, getting up

from the bed and reaching for the robe beside his
bed, he put it on, tying it around himself. “I’m good
at it, so I can teach you, if you want.”

Anne smiled a bit at him.

“I was hoping you would offer,” she admitted.

Remus sighed, shaking his head in disbelief that the

situation was really happening before throwing
himself back at the pillows with a loud groan.
Moaning in complaint for knowing that he wouldn’t
be able to go back to sleep, he kicked the covers
away from him as he walked to the furnace in the
middle of the room and throwing a log in there –
that would keep the room warm enough.

“I’ll go get the board,” Remus said.

“I’ll brush my teeth,” Peter said, going to the

bathroom.

When they came back, Anne was sitting over the

rug in the middle of the room, ear the furnace and
waiting for them patiently with criss-crossed legs
and eyes looking around with boredom. She looked
up as Remus walked into the room again, Peter
took a minute more before starting to go back out,
but stopped at the door, seeing Remus on his
knees, putting the pieces in the right spots of the
board, taking in a low voice.

“…Peter is a lot better than me, that you can be

sure. He’s pretty smart, otherwise we wouldn’t be
his friends,” that sounded like a joke, but Peter did
hesitate. Did he have any redeeming features
beside his mind? “Anyways, he’ll be able to explain
this to you. I’m a horrible teacher.”

“Oh, really?” she asked in a teasing manner, eyes

shining with a secret gleam. “I beg to differ.”

Remus laughed a bit before getting up and going to

sit on the edge of his bed, still shirtless and not
looking very bothered.

“James will never let me live that down,” Remus

said.

“And he shouldn’t. You’re a wonderful teacher,

everybody can see it, though I’d be a bit more
careful with the horrible words that leave that
pretty mouth,” she said.

“Says you,” he answered.

“Says me, then you know you’re in a bad place

when I say that you’re saying too many bad
words,” she said.

Remus laughed again.

Peter walked out, feeling a bit self-conscious, but

then Anne smiled at him again, clearly excited to
learn something from him, which made his mind
stop overthinking about everything it could reach,
allowing him to think only of Anne and of the chess
pieces waiting for him.

“Muggle board,” Remus explained once he saw

Peter’s eyes over the board. “I thought it was
better for you to explain it like this before wizarding
chess.”

“Good idea,” Peter said. “Now, what do you know of

chess?” he asked Anne.

“Knights go in a ‘L’, pawns can’t move much, the

queen is a badass and the king is a weakling,” she
said.

Remus just looked at her for a moment before

thinking a bit and nodding to himself, mumbling a
‘it does summon it’ under his breath.

Peter, however, wasn’t as happy with the summary

of the game like that, because he tried his best to
teach her, but she certainly wasn’t doing as well as
he had expected her to. She had learned the basics
of how the pieces moved, but she wasn’t thinking
ahead as much as Peter wished.

“Don’t think only of your moves,” Peter said. “Think

about mine, too.”

“How can I think of your moves?” Anne asked.

Remus sat down beside them, watching the fourth

game they were having. Noon outside probably
making the training session last longer.

“Look at your game,” Peter said. “Do you know

your next move?” she nodded. “Good, now look at
my game. Now, imagine you made your move;
think of what move you would do to counter it,” her
eyes were travelling the board slowly. “This is like a
war, Anne, you need to understand both sides to
win.”

Her eyes flew away from the board to Peter’s.

“A war?”

“Can’t you see?” he asked. “The Pawns are the low

foot soldiers, the first ones to be sacrificed. The
Tower, or Castle as the muggles call it, are higher-
ups, maybe even the walls of a castle with the
people inside. Then we have the knights, the ones
protecting the royalty. The bishops, always beside
the royals. Then we have the Queen, powerful and
ruthless. And the King, if he’s dead –”

“Game over,” Anne mumbled.

“Yes, without the king, there’s no way a war can

continue,” Peter said, nodding.

Anne lost it once more.

On the eighth game; Anne won.

Remus smiled and played with Peter until James

and Sirius were back, Anne watching his games
with as much attention as he had watched hers.

The wall behind her bed was charmed with a

Notice-Me-Not and Anne stared at it the wallpaper
in silence in the middle of the night, already
dressed in her pyjamas, sweaty from the nightmare
she had. She was sitting, hoping that would keep
her awake through the night, pushing away the
possibilities of more nightmares and more
loneliness. The pins were in the small box in front
of her, pieces of parchment on the side, quill and
ink over it.

She didn’t want to go to her dad once more. He had

trained the whole day and there was class
tomorrow and he had prefect duties in the very
morning. She had spent many nights alone with her
memories and fears, she didn’t need to go to him
again.

But she didn’t want to sleep either, so the thinking

was good company.

Chess, her newest game, was on the top of her

mind as she started to think of something to keep
her awake and alert, but the war and the memories
were still booming in the back of her mind,
grabbing at her sleeves, pulling her down to the
ruddy water. Still, it was the combination of both
that made her blink.

Pawns are the frontline soldiers of no rank, they

had barely any importance but the idea that they
could move before the full battle actually began.
Beside the name of the piece, names of people
appeared on her mind: Caradoc Dearborn, Benjy
Fenwick, Anabella Figg, Mundungus Fletcher,
Sturgis Podmore, maybe even Rubeus Hagrid –
those were the pawns in Dumbledore’s plan. She
recognized the signs. She saw the same signs
appearing when Charlie Weasley wanted to get into
the Order in her time.

Names were written and pinned to the wall.

Towers were in the corner of the game; they were

the barriers of protection between the actual
important pieces and the opposite battalion. Those
names came easier to her mind, but she hated it all
the same: Edgar Bones – with a hand in the
ministry –, Dedalus Diggle making sure the safe
houses were usable, Elphias Doge was the bloke
that studied with Dumbledore, Gideon Prewett in
Gringotts, even though his brother was a Tower as
well with no job, Fabian was just blindly loyal,
Emmeline Vance doing whatever her job as an
auror asked her to. Molly and Arthur doing
whatever they could to make sure their family was
safe. Were Bill and Fleur there as well?

The second division on the wall was pinned.

And the Knights, the loyal ones that did whatever

they needed to protect the royalty. There was no
difficulty to know who was stuck in that part of the
wall; she was all too familiar with those names.
Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Lily
Potter, Alice Longbottom, Frank Longbottom,
Dorcas Meadows, Marlene McKinnon, Alastor
Moody, Minerva McGonagall; in her time, she was
pretty sure Nymphadore would be there as well,
proudly on top of a metaphorical horse just to
protect who she needed to.

That part of the wall seemed packed, but empty at

the same time.

The Bishops were harder to conjure up, but all she

could think was of how people would hold onto the
small image of hope and faith that existed in the
stories behind her brother. Harry was the bishop,
and so was the friendship image he had with
Hermione and Ron – maybe, in her time, Anne was
a bishop as well, the younger girl following her
brother wherever he went because that was all she
knew how to do.

She wished to put pictures in that part of the wall,

but she cursed herself to know that she had none
with her.

Queen and King.

King was certainly Dumbledore. A weak link,

expecting everybody to protect him as he
masterminds everything behind them. He was also
the image of faith that many people had hang onto.
Anne sometimes would stop and think that she
should’ve known they were going to lose the war in
the moment Dumbledore died, taking with him the
sense of security some insisted on blinding
themselves with. The awakening was too rough and
people didn’t want to fight.

But the Queen stayed empty for a moment longer.

Ruthless. She knew that was how Queens were,

historically, without kings by their sides. They cared
none of who had to go down for their goals, as long
as she kept the rest of the royalty safe, there was
nothing she wouldn’t do – she was the preferred
weapon of most players.

Anne put her own name under the crown.

The weight on her head, however, seemed to

lessen.

She sat with her back to the feet of the bed and
watched the small and simple plan she had put on
her wall. She wished not to forget any of those
names, because all those people were going to fight
with her and she would not want to leave any of
them behind.

Chapter 51: Chapter Fifty-

Summary:
Anne has a date with Regulus in
the middle of the night in the
Room

Notes:
SEXUAL THEMES ALL OVER THIS
CHAPTER - PLEASE, BEWARE.
Also, Anne and the Marauders talk
about weight, which I understand
might be uncomfortable for some
readers, so please, be careful
while reading this. I don't want
anyone feeling bad!

THE ROOM OF REQUIREMENT

“Anne, I don’t like when you do that,” James said,

watching Anne roll in Sirius’ bed like a cat trying to
find a comfortable position to sleep in. “I know your
bed is a mess of parchment and pins, by what Lily
said, but you should keep yourself out of my
friend’s bed.”

“It sounds so wrong when you say it like that,”

Sirius complained from the bathroom where he was
changing into his sleeping clothes.

“It does,” agreed Peter from his bed where Remus

nodded too, moving his knight to the left and
taking another pawn of Peter, who quickly took the
knight with his rook. “Why do you have to take
everything Anne does to that sense, James?”

Remus laughed, lips curling with disgust by the

implications.

“Ew!” Anne exclaimed, laughing.

“Caught you there, mate,” the werewolf smirked at

his friend.

“Oh, shut it,” James said, clearly moody by the

implication as well. “You should really fix your bed.
You need to sleep in it tonight.”

Anne smiled at him, pretending she had no idea

that she wasn’t going to spend a single moment of
that night in her bed.

She had been spending a lot of those nights

sleeping out of her own bed; she had ended up
falling asleep in Lily’s bed with her while the two
were doing their homework with the curtains closed
so not to wake Marlene, she didn’t scream, but she
woke Lily up by jumping out of the bed, struggling
to breathe; she passed at least two nights in James’
bed since his presence seemed to push the
nightmares away and even sneaked into Sirius’
once when Remus spent the night in the Hospital
Wing after a faulty spell during DADA and they
slept together since he was anxious and Anne was
looking for any excuse possible so not to sleep
alone. The nightmares were getting worse since she
got back to Hogwarts.

The Potter Manor was clean, there was no memory

tainting it, but Hogwarts was the source of all
darkness in her mind. It was no surprise that the
nightmare came back full force, but it was certainly
a lot worse she had thought it was going to be.
After having such a complex, but secure support
system created around her, she thought things
were going to get better and, for a while it did –
but after the first nightmare, she was pushed back
in the healing. She was fighting to go forward
again, but once Professor Snape had told her
something that she saw herself thinking of very
often: ‘healing from that type of hurt takes more
than time; it’s one step forward and two steps back
sometimes.’.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, dismissing his order

altogether, still lying in Sirius’ bed and looking at
the ceiling. “What is that?” she asked.

The small black patch on the ceiling right above

Sirius’ bed had not been there before, she was
almost certain of that.

“What?” Remus asked, looking at the ceiling as

well.

“Sirius had a small accident with ‘incendio’ last

week,” Peter answered.

Sirius walked out of the bathroom eyeing Peter with

narrowed eyes.

“How do you even know that?” he asked.

“Because it was three in the morning and you

screamed,” Peter answered. “I wake up easily.”

“Liar,” Remus accused, moving another piece of the

chess.

“Well, I do when my friend is screaming like a little

girl,” Peter said, glaring at Remus. “I don’t know
how you didn’t wake up. James wasn’t here –”

“Oh?” Remus said, eyeing James.

The boy on the other bed blushed deeply in the

cheeks and forehead, much like Harry did in the
few situations where he had that boyish shyness
come out. He shook his head, urging Peter to shut
up, but clearly the boy didn’t see him saying
anything, because Peter just nodded away, moving
his chess piece in concentration.

“I think he shagged a –“

“Oh!” Anne said, frowning.

“I didn’t shag anyone,” James said, turning to

Anne. “It was just a snog. I was back before three-
thirty.”

Anne blinked at him, still a bit disgusted with the

mental image Peter had thrown at her, but
shrugged it off quickly. She wanted to make sure
James knew that it was none of her business;
although she didn’t like hearing about it, she
certainly wasn’t going to stop him from doing
anything. He was a single, healthy young man; he
could go snogging and shagging whoever he
wanted, as long as she didn’t have to hear about it.

Sirius jumped on his bed, making Anne shake

around and hold onto the banister, looking at him
at warning. He lied down beside her and put his
arm under her head.

Anne almost smiled, remembering how Regulus did

the same thing to her.

“I’m hungry,” Sirius said.

James snorted a laugh.

“We just had dinner,” Remus said.

“How can he eat that much and I’m the one gaining
weight?” Peter complained, looking at Sirius with
soe jealousy.

Remus watched his smaller friend and tried to

figure out if he was jealous of Sirius for eating all
he wanted without any consequence or for having
Anne in his arms. It seemed to be a repetitive
segment in that part of their friendship story –
Peter’s eyes were always on Sirius with some level
of bitterness.

“I’m hungry, too,” announced Anne. “And don’t

worry, Peter, I’ve been gaining weight as well. I
must be with ten stones or so by now.”

Sirius looked at his side, measuring her body with

his eyes.

“I don’t think so,” Sirius said.

“You look good as always, Anne,” Peter was quick

to say, cheeks blushing when she smiled back at
him.

“I’d say nine stones,” Sirius said, shaking his head.

“You have really long, but thin legs. Your bust is
what, eighty something?”

“Stop looking at her boobs!” Remus said, sounding

quite shocked that Sirius was saying that very
nonchalantly.

“I’m not!” he answered.

“He’s saying that because he heard the woman

measuring me when I went to buy a dress,” Anne
said. “No need to get jealous, Remus; we both
know he has no eyes for anyone but you.”

Sirius made a small noise that sounded a lot like a

disgusted groan. Remus rolled his eyes at his
antics.

“Too sweet, Anne, too sweet,” he warned.

“Am I wrong?”

“Not at all,” he said, smiling at her. “Now, eighty

something, right? That’s small.”

“Bust 83, waist 66 and hips 86,” she said. She

blinked, surprised that she cared enough about it to
remember it so quickly. “Or something like that.
But I do know I gained weight,” she added, trying
to make it seem like it wasn’t all that big of a deal.

“Good,” said Sirius. “You were unhealthy when we

brought you in.”

Anne laughed, turning to Remus.

“Did you hear that? ‘Brought me in’, as if I’m some

type of pet!” she laughed again to the boy, who
smiled and shook his head at the two. “You’re
fattening me up to eat me, big, bad wizard? I don’t
think so, then any weight is good for me, but I am
trying to get some more.”

Sirius laughed along, just joking around with no

hesitation.

Lying there, Anne admitted to herself to being a

teenager. It was somehow odd to remember herself
about it. She would be reminded of it by Mia and
Monty taking care of her with worry, by Lily and
Marlene talking about boys and gossiping about
other things and by James’ terrified eyes when he
heard of her presence in the Hospital Wing.

Now, however, it was the worry for beauty that

brought her back to her own age.

James was handsome. Sirius was charming. Remus

was magnetic. Peter was kind. They were popular
and would never, ever, imply that she was anything
other than pretty and – in James’ case – beautiful.
Still, she couldn’t be sure of what the others were
thinking of.

Regulus himself was a handsome man that could be

charming and magnetic and kid when he wanted,
but she had no idea if he liked her by the way she
behaved or by the way she looked. Was she even
pretty enough to tempt him like some of the
Slytherin girls that followed him around? Was she
pretty enough to make him want her in the way he
seemed to want her in the Astronomy Tower again?

As she was silently lying there, Peter got up.

“I’m going to the kitchens,” he said. “Does anyone

want anything specific?”

“Chocolate,” Remus quickly said.

“I want cake and pudding,” Sirius said. “Anne would

like some pudding as well,” he added, taking a
glance at Anne.

“Can you please let me answer it myself?” she

asked, clearly upset, shoving him.

“What do you want, Annie?” he asked, turning to

her with eyes rolling.

She blushed.

“Pudding,” she admitted.

Sirius smirked and looked at Peter again, who just

smiled.

“I’ll come with you, Wormtail, you won’t be able to

carry it all up here,” James said.

Anne tried not to smile again.

That was the perfect opportunity and James didn’t

even notice what he was doing.

As soon as the two were out of the room, Anne

jumped up from the bed and ran to James’ chest,
opening it and looking for the invisibility cloak. She
found it on the very bottom of the chest, under his
casual wizard robes for weekends.

“So discreet,” said Remus with irony, moving his

chess piece and then waiting for Peter to come
back.

“Well, you can date publicly, I cannot,” she said.

“And if Dad finds out I’ve spent the night out, he’s
going to freak out.”

“Oh,” said Remus in a teasing manner. “You’re

planning to spend the whole night out, that’s a new
one.”

Sirius groaned from his place in the bed.

“Please, do not tell me anything,” Sirius said. “I’ll

help you keep James away from the Map today and
sort of distract him so he won’t catch on that you
have the cloak, but do not tell me anything about
your… date with my brother.”

Anne turned to Sirius before winking at Remus,

signalling that she was about to start a joke.
Remus smiled and waited.

“Oh, you don’t want to know how hot he is?

Honestly, he has these long fingers that –” she
started.

Sirius gagged loudly in a dramatic way, covering his

ears and then humming a song loudly with his eyes
closed tight to cover up whatever she was talking,
not knowing that she had turned to his boyfriend
and giggled.

Quickly, Anne put the cloak on the inside pocket of

her robes and then sat down beside Sirius again,
forcefully pulling one of his hands away from his
ear, though he heard nothing but silence, he
hesitated for a moment before opening his eyes.

“If you tell me anything, I’ll tell you about the day I
caught your dad with Audrey Williams in the
Prefect’s Bathroom. That was the girl that did call
him ‘Daddy’ last January, if you’re curious to know”
he threatened.

“I am not telling you anything. Stop it, now!” Anne

insisted, lips curling.

Remus laughed at the two, crossing his arms and

watching them.

“You’d make a terrible father, Padfoot,” said

Remus.

“Oh, shut it. I’d be an amazing dad,” Sirius

disagreed quickly. “I’m cool, I’m hot and I can
teach my children to do anything they want
because I can learn anything if I have enough
time.”

“I’d like to call you a narcissist, but we both know

it’s the truth, therefore it won’t hurt you at all. The
animagus form moving around with me once a
month certainly is the proof of it,” Remus said.

“You were fourteen in when you managed, right?”

Anne asked, turning to Sirius again. “I was always
very interested in becoming an animagus, but I was
terrified of the process. It’s long and certainly
demanding, so I never went ahead with it.”

Remus nodded. “Motherfuckers didn’t even tell me

they were doing it until they were ready,” Remus
told her. “I thought I was about to have a heart
attack and that I was hallucinating, because there
was no way my friends turned into animals and
were willing to run in the full moon with me. But
they did it anyways, even when I told them to fuck
off.”

“Well, I’m stubborn,” Sirius said, as if it was an

excuse.

Anne chuckled and rolled her eyes.

“Don’t I know it,” Remus commented.

“Are you trying to say I’m a brat?” Sirius asked,

raising his eyebrows to his boyfriend.

“In more ways than I should say in front of Anne,

love.”

“EW!” Anne screamed again.

The cloak didn’t weight much, but its silk-like

texture made Anne feel like she was going to be
seen, even though she had the invisibility power
wrapped around her. Still, she walked through the
corridors with little worry to being found before the
curfew was called in. She found the broom closet
on the fourth floor quickly and walked in.

There was no one waiting for her inside, so she

rested against the shelves behind her to wait for
Regulus to get there. She crossed her arms, hoping
that would somehow warm her up a bit more since
that night was colder than she had expected it to
be for early October. Closing her eyes for a
moment, she relaxed, trying to forget her
nervousness.

Kissing Regulus, at that point, was familiar, but she

knew that he might expect more sooner or later.

More was what she had done once in a rented room

in the Three Broomsticks two days before she went
on the run with her brother and friends, she had
been drunk – too lost in the drunk courage, she
didn’t feel fear. But she wanted her time with
Regulus to be slow and careful; she wanted to be
completely sober and there for the occasion, but
she wasn’t sure she could do so at that moment.

She had a few comforts, of course. The fact that

Regulus refused to kiss her when she asked him to
when she was emotionally distraught was one of
them and the fact that she knew him enough to feel
safe was the other, but even that wasn’t everything
a girl could ask for in someone. Regulus was still
stronger than her, bigger than her; if she had to
fight him physically, she wasn’t so sure of who
would survive, though if she still had a grasp of her
magic, she would certainly have a head above him
in that water.

The door opened.

She looked, eyes opening as once, and watched as

Regulus slipped into the broom closet with a peek
outside.

“Hi,” she said, pulling the cloak down.

Regulus put his hand over his mouth so his yelp

wouldn’t be too loud.

“Don’t do that, Anne! Melin’s trousers!” he scolded.

Anne smiled at him, surprised that she had

managed to startle him.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to,” she admitted.

“My heart almost stopped beating!” he complained.

Anne chuckled, head falling forward to rest on his

shoulder.

“Are you alright?” she asked, laughing lowly.

“Yeah,” he said, head falling back to laugh at

himself. “Sorry if I was rude, you truly startled
me.”

“It’s fine,” she dismissed, pulling away from him to

look at his face. “I’m glad you got here before
Mister Filch started going around for his patrol.
Let’s go.”

He blinked in the half-darkness, confused.

“Where are we going? I thought we were going to

stay here,” he said.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Not with my father

having a map that shows where everybody in this
school is all the time. If your brother fails to
distract him, he’ll come after us or something like
that. He’s been very protective of me these last few
weeks. Now, come on, move.”

“Are you just going to ignore that you told me

about a magical map of Hogwarts?” he asked,
holding her hand as she threw the cloak over him.
“Anne, this might be dangerous.”

“It isn’t,” she dismissed. “Hold onto the cloak.”

“Are you also going to ignore the fact that you have
an actual invisibility cloak with you? This is rare!”
he added to his curiosities.

“Family heirloom,” she said, holding his hand

tighter.

She led the way out of the closet and through

corridors and stairs until she was in the right
corridor, where she started pacing. Regulus was
mumbling a few complaints as he followed her, not
understanding where she was taking him to.

He fell silent when the door appeared out of

nowhere on the wall. Anne pulled the cloak away
from them.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Welcome to the Requirement Room, Regulus,”

Anne said, smiling at him and reaching for the
door. She opened it. “Come on it, we have all we
can need in here.”

As they walked in, Regulus gasped.

The room had made its own rendition of the

Slytherin Common Room. All the green and silver
almost glowing in the dark, the fireplace crackling
warmth around the room. Though it looked like
Slytherin’s Room, it was certainly a lot warmer than
that and there were no book shelves resting
between the windows showing the deep parts of the
Dark Lake. The sofa looked bigger and a lot more
comfortable too.

Regulus took a moment to noticed that the sofa

almost looked like a bed. Once he did, he glanced
at Anne.

“How does this room work?” he asked, making his

best effort not to let himself blush.

“You have to pace in front of the room’s entrance

over there, keeping what you need the room to
present you in mind,” she explained, also looking at
the sofa-looking-bed and blushing a bit, knowing
what he was thinking. “It gets you what it thinks
you might want… or need.”

Regulus nodded to himself.

“Anne, I –”

“I’m not ready to have sex with you,” she said.

Regulus turned to look at her, face completely

blushed at this point.

“Oh,” he said, not sure of what else to say.

“But I want to do… more,” she added.

Anne wasn’t sure where that addition had come

from, but it certainly felt and sounded true. Kisses
were nice and so was the feeling of the bodies
holding onto each other, but she had to keep
herself from exploring Regulus’ body with her
hands out of respect several times, enjoying simply
the small and careful bites and kisses on her neck,
the ones that never left her with any marks, even
when she thought that – perhaps – it would look
great on her.

“Anne, you don’t need to feel pressured into doing

anything,” Regulus said. “I also want to take this
slowly. You need to feel like you need to move it
faster.”

She turned to look at him, looking quite confused.

“Did… something happen to you as well?” she

asked.

“No,” he said with a weak smile. It was sad that it

was her first thought, but it was nice that she was
ready to be as understanding with him as he was
being with her. “I just really like you, and sex is
nothing when both of us aren’t on board with it.
Let’s go slow. We have time,” he smirked. “You
made sure we had time, isn’t that why you did all
this? To give everybody time.”

“Alright,” she whispered.

“I mean it,” Regulus said. “Don’t do anything you

don’t want to.”

She smiled at him and walked closer to him.

Anne kissed his lips without hesitation and that was

the moment Regulus forgot everything that he was
speaking, focusing only on the feeling of her lips
caressing his with care. She was throwing herself
on his arms, holding his tight with her arms thrown
around his neck and her whole weight resting
against him. Regulus wasn’t having any trouble
holding on, she wasn’t all that heavy and the arms
going around her waist pulled her against him
tighter.

She giggled with the feeling of Regulus iron-like

embrace around her waist; her breasts were
against his chest and her hips were against his
without a problem. He smiled to her before kissing
her, taking initiative this time.

“Do you have a curfew?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Marlene is already asleep and Lily

will cover for me in breakfast.”

“Good,” he sighed, turning his head to the side to

kiss her cheek and go to her neck, kissing there
sweetly only to smirk to himself when she sighed.

“Do you?” she asked, panting a bit.

“No, Severus is covering for me,” he said. “My

roommates know I have a date, but he’s covering
for you identity, don’t worry.”

His hands moved from her waist to her hips,

holding her lightly and gently leading her towards
the sofa.

The back of Anne’s knees touched the sofa so she

pulled away from the kiss to look where she was
sitting on before pulling Regulus to sit beside her by
the arm. He chuckled with her eagerness and went
back to kissing her, leaning over her to reach her
lips with no problem, however one of his hands was
resting on the sofa right beside her thigh and the
other rested on her waist. He liked the feeling of
being almost on top of her, but he liked the feeling
of Anne’s hands going straight to his hair because
she had already noticed he liked when she pulled at
it.

She pulled him down again as she slowly leaned

away, lying on the sofa with nothing but want in
her eyes. Her legs were still to his right, touching
the ground and the position she was lying in did
look uncomfortable. Still, he didn’t insist on her
putting her legs around him, she probably wasn’t
comfortable with it, so all he did was lean over her
again, on his hands and knees on top of her to kiss
her.

This time the kiss was less gentle. It had tongues

curling around one another, caressing each other
with no care or chasteness and, more than
anything, Anne had gently caressed his tongue with
her tongue before sucking it into her mouth.

“Oh, Merlin,” he gasped, kissing her firmly.

Anne chuckled with his reaction, throwing her head

back. Regulus, in revenge, attacked her neck, this
time not caring for not leaving marks. She knew in
the moment he pulled away, proudly, that there
was going to be a mark on the side of her neck and
she liked it.

She didn’t think twice before pulling the left leg

from the side and passing it under him before
propping both of them on either side of him.
Regulus was in between her legs and she – very
proudly – wasn’t afraid.

Regulus hesitated.

“Anne,” he started, a bit unsure of what to do.

“It’s alright,” she said, opening her arms to him.

Regulus, finally, leaned down again, this time on

his knees and elbows to get his body closer to hers.
He felt something on his chest and he looked down
in surprise.

Under Anne’s shirt, there were two small

protuberances. Her nipples were screaming for
attention – his attention.

“You –”

“I have no bra on,” she finished once she saw his

eyes on there.

Embarrassingly enough, that sentence made

Regulus’ lower stomach tug and the blood rushed
away from his face and brain towards his second
head. He could feel it hardening slowly as he went
back to kissing her, this time bringing her body
against his, chest against chest. He could feel her
breasts a lot better now that he was paying
attention to it. But nothing came as close as
making him come in his trousers as when Anne
took the hand was resting beside her head and led
it to her chest.

His left hand cupped her breast gently at first,

surprised that he was allowed to do that, but
thrilled that the nipple was against his palm, even if
over the shirt. She gasped when he lightly moved
his thumb to the side, getting a better grip. He
groaned when her legs were thrown around his
hips; she didn’t pull him closer to herself, hips
having a small distance between them, but the
feeling of her trembling legs around him still made
him feel almost weak, his own knees starting to
tremble.

“I like that,” he said.

“What? Touching me?” she asked, trying to find his

eyes. “You can do it more. Please, do it more.”

He pulled back a bit to try to meet her eyes. His

fingers tightened around her and she wiggled, he
smiled at her.

“Having your legs around me,” he corrected.

“Holy shit,” she gasped. “Fuck,” she mumbled,

pulling him by the hair to kiss him again.

Regulus chuckled. He had no idea simple words

such as those could have such power over her.

She struggled as she made him take off his shirt,

moaning in delight once she felt the muscles of a
Quidditch player under her hands. He was skinny
and that was why he was so good in being a
Seeker, he had a slim waist and a hard chest of
discreet muscles, but his arms were stronger than
she expected.

This time, her legs pulled him closer when he

squeezed her breast lightly. Their hips met, his
erection poking her on the belly.

Anne’s legs opened, letting go of Regulus at once.

Regulus jumped back, feeling her whole-body stiff

under him.

“Anne?” he called out, scrambling to get away.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out. She pulled her legs

closer to herself and sat down, putting her feet on
the ground again, legs tightly closed. “I’m sorry, I
just –”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. You weren’t supposed

to feel that,” he admitted. “I just got overexcited.
I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, face blushing deeply. It was

just Regulus, that was all her mind seemed to
scream at her, but her body was frozen and her
heart was struggling to keep beating, still wanting
to find a way to escape from her own body.

She wanted more, she didn’t want to separate

herself from Regulus and she knew that he had
done nothing wrong. He was a young man kissing
and caressing a young woman, it was expected that
his body had a reaction at some point, but she
hadn’t expected to feel it. Once she did feel the
hard member against her, it was like she was stuck
– she was on the ground on the bathroom of the
house she grew up again, unable to move out of
fear of what he could do to her or Harry if she
fought back, hands were on her and she couldn’t
enjoy herself.

It was like falling for a moment. It was the same

cold sensation on her stomach, the same absolute
disgust of being stuck to helplessness and the
uselessness that never seemed to go away from
the back of her mind.

And then Anne was back.

She was sitting on the sofa, warming up with the

fire with Regulus standing away from the sofa,
hands on his pocket to try to hide the bulge
between his legs, discarded shirt still on the ground
near her feet – he didn’t dare approach her yet.

“Anne?” he called again.

“This is embarrassing,” she said.

“No,” he said.

“It is. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “Give

me a minute. I’ll deal with it and we’ll talk about it.
We have time. No hurry.”

‘Deal with it’ meant that Regulus quickly made his

way to the small bathroom on the corner of the
room that looked just like the communal bathroom
of Slytherin House and made sure his right hand
took care of the erection that ruined the snogging
session they were having. However, in the silence,
he noticed something he hadn’t before: he was
quite vocal. Regulus had loud moans, loud groans
and he even whimpered once he got to his high;
since he was never one to actually look for relief
unless absolutely necessary, he had never thought
much about it.

A bit flushed and a bit embarrassed of his

discovery, he came back to find Anne sitting on the
sofa still, but with his shirt in hands. She had folded
it and had it on her lap.

“I’m back,” he said, voice a bit choked out.

“I just wanted to snog, but I didn’t think about

bodily reactions,” she vomited the words before he
could say anything else. “I’m sorry, truly. I didn’t
mean anything by it, it just took me by surprise.”

“I understand,” he comforted her, sitting beside

her, but not touching her. “I really do, Princess.
Don’t worry about offending me or hurting me by
somehow denying me something or disagreeing
with me. We’re dating – this is a two-way street,
ok? You want something and I want something,
that how things work. Nothing here will be decided
on our own if it involves the other.”
“I want to sleep with you,” she said.

“We don’t need to –”

“I don’t mean sex,” she said, shaking her head at

him. “Spend the night with me, like after the
Soiree. Just lie beside me and stay with me for
tonight. I want to hold you and I want you to hold
me.”

Regulus blinked in surprised. He had expected to go

back to his dorms at late night or early morning,
but never imagined to spend the whole night. He
was pleasantly surprised, of course.

“I can do that,” he said, nodding.

Anne smiled.

“Good,” she still looked flushed and a bit sad, but

his agreement seemed to make things better.
“Thank you.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” he said. He

smiled at her. “Now, I’ll put my shirt –”

“You don’t need to,” she said, smiling a bit at him.

“Oh?” he said, raising his eyebrows at her in a

teasing manner, trying to make the situation
lighter.

“I like you without it.”

“Well, then let’s just go to sleep,” he said.

Chapter 52: Chapter Fifty-One

Summary:
Anne and Regulus have more fun,
but James Potter finds out.

SUNDAY

Soft skin under his lips, the distant smell of

jasmine. The cream Anne used tasted like
strawberry too, he could feel it on his lips when he
went to her back for a kiss, not her neck. He liked
the odd combination; jasmine perfume and
strawberry body-cream.

Anne’s eyes fluttered, but they didn’t open at first.

“Good morning,” mumbled Regulus on her ear.

His voice had the unexpected reaction of making

her eyes snap open as she turned her head to look
at him as if surprised that he was there at all. For a
moment, Regulus wondered if she thought she had
dreamed all last night, but there was no way even
the best of dreams could be as fulfilling as actually
waking up with Anne in his arms, sighing away as
she got lost in dreamland.

“Regulus!” she said.

“Hello,” he said, amused by her reaction.

He leaned towards her for a quick kiss, but he

didn’t manage to get that from her. She moved her
head away from him, going back to the position of
the little spoon.

“I didn’t brush my teeth,” she said.

In any other situation, he would’ve laughed, but it

was the first time they were waking with one
another with the actual possibility of kissing each
other. Besides, he didn’t really count the day he
woke up in her bed after the Soiree, it was quite
the scary event and he fell off the bed in the
moment his eyes opened, so it was different from
waking her up with kisses and hugs.

“I know,” he said. Quickly, he reached for the

pockets in his sleeping trouser. “Here, I got this.”

He showed her two small mint-green squares.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Fresh-Breath-Squares from Zonko’s,” he

answered.

She turned her head to him this time, her whole

body still facing away from him.

“So you were planning on spending the night,” she

teased.

Blushing, he chuckled.

“It’s always good to be prepared,” he said, not

really admitting that he did have hopes of spending
the night away with her, doing whatever she
wanted him to do to her. “Besides, I like the taste,
so I always have one or two in my bag with my
sweets.”

She laughed in surprise.

“You have a sweet stock in your bag?” she asked.

“Just a bit; black licorice,” he admitted. “It’s my

favourite sweet and, honestly, Fresh-Breaths tastes
really good.”

“Well, if you like peppermint,” she said, taking one

of the small squares.

She threw the square in her mouth and bit into it,
jumping startled when it made a small ‘pop’ in her
mouth and she was washed away with the feeling
of her teeth being cleaner than any of the good,
expensive muggle toothbrushes could get her. With
a small hum of delight, she nodded at Regulus in
agreement that she did like it, watching him throw
him own square into his mouth and chew calmly, as
if he had not eaten one already.

Once the square was swallowed, Anne smiled and

leaned back, kissing his lips promptly, not caring
that he had yet to swallow his square. He kept his
mouth closed, but stopped chewing, kissing her
gently.

“Good morning,” he repeated once she pulled away.

“Good morning,” she said, smiling at him this time.

Surprisingly, both of them liked the position they

were in.

Their bodies were against one another, but it didn’t

feel awkward or sexual. The way her back seemed
to fit so well with his chest was simply relaxing and
comforting; it was like they were made for one
another to hold on.

Swallowing, Regulus put his elbow to the side,

propping his body up so he could lean and kiss
Anne without making her look over her shoulder to
him all the time, after all that certainly had to hurt
her neck a bit. In the kiss, he could feel her arm
reaching behind her to comfortingly touch his arm,
leading one of them to her breast again.

The surprise was obvious in Regulus’ face, because

Anne laughed.

“It feels good,” she explained.

“Then I shall make you feel even better,” he said,

smiling at her.

The snogging session was certainly a lot better than

the night before, both of them were a lot more
comfortable with themselves and a lot less nervous
when in comparison. There was no surprise in the
fact that now her noises of pleasure were louder
and the way her hips moved back to meet his was
very much different from the night before as well.

There was no fear, there was no shame or

hesitation. They were two teenagers snogging in
the few moments of privacy they could steal in
their day.

Anne’s behind met Regulus’ slowly-waking bulge,

but she didn’t freeze this time. She sighed in
delight as she moved het hips against it, grinding
slowly and throwing her head to the side to give
him access to her neck to pleasure her as well, his
hands in her breast holding tighter, thumb fiddling
with the nipple in accident. Lost in the feeling,
Regulus started grinding back against her, sighing
in pleasure and leaning to her neck.

There would be a mark from the way he sucked the

skin, he knew, but he didn’t regret it and he
certainly didn’t think about the consequences that
could follow. He just licked the reddish skin and
heard her small moan with pride and pushed his
hips against hers, hearing once more her sigh and
smirking to himself.

She reached behind her, her hand grabbing his hips

and pulling him against her back, holding him in
place there. Regulus laughed, amused by her
eagerness, but Anne looked over her shoulder at
him and smiled a bit, clearly blushing by how she
was coming across – trying not to let her get too
much in her head, thinking too much about her
every move and making herself self-conscious,
Regulus kissed her lips once more, tongue
caressing hers to distract her as quickly as possible.

Lost between both sensations, he neglected to feel

the way the pool of heat in his lower abdomen
seemed to be growing until he was almost to the
point of exploding. His whole body seemed to grow
cold and hot at the same time as he froze mid-
grinding, legs trembling violently as he came all
over his underwear.

“Oh!” he moaned loudly, surprised by the feeling.

Anne looked at him in surprise, as they pulled away

from the kiss, seeing this red face and his trembling
knees.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

He pulled away quickly, the warm feeling of his own

cum making him feel disgusting.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry!”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I didn’t mean to do this, Anne, I’m sorry,” he said.

He was getting up from the sofa, bracing himself on

the side of it since his legs didn’t seem to be
obeying him very well.

“Did you –” she started, blushing.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, shaking her head and rolling

her eyes at his reaction. “There’s no need to be like
that, Reggie, it happens.”

“I didn’t even feel it coming, it just… exploded,” he

said, covering his face with his hands. “I need to
get cleaned up. I’m sorry, Anne, really, I am.”

“There’s no need to be sorry, I said it. Just go get

cleaned up before your face explodes out of
shame,” she said.

Still, understanding of his shame, she said nothing

else and he made his way to the bathroom and
cleaned himself up as best as he could with spells.
Anne just kept sitting there, looking at the folded
robes on the corner of the room that the Room
gave them.

She walked there and took the female robes. It was

a lavender coloured with small and discreet
diamond beads on the collar; it was very
expensive, she could see that just by the way the
fabric reacted under her touch – it seemed to
almost dance, like it was silk, but it felt a lot
warmer. She put it on, folding her pyjamas and
putting it on the table as well, knowing that it
would appear on her bed by the night.

It fit just well.

“Why are you wearing that?” Regulus asked as he

walked out of the bathroom. She turned to look at
him. “That is a very expensive robe. Where did you
get that?”

“The Room gave it to us,” she said. “You have one

here as well.”

Regulus took the shirt out of the floor and made his
way to her folding the shit and putting it beside her
pyjamas. He took the robes beside it and looked at
it – it was expensive as well, and Anne knew that
because of the amount of silver used in it. The
robes were black, though the collar and the end
had silver strands in the blouse and cloak.

“This is my father’s,” he said.

Anne turned to look at him in surprise.

“I’m sorry?”

“It belonged to my father when he was my age,” he

explained. “That’s odd. He has a few pictures in it,
but he lost it when he was seventeen; he always
said somebody had stolen it. It was his favourite
robes.”

“Maybe he just lost it and the Room is giving it

back,” Anne said. “This Room can, after all, be the
room of Lost Things.”

The Horcrux’s energy, even in memory, made her

stomach churn and her head receive a painful stab
in between her eyes, but she stayed quiet; the
image of Ariana still made its way across the room
by the corner of her eyes, but Regulus didn’t seem
to notice. Anne blinked, pushing the thought away.

Not thinking much, Regulus untied his trousers and

let it fall to the ground, his slim boxers making
quite the appearance as Anne looked away.
Regulus dressed quickly. He put on the robes’
blouse and then the trousers before the thick and
warm, elegant-looking cloak over it.

“We should go,” Regulus said. “We are most likely

late for breakfast already and Severus can only do
so much with covering me.”

“Right,” Anne said, nodding, trying not to say

anything about how pretty his behind looked from
where she was standing, even if she had looked
away as soon as she noticed what she was doing.
“Let’s go.”

“You go first, I’ll follow you in a few minutes,” he

said, nodding towards the doors of the room. “If we
get to the Great Hall together, people will speak of
it. I’ll see you later, Princess.”

She turned to him, giving him a quick, chaste kiss

on his lips before making her way out of the room.

James Potter was quite happy to listen to Lily Evans

complain about a first-year who had almost thrown
himself down the stairs to get attention from a girl
he liked and even stayed quiet as she poked fun at
him for not having thought of that when they were
younger, but what he wasn’t happy about was how
Anne Potter didn’t seem to be anywhere to be seen
and Marlene was clearly covering for her.

“Marlene,” said Lily, bringing the girl into the

conversation. The blonde looked up, alarmed.
“Didn’t the boy think it was so funny that the girl
looked at him for more than a second?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Marlene said.

She was so nervous that James couldn’t help but

think about how terrible of a liar she was. He was
quite happy that Anne hadn’t trust her with all her
truth, because she would be found out in a second.
James raised his eyebrows, clearly urging her into
nervousness to make her vomit all the information
he wanted.

“Where’s Anne?” he asked.

“She just slept in today,” Lily dismissed, calmly

buttering her toast.

“Oh, did she?” James asked, frowning.

“Yeah,” said Marlene, voice wavering.

Lily glared at Marlene before turning to James.

“Don’t worry about her, she’s alright, just tired,”

Lily kept going. “She slept late and decided to sleep
in for a little bit. Sooner or later, she’ll show up.”

“Lily, really, don’t –” started James.

Hurried footsteps were what stopped him from

saying anything else and made him look away from
Lily, startled by the way that the steps seemed to
be going towards him.

Anne was walking fast, almost jumping to sit beside

Marlene as she smiled bigly and perhaps too
excited.

“Good morning!” she said.

“Sleeping in did you some good,” Lily said.

Anne barely blinked, just smiling as much as before

as she nodded. She had noticed it was a warning of
the story that Lily had laid down, but so did James
– he had spent time enough with Anne. She was a
good liar, she had gotten that from her mother; he
had to admit that much, but he could notice the
small hesitation as she played out a lie from
someone else into her mind.

“It sure did,” Anne said, nodding so lightly that her

hair barely moved.

Her hair was a mess, James noticed. Anne probably

had noticed that as well, because the hair was
being pulled back into a quick plait. The robes she
was wearing had not been in her closet before, he
was almost sure, though he never really paid much
attention to her clothing.

“What are you wearing?” Sirius asked, stopping

mid-sentence from the conversation he was having
with Peter. “That’s a designer robe. When did you
buy it?”

“Designer?” Remus asked, looking at the pretty

robes. Sure, they looked good, but how they were
so important as to stop Sirius from talking about
Quidditch he couldn’t understand. “Because of the
stones?”

“Diamonds,” corrected Sirius. “Real bloody

diamonds. That’s an Atika Labrone outfit.”

“Who?” Lily asked, raising her eyebrows at Sirius.

“That’s a famous designer from Morocco,” James

said, glancing at Sirius before looking back at Lily.
“Sirius is absolutely in love with her pieces ever
since he was fourteen or so. She’s good, but… I
don’t think Anne could’ve gotten a piece so easily
here in England.”

“I just had it in my closet,” Anne said. “Maybe Mia

bought it?”

Sirius raised his eyebrows at her.

“Mama is not one to buy clothing with diamonds

embedded,” he seemed to warn. She had to find
another lie.

Or she just didn’t have to. A half-true would be

good enough.

“The castle gave it to me,” she said. “I was in the

Room in this morning and my clothing got dirty, so
the Room gave this one to me.”

“Room?” Marlene asked.

“The Room of Requirement, you know. People call it

the Come-And-Go Room, too, you heard of it
before, I’m sure,” Anne said.

“Anne found it quite quickly,” Remus said, nodding.

“That’s wicked!” Peter said, smiling at Anne.

Anne smiled back at the smaller boy, who was

leaning over the table to hear the conversation
better and understand what was happening.

“Where were you?” James asked, cutting the

pleasant theme.

“In the Room, I just told you,” Anne said.

“With whom?”

The small group went silent at once.

Sirius quickly turned to look at Remus, clearly

eager to get a conversation going and forget that
they knew the answer to that question. Peter, lost,
just kept paying attention to the conversation
between father and daughter. Lily glared at Marlene
as she went pale quickly, almost looking like she
was ready to faint.

“I’m going to talk to Dorcas,” Marlene quickly

mumbled before stumbling to her feet and making
her way away from the red table towards the
Hufflepuff table where Dorcas was more than happy
to receive her. “Dorcas!” Marlene almost
whimpered as she sat down, voice going around the
whole Great Hall.

Lily sighed in disappointment, but turned to look at

Anne.

“I was alone,” she lied.

James’ eyes narrowed.

“Don’t lie to me, we promised each other,” he said.

“It wasn’t anything important,” she dismissed,

rolling her eyes. “I just having some fun.”

That’s when he saw it.

“Fun. That’s what you call that big bruise on your

neck?” James asked, bitterly as his stomach
churned.

Lily’s eyes widened as she followed James’ eyes to

the side of Anne’s neck, there was indeed a bruise
there with the unmistakable shape of a love bite.

“Oh, Merlin,” Sirius sighed, lips curling in disgust.

Remus smiled at the girl, trying his best not to

laugh out loud.

The Great Hall’s double doors made a small noise

as Regulus Black opened just enough to slip in and
made his way towards the Slytherin table, chin up
and an odd smirk as he said a polite ‘good morning’
to Elizabeth and Severus, who were deep in a
conversation about something, deep enough to
barely look up to him, just nodding in
acknowledgement and going back to talking.

Sirius followed his brother with his eyes, lips curling

even more. He knew that look; he knew that glow
in his skin – he had the same glow every now and
then after he had a good orgasm early morning.
Morning sex almost always made him have that
exact same look. Remus holds back the laugh as he
also recognized the look and saw the disgust
growing more and more inside of his boyfriend.

“Really?!” Sirius asked.

Lily held back her giggle, hand going to her mouth

to muffle it.

“I tried, Anne,” Lily said, muffled.

“Meh, it’s fine,” Anne said. “Well, James, I was with

Regulus. And this is just a love bite, let’s leave this
conversation for some time else – like, maybe,
never.”

“You lied,” James said.

“Not the time, Prongs,” said Remus. “Let’s talk

about this… family matter later, okay?”

James looked between the two of them and

nodded, leaving the conversation for later, but
clearly being angry at Anne.

She was quite happy that he was angry at her

because she lied, not because she had been out
with a boy. She knew that he had no right to get
involved in her personal life in that way and he
knew that too. The thing was that he was angry at
her for lying to him and, therefore, somehow
putting her own safety at risk.

She smiled at him.

James couldn’t help but smile back.

The conversation was never had.

“Come on,” Peter said, smiling a bit. “We have to

go to Hogsmeade today. I have quite a lot of
sweets to buy. Remus, our first stop is
Honeydukes!”

Chapter 53: Chapter Fifty-Two

Summary:
A Jily chapter

SAVE THE DATE

James Potter was panicking.

Lily’s green eyes were curious and nervous,

watching his face and looking for every single
reaction he might have. Her fingers were twitching
and grasping to one another, clearly anxious for his
answer.

But how could he answer a question he had never

expected to hear? “Do you want to go out with
me?” Lily had asked. His whole life, he had thought
he’d be the one to ask that question and he had
done so several times. After he stopped asking it,
then she went and asked him that. No. He knew no
words. He knew only ‘hm’.

James had been making weird noises for almost a

whole minute at that point.

“You know what?” Lily asked, upset. “Forget about

it. I’ll just go now, okay?”

She started to turn, ready to walk away and cry

herself to exhaustion on the bathroom out of
embarrassment.

Fear and panic choked him up.

“No!” he almost screamed.

The Ravenclaw students walking by on the corridor

glanced at him, but kept walking.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Lily said blushing, wanting to

disappear out of shame.

“No! I mean, yes!” he said loudly. “I want to go out

with you, please. I just forgot how to speak for a
moment.”

Lily looked at him, blushing and then just smiling at

him, hoping that would make her have enough time
before answering anything. She was too happy, too
nervous and too confused – everything seemed to
be going on all at once. She knew James was a
very dramatic person, but she knew that this time
the ‘I forgot how to speak’, he really meant it,
which only made her smile even more.

“Oh, okay. Thanks,” said Lily, nodding to him.

“Hogsmeade?”

“Yeah,” James answered. “That’d be nice. We can

meet on the Common Room and go there
together.”

“Sure!” she said, she stopped for a moment. She

sounded a bit too excited, she thought, so she
controlled her voice a bit better before keep going
her sentence. “We can meet on the Common Room
and we can just get the carriage together.
Tomorrow at ten?”

“O’clock,” he added, nodding.

“Nice,” she said.

“Nice.”

And she walked away, forcing her body to act like

nothing different was happening, though her heart
was skipping several beats over pure anxiety and
excitement.

James just stood there and walked her walking

away, still in shock that it all had really happened.
That had only happened before in the best of his
dreams and in his nightmares when he was unable
to control his mouth as he said ‘no’ to her request
several times and his soul screamed, unable to do
anything to change the outcome. And now, it was
real, and he was going out with the love of his life –
the girl that he was going to marry and the woman
who was going to the mother of his children,
though he knew she didn’t know those things yet.

Once he noticed he was just standing in the middle

of the corridor, he turned and ran as fast as he
could towards the Gryffindor Tower, completely
forgetting of the rounds he was supposed to do
with the Ravenclaw prefect of fifth year in half an
hour. He needed to talk to his friends and he
needed to talk to his daughter right away.

Stumbling and almost falling down the stairs, he

managed to get to the dorms in one piece.

Opening the door at once, he ignored that Sirius

had jumped away from Remus, who was quick to
put on a shirt.

“What the bloody hell, James?” Sirius asked.

“Pads, where’s everybody?” James asked.

“I don’t know,” Sirius answered. “Why? What

happened? Did something happen to Anne?”

“Something good happened to me and I need

advice, like right now. I have a date tomorrow,”
James said, looking around before running to the
foot of his bed and opening the chest on the
ground. He went through his clothes. “I need my
best shirt, that blue one with buttons.”

“What’s going on?” Remus asked, getting up from

his bed with a very messed up shirt. “You’re not
usually like this about dates ever since fourth-
year.”

“Lily Evans asked me out!” he announced.

Sirius scream was so loud that Remus winced in

surprise, but looked just as happy as he announced
as he ran to the door that he was calling Peter and
Anne, though he clearly had no idea where they
were.

“She asked you out?” Sirius asked.

“SHE CAME TO ME AND ASKED ME OUT!” James

said, so excited that he didn’t notice that he was
yelling. “Pads, I got it! After years, I got the date!”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, ten o’clock in the morning, we’ll meet

at the Common Room and we’ll go to Hogsmeade
together,” James said. “I really need my blue shirt.
I don’t know here I put it, but I need it. It goes well
with your black trousers, the ones with silver chain
on the right side – if I take the chains out –”

“You’re not messing with my clothes,” Sirius said,

final tone.

James looked at him like a puppy, eyes wide.

“Please!” James said. “It’s for the date!”

“Oh, come on, Prongs,” whined Sirius, hesitant.

“Don’t make me do this.”

“Please, Pads! Please! I can fix it later!” he insisted.

“Those are my favourite trousers, you can’t just

come in here and ask me to vandalize them so you
can wear it for a few hours and, if you’re lucky,
you’re going to get it out in a couple of hours –”

“Don’t talk like that,” James said, interrupting. “I’m

not that type of person.”

“You hook up all the time… or you did, before Anne

came along,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes.

“Well, I hooked up with girls, but I didn’t take them

on dates. I don’t sleep with the girl in the first date,
mate. I’m not that guy,” James said, shaking his
head. “And I’m sure Lily is not that girl, either.
She’s rather…” he thought for a moment for the
best word, “reserved.”

“Frigid,” corrected Sirius.

“Piss off, Sirius, don’t call her that,” James said,

glaring up at his brother.

Noticing that, once again, he was having a speech

that his father would probably have, he stopped
himself from speaking anything else, just sighed
and went to his bed to get the trousers from the
chest and gave it to James.

“Ruin those and you’ll pay with your life,” Sirius

warned.

“Thanks, you’re the best!” James said, getting the

trousers from his hands and putting on the bed as
he went back to looking for his shirt.
Remus ran back in with Peter right behind him,
sprinting up the stairs with the biggest smile James
had ever seen in his life.

“You’re going on a date with Evans!” Peter

announced.

James looked up and smiled.

“I know!” he answered.

A second later, Anne walked up the stairs looking

rather tired, but in silence as she looked around the
room and blinked slowly.

“Sorry, I was taking a nap,” she said. “What’s

happening? Lily accepted going out with you?”

James shook his head, but with a big smile.

Confused, Anne looked at Remus.

“Lily asked him out, not the other way around,”

explained the werewolf. “That’s why he’s this
excited.”

“I’ll be just as excited if I had been the one to ask

her out and she had said yes, but I do like the fact
that she made the move this time,” James said,
nodding at his friend. “Tomorrow in the late
morning, we’ll go to Hogsmeade together. And
Anne? I need every single detail that you have on
her.”

“What I have, you probably have more,” Anne said.

“You were sort of stalkerish a couple of years ago,”

agreed Peter, nodding to James.

“Piss off, Wormy,” Sirius said, glaring at the smaller

boy, who looked down at his own foot.

James sighed as he pulled the shirt out of the chest

and put on the bed as well. He took a pair of black
socks and put it beside the trousers. He raised two
shoes, urging his friends to choose – unanimously,
they chose the black shoes. He sat on the table and
nodded to himself, trying to calm down.

“Clothes, ready,” he announced. “What do I do with

my hair?”

“Nothing, use it normally,” Anne said. “I mean, if

she asked you out with that hair in your head in the
way it is today, you’re fine.”

“What do you mean by that?” James asked,

offended.

“You’re having a bad hair day,” Peter quickly

agreed with Anne. “But tomorrow it might be
better,” he offered the comfort on the way James’
face reddened.

Sirius turned to look at Peter again before starting

to glare with the blankest of faces, clearly tired of
his presence already.

“Mate?”

“Yeah?” Peter said.

“Shut up.”

“Yeah.”

Sirius had been dragged away from the dormitory

by Remus because his ‘pep-talk’ was somehow
making James even more nervous, as if he hadn’t
been listening everything that could go wrong with
the date in a joking manner as if saying ‘not even
you could mess up this much’.

At the point James was left alone with Anne, he

was about to have a panic attack. He was sitting on
his bed, head between his knees and shaking from
head to toe, panting and gasping for breath and he
held onto the sides of the bed.

“Where’s Peter?” James managed to gasp.

“He’s with Lily, she’s downstairs finishing up an

essay,” Anne answered. “She seemed nervous too,
so Peter is sitting with her and trying to get some
conversation going. Sirius must be there at that
point, but don’t worry, Remus will keep him quiet
and in line before he can say anything.”

“I’m not worried about Sirius,” he said. “I’m going

to mess this up all on my own, I don’t need his help
there,” he looked up at Anne, eyes wide and
looking like they were trembling too. Anne was
starting to get freaked out. “Are you sure you don’t
want to tag along under the cloak?”

“Absolutely not following my father on his date with

my mother, thank you,” Anne said shaking her
head and sitting down beside him. “Look, you’re
going to be fine, I swear. She asked you out, which
means she’s willing to learn more about you and
she might like you already. All you need to do is be
who you’re already being and everything will work
itself out.”

“You sound so confident,” he whimpered.

“Because I am,” Anne said. “I swear to you that

there’s nothing that you can mess up in a single
date, James. James and Lily. Everybody has been
waiting for this to happen, and there’s a reason for
that: everybody knows this can work out if both of
you work for it and become the people each other
need. Isn’t that what love is?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked. “Your parents love each

other. How does grandma and grandpa love each
other? How can you know they love each other?”

“I exist,” he guessed.

“And I do not?” Anne said, raising her eyebrow.

“That’s not a real reason. I mean, Regulus and
Sirius exist and Walburga and Orion most likely
hate each other. No, children are not products of
love.”

“Well, Dad makes Mum tea before she wakes up,

even in the days he doesn’t work. He still wakes up
super early to make it, the elves are not allowed to
do tea for Mum,” James said. “And Mum always
gets the right size of clothing and Dad loves the
socks she buys because she always remembers he
only like wool socks.”

“See?” Anne said. “Love doesn’t need to be perfect.

Love needs to be wool socks.”

“Lily doesn’t like wool socks, she likes the ones with
pretty designs, the odd ones. Like bananas and
other fruits and there’s one with pain-brushes,”
James said.

“Look at that! You know the socks she likes,” Anne

said, seeing that he was calming down with the
subject. “That’s good enough for now. Get to know
her better; know her favourite flower, colour and
how she takes her coffee.”

“She only takes tea,” James said.

“That’s why you need to find out about her coffee.”

“I don’t understand,” James said.

Neither did Anne at that point, she was just

speaking nonsense until James seemed calm
enough to walk down the stairs on his own without
falling to his death and ending up with a broken
neck on the floor.

Anne pulled him up from the bed and fixed the

collar of the shirt in his body.

“You won’t do any make-up?” she asked.

“I don’t look good with it,” he dismissed. “And my

lashes are beautiful without it anyways,” he added
playfully, blinking several times and fluttering his
eyelashes at Anne, who rolled her eyes.

James did have pretty lashes, much like Harry –

full, dark and naturally curled. A man’s thing, Anne
was starting to think since Sirius and Regulus
seemed to have the same, though Remus and Peter
were too blonde to have any visible lashes. Anne
and Lily were too light as well to have lashes easily
seen without some makeup on it and, although Lily
put make-up on her lashes every morning and
curled them up, theirs were almost straight and not
all that long.

“Your hair?” Anne asked.

“Seems to have calmed down from yesterday and,

if I try to brush it, it’ll just look like I did some type
of flight,” he shook his head. “Let’s keep it like
this.”

“Yes, sir,” joked Anne.

James fixed his own glasses and smirked at Anne.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, taking a deep breath.

That was her cue.

Anne smiled back and nodded.

“I’ll see you later,” she answered, taking a step

back from him.

Anne turned and made her way to the door of the

dormitory.

Quickly, she went down the stairs and saw Remus

waving at her, urging her to sit down next to him
while Sirius’ head lied on his lap, clearly tired of
waiting for James to come down. He was taking
longer than usual, they all had to admit it, after all
it was ten-fifteen and Lily was talking to Peter; the
talk between the two was the only reason she had
yet to notice James was late, she probably wouldn’t
be angry at that, but certainly would’ve been
annoyed that James would be late on their very
first date.

Peter stopped talking once James walked down the

stairs and into the Common Room, confident smile
on and hair carefully messed, though a lot tamer
than usual days.

“Morning,” he said as if nothing important was

happening and his heart wasn’t about to skip out of
his chest by his throat.

“Hi,” Lily said, almost jumping up from the couch to

stand up and turn to look at him with a smile. She
smoothed down her long skirt filled with beautiful
flowers and smiled. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, sure!” James answered, smiling at her

sweetly.

They started moving to the portrait space, Lily

quickly making her way out without much of a
thought, though James looked back at his friends
and daughter and gave a little wink before walking
out as well.

Anne turned to Remus and squealed in excitement.

“Hell yeah!” she said, clapping once in happiness.

“Got ‘em, mates!” Sirius announced.

Peter smiled at them and made a little victory

dance, still sitting on the sofa, but clearly happy
with the outcome of their hard work.

Loud footsteps came running down the female

dormitory and Marlene appeared, eyes wide, hair
messy and a small handbag on her hands.

“Where’s Lily?” she asked, voice choked out.

“Just went out,” Remus answered, looking up in

surprise.

“She forgot her bag with money,” Marlene said.

But they all knew that Lily was not allowed to pay
for anything, James would never let her do
something like that.

Anne smiled, completely relaxed.

Anne wasn’t on the male dormitory when James got

back from his amazing date, hand still shaking a bit
now that the adrenaline was coming down and a
huge smile on his face, the one he couldn’t hide no
matter how much he tried.

He stopped in front of the door and took a deep

breath, finally stopping his smile before opening the
door to see all his three friends sitting on the floor,
playing Ludo together, but the board almost flew
when Peter got up with a jump and ran to James’
bed, sitting down, ready to listen. Remus got up
fast as well, stumbling a bit and leaning on Sirius –
who was getting up as well – to pay attention to
James.

“Hi!” Sirius said loudly with a smirk.

“Hey,” James said, sounding so disappointed that

the boys felt their stomachs drop.

Sirius’ smirk dropped and Remus sat down wearily.

“So?” Remus asked.

James shrugged, looking down with a serious face.

He bit his lip to keep himself from laughing, making
his focused face look like he was about to cry.

Peter got up from the place he sat down in and

started shaking, eyes almost tearing up.

“I’m so sorry, mate,” said Peter, sounding so

genuine that James almost felt bad for the joke he
was throwing at them.

He couldn’t help himself.

James had the hugest smile on his face on the very

next second, making Peter scream in frustration
while Sirius hooted as he jumped on the bed he had
been sitting on before. Remus smiled, getting up
from the bed in clear happiness – the werewolf
inside of his also made a noise, though he pushed it
to the side easily since it was so far away from the
full moon.

All that screaming and celebrating lasted for hours.

James didn’t sleep, retelling every since detail of

his date to his friend and proudly saying that the
only kiss he had shared with Lily was on the cheek
before he walked up the stairs to the dormitory.

“And…” he screamed, trying to calm down all the

loud-talking boys. “And…” he repeated. Silence was
made. “And she agreed on a second date next
month after Halloween, this time at MacTonshik’s.”

“MacTonshik’s?!” Peter squealed. “That’s your

mother’s favourite restaurant.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “And she knows that. She was

the one to say to meet there. What do you think?”

“I think that you should start looking at pretty

rings,” Sirius said.

James squealed, stuffing his face against his own

pillow to scream as loud as he could without
damaging his friends’ ears.

Chapter 54: Chapter Fifty-Three

Summary:
Lily makes a mistake during the
night of November 6th, a full
moon night.

THE NIGHT OF NOVEMBER 6 OF 1976

Lily Evans was as quiet as a mouse as she got up

from her bed, groaning uncomfortably as her feet
hit the cold wooden floor of the dormitory. Slowly,
she made her way to the middle of the room,
opening with a movement of her wand the small
space in the furnace and put another log into it
before taking a step back, admiring her work and
throwing another one in.

It was November, but was colder than any other

November Scotland seemed to have experienced
before. McGonagall had commented to Dumbledore
that very day that she expected snow earlier than
ever that year and Lily had overheard it, shivering
in anticipation.

She hated to cold, it always made her sleepy.

But now, she was wide awake for some reason.

“Lily?” Marlene called out.

“Sh!” Lily quickly made. “Anne is asleep.”

That made Marlene sit down slowly, trying to make

as little noise as she could. It was rare for Anne to
sleep so early in the night (before midnight), and it
was even rarer to see her that deep into her sleep.
No one dared to interrupt her in it.

“What’s happening? Are you cold?” Marlene asked.

“I can get you another blanket.”

“No, I just can’t sleep,” Lily answered. She peeked

out of the window. “I think I’m going out for a
walk.”

“It’s almost midnight, curfew is already on,”

Marlene said itching around her eyes in sleepiness.
“Don’t be silly, it’s so cold outside.”

“Cold makes me sleepy,” she answered. “I’ll be

back in, like, half-an-hour, I swear.”

Marlene was hesitant, wearily looking around

before shrugging it off. Lily was Head Girl, she
certainly knew what she was going most of the
time, Marlene was too much of a rule-breaker to
say anything about it.

“Alright, then,” the blonde said. “Don’t wake me up

when you come in again, though. I have Quidditch
practice tomorrow and Potter will fuck my life up if I
fall asleep on my broom again.”

“Again?” Lily said, blinking in surprise.

But too late, Marlene was lying on bed again and

she had the annoying habit of falling asleep as soon
as her head hit the pillow, though she did wake
quite easily at any point of the night. Lily, still
confused by the story, turned to look at Anne once
more, but she was still fast asleep as well, mouth
slightly open – there was no drool, but she looked
younger like that; if had no idea of who she was,
she’d say she was fifteen or so.

Quickly, Lily got her coat and put it on before

throwing her cloak over her pyjamas, making her
way out of the dormitory in silence, feeling her legs
complain about the cold making her joints slightly
rigid and her knees crack on the very last step
before she got to the Common Room.

Without thinking twice, she opened the portrait of

the Fat Lady and made her way out of the
Gryffindor Tower.

The Fat Lady woke up from her sleep, snoring

loudly and looking at Lily in shock.

“Goodnight, ma’am,” she said politely, blushing for

being caught already.

“Going out at this hour, Miss Prefect?” the woman

said, narrowing her eyes.

“A midnight walk does wonders for sleep, ma’am,”

she answered.

The woman rolled her eyes, shaking her head in

clear disappointment.

“As if you were the only one using that excuse

today, my dear,” said the woman. “Now, now, don’t
take too long to come back. And tell your friends to
do the same, okay?”

Although Lily had no idea whose friends the Fat

Lady was taking about, she just smiled and nodded,
hoping nothing important was happening around
her.

Marlene groaned once a loud noise woke her up

again in the middle of the night and opened her
eyes, quick to anger in her sleep-deprived
situation.

“Lily, I told you not to –” she stopped herself.

Anne was standing in the middle of the room,

stumbling to stay up after having fallen to the
ground after the nightmare she had, wand in hand
and eyes wide, looking around the room for any
sign of danger. Her wand arm was raised, but
Marlene could see it was shaking violently, as if the
wand weighted pounds in her arm.

“Where’s she?” Anne asked.

“Who?”

“Bella? Where’s that crazy bitch?!” she asked.

“Where’s Lily? Does she have Lily?” she was
stumbling over her own words too, Marlene only
understanding her because she was wakening up
quickly at the sight of her friend so scared.
“Marlene, where’s Lily?!”

“She’s fine. She just went for a walk out in the

gardens, Anne, calm down!” Marlene said, confused
by her reaction to the empty bed beside hers.

Anne seemed relieved for a moment, taking a deep,

shaky breath and walking towards the window of
the bedroom as if she would be able to see Lily
walking around in the gardens as if nothing was
happening, but something made her completely
freeze staring out.

“It’s a full moon,” Anne mumbled.

Marlene nodded.

“Yeah. Did you forget something in Potions?” she

asked, confused by her reaction once more.

Anne’s wand dropped from her hand as she ran to

the chest on the foot of her bed and threw it open,
getting her warmest cloak and throwing it over her
shoulders, struggling to clip it on as she tried to get
her wand from the ground at the same time.

“Shit! Shit!” Anne was grumbling, clearly scared.

“Anne, what’s happening?” Marlene asked, jumping

up from the bed. “Is this about Potions’ homework.
I’m sure if you explained to Slughorn that you just
fell asleep he’ll understand, you never fall asleep,
even when you want to – or need to. Calm down!”

But Anne didn’t answer, she just almost ran into

Marlene as she started moving to the door.

Marlene stood there for a moment, not

understanding anything that was happening as her
friend ran out of the dormitory with her sleeping
gown and socks on under the cloak, but no shoes
and with her hair sticking out in every direction,
slipping out of the bun on the top of her head. Anne
also couldn’t be any paler than she was at the
moment, throwing the door open and running down
the stairs before the door even hit the wall behind
it.

Anne didn’t stop to talk to the clear annoyed Fat

Lady, who complained about another kid running
out of the Gryffindor Room in the middle of the
night. She didn’t even hate time to finish her
sentence before Anne almost threw herself down
the stairs, slipping around in her socks because of
the marble floor. She sprinted down the corridors
and stairs without fearing a fall, getting to the wet
grounds outside of the castle and running even
faster outside as she looked around for anything
that looked familiar.

She didn’t think of what she was going to say to

Lily once she found her. If she was unharmed and
confused, she’d have to lie her way out of it. If she
saw Remus, then things were certainly be a lot
harder to explain, but she had to do that – she had
to find a way to protect Lily. Not only because she
needed to live, but because Remus would never
forgive himself if anything happened to anyone
because of his condition. Still, she knew she
couldn’t just go screaming for her; that would make
the werewolf certainly come to them.

She was nowhere near the entrance of the castle

and nowhere to the left, so Anne ran to the right,
slipping on the wet grass and falling twice before
growing accustomed to the way running in wet
grass in socks felt.

Near the end of the right side, she saw Lily Evans
kneeling down and carefully touching a Moon
Flower under the moonlight. The flower was rare, it
only bloomed at nights of full moon and it always
turned towards the moonlight like the sunflowers
did to the sun. She seemed completely
unbothered…

Until she noticed the dark figure of the huge wolf

running out of the Forbidden Forest right towards
her at full speed, not noticing the red-headed figure
running towards her from the back.

Lily screamed, hand going up to protect her face

once the wolf came close enough to bare its teeth
and make it shine under the little light.

But the nails didn’t tear her skin nor did the teeth
buried themselves deep on her neck.

No pain came.

Just another scream.

Lily opened her eyes in shock.

Anne was standing in front of her on her tip-toes,

arms stretched out and yelling at the wolf as loudly
as her throat could manage. Her face was red from
running and she was sweaty from it and from the
nightmare as well, but she looked almost as
animalistic as the wolf in front of them. The wolf
stood in its back paws, making a loud noise and
sniffing around the air, leaning towards Anne
carefully as if smelling a curious puppy that came
too close to him, but not hurting her in the first
opportunity it had – no, the wolf took a step back.

Lily understood in a second that it wasn’t a wolf. It

was a werewolf.

Anne was screaming and waving her arms, almost

jumping up and down to get the werewolf’s
attention away from Lily, even though she was
almost two head smaller than the wolf standing in
its back legs and staring at her.

Lily thought she was about to faint.

Nothing could go crazier than it already was.

And then a huge red stag ran out of the Forbidden

Forest, sprinting towards them as well and, before
she could warn Anne about the second danger
coming to them, the stag entered in between Anne
and the wolf, standing in its back legs as well and
pushing the front legs on the wolf’s shoulder,
almost as if punching him away from the girls. The
stag put all his feet on the ground, using his antlers
to poke the werewolf and urge him to run back into
the woods, though the werewolf refused at first –
the stag then made a sound that almost sounded
like roar or a scream, making the werewolf take
several steps back in surprise.

Lily had been taken so aback by the huge

appearance that she didn’t even notice the big
black dog running there too until it bit Anne’s cloak,
pulling her back surprisingly gently to a dog that
size. It had no collar on, but in its neck, there was
a rat holding onto its hair before receiving a hit by
the werewolf and jumping down and running to
Anne’s feet, going between it and running to Lily,
who screamed again.

The scream brought Anne back to reality, turning

her back to the fight going on and leaning down to
get the rat in hands before running, grabbing Lily’s
arm and leading all of them towards the entrance of
the castle.

“Faster!” Anne screamed.

“What is going on?” Lily screamed.

“Not now! Run!” Anne said.

And the girl did, following her friend without a

second thought and not questioning why she was
holding the rat so gently on her hand as she ran
with her.

As they got to door of the castle, Anne kicked it

open, let Lily in and closed it, throwing her whole-
body weight against it and putting the rat on the
ground. She fell, slipping down to the marble with
her hands shaking and her dirty feet sliding across
the white floor, making the mud leave marks.

“What the fuck were you doing outside in the

middle of the night, Lily?” Anne asked, voice a lot
louder now that it echoed around the corridors and
Great Hall.

“I was just taking a walk. I always do that,” Lily

answered.

“Not in the middle of a full moon night, you bimbo!”

Anne screamed.

“What did you just call me?!”

“You don’t go outside near the Forbidden Forest in

a full moon night, Lily. You should know that by this
point. You’re in your last year and you’re Head
Girl!” Anne said. Sure, Lily seemed upset, but Anne
had been the one to protect her, so Lily was just
listening to her in silence for a moment, taking the
scolding. “You scared the living shite out of me.
Don’t do that again. I woke up and I thought you
were taken and then Marlene said you were taking
a walk and then I saw the moon! I thought I was
going to die of a heart attack before I could find
you. Lily, please!”

Lily looked at Anne in surprise as she saw the tears

running down her sweaty face. Anne then started
sobbing. Confused and upset, Lily just started
crying with her, sitting beside her on the ground
and sobbing her own fears away.

“I thought I was going to die too,” Lily admitted,

crying.

“No!” Anne lamented.

“Yes!” Lily answered. In her tears, Lily asked what

was bothering her. “Why would you bring the rat
with us?” Lily cried. “I’m scared of rats.”

Anne sobbed even more.

“Pete?” she cried.

Lily looked up in surprise to see a very confused

and scared Peter Pettigrew standing in front of
them. He had a small bruise forming on his cheek
where the werewolf had hit him, but otherwise he
looked fine, just very unsure of what to do with the
two crying and scared girls sitting in front of him.

“Yeah?” he asked, voice wavering.

“Why I did I bring you?” Anne sobbed.

Lily sobbed even more.

“He’s an animagus. How could I not notice?”

Uncomfortable with the whole situation happening,

Peter quietly sat down in front of the two crying
girls and waited. Slowly, he made his way to sit in
between the two and did what he always saw
James doing when some younger people were
upset and crying, he put his arms around their
shoulders. The result was immediate, Lily and Anne
turned towards him, both sobbing now on his
shoulder. He sat there, unmoving until sunrise,
listening to them crying and Anne sometimes trying
to explain how James was a stag and Sirius a grim,
which only made Lily even more upset because,
apparently, she had tried becoming an illegal
animagus before, but didn’t manage to do so
because McGonagall found out and gave her a
scolding.

It was almost six in the morning when he managed

to convince both of them to go back with him to the
Gryffindor Common Room to get clean from all the
mud since it was a Sunday.

He waited on the Common Room while Lily and

Anne went up to take a shower, though he was
pretty sure by the way Anne was clinging onto Lily
that they were certain to shower together out of
separation-anxiety.

When they came down, they looked a lot better.

Anne had a bloated face and puffy eyes, her hair

was tamed and she was dressed in common
wizarding robes in royal-blue, accompanied by Lily
with wet hair and a Muggle white shirt and jeans.

“The boys must get here any moment now,” Peter

said, glancing at the sun outside. “It’s already sun
outside, they must be waiting for Madame Pomfrey
to leave so they can get out from under the
Invisibility Cloak.”

Anne nodded.

“I need to talk to Remus,” Lily said.

“He might now want to at the moment,” Anne said.

“I’m sure Sirius will tell him what happened before
they come here. James won’t leave them alone
until he’s sure Sirius won’t dramatize it all and
make Remus even more scared.”

“That’s mean,” Lily said.

“He doesn’t do that on purpose though,” Peter said.

“Sirius is just very dramatic. He doesn’t notice he’s
doing it.”

“I bet he doesn’t, otherwise there was no way

someone could be that obnoxious all the time,” Lily
said.

“You’re going out with my friend now, Evans, don’t

speak of the others,” Peter said, clearly annoyed.
“James won’t give you the time of day if you keep
jabbing at his best mate, alright? You don’t know
Sirius well enough to take a jab at him like that.”

Lily looked at Peter in surprise.

“I might have to take Peter’s side here,” Anne

agreed. “Sirius’ a good bloke, just has a flare for
the dramatics. Once you get used to it, you
understand him a lot more than before and his
story-telling becomes less like hearing a liar and
more like hearing a really bad actor, it’s amazingly
funny.”

“Hilarious,” agreed Peter.

Blushing, Lily looked away in the very moment that

the portrait swung open and James Potter ran in.

“Anne?” he called out.

“I’m here. I’m alright,” Anne said, dismissing.

“Lils?”

“I’m okay,” Lily said, nodding at the boy.

James sighed in complete relief as Sirius walked

into the room, Remus with an arm around his
shoulders and being supported.

“Remus, you should be in the Hospital Wing!” Peter

said. “How are you feeling? Are you hurt, Moony?”

“I’m sorry, Wormtail,” said Remus, voice choked

out. He had been trying not to cry since the
moment he was told what had happened. “I didn’t
mean to hurt you. Girls, I’m so sorry. Anne, I didn’t
want to scare you, I really didn’t.”

“I know, Remus, you’re fine,” Anne dismissed. “Are

you alright? It must have scared you as well.”

Remus’ eyes watered, but he nodded firmly,

dismissing any worries about his own health or
situation. All he could think was that he ran
towards his goddaughter and could have hurt her if
James hadn’t run in between them and pushed him
away strongly enough that there were bruises on
his shoulders and collarbones.

His eyes turned to the other red-head in the room,

but Lily wasn’t too worried about him, she was still
looking around the other boys to make sure they
were around as well before she turned to look at
him and… smiled.

“Good to know you’re alright, Remus,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Lily.”

“You didn’t have control over yourself, I

understand. I was the one out there in a full moon,
I was a bimbo, according to Anne,” Lily said,
managing a little smile, though James turned to
glare at Anne, who just shrugged. “I was scared,
but you didn’t attack anyone.”

“I attacked Anne,” Remus said.

“You didn’t, though,” Peter said. “You just sniffed

her, really.”

James nodded, putting a hand on Remus’ back.

“It was like you knew she was pack, mate, really. It
was like I told you, I just pushed you because I
wanted you away from Lily, but you seemed rather
comfortable with Anne there,” James said. “Now,
let’s all calm down, clean up and go for breakfast,
alright? Everybody is alright, though Pete does look
like he was punched.”

“The story is: Sirius punched me. I scared him and

got punched,” Peter said.

Sirius glared at him.

“Why me?”

“Why not?” Anne asked.

Sirius blinked.

“Fair enough,” said Sirius, nodding to himself. He

had been mean to Peter enough times to let his
repuation take the hit for it, especially now that he
was that happy; all his friends were alright.

Chapter 55: Chapter Fifty-Four

Summary:
SEXUAL THEMES AND SEXUAL
ASSAULT IS IMPLIED IN THIS
CHAPTED.

LITERALLY JUST SNOGGING.

Chapter Fifty-Four –

HIGH IN LOVE

It wasn’t hard for anyone to see Regulus making

his way through the corridors in the middle of the
night as if he was doing nothing wrong after
curfew, prefect pin on his chest shining under the
moonlight as he almost skipped around in
happiness. If only anyone was there to see him that
lost in ecstasy, people would stop saying that he
looked nothing more than a depressed teenager
with too much power in his hands with a tattoo on
his left arm.

Regulus Black was a young man on his way to see

his lover once more, of course he was going to look
happy.

In the Room, Anne smiled once footsteps outside

pacing around the front were heard and she waved
when Regulus walked in, shrugging his cloak off
and throwing it to the side, ignoring when magic
made it float and fold itself, being put on the small
table beside the door.

The Room looked different, but he recognized it any

way.

“Your bedroom in the Potter Manor,” he

commented. “I missed it.”

“What? You missed the pink and cream-coloured

walls?” she teased. “Or did you miss the super soft
bed?”

“The bed, of course,” he said. “Never have I ever

slept that well again.”

“It’s called passing out drunk,” Anne answered with

a small grin on her face.

He chuckled, walking towards her and putting his

hands on her face before kissing her on the lips
hard. He pulled away, smiling at her and sitting on
the small chaise sofa on the foot of her bed, taking
his sweet time to untie his shoes.

Anne was sitting on the bed, already without shoes

and on a long white nightgown with lace, cloak
folded right beside Regulus’ and seemingly
comfortable as she kicked the thick covers over the
bed and tucking herself in without much trouble as
she watched Regulus still in his uniform moving
around.

“Why are you still wearing the uniform? You don’t

have Astronomy tonight,” she said.

“Severus and I were studying on the library and I

ended up losing track of time,” he said. “Marcus
has a date tonight with a Hufflepuff girl, so I’m
quite safe. Evan doesn’t really ask questions, he
just glares most of the time when he catches me on
a lie, though he’s not all that interested in knowing
the truth.”

“Rosier?” she said.

“Evan Rosier. Death Eater, low-foot soldier,” he

explained, getting up and making his way to lie
beside her on the bed. “No matter. How was your
day?”

Anne smiled.

“Good,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Just good? And it didn’t seem good. You fell asleep

in DADA, by what I heard,” he said rolling his eyes
at her. He sighed as he covered himself as well,
delight with feeling her warmth beside him. “Did
something happen yesterday? You’re not one to fall
asleep in public unless you’re exhausted.”

She hesitated.

“Actually,” she said, taking a moment to put her

story right. “Actually, yes, something did happen. I
had a nightmare and when I woke up Lily was
nowhere to be seen, so I freaked out until I found
her walking around in the gardens last night. The
thing is: it was the full moon,” the way his face
paled made her regret telling him anything, but she
knew that he was going to find a way to understand
what happened and if she hid it from him, he would
get angry. “Everything was fine. Remus didn’t
attack me, just sniffed around and I only got hurt
falling.”

“You got hurt?!” he said, sitting down and pulling

the cover away from her. “Show me!”

She rolled her eyes, pushing herself to sit down as

well.

“I just fell down,” she dismissed.

“Show me,” he insisted.

Sighing in annoyance, she pulled the long

nightgown up, showing her legs until a few fingers
up her knee. Her knees were bruised and cut by the
grass burn, but otherwise she looked alright. He
hadn’t been able to see her knees and legs since
they were hidden under the thigh-high socks she
usually had under the skirt, but without it, it looked
like a child falling on the yard during a play.

He hissed with the bloody mess.

“It’s healing,” she said.

“Not fast enough,” he said. “Take a potion for it.”

“I won’t take a potion because I scrapped my knee,

Regulus.”

He huffed and crossed his arms, trying to urge her

into agreeing with him, but Anne only looked at him
and raised her eyebrows, clearly unwilling to budge
on her decision. It was quick to make Regulus
change approach, sighing and covering her once
more as they sat beside each other under the
covers and trying to calm each other down.

“I was fine. Moony just sniffed me and then he

moved away. Besides, James and Sirius pushed
him away and Peter led Lily and I away from there
quickly,” Anne explained. “We were all alright,
though Pete got hit on the face.”

“So Sirius didn’t hit him?” Regulus asked. “I knew

it! There was no way Sirius was ever going to
actually punch any of those guys. Easier for him to
punch me than them.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Anne cut him off.

“Am I wrong?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in

surprise.

“Well, not really,” she said. He grinned, smug. “But

that doesn’t mean you can just dramatize your
brother-issues.”

‘Brother-issues’, that caught Regulus so by surprise

that he made an awful noise before laughing. The
fact that he had heard, at first, ‘bother-issues’
made everything even funnier to him at that
moment.

Startled by his reaction, Anne turned to look at

him, not managing to hold back her own surprised
laugh and amused raise of eyebrows.

“Well, I’m glad everybody was well at the end,”

Regulus said, turning to look at her again once the
laughing stopped. “But you have to admit that I
have reason to be terrified for you when you tell
me you threw yourself in front of your mother
because of a werewolf, even if that werewolf is your
godfather.”

“Leave my godfather alone, Black,” she answered,

fake glaring at him.

Regulus smiled.

The way her eyes had narrowed, but it seemed to

still have some brightness in them made him think
her to be a lot sweeter than she usually was when
glaring at him. He couldn’t stop himself. Before he
thought of anything, he had leaned over and kissed
her on the lips once more, caressing her bottom lip
with a sweet kiss.

He pulled away soon after, blushing a bit.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice, suddenly

whispering without reason. “I should’ve asked you
before I’ve done that. Sorry.”

“It’s alright, Regulus. I’d have said something and

not kissed back if I had a problem with it, wouldn’t
I?” she said, rolling her eyes and leaning over to
him. Without missing a bit, she pushed a leg over
him, sitting on his lap with both legs in which side
of his body. “I’m very glad you respect me and my
boundaries and I’m lucky, I know. Through the time
we are together, you never asked a single question
about what happened.”

“I don’t need to. I know what happened.”

“Not everything.”

“I don’t need to know everything,” he said.

“Something happened, you were hurt and I’m here
to never let you get hurt like that ever again. That’s
all I need to know, really. Whatever was your past,
you promised whatever was what you saw with the
Horcrux that you wouldn’t let it control you
anymore and I can see you fighting it.”

“I’m trying,” she admitted. “Some days are better

than others. Sometimes even my own touch as I
clean myself in the shower makes me crawl back
into the little place in my brain where I run away
from all this.”

Regulus’ arms around her waist pulled her closer,

her arms went over his shoulders, hugging him.

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’ll gladly hear,”
Regulus said.

“I don’t want to and I don’t think I’ll ever be able

to,” she said.

“Then I don’t need to know,” he said.

Anne hugged him tighter. She had never thought

she would meet anyone that would understand her
story without actually having to hear it. She had
heard of men wanting to hear women’s story and
actually finding pleasure in the retellings, but there
was Regulus, not wanting anything that she wasn’t
more than willing to give. She didn’t want to taint
him already bad life with even more horrible
stories.

She pulled away only to bring him into a thankful,

deep kiss. Regulus didn’t hesitate to put his hands
on her hips and pull her closer to kiss her, his left
hand going to her face and caressing it gently
before allowing his tongue to slip out of his mouth
and into hers. Anne had no problem in open her lips
just enough to let it in and enjoy the way it
caressed her own. She sighed, pulling him closer.

Her hips moved forward at first.

Regulus hand on her hip made a small movement

before squeezing it.

“Want me to stop?” Anne asked, pulling away

confused.

“If you just want a quiet night with a sweet little

kiss, yes. If you want a good snog, then, no, go on,
dear, I’ll love it,” he joked.

Anne, still looking at him, smiled and held onto his

shoulder before rolling her hips while looking at him
straight in the eye. He smiled back, clearly happy
for her decision taken without as much as a second
thought. He groaned when her thighs squeezed him
slightly as she leaned down to capture his lips and
tongue into hers again. She sighed when his hips
pushed against her slightly, giggling quietly by her
reaction, but arms going around his shoulders for a
deeper kiss as they bodies were flush against each
other.

He pulled away from the kiss first, the hand on her

face pushed some of her hair away from her face to
give him access to her neck and there he focused;
there were kissed, sweet nibbles and licks all over
her neck and collarbone. The hand on her hair let
go and slowly made its way down, caressing her
neck and shoulders in the process, the side of her
breasts and the ribs on her side before settling on
her waist.

Anne didn’t pull away to untie her nightgown, but

once Regulus felt her hand touching his face
without it meaning to, he pulled away to watch.

The nightgown had a small bow on the very front of

it; bow that she untied, making the nightgown too
big around her shoulders and letting it fall from her
shoulders and pooling around her hips.

“Oh, Sweet Merlin,” he grumbled in surprise.

Naked breasts stood tall in front of him, nipples

begging for attention.

Before he could as much as move towards her,

Anne started to unbutton his shirt with agility. The
small smug grin on her face showed him that she
knew exactly what was her power over him.

He helped her once the shirt was completely open

and untucked, he shrugged it off, throwing to the
side of the bed and looking back at her with a
smile, pulling her flush against him once more for
another kiss. He could feel her body against him a
lot better than he expected – it was like his whole
body knew what he was doing and every
centimetre of his skin was hyper-aware of its
feelings.

He turned to Anne once more, leaned slowly

towards her chest, kissing the middle of her
sternum with a chaste kiss. She sighed, throwing
her head back and not complaining, so Regulus did
it again… and again. And then he kissed the left
breast, gently taking the other in his hand.

Her hips stuttered against his as she groaned. Anne

laughed breathily with the odd feeling once he
kissed her left nipple. Her arms were still around
his neck, but this time her right hand went to his
hair, fingers tugging at his curls as he sucked on
her breast gently, nibbling her nipple before licking
it and pulling away.

Regulus almost melted once his eyes met Anne’s.

Her face was slightly pink, her lips separated and

her eyes slowly opening as she was still lost in the
feeling of pleasure that he had been able to give
her.

“You look so beautiful,” he commented before he

could stop himself.

“You’re handsome as well, my prince,” she laughed,

kissing his cheek before kissing his lips. She bit her
own lips. “Can I be under now?”

“I’m sorry?” he asked, confused.

Anne climbed off of him and lied down beside him,

looking at him expectedly. He understood then that
she wanted him to be on top – he smiled, he liked
the feeling of being on top. Besides, with Anne lying
down, her breasts were spilling to the sides.

He moaned once he was on top of her, his half-hard

erection brushing the inside of her thigh. Anne
smiled. Regulus leaned over her to kiss her on the
lips, tongue sweeping into her mouth and caressing
her tongue before pulling back and kissing her
neck, licking her collarbone and sucking her right
breast this time. As she moaned, her back arched
as if offering himself to him, legs curling around his
hips and pulling his hips against hers.

“Like this,” she explained once he pulled back to

look at her once more.

“And so I guessed,” he laughed.

They kissed lips to lips once more.

Hips didn’t stop moving against one another.

Regulus felt embarrassed about how hard he was,

but there was no way to deny that Anne made him
climb walls in desire and lust. All his
embarrassment certainly disappeared once he could
feel the wet spot rubbing on his trousers; he wasn’t
the only one certainly turned on by their situation.
That made him even more excited.

He thrusted against her, a hand holding onto her

breast and the other holding onto the headboard of
the bed, the only reason he was even able to do
what he was doing without crushing Anne. She
moaned loudly and high-pitched.

“Must I assume that you liked it, or was that a

warning to not do that again?” he asked on her ear
in a whisper, hips moving slower, but not stopping.
Her only response was another loud moan and a
stutter of her hips against his. “Anne?” her hands
held onto his hair, pulling him into a kiss. He pulled
back after they pulled away for air. “Should I stop?”

“Oh, Regulus. Don’t you dare stop!” she said, hips

moving against his faster.

And he didn’t.

Until her thighs held him in place against her as it

fluttered and trembled, holding him flush against
her hip bone as she closed her eyes tight, she bit
his shoulder. He didn’t hesitate to keep moving
once he realized Anne was on her high, his hips
stuttered and he was certainly a lot less controlled
than he wanted to be, but he brought her down
right before he was pulled over the edge himself
with a loud groan before a pathetic yelp as the
hand on her breast went to her hips, holding them
in place as he spilled himself inside of his own
trousers and underwear.

As his arm could no longer hold his weight, he fell

on top of her.

Anne yelped, making an ‘oof’ under her gasping

breaths.

“Sorry,” he choked out.

He rolled to the side.

Anne took a deep breath once he wasn’t on top of

her anymore, taking a moment before turning to
her side to look at him.

“Well, that was –” she stopped himself, raising her

eyebrows and looking away.

He looked at her.

“I hope that’s something good,” he said, still

panting.

“Something great,” she corrected. “It has been

quite a bit of time since I last… came.”

“Liar,” he dismissed.

“I don’t like touching myself,” she explained. “I

never really get there and it only makes me
frustrated, so I just don’t at this point. Besides… I
shared my bedroom with my brother most of my
life, I’m sorry if I’m a bit hesitant about it.” He
cringed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

There was a moment of silence before Regulus

turned to his side too.

“Did you eat strawberry before coming here?” he

asked out of nowhere.

She nodded, surprised.

“Marlene bought some strawberry covered in

chocolate, but she didn’t really eat everything, so
she gave me a few of them right before I walked
out. I didn’t have time to brush my teeth because I
didn’t want to be late. I’m so sorry,” she said,
blushing. “I didn’t think I would taste like them.”

“It’s alright. I don’t hate it,” he said.

Regulus wouldn’t say he liked it, either. He didn’t

really like strawberries, but he certainly did put the
smell of them high on his list of favourite smells,
especially after he recognized Anne’s body cream
as Mariana’s Diamonds Red once he walked by the
store in Diagon Alley. The smell had been
astonishingly strong at first, but then he got used
to it. The taste of strawberries, however, wasn’t all
his favourite; if he was completely honest, he
thought them too bitter.

“Good, because otherwise I’d have commented

about the black licoirice taste in your mouth,” she
teased.

“You just did,” he teased back.

She smiled at him.

Anne didn’t like black licoirice. Harry thought them

to be sickly sweet, but she thought the smell to be
a bit less comfortable than the taste, after all she
had eaten it before when it was all the sweet Ron
had and she just needed something sweet after
accidently eating something very spicy and since
them she had a soft spot for the taste, but the
smell still made her stomach churn if she was
having a bad day. Hermione loved it, perhaps that
was why Ron always had a handful of them on his
bag; simply thinking of that possibility made Anne
smile to herself.

Regulus noticed the smile disappearing before

coming back slightly sad, but he didn’t acknowledge
it out loud. Anne was entitled to her memories and,
if she wanted, she would talk about them to him.

He put his arm to the side and smiled at her,

catching her attention.

Anne smiled again, putting her head on his arm and

rolling to hold onto him naked torso with her arms,
her own nudeness not bothering her as she held
him close and closed her eyes, not sleeping, just
embracing the feeling of not being alone even in
her silence.

Chapter 56: Chapter Fifty-Five

Summary:
Anne recieves flowers at breakfast
and Regulus can't put his feeling
into words.

Notes:
Fluff, mostly, but with a bit of
angst at the very end.

FLOWERS

Sirius Black didn’t make a single comment on how

his brother seemed too happy as he laughed of
something Severus Snape had said; after all, there
was no way Snape was funny, especially at that
time in the morning. But he knew why Regulus was
in such a good mood, the way Snape had held onto
his collar and raised it just enough to peek into the
shirt, to the shoulder and laughed, shaking his
head only made it obvious.

In silence as his Remus talked excitedly about his

newest interest (candle-making and scent-making)
and how his ‘furry little problem’ finally was helping
him in something other than hearing gossips. He
had been very happy about it because it could
actually turn into a job in the future and that was
something he could enjoy doing.

“…I’m sorry if I’m boring you,” Remus said

suddenly.

Sirius turned to him with wide eyes.

“You’re not. Why would you even say that?” Sirius

asked, shaking his head in despair. “I’m just a bit
distracted now and Anne isn’t here yet and… well,
Regulus looks a bit too happy.”

“Can you, please, stop trying to get involved in

your brother’s love life?” Remus said, sighing. “He’s
happy with her and she’s quite happy with him. The
nightmares stopped, Sirius, that has to count for
something.”

“Stopped? How do you know that?” Sirius asked.

Remus took a deep breath and looked at the doors

of the Great Hall as Anne waved at Marlene and
quickly made her way to sit beside her friend, Lily
jumping to whisper something that made her laugh
on her ear and hold her hand. James barely looked
up, half-asleep over his place because Marlene had
accidently revealed that – once more – Anne wasn’t
on the dormitory and he had spent the night
searching for her in the Map and she was nowhere
to be seen until he fell asleep around three in the
morning.

“Take one good look at her,” Remus said.

“She looks happy,” Sirius had to admit.

“She looks healthy,” Remus corrected. “Look, the

bags under her eyes are getting better and her face
not always bloated in the morning, which means
she didn’t cry herself to sleep again. It might be a
coincidence that her relationship with him and the
nightmares stopping had the same timing, but it
certainly could mean something.”

Sirius shifted, uncomfortable, on his seat.

“That doesn’t sound healthy.”

“What?”

“Her mental health getting better just because

she’s in a relationship,” he said.

Remus rolled his eyes.

“This has nothing to do with it.”

“It has, though!” Sirius insisted.

“Just because they feel comfortable with each other

and talk to each other, making their traumas be a
bit more bearable, it doesn’t matter they are co-
dependent, Sirius,” Remus disagreed. “We know
Anne. She’s strong and has plans on her own; not
everything in her life revolves around Regulus. I’m
sure Regulus would be a lot happier if Anne focused
on him as much as she focusses on her plans.”

“And I’m sure James would be happy if she focused

on her grades,” Sirius said, moody.

That made Remus laugh.

“By your tone of voice, James is not the only one

that is a bit jealous of her,” Remus teased. “Must I
be worried?”

Sirius slapped his arm, making Remus’ laughter

grow even more as he reached for his cup to drink
his apple juice, though he struggled to swallow it
mid laughter and trying to hold back his grin as his
boyfriend’s anger and embarrassment took over his
face, making it go very pink on the cheeks and
forehead.

“Of course not!” Sirius exclaimed. “It’s just Anne.

My Annie.”

“That doesn’t make it sound any better,” Remus

laughed even more. “And she’s my Annie, as I’m
sure you are aware. You have your Harry, so piss
off.”

“But I’m the one that lives with her!”

“For now!” Remus quickly cut him off. “She might
live with me in the future. I’m going to be the fun
uncle that will give her condoms whenever I think
she needs it and not ask questions besides what
time she thinks she’s going to be back.”

“So irresponsible!” Sirius said, sounding

disappointed and shaking his head.

Remus threw his head back in laughter, belly

hurting already from everything that he had
laughed already.

“Says you, Mister-It-Was-Just-A-Prank-Moony,”

teased Remus.

Sirius glared at him. He hated when The Prank was

brought up in conversation, even if Remus had
forgiven him; he still felt terribly guilty and, if he
was a bit of a better person, he would’ve
apologized to Snivellus, but Sirius refused to be a
better person and being in good terms with his
friends was enough, even if sometimes he lied in
bed awake wondering how he would live if Severus
Snape had actually died that night.

“Low blow! Low blow!” he said, looking away.

Remus hugged him by the side, kissing him temple

to distract him from the thoughts he knew to be
under all that black hair.

Sirius listened to all the candle-making talk in

silence, but with his full attention.

Beside Sirius, Peter smiled into his food as Marlene

had put him into the conversation about Quidditch
with her and James while Anne and Lily were
talking about something else in whispers and
between giggles that certainly were making
Marlene very curious since she was glancing at the
two girls every now and again, trying to hear
something.

“Oh, thank Merlin,” Marlene said, looking up.

“Post!” she announced.

A few younger students cheered when the owls

started to fly down from the sky towards their table
and leaving newspapers, boxes and letters all
around.

James was quick to take the small box in brown

packaging and opening it, showing it off to Sirius.
Cupcakes that his mother had made and sent to
him and his friends (though it was very much
specified that Anne was to eat at least one before
he gave it to his friends). Sirius reached for it, but
received a smack on the hand.

The group went quiet when a flower bouquet fell on

the middle of them.

It was full, but not all that big. It looked beautiful,

but somewhat not professional. It had been made
most likely by the hands of a teenager with good
intentions since the flowers were white and violet
coloured, simple, though not all that easily found.

“James, --” started Lily.

“It wasn’t me, I promise,” James quickly said. “I

had nothing to do with this, please don’t be angry
at me.”

Ever since they had started going out, but put no

labels on their relationship, things were a bit
awkward still, though they were working on it.
James already called Lily his girlfriends to his
friends and Lily had even refereed to James as her
boyfriend to Anne and Marlene before, but nothing
public yet. They had wanted to keep everything
quiet for now until they were sure things were
going to work together without the pressure of
other people watching them all the time.

“What are those?” Peter asked.

“Those are Arabic-Jasmines,” Lily said.

Anne leaned closer. Sambac, she had learned about

that flower under that nickname, but the other
flower was unmistakable. The flower was hard to
find on England, especially around that time of the
year; it was too cold at the moment and the
country itself was cold, they usually only grew in
tropical climates.

“Sambac and French Willows,” Anne said, smiling.

She reached for the flowers, pulling them closer to

herself to look at it a bit better.

“There’s a note,” Sirius said.

He reached for it so quickly that Anne had no time

to stop him from getting it. Sirius really needed to
stop reading things that didn’t belong to him,
because as soon as he opened it, his face went pale
before going pink and the card was put down.

Anne rolled her eyes, taking the card and opening

it.

She blushed deeply.

My Anne-Girl,

When we are free, I will do everything I want to. I

will walk into you and pretend I don’t know you are
there, but discover you all over again. We will talk
about the thought in our heads all over again; the
millions of them that never stop, myriad of scars of
the past exposed in our skins, but we will kiss them
and we will let the world burn to the end.

When I can, I will cover you with all my love, with

caresses and ecstasy until we faint and die side by
side in the darkness of the best night of our lives. I
shall astonish you with all the joys of the flesh and
pains of passion. I wait patiently every night for
you in my dreams and in my arms.

R.A.B.

Regulus had sent her a sensual letter mid-breakfast

and he was quite happily munching his food as if he
had not filled her head with dirty thoughts for the
rest of the day, calmly taking Elizabeth Fawley’s
conversation in and nodding with a smile. He didn’t
even look at her, but by the smugness on his face
she knew that he could feel her watching him
attentively.

“What is it? Let me read it,” James said, leaning

over to try to get the card from her hand. Anne put
it quickly inside of her shirt, into her bra and close
to her heart, glaring at her father for being too
nosy. “What was written in it, mate? Pads?”

But Sirius was unwilling to talk at the moment,

shaking his head and biting his lip, and he would
forever be unwilling to speak about what he had
read.

Marlene, who had read it over Anne’s shoulder,

giggled.

“A lot was written there… a lot,” Marlene said.

“You’re not helping,” Remus warned.

Marlene shrugged.

Lily leaned to take a peek, reading it as fast as she

could before she got to the second part, not holding
back her smile anymore and closing it before she
finished, also blushing this time.

“My, my, Anne,” Lily said. “You caught him good.

Keep up the good job and you’ll get a lot more than
flowers; maybe a ring soon enough?”

“No! Stop that!” James said. “No rings any time

soon. She’s seventeen.”

“You proposed to Lily at thirteen,” Marlene said.

“Well, she said ‘no’, didn’t she?” James said. “No

marriage before twenty.”

“Oh, shut it,” Anne said. “You’re not one to talk,

James, really.”

The fact that Anne knew that her parents had

married at eighteen only made the scene of James
freaking out a lot funnier than he intended on
making. James also knew that at that point, so he
just kept quiet, but didn’t stop glaring at Anne and
at the flowers every now and again.

“Must I know what those flowers mean?” Anne

asked Sirius.

Although she knew that Regulus knew that French

Willows were her favourite flower, she wasn’t sure
where he found the idea of sending her jasmines as
well, especially Arabic ones since she had never
expressed any interest in them.

“Probably,” Sirius said. “It is a common language.”

“Language?” Remus asked.

“The Language of Flowers,” Lily said.

James nodded.

“It’s a common thing amongst pure-bloods, it might

be important to know the reason why he sent the
flowers as well, it might be important. Did
something important happen yesterday night?”
James asked.

“Yeah,” was all Anne answered.

Sirius nodded.

“Then probably you should.”

Being Wednesday, Anne had the whole day always

nearby Regulus, so it was easy and completely
natural of her to take her first opportunity of the
classroom somehow being loud so she could ask.

“Hey, what were those flowers for?” she asked.

Regulus looked up from his Potion, taking a single

glance around before answering.

“Well,” he mumbled his answer. Anne had to take a

single step to the side to manage to listen what he
had to say, still their shoulders brushed for a
moment and she had to take a step back, annoyed
that they couldn’t touch each other publicly. “I
thought you deserved it.”

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“For trusting me,” he said.

She sighed, looking down at the knife in her hands

that were chopping frog’s liver.

“I don’t need a present for doing the very least into

a relationship,” she mumbled. “I don’t need flowers
because we snogged, Regulus.”

He looked at her in shock, trying his best not to

blush.

“This isn’t it!” he said.

He was too loud, clearly, because most of the class

either glanced or just plain stared at them (Severus
Snape being one of the latter, clearly warning
Regulus off against calling more attention to
himself and Anne). Regulus shook his head, hand
gripping his own knife and using the back of his
hand and wrist to push his hair away from his face
without cutting himself.

“What?” Anne asked.

“You’re chopping it wrong,” he said, voice still a bit

loud.

A Slytherin two tables down chuckled and Anne

blushed. She wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t because
she had been the one that taught Regulus that new
chopping technic that Severus used in the future,
but, apparently, he had yet to learn it at this time.
Still, she hated the idea that people thought she
was doing something wrong in something as simple
as a 6th level year potion.

“What was the reason, then?” she asked in a low

voice.

“You trusted me a lot more than I had expected

you to. Those flowers were not rewards or gifts, it
was just my way of telling you I appreciated it. See
them as a thank you, if that makes you more
comfortable with accepting them,” Regulus said,
taking the liver piece and throwing them into the
potion. “Really, I didn’t mean for it to be seen as
some type of reward for snogging me,” he smirked
to himself. “One would think that by your reaction
last night, staying over certainly was a reward in
itself.”

If they weren’t in public, she would’ve smacked him

in the back of the head, but all she did was hold her
own grin.

“I hadn’t expected you to remember I liked French

Willows,” she admitted. “You were half-asleep when
you asked.”

“But I did ask, didn’t I?” he said.

“Yeah, but you were about to fall asleep.”

“Of course, I remember,” he said, shaking his head

in disappointment for her thoughts of him. “You like
French Willows, but you’re not all that much of a
fan of traditional red roses and you think roses
smell weird, that’s why your perfume is jasmine.”

“That’s why you gave me jasmines as well,” she

guessed.

He shrugged.

“Not really,” he admitted.

“What for, then?” she asked, interested and putting

her knife down.

“Do you know what your flowers mean?” he asked.

She shook her head. “A French Willow is your
flower, indeed, Anne. It means courage and
humanity and I couldn’t help but think of your
intentions here in this mission when I remembered
it. But only French Willows didn’t make good
bouquets, so I found something else that could only
belong to you in my head.”

“And those were Arabic-Jasmines.”

“Yes. They mean I attached myself to you,” he said.

“You’re about to turn into someone a lot more
important to me than I had expected when we first
met, Anne, and I wanted to make sure you knew
that.”

“Is that your way of –” she hesitated.

‘Tell me you love me’, she had wanted to say, but

she held back. She wouldn’t pressure him into
saying words he didn’t mean just because she
sounded like she wanted to hear them, besides
they were in public and that conversation in itself
was dangerous enough to have, exchanging love
vows wouldn’t make their situation any better. She
wanted to tell him she loved him, but they didn’t
know each other for that long and she didn’t want
him to think she sounded fake.

She was too much of a liar for anyone to believe

her easily. She was too much of a secret-hoarder to
share something so important with someone
without them expecting her to want something in
return. At that point, Anne knew her place.

“That’s my way of saying I like you very much,” he

said, unbeknown of him that his thoughts were
going through her head as well.

Anne smiled him without a single one of her fears

coming through her eyes.

Regulus could only think that Anne was so closed

off in so many ways that he hesitated in telling her
that he loved her. How could he when he wasn’t
sure she would say it back to him? He didn’t think
he would be able to go through the rest of the war
without her by his side – if it was as a girlfriend,
that would be great, if it was as a friend, it would
be good. If it was as more, he would be the
happiest soldier in those years.

He smiled back at her without letting anyone know

that his heart felt smaller than it was before he
walked into that classroom.

Chapter 57: Chapter Fifty-Six

Summary:
Anne finds out about a secret and,
for the first time in a long while,
she wants to tell the truth.

SATURDAY; THE 20TH

Anne hated how something had changed in her

relationship with Regulus ever since that snogging
session and morning with flowers. It felt a bit more
awkward, as if she had made a mistake or missed
something as if she was dumb and completely
unknowing of the world beside his little bubble of
war-preparations.

She had been busy, she had to admit, and seeing

Regulus constantly couldn’t be a priority. She had
seen Dumbledore just a few days before that 20th,
he had received word from Moody to tell him that
one of the two guards of the Lestrange’s Vaults had
committed suicide, though Moody himself thought it
to be ‘absolute bullshit’, by the auror’s own words.
Gideon Prewett had been moved from the main
corridor of Gringotts to being a Private Supervisor
of some vaults in the shallower parts of the bank,
losing most of his access to information, which
made Fabian (much against his will) try to get a job
into the bank and was waiting for an answer.

With the 20th being a Saturday, Anne had hopes

that she would have some free time and would be
able to call for Regulus to meet with her if he didn’t
have Quidditch practices.

The idea was destroyed as soon as she walked out

of the Headmaster’s Office just to see through one
of the windows the Quidditch team moving behind
Regulus and towards the Quidditch Field.

She sighed, annoyed.

“Ah, found you!” said a hoarse voice. She turned in

surprise to see Severus Snape running towards her
surprisingly fast and away from the windows.
“Sage, we need to talk. Now!”

“What is this about? Did Regulus send you?” she

asked, eyebrows raising as he took her arm and
starting leading her through the corridors and,
finally, into an empty classroom that had been
unused for quite some type by the musty smell.
“Snape, what happened? Is everybody alright?”

“You said you need information,” he said.

Anne nodded.

“Alright,” she said.

“The Dark Lord will go to Albania, Romania and

Bulgaria during the Winter Holidays,” he told her.
“He will take some of his Death Eaters and I was
chosen to go with him. It would be me, Malfoy,
Lestrange (all of them, including the younger one)
and bloody Evan Rosier,” he sighed in frustration,
clearly annoyed. “He just got into the Inner Circle,
but killed several animals without hesitation during
the trainings; he’s one of the favourites.”

“Do you have a reason?” she asked. “Albania and

Romania are rather safe to assume he’s trying to
buy something or find something hidden, but with
Bulgaria he might be wanting to get more followers
or something that. That would be dangerous. That
could bring the war to outside of the Britain and
Ireland.”

“He didn’t share it,” he said. He shook his head

several times, blinking quickly as if holding back
tears. “He wants Regulus to join him.”

“He already has the Mark,” she said. “I know. He

told me. He showed me.”

“No. I mean, he wants him to follow him through

the countries,” Severus explained. “He expects his
help and his connections in higher places to get
through without much trouble.”

“For that he has Lucius and Abraxas,” she said.

“What does he really want?”

Severus hesitated, glancing at the closed door.

“He wants Regulus to fulfil his first mission under

his name,” he admitted.

Anne knew what ‘fulfil’ a mission meant. Regulus

would be forced to be a Death Eater and not only
carry the title. It was easy to be a called a Death
Eater and feel the horrible pain of taking the Dark
Mark, but that didn’t make someone the follower of
Voldemort or a trusted person in the Inner Circle.
Regulus would be dragged across Europe with the
hopes of presenting himself as a memorable
member of the Inner Circle with his name,
contacts, and position as an Heir and also prove
himself worthy of his place in there – he couldn’t be
a coward and he couldn’t be brave either; he
couldn’t run and he certainly couldn’t face them off.
He would have to kill, maim and torture as a good
robot he was expected to be, not emotion and no
regret for anything other than blood in good, shiny
shoes.

Regulus was no longer allowed to be a boy; he was

to become a man in a few weeks and be proud of it.

She needed to think, her mind screamed at her, but

there was no way she could find a way out for him.
She needed Regulus inside there much like she
needed Severus in there, but how could she in good
conscious ignore their fears and the harm coming
their way?

“He doesn’t know,” Severus added.

That made things worse.

“What, exactly, doesn’t he know?” she asked.

“He has no idea Rosier climbed up the ranks and he

has no idea he is being considered or even about
the trip at all,” Severus said. “He has no idea he’s
being watched and under a test. I have been
keeping him busy, keeping you out of his way.”

“Not that I’ve been giving you a lot of trouble these

days,” she said, sounding a lot bitter than she had
expected.

“Yeah, you haven’t,” he said. “Did you fight? That

makes things easier for me?”

“No, we’re in a great place, I just been… busy.”

Busy, quite the understatement. Anne had

overwhelmed and she was exhausted.

“Why doesn’t he know anything? Don’t you think it

would be best if he knew everything?” she asked.

“Regulus cannot know this. We made a promise not

to tell him to the Dark Lord, I just now found a
loop-hole in the agreement and decided to tell you
with the intention of asking you not to tell him
either.”

“What? Why wouldn’t I?!” she asked, shocked with

the decision the boy seemed to be taking.

“Because if he knows, he’ll do everything in his

power to go just so he has enough information to
tell you when he comes back,” Severus said. “If he
doesn’t know, he’ll act normally and keep on being
completely uninterested in everything we do. It’s
for the best, Anne, believe me. I know it might not
make sense, but I know Regulus and I know how
he’ll react and I know he’ll try his best to do
whatever it takes to make you happy.”

“What if I tell him I don’t want him to go?”

“Then he’ll come because I’m going,” Severus said,

shaking his head. “We both know how he is.”

Loyal. Regulus was loyal to a fault to those loyal to

him. Neither Severus nor Anne would betray him,
even if that meant keeping him in the dark about
things on his own life. It sounded so horrible, mean
and inhumane to not tell someone about something
so important in his own life and future, but what
else could they do?

“He can’t go,” she mumbled.

“He doesn’t have a choice… neither do you.”

“The things he’ll have to do…”

“He’s expecting to do them at some point,” Severus

said. “And, however much I agree that Regulus
might not be able to take everything that he’ll have
to do, things don’t change just because we want
them to. He needs to live through this and survive,
when he comes back, then I’ll help you pick up the
pieces.”

“If there are any pieces to pick up!” she said,

clearly bitter.

Anne knew how terribly mean it sounded how

protective she wanted to be to Regulus when she
had been the one to tell Severus to hold on and
survive through the hell she didn’t want Regulus to
go through. It sounded unfair and dreadfully
hateful, but there was nothing else in her heart
than despair for her loved one.

“To bring him back alive is all I can promise you,”

Severus said.

And Anne knew she didn’t need his promise to

know that Regulus would survive the trip. Promise
or not, Severus would do his best to keep the boy
holding himself together until they were inside the
castle and away from the eyes of other Death
Eaters before he could breakdown. But still, how
could that promise sound enough?

“Do you think you can hold on a bit more?” Anne

asked. “If you can’t, I’ll get you out.”

Severus knew that she was saying that in hopes

that he could forget how uncaring she sounded
when his life had been side by side with Regulus’.
But Severus didn’t dare to care about something so
petty, he knew young love made people act
irrationally, especially in life-death situations.

“I can hold on,” he said firmly. “Can you?”

Anne didn’t answer as she started walking towards

to the door.

She stopped in the doorway.

“Bring him back.”

“I shall.”

“Come back,” she insisted.

Severus’ face softened.

“I’ll try.”

The answer, he noticed as she walked out of the

door and closed it behind her, was that no… Anne
couldn’t hold on for much more because she was
already falling apart under all the pressure already
on her.

Anne walked into the boy’s dormitory without

knocking at three in the morning, hands shaking,
face wet in tears. Another nightmare that made her
wake up with vomit in her mouth and scratches on
her body as she fought the weight of Bellatrix on
top of her – this time, however, no questions about
the sword were asked, only about how much she
had paid or what she had done to make Regulus
Black betray his family and cause. She had been
called awful names and, after a while, the voice of
Bellatrix was Vernon’s. She woke up drenched in
sweat and shaking enough to almost fall once she
threw up to the side of the bed and tried to get up.

After a cleaning spell and muffled sobs stopping,

she made her way down the stairs towards the
Common Room before going up to the boy’s dorms.

It wasn’t hard to see in the dark. Peter was afraid

of the dark, so there were always candles in the
middle of the room ever since Sirius had found out
about his friend’s fear on second year and made a
spell to make candles never finish burning – though
now Remus had been trying to make a candle with
relaxing smells to make Peter lose his fear.

She made her way into James’ bed without asking

permission, just climbing and sitting beside him as
she closed the curtains around them. She put a
sound-proofing spell and shook him. His warmth
under her hands made her tears come back.

“Dad?” she called.

“Hm,” he made, not opening his eyes.

“Dad, please, wake up, please,” she begged, voice

wavering.

His eyes opened at once after he recognized the

voice and the emotion behind it.

“Annie?” he called out.

She muffled a sob.

“I’m scared,” she admitted.

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asked, hands going

near his beside table to get his glasses. He put
them on, finally seeing his daughter’s face bloated,
red and wet. “Oh, sweetheart. You’re awake now. It
was just a nightmare.”

Still muffling her sobs with her hands, she nodded,

throwing herself against him and letting him
embrace her with care and lying her down in bed
with him. She clung to him like a child, like she had
always wanted to do when she was awake in the
middle of the night pretending Harry was her dad
and she would whisper all the terrible things that
had happened in school that day and Harry, in his
sleep, would hold her lightly, not even knowing he
was giving her the comfort she seemed to need.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Regulus was about to be killed because of me,”

she cried. “Oh, Dad, how I could even bring him
into this? This is dangerous enough for him on
himself, can you imagine how much worse I’m
making things by being this close to him?”

“Don’t do this,” he said, shaking his head.

She looked up at him.

“Do what?”

“Throw all the weight of this war in your shoulders,”

he said. “You’re seventeen and you have a
boyfriend that likes you and you like him, I see
nothing wrong with this. You’re being a normal girl
and still making sure you can balance this, grades
and planning a war you should not even be
involved in.”

“I need to be.”

“But that doesn’t mean you should,” he said. “In

times like this we do a lot of things we need, but
doing them doesn’t make them any better. We
need to survive, so we do what we shouldn’t. This
isn’t any different for you, Annie.”

“He can be killed for being mine.”

“Much like he can be killed for saying a syllable out

of place,” James said. “I know it’s not much of a
comfort, but it’s the truth. Nothing that happens to
him will be your fault, no matter how much you feel
like it. He’s a Death Eater and he chose it to
survive, but he came to you to try to live and
you’re giving that to him,” she sniffed, cleaning her
nose with the back of her hand. “Don’t look away
from me. I know you don’t like to have those types
of conversation with me, but I know you love him.”

“And yet you don’t like him,” she mumbled.

“I don’t dislike him,” he said. “I just don’t like the

fact that you are dating someone. I can feel a bit
jealous of my little girl, can I not? I didn’t have you
for nearly enough time to learn how to let go as
many other fathers do.”

Letting go did sound so painful to James, but he

was sure he would certainly let go of Anne when he
gave her away to Regulus in a church, under the
watchful eyes of the Minister himself if it was under
his possibility of making the Minister of Magic
himself to marry the two. Until then, she was his
little girl, even if they shared ages and classes.

She held him.

“Don’t let go yet,” she said.

The begging sounded so childish to her own ears

that she blushed, but James didn’t seem to care.
He held her tighter, not caring at all that she felt
embarrassed because he too wished not to let her
go yet.

“Whenever you need me to, Annie,” he promised,

kissing the top of her head gently. “I’ll always be
here, waiting for you to need me.”

Chapter 58: Chapter Fifty-Seven

Summary:
Regulus deals with people keeping
secrets from him and him finding
out.

ANGER

Dearest Little Cousin,

I have wonderful news to you. You have been

chosen to get your first mission into our cause after
I much convinced the Dark Lord that you were the
right person for the job. Aren’t you happy? It took
me a while, of course, he thinks you to be too
young, but you did skip a whole grade in Hogwarts
and that’s not something everybody can do;
therefore, it must be good for something and it
must mean something as well, am I correct?
Anyways, in the past couple weeks, as I hope you
had noticed, Evan Rosier has been watching you
closely and telling us your every move to make
sure you were the right person for it – you study a
lot in the library, don’t you? So unfun of you.

Now, however, the Dark Lord said that you can do

it and I was allowed to write you and tell you the
good news. Aren’t I a good cousin? Anyways, I’m
sure you’re eager, but for now keep your mouth
shut and wait for more instructions and know that
the mission will be through the Winter Holidays.
Study the Spells I taught you last time we seen
each other.

Be quiet while you wait,

Bellatrix Black-Lestrange.

PS: Burn the letter after you read this, don’t be a

dumb little boy like I’ve been trying to prove you
are not.

Regulus was going to throw up, he was sure. His

stomach was churning and his head was hurting a
lot as he tried to focused on breathing time and
time again, though his body struggled against the
very simple task.

He sat down on his own bed, hands trembling with

the letter and hoping that nobody would catch him
freaking out about the piece of paper in his hand.
He crumpled the letter and threw it on the fireplace
of the bedroom of Slytherin boys of seventh year,
trying his best not to fall to his knees in absolute
despair.

He didn’t want a mission and he certainly didn’t

want to train the stupid spells Bellatrix had taught
him with the second wand he had been keeping
under his pillow in case of emergencies like
Bellatrix had taught him to do. A spare wand had
been a smart idea, he had to admit, but learning
Unforgivables with them had been absolutely
traumatic to him, even if they had used just a dog
from the neighbourhood mutt for that.

The dog had been black, just like Sirius’ animagus

form. It had been hard to kill it after seeing it
whimpering and yelping in pain for hours, but it
would’ve been hard to keep it alive to leave it to
suffer even more. The fact that it was better off
dead was the only thing that kept Regulus from
going crazy out of guilt. If he was feeling like this
already because of a bloody dog, he wasn’t sure he
would make it out after doing the same with a
person.

The door of the dormitory opened as he shook,

watching the paper burn slowly.

“Regulus?”

He looked over his shoulder to Severus Snape

standing near the door, closing it behind him.

“Did you know?” was all Regulus asked.

Severus didn’t need an explanation as he just stood

there, watching him for a moment. That was
answer enough for Regulus’ anger; of course,
Severus knew, he knew everything that was
happening inside that bloody cult.

“Yes,” Severus admitted after a minute of silence.

“And you didn’t tell me why?”

“Because I thought there was a better chance of

you not being chosen if you were seen as
completely useless, being focused on Prefect duties
and Quidditch training like any other boy your age,”
Severus said. “But apparently being completely
unfocused on the war and just living your life like
nothing was happening made Evan Rosier think you
to be a good actor enough to come.”

Regulus shook his head, frowning in disgust for the

horrible reasons his friend had given him. None felt
true, none felt like reason good enough to hide
something so important from him. And to think he
thought of Severus as a really good friend, a loyal
one – and there he was, admitting to betray his
trust over assumptions and hopes; how pathetic,
was all he could think of.

“How dare you,” he groaned.

“Don’t start this, Black.”

“How dare you betray me like this?!” Regulus said,

turning to him completely, forgetting about the
paper burning slowly. “This is absolutely disgusting
of you, Snape. You betrayed me! You said you
wouldn’t hide things from me. You know I can do
this, you know I’m not a child and yet you treat me
like one.”

“The first thing you asked me to do after you took

the Mark was to not let you die,” Snape said,
sounding bitter, but amused. “You sound like a
child to me. A child you ask this of someone.”

“Stop that!”

“Am I lying?!”

“You should’ve told me!” Regulus exclaimed.

Severus took several steps towards him, fast and

firmly, making Regulus stumble back in fear. The
way he walked towards him reminded so much of
Walburga when she was angry that his body
reacted before his mind was aware of where he
truly was and what he was doing. He was safe in
Hogwarts, or so he had expected himself to feel,
but now he was being proved wrong.

“You think you need to know everything, boy? You

think you’re entitled to everything that happens
around you? Don’t be silly. Don’t be completely
stupid,” Severus said, voice low-pitched, but clearly
angry by the loud volume.

“I’m entitled to know what is about me and my own

life!” Regulus said.

“Not when it might put me in danger!”

Regulus shook his head.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I was made to promise I wouldn’t tell you, I swore

it to him, Regulus. The Dark Lord asked this to me
himself. Do you truly think I wouldn’t tell you
something like this if I had a choice?” Severus
asked. “I did what I needed to do. I did what I was
told to do, no more and no less, you can be sure of
that.”

“Is that your apology?”

Silence. Hesitation. Fear and guilt choking him.

Severus was honest.

“It is.”

Regulus looked up in surprise. Severus had never

apologized so truly, even if not saying the words
‘sorry’ or ‘apologies’, nothing more than an
agreement and it was enough for Regulus’ heart to
break deeply in his chest. If Severus saw it fit to
apologize, then he was to expect terrible things to
happen soon enough to him in the mission he was
supposed to fulfil.

“I do not accept it,” Regulus said, honest.

“You don’t need to,” Severus said. “I did what I had

to do. No more than that. I expected you to be
smart enough to know that and not act like a
spoiled child.”

Silence once more. Severus truly believed Regulus

was not forced to take the apology in good will, but
he had certainly hoped he would by how
disappointed his voice sounded.

“You promised to not let this happen to me,”

Regulus mumbled, feeling his throat hurting. “You
said you were going to protect me, Severus. You
said you were going to be the big brother Sirius had
not been able to be, and yet you failed me.”

Severus froze in place. More than fear now; only

guilt choking him tight and boiling in his blood. All
he could think was Regulus lying on the ground,
dirty with his own vomit and sweat as he got over
the terrible pain the Dark Mark brought as Severus
made promises in a half-voice, not even thinking
that Regulus was truly hearing them. But he was.
He was very attentive and holding onto his new
older brother’s voice, and yet Severus failed him as
much as Sirius had.

“Regulus –”

“I’ll take a walk,” Regulus said, cutting him off.

“Don’t come after me, if you’re as smart as you
make yourself to be. And do tell Evan my thanks
for the opportunity and warn him that I’ll write
Bellatrix on my own to thank her for the way she’s
destroying my bloody life.”

Regulus walked by Severus without brushing

against his shoulder, but Severus felt like there was
a hit against his body either way. Severus was
familiar with guilt, but never had it felt as heavy in
his chest before.

Bellatrix Lestrange,

See that your wonderful efforts to give me this

opportunity to fulfil a mission I had interest in for
so many years is thanked. I also thank the Dark
Lord for sending someone to watch me so closely
as Evan Rosier, but do warn him I failed to see the
new founded interest of the man in me to be
somehow odd – a year ago, we used to be good
acquaintances before a small disagreement took
place between us, so his interest in my life was
seen as nothing more than an empty and
unworking attempt of recreating some type of
friendship.

Now, the Winter Holidays were greatly expected by

me, however now I feel like all my plans will have
to be put on a hold to make sure the small trip I
was told I was to take can be completed. A trip
around Europe was not something I had expected
this year, but I suppose there’s a lot that will
happen that nobody can see coming, am I correct?

A muggleborn saw the Dark Mark in my arm last

night, said something about how glad they were
that I was a pureblood that had nothing to do with
the Dark Lord since I had a clear Muggle-Looking
tattoo on my forearm. Did you know the Dark Mark
looks like something called a tattoo? I thought it to
be most disrespectful to have something in my arm
that makes me look like the very thing I’m fighting
against, cousin, and I think you will agree with me
here. If you ever go in public, make sure to hide
the shameful mark (and I’m saying this so you will
not be confused with a muggle-lover, not because
of what it truly means).

Do tell me all you can once is possible.

Your eager cousin,

Regulus Black.

Sitting under the shadow of the tree on the very

edge of the Forbidden Forest surely made Regulus
feel like a hunter lying in wait, especially as he
watched groups of students walking by without as
much as looking in his direction, all too lost in their
own lives to see they were watched as prey.

Regulus was under the protection of shadows,

silence and tall grass, but yet it was like none of
those things mattered to Anne Potter, because he
saw her getting closer to him, eyes stuck to his
without hesitation – she didn’t doubt that the small
and dark figure in the very corner of her eye was
Regulus, she knew it from the way her heart sped
up in fear of why he was hiding away from
everybody.

One look at him as she made her way towards him

made her know that he knew.

“Hey,” she greeted, walking towards him.

Regulus didn’t look at her, not even a glance.

“I’m going to die,” he said.

Anne froze in place.

“Why would you say that so suddenly, Little

Prince?”

“Because it’s the truth,” he said, turning to look at

her. His face was pale, but the skin around his eyes
was red. He had been crying, but there were no
more tears to shed at that moment. “He’ll know, I
just know it. He’ll know I’m not loyal to him. I can’t
do the things he asks other people to do, Anne. I’m
to die by his hand soon enough.”

“This trip will be important. I wasn’t aware of it

until Severus came to me, which might mean
there’s something changing from what the timeline
I came from,” she said, starting to walk to him
once more. She stopped beside him, sitting soon
after. “I hate to say this, but I need you to go.”

He turned to look at her, pain and betrayal in his

eyes as he held his breath.

“You knew?” he asked. She just blinked at him, not

sure on how to answer him. “I didn’t say anything
about a trip.”

“Severus came to me five days ago, he told me not

to tell you anything,” she admitted, knowing there
was no way or reason to throw him a lie when he
was angry about being lied to. “I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Because he said something that made sense,” she

said. “He said that if he admitted what was going
on to you, even if he wasn’t forbidden to do so,
you’d somehow find a way to go, even if you didn’t
want to, just so you wouldn’t leave him alone and
just so you could get information.”

Regulus shook his head, eyes filling with tears once

more.

“There’s no way I’d want to go there, and there’s

no way in hell I’d do something like this for him,”
he said. “He betrayed me.”

“He tried to protect you,” she said.

“Why are you defending him?!”

“Because he’s in the right here, Regulus. I

understand you’re angry and you’re entitled to your
anger and bitterness, but know that holding onto
those feelings will make you nothing less than
lonely,” Anne said seriously at him. She frowned. “I
know how it to want to blame terrible things on
those closest to us because the real culprits sound
untouchable and too far away to be held
accountable. I blamed myself when I couldn’t
blame anyone else.”

With lips curling, Regulus desired nothing more

than to hurt Anne by the way her calmness was
hurting him.

“And now you learnt to blame Dumbledore,” he

said. “Oh, how you grew.”

The way he added disgust and anger in his

addendum to the very private things going on
Anne’s head made her look at him in disbelief.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Anne

said, voice strained, but trying to keep herself in
check.

“Don’t,” he said, voice firm. “I did say it.”

Anne got up from her place beside him in a jump.

“I don’t deserve to listen to this bullshit when I’m

trying to do you some good,” she said. “Fuck you,
Regulus. Deal with your shit on your own if you’re
going to spit at my help, you sadistic son a bitch.”

“Don’t you dare, Potter!” he exclaimed, jumping to

stand as well. “You don’t get to come here and say
those things as if you are all grown up and wise.
You’re just as much as a child as me. Deal with it.
Deal that you’re a child, no matter how much you
act like an adult – nobody sees you as an adult,
that’s why all those people in your dear Order of
the Phoenix are not calling you to make part of
meetings that the Dark Lord is aware they are
holding.”

“No!” she said in a scream, turning to him. “You

don’t get to be angrier than me here! I lost
everything to make this work this time around and
you’re fucking it up because you disagree in the
way your friend went about something – he didn’t
tell you that you were under watch so you would
act normally. How difficult is that to bloody
understand?”

“Hard! Very hard!” he said. “He betrayed me!”

“He didn’t want to die!” Anne exclaimed. “How can

you not understand that? He made an Vow on his
Magic to not do anything in the expectations on
letting you know something so when he came to
me and told me, I kept quiet because I didn’t know
how telling you would affect his Vow.”

“What are you trying to say?” Regulus scoffed.

“That you’re being selfish,” she said.

Regulus’ jaw dropped in offense and disbelief.

There was a moment of silence as his hands went

to rest of his hips as he struggled to breathe
through his amused, but angry laugh.

“Is that what you think of me?” he asked.

“No, that’s what I think of this reaction,” she

explained.

He shook his head side to side.

“So you’re choosing his side.”

“There are no sides to choose, Regulus. He did

what he had to do to survive. I didn’t judge you for
doing the same and entering the bloody Death
Eaters, did I?” she said.

“I did it because you asked me to!” he said.

“You did because you were tired of being tortured

and you’ve done it without me saying that you
should do it,” she said. “At that point, however,
you’d be too angry and too blind to see what I was
trying to tell you, so I had to move faster.”

“So you manipulated me and used me, how

wonderful of you!”

“And you are surprised?” she scoffed. “I guess I’m

much more of a Slytherin than you are, then. But
believe me, in my place, you would’ve done the
exact same thing and I wouldn’t have blamed you,”
she took a deep breath. “I’m looking on the other
way for all the things you said to me today; I’m not
saying that I’m not angry, because I am, and I am
hurt, too. But so are you, so I can take this lightly.”

“I don’t need your pity,” he dismissed.

“Sympathy,” she disagreed. “I don’t pity you.”

Regulus had a deja-vu, looking at her eyes as he

swallowed down his anger. It was like sitting in
those stone stairs with Anne all over again, hoping
that she wouldn’t tell to anyone about the broken
ribs he had received after a face-off with his mother
and cousin.

“There’s a difference between pity and

understanding of a situation,” Anne continued. “I
hope you can see it and understand it someday,
maybe then you can see why I’m taking all this shit
you’re throwing my way without cursing your arse
off. Because in any other day and coming from
anyone else, be sure they wouldn’t be talking to me
like that after the first time they screamed me.”

He bit the inside of his cheek.

“I’m angry.”

“And I can understand that.”

“I’m hurt.”

“That’s expected.”

He looked at her.

“I’m terrified.”

She looked at him and frowned.

“I am too,” she admitted.

To my only true friend,

I don’t think it to be safe for me to apologize out

loud to you, Severus, and it wouldn’t be wise to try
to get you alone to talk to you when you seem to
be trying to avoid me at all costs. I understand that
and I sympathetic to the feeling of anger that you
must be feeling after my less than understanding
reaction to a true dangerous situation you saw
yourself in. I’m truly sorry for the time it took me
to write this letter, but it never seemed ready and,
worse, it never seemed to be good enough.

Anne has helped me see reason as women seem to

have a talent to do, according to my father, though
I disagree with him about my mother having that
talent, and yet I couldn’t help but think of when he
told me that when I was eight as she scolded me
for being mean to you during our small argument.
You seem to have taken a hold of her heart as
strongly as I have, if not more – there’s truth
behind the saying that friendships are tighter
bounds than love matches. And that is my not as
discreet way of saying that Anne should be a good
friend to you, seeing that you might have need for
one at some point in your life when I’m not
available and I cannot be your only friend.

She has in mind that you two are not friends yet
and that seem to have hurt her somehow, so I urge
you to form an official friendship with my lover,
Severus, most urgently for her sake and for yours
as well. You two would do good to one another, I’m
sure.

I rambled enough.

I write in here most clearly so you cannot say that I

made no effort to be true to words.

I’m sorry, Severus, for my reaction. I know that

you did what you had to do to survive and you
went to Anne in the hopes that she would find a
loop-hole or a way to get me out of the situation,
but she couldn’t because the Dark Lord made sure
there was no way anyone could do so. I understand
now that my blood is colder and my mind calmer. I
understand that I was a spoiled child reacting to a
not-so-good new when you had worse ones in your
pocket.

This is also my way of saying that I know your

mother is dead and that it was why you were pulled
from Astronomy last night. Dumbledore told me so
and asked me if I wanted to go to the burial, but I
wasn’t sure you wanted me there; I didn’t want to
soil your mother’s rest by appearing where I was
no welcome, my friend, but I hope you know I have
paid for everything the funeral house asked, and
not Dumbledore or Hogwarts – see it as another
part of my apology.

I hope you can see you can count on me again, and

I’m sorry for failing you.

Faithfully yours,

R.A.B.

Chapter 59: Chapter Fifty-Eight

Summary:
A missunderstood conversation
leads to trouble.

Notes:
A little filler chapter, but a funny
one. Mostly family fluff.

MISSCOMUNICATION

Cramps had never really been a problem to Anne

before, and she was grateful for that as she
watched Lily complain and whiter away in bed out
of pain. She knew it was usually genetic, so she
was very glad that she got that from Mia’s side of
the family since the woman was a rock and barely
ever felt pain, even in her worst days of periods,
according to the woman herself.

“Lily, I can just go and get you a potion,” Marlene

said.

“No!” Lily answered.

“There’s no reason to be ashamed of having your

period. It’s normal and expected; it’s better to have
it then skipping it like I do,” Anne said.

The two turned to her.

“Skip it?” Marlene asked.

Lily groaned as she sat in bed.

“What do you mean by ‘skip it’?” she asked.

Anne shrugged.

“My periods were never all that regular. There are

months I skip them and there are months I have
my period twice; it happens since I skip a lot of
meals and all that, I guess it’s a family thing or
something, Mia said that Monty’s sister had the
same when she was younger; it happens
sometimes in some wizarding families because of
the less than fertile womb or something like that.
Mia herself has that, was never too right with the
dates of her periods, that’s why it was so hard to
conceive when he was a newly-wed,” Anne
admitted. “I skipped my period this month, I’ve
been waiting for it for at least a week at this point.”

“And nothing?” Marlene asked. “You’re so lucky!”

“This is where we disagree. Between having it and

skipping it and making me scared shitless, I rather
just have it like a normal person, ‘Lene, thanks,”
Anne said, rolling her eyes. “It makes me feel so
bloated and all that, I hate it. I just want it to get
out of me as soon as possible.”

Lily looked slightly worried as she pushed herself to

sit down in bed with a groan.

“It’s not normal to skip periods, Anne,” Lily said,

scrunching her eyebrows. “Wizarding blood or not,
you should try and see a healer or a doctor about
it. I know an obyg that’s wonderful that has been
taking care of me and my sister ever since were
thirteen.”

Anne shrugged, resting her back against the

headboard.

“It’s always been like that. My aunt said that it

wasn’t important enough to take me to a doctor, so
it mustn’t be, right? It’s just a period, it’s not like
I’m dying or something,” Anne sighed. “Though, I
have to admit, I never skipped two months at once,
so I’m starting to worry here.”

“Two months!” Marlene said. “Anne!” she sounded

like she was ready to scold the girl.

“What?!” Anne said, taken aback by their reaction.

“It could be a health problem. You should’ve said

something!” Marlene said.

“You could be sick!” Lily agreed.

“I’m not sick, though,” Anne said. “I just have a

headache or so sometimes, nothing more than that.
It’s nothing important, really.”

Lily shook her head, clearly disagreeing with what

her friend was saying. She had heard of people that
would skip periods and would end up having
tumours or being pregnant without even knowing.
The lives of those women were completely ruined
no matter the outcome, she had watched it. As a
student there’s very little she could do for her,
there was no way she could just find a way to find
tumours, she had never been very interested in
healing magic other than physical, but shallow
wounds – as a woman, however, she had a small
thing that could help.

“Let’s just leave it, alright,” Anne said, dismissing

her quickly.

Marlene didn’t just leave it, of course. Anne’s small

problem was all she could think about as she lied
down in bed, waiting for the tea Lily drank to have
some effect on her pain before they left for classes.
Lily couldn’t stop thinking about it either, lying as
her pain made her nauseous, her mind working in
anything she could find to help her friend.

Still, as they were in classes, Lily couldn’t stop

thinking about it.

As Professor McGonagall talked about the tests that

were coming quickly to them, ready to mess up
their minds, Lily couldn’t help but think of
possibilities of what to say or what to do to find
what she needed to get Anne what she probably
needed.

But it was only near lunch that she managed to talk

to Remus Lupin.

“Where do I find Health books in the library?” she

asked suddenly.

Remus, standing beside her before the other boys

came to lunch, turned to her in confusion.

“Interested in becoming a Healer?” he asked.

“No, still thinking of a Mastery in Potions,” she said.

“I just know someone that might need a
Pregnancy-Test Potion and I don’t know how to do
it, but I know that if I ask Madame Pince or
Madame Pomfrey they certainly wouldn’t like it at
all and would ask too many questions that I don’t
have an answer to.”

Remus almost dropped his fork. He looked around

in surprise, but there was no one listening to their
conversation. He leaned towards her.

“Lily… are you in some type of trouble?” Remus

asked.

Lily blushed deep red as she shook her head

violently.

“No! No,” she said. “It’s not like that, Remus. I

swear, is not for me. I’m not in trouble.”

“You don’t need to lie to me.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“Are you sure?”

“Remus, stop it!” she said, blushing ever more.

Remus let it go after a while, mumbling quickly the

right corridor in the library that he had spent a lot
of time in as he learned (or tried) to heal himself
after violent full moons. He let it go, after all, it was
none of his business.

But Sirius, who was standing feet away, hiding

behind a wall, did not agree with Remus’ ideas.

“You’re an irresponsible brat, you little shit,” said

Sirius Black as soon as James Potter walked into
the locker room when the rest of the team was
already on the pitch, waiting for the late Quidditch
Captain.

“I know, I’m sorry. I was talking to Lily and I sort

of lost track of time,” James said, blushing a bit.
“I’m here now. I’m sorry that I’m late.”

Sirius rolled his eyes, crossing his arms as he

watched his friend taking his clothes off and, in his
underwear, took the uniform and put it on, jumping
a few times on his left leg when he was putting the
trousers on.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Sirius said,

uncrossing his arms with a huff. “Look, what is
Anne going to say?”

“Anne doesn’t care about Quidditch that much as

long a we win at the end,” James said, shrugging
as he took his broom from the side of the door.

“I’m not talking about Quidditch, James!” Sirius

exclaimed.

Confused, this time James took a moment, opening

the door and turning to look at his friend, not all
that sure of what Sirius was talking about. Sirius
walked out of the locker room and into the field,
turning to James and crossing his arms once more.
He clearly was upset about something, but James
had no idea what it was about.

“What’s happening?” James asked.

“Harry is supposed to be born in 1980 and you’re

fucking this up – and don’t say anything about my
fucking language, Potter. How could you do this to
Lily? How could you do this to Anne?!” he hissed
towards his friend, not wanting his teammates to
listen to their conversation. “You’re irresponsible
and certainly a lot less smart than you make
yourself to be. If even Anne can take Anti-
Pregnancy Potions, so can you. Merlin, James, can
you understand what that could mean to the war?!”

“What are you even on about, Sirius?” James asked

once more, dropping the broom in annoyance.

“OF YOU KNOCKING HER UP!” Sirius screamed.

From his place on the broom, flying nearby, the

youngest Keeper in the story of Gryffindor at just
twelve-years-old, Shackebolt just stared at the two
staring at each other just a few seconds before
deciding it was none of his business and flew away,
though he did glance at the two throughout the
training session.

Through the whole training session, it was clear the

tension between the two. Sirius was angry at the
lack of reaction of James and James was just too
shocked to react or speak, all he did was train.

The fact that explained his shock and lack of

happiness or fear was that James and Lily never
had sex before. Lily really wanted to wait until
marriage, or so she had said during a snog and
James was more than happy to comply to her
request of waiting for a bit more before they did
anything, even if sex wasn’t on the table at all.

If Lily was pregnant as Sirius said, then the child

wasn’t his.

James had done his best to calm himself down and

focus in the, suddenly, unimportant sport. He
focused on it as best as he could, but it wasn’t
working because all he did through the day was
shaking and swallowing down the anger and
jealousy growing inside of him. He hated himself for
being so angry, and he hated himself for having so
much expectations on Lily – if she had found
someone better, then he would’ve failed Anne and
Harry. There was so much in his head that there
was nothing more to do other than try to keep
himself in check as Captain.

“James,” Sirius had said once they were showering

side by side after all boys had left. “You need to
talk to me and you really need to go to Lily. You
can’t just leave her to figure all this out on her
own.”

“Don’t start this now,” James said. He didn’t have

his glasses, so his eyes were closed as he washed
his hair.

“You don’t have an excuse. You had a good father

and a good mother, so you know how a child should
come to the world and how a family actually looks
like; so does Lily, she also knows how all those
things work, so please, don’t fuck this up,” Sirius
said, getting out the shower and covering himself
with a towel. “Anne wouldn’t be happy –”

“THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANNE!” James

screamed in anger, finally boiling over, eyes
opening wide under the shower. “FUCK!” he
screamed when shampoo fell on his left eye. He
bent over, trying to wash it off. “Not everything in
my life has to revolve around Anne, okay? Sirius, if
Lily is pregnant, then there’s nothing in it for me,
because the child cannot be mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I didn’t have sex with Lily,” James

explained, feeling around the small cubicle with his
hands to find his glasses on the small wall between
showers. He put those on, leaving the shower. “We
barely kissed. She wants to wait and I won’t
pressure her into something like this. I haven’t had
sex ever since Anne came by.”

“What about –”

“The girl back at home didn’t get far before

Dumbledore came tumbling through the fireplace,
did she?” James said. “It’s been a long time, mate,
I have nothing to do with it.”

Sirius was looking a bit pale as he sat with the

towel around his waist on the small bench.

“Holy shit, Prongs.”

“If she needs me to, I’ll step up, but… It’s not
mine,” James said.

The other looked up in shock.

“Don’t be stupid, James. You can’t just claim

someone else’s baby and pretend everything is
going to be fine,” Sirius said, shaking his head.
“This is absurd.”

“Is Lily,” and that sounded like it was enough

explanation to James.

But not to Sirius.

“If it’s not your responsibility, don’t go after it,

mate,” Sirius said. “It’d be simply a stupid decision
that you didn’t need to take.”

But there was no changing James’ mind.

With Sirius running after him and Peter completely

confused as he saw his friends power walking and
running towards the library, James made his way
through the castle and completely ignored how
Peter joined Sirius in running after him without
even knowing what was going on. Remus, however,
was already on the library when they got there,
looking very confused by the two (Sirius and Peter)
presences behind James.

“What’s happening?” Remus asked.

“Lily’s happening, mate,” Peter said.

Remus went pale. They knew. And they knew he

knew, by the way Sirius glared at him.

“James, calm down,” started Remus.

“Shut it,” James warned.

He walked past his friend, making his way towards

the table he knew the girls liked to stay at. And he
was right; there they were, sitting and reading,
sometimes even giggling to one another as they
whispered about the books they were reading.

Remus ran forward, standing in front of Lily.

“James, please –”

“Step away. I just want to talk,” James said, coolly.

Lily peeked over Remus’ shoulder, standing on her

tip-toes.

“What’s going on?” Lily asked.

“Are you pregnant?”

Marlene dropped her book on the ground, the hard

cover making quite a bit of noise as Mary gasped,
hands flying to her mouth, but Dorcas paled before
almost fainting while sitting. Anne looked up from
the book in her hands and froze, not saying
anything else, just staring at James and Lily.

“What are you talking about?” Anne asked.

“I’m not pregnant!” Lily said. “You should know

this, James Potter. I’m a virgin and you know I plan
on keeping it like that for quite some time still.”

“Then why in the bloody hell would you want a

pregnancy test?” James asked, slapping his thigh in
clear distress and frustration. “Lily, I’m not going to
be mad if someone did something to you. You don’t
need to be ashamed; we can get help. You don’t
even need to have it; we can get rid of it if you
don’t want it.””

“No, I’m not pregnant and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t

raped,” Lily insisted, a bit too loud.

Madam Pince hissed from her place several

corridors away, but did not come to make sure
nothing else was happening.

“Then why do you need a pregnancy potion?” Anne

asked.

“Yeah, Lils, that’s pretty odd,” Dorcas agreed. “If

you’re in trouble we can fix it. I can made quite the
Contraceptive Potion; it can get girls fixed even two
months into the pregnancy. You can ask the other
girls in Hufflepuff, I literally get paid to make some
every few months.”

“It wasn’t even for me!” Lily said, turning to the girl
with wide eyes.

“Who was it for, then? I mean, I’m gay, Dorcas is

pretty gay too and Mary would rather die than have
sex with someone within the same bloody
generation as her, so if Mary shagged a professor
–”

“Which I didn’t,” Mary added.

“Which she didn’t,” added Marlene. “There’s no one

left. Just – oh. Anne.”

Anne turned to the blonde girl.

“What? Me?!”

“What?!” Sirius exclaimed.

Another hiss from Madame Pince followed by a

second of hesitant silence.

Lily blushed.

“You skipped your period,” Lily said.

“Oh, I’m going to faint,” James whispered.

Peter was quick to hold his arm and lead him to sit
down on a chair as Remus turned as pale as
parchment, Sirius turned deep red, looking in
between Anne and Lily as if hoping someone would
give him an answer.

“I always skip periods,” Anne dismissed. “I’m not

pregnant.”

“Can you be certain?” Marlene asked.

“Yes, I can, thank you very much, Marlene,” Anne

answered, annoyed. “I’m not pregnant, I’m sure.”

James got up from his seat.

“Did he do something to you?”

“What? James, you know he did not. He did nothing

I didn’t want him to,” insisted Anne.

“Ok, that’s enough,” Sirius started.

“That’s so disgusting,” James groaned.

“Shouldn’t you be happy for me? Happy that I

actually bear the touch of someone without wanting
to throw my guts up!” Anne said. “Listen to me,
you have no right to insert yourself in this
conversation since it certainly does not have
anything to do with you. Can’t you see? I can
absolutely have sex with whomever I want
whenever I want, I have potions if I wanted to do
so, but I didn’t. I didn’t get that far because I
cannot, not because I don’t want to.”

James looked like he was trying to decide if he was

going to throw up, faint or simply cry himself to
sleep for the rest of his days.

“James –” started Lily.

“Not the time, Lils,” Sirius said.

“No, he has to hear this!” Lily insisted. “Just

because you’re her brother, it doesn’t mean you
have a say on her sex-life.”

James sat down once more.

“First of all, let’s stop with the sex-life talk. Now,

who the hell told you I’m her brother? I’m not her
brother!”

And there was so much confusion in between all

those people in that table, that all Anne could do
was get up and run away, leaving all her things
behind to try and get away from that position.

And outside of the table, Severus heard only half of

the story, but had a full set of questions on his
mind before Anne was away from the library.

James smiled sheepishly as he walked into the

small room that he knew Anne would be in. For
whatever reason she had found herself sitting
under the professor’s table on an empty potions’
classroom

“You shouldn’t be looking for me on the map if I ran

away from you, it’s pretty rude,” Anne said from
under the table, peaking at him.

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t really mind being seen as

rude when I was already rude to you today,” James
said. “I came here to apologize, sweetheart.
Nothing of this had anything to do with me,
everything was just a huge misunderstanding. I
came here to explain to you what happened.”

“I know what happened, you were a Gryffindor,”

she said, bitterly.

“Pretty much, yes,” he admitted.

He stood beside the professor’s table and very

slowly sat down in front of it, looking at her. She
looked at him, showing that she had not cried, but
she certainly had been pretty embarrassed for
everything that had happened.

“You weren’t supposed to know anything about

this,” she admitted. “This is a conversation I should
have with Mum if I was having a normal life, so I
wanted to try, you know? I wanted to talk to her
about boys and sex and periods, like any other girl
my age when they have a nice mum that is
understanding. I mean, not every girl can have a
mother their own age, you know?”

“I understand and I’m so sorry that you were

cheated off of that, Anne,” James said, genuine in
the sentiment. “You have all that right, but we had
a small problem in the communication and I ended
up being a jerk. I thought Lily was pregnant, and
certainly the child wouldn’t be mine, so I went to
confront her.”

“I understood that much.”

“Turns out there was another miscommunication,”

he said. “She thought you were pregnant and
Remus thought she was pregnant and Sirius
thought I knew and had shunned her for some
reason. It was just a lot of things happening at
once.”

She looked at him again.

“I thought you would be happy for me,” she

admitted.

“Well, I don’t like listening or even imagining that

my little girl has a boy on her arms, doing Merlin-
knows-what during the nights she skipping. I saw
the love bites and the little smiles and I kept it to
myself, because it’s none of my business, but this
would be different.,” he said. “In the Wizarding
World, pregnancy before marriage is simply
unacceptable. If it was true, no place would want to
work with you unless you got married already.
There are things in our culture that are unsaid, that
you understand as you live and no more than that
and I’m sorry I failed to explain this to you.”

“You don’t need –”

“But I do, I’m your father,” James said, cutting her

off. “And there’s a lot you don’t understand in this
world, you were raised muggle. Purebloods are
messy people, and they all care a lot about unsaid
rules.”

“Even you?”

“Even me, I must admit,” he said, smiling at her

just a bit. “I’m so sorry for embarrassing you,
Anne, I really am.”

“It’s alright.”

He smirked.

“If you want to, I can try to listen to you and not
kill Regulus Black at the end of the conversation,
but I can’t really promise I’ll go there and give him
pointers, but surely he can ask some off of Sirius’,”
he joked.

“Please, no!” she laughed, closing her eyes and

shaking her head.

“There’s this one thing you can do that –”

“No, stop!”

“I’m being serious and my age with a friend, not

my daughter, so I can talk rubbish,” he laughed.

“I’m your daughter. I’m your daughter!” she

insisted, laughing.

Waking up with Severus Snape slapping him on the

back wasn’t what Regulus had in mind when he fell
asleep on the common room, taking a nap near the
fire with Elizabeth Fawley sitting near his feet,
doing her homework. Now, however, he was
looking around and trying to her his wand in panic
before noticing it was just his friend.

“You dumb dunderhead!” Severus started.

Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen, but the clock

was.

“It’s three in the morning, what are you doing?”

Regulus asked.

“You should’ve been careful, you know?”

“Careful with what? Shouldn’t I have slept here?”

“You shouldn’t have slept with her!”

Confused, Regulus just stared at his friend.

“Anne?”

“Who else?!” Severus exclaimed.

He pushed Regulus’ legs out of the sofa and sat

down beside him, crossing in his arms in clear
distaste for the situation.

“What about Anne?”

“She’s pregnant, or at least she suspected she

might be, but she’s not,” Severus explained.

Regulus felt himself freeze.

“She told you this?”

“No, of course not. James Potter was scolding her

with Evans and all that,” he said.

Not knowing all the truth, on the next morning

Anne received a letter that made her laugh at
breakfast, answering it before lunch where she
insisted in good-tone that there was no way that
‘grinding themselves to the high’ (as Regulus had
described) would somehow get her pregnant.

Regulus was happy for the rest of the day.

December the first came and, with it the blood.

Anne received a bouquet of red catchflies and
strawberries covered in chocolate.

Chapter 60: Chapter Fifty-Nine

Summary:
Students come back from
Hogwarts for Winter Break.

A NEW CHAPTER

Anne’s heart was completely hurting as she

watched Regulus Black walk by her as if nothing
was happening, though his hand did brush against
hers for a moment before he smiled to Elizabeth
Fawley as she talked to a girl, curling her hair on
her finger.

This time around they couldn’t have some time

together. Regulus had to meet with his ‘co-workers’
and Anne couldn’t follow him around, they couldn’t
even have an actual goodbye for Christmas Break,
not even a little kiss! Not even a hug before he
went to one of the most dangerous missions that
probably were out there.

Now, all she could do was sit beside James, book

open in her hands and slowly reading the romance
book, Lily sitting across James and talking to him
about Prefect duties. They had just given up on
trying to talk to her and get her into the
conversation as well, trying to be polite and kind to
her, but she was much more interested in rereading
Tamino – Persephone’s first bathing being watched
by Hades as he slowly falls in love by the melody
the woman hums to herself; he wants to, but he
doesn’t turn to watch her without her approval, so
all he does is wither away in forbidden desire.

She was trying hard to focus on it, though her

heart and head were too worried about Regulus to
let her enjoy her own scribblings on the corner of
the pages, though she was sure they were funny or
sweet. No, she couldn’t enjoy things she usually
enjoyed without feeling guilty. She was able to
have a small normalcy in her life while the boy she
liked was about to put his life in harm’s way
without any way out.

Of course, her parents noticed.

Even with Marlene and Dorcas coming by to sit with

them for a moment before the other Marauders
came and the girls left, James and Lily watched as
Anne didn’t eat and barely spoke, not even making
polite small talk to Peter, who tried to get her
attention.

“Are you alright?” Lily asked after a while.

James knew what was on his daughter’s mind, but

Lily had no idea of what was happening in that
compartment.

“She’s jut focused on her book,” he said, quickly

covering for her.

“She can answer herself, James.”

“Just leave her alone,” James said, once more

cutting Lily off. “She’s just going through some
stuff. She didn’t really tell me anything, but I can
see it’s very personal.”

Lily did go quiet, though she clearly didn’t enjoy

that James was cutting her off from the
conversation Anne clearly didn’t want to have.

By the time they got to London, it was late

afternoon and Anne was asleep with the open book
on her lap. Sirius quickly took his bags and threw
Anne’s over to James, who quickly held onto it with
great effort to drag both of theirs out. Lily made
her way out, saying her goodbyes in whispers so
not to wake up Anne. Peter got his bag and made
his way out quickly, knowing that his mother – who
had written to tell him that she was slightly sick –
was waiting impatiently for him.

Remus was left behind with Anne.

“Annie?” he called out, slowly getting closer. He

took the book from her, marking the page and
closing it. He held it with his right hand before
leaning and touching her shoulder, gently shaking
her awake. “Wake up, Annie. We’re in King’s
Cross.”

“Hm,” she did, unwilling to move.

“Wake up.”

“I’m tired,” she complained.

“You can keep sleeping in your bed, but you need

to wake up and go find your grandparents, alright?”
he said. “Come on, I’m sure your dad will be more
than happy to keep you awake for a bit by telling
you how happy he is that he was invited for the
Evans’ Christmas Party to meet Lily’s parents and
all that. Come on.”

“Mum invited us?” she groaned as she opened her

eyes.

Her hands went to grab the book on her lap, but

there was nothing there. Remus smirked, shaking
the book in his hand and offering his other hand for
her to take. She sighed, taking it and allowing the
boy to pull her up and stabilize her once she was
standing. He kept holding her hand as they started
walking out of the compartment.

Remus tried not to laugh as they walked since Anne

was stumbling a bit through the way, like a drunk
woman she was holding onto Remus’ hand for
support and guide, while all the werewolf could do
was try to hold back his laugh.

On the platform, Remus had to almost carry Anne

to get down from the train and she sighed deeply
once her feet touched the ground.

“I’m knackered,” Anne admitted.

“You can sleep again in a few minutes, alright?

You’ll be going straight home with Mia and Monty,”
Remus said. “Come on.”

“Where’s James?”

“With your bags and Sirius over there,” he said,

pointing at the two standing in front of Mia and
Monty. James was looking around, quite worried as
he looked for her. He waved. “See? They’re calling
you.”

“Peter?”

“Home already, his mum is sick,” answered Remus.

“Go on, then.”

“Come with me, please,” she said.

Remus smiled and nodded, following her towards

her grandparents without complaints.

Mia opened her arms to take Anne and Remus into

her embrace quickly, tightening the arms around
them so much that Anne struggled to breathe for a
second before she was let go at once. She stumbled
back, James holding her up.

“You look tired,” Monty said, leaning to kiss Anne’s

forehead.

“I am tired,” she answered. “But thanks for the

compliment, Monty. Exactly what a girl wants to
hear.”

Monty winced a bit, unsure of what to do after he

had made a mistake.

“She’s in a bad mood,” Sirius said.

“Why?” Mia asked.

“Could snog her boyfriend goodbye,” James

answered.

Anne glared at James. Though she was annoyed,

she could see it was all in a good mood and just a
joke, so she kept herself quiet. Her annoyance had
nothing to do with his happiness. She could hold in
for a moment more.

“I just woke up,” was her defence.

“It’s alright, love,” Mia said, taking Anne by the

shoulder. “I can understand. The trip here is quite
long, isn’t it? Very tiring.”

“Yeah,” she said.

She missed Regulus and his quiet acceptance of

whatever was going on with her, no questions
asked, just open ears and hopes of understanding
on both ways. She missed him. She wanted him.

Regulus ignored the heavy feeling as his father put

his hand on his shoulder. Most of his weight was
resting against him, his father was looking paler
than before and he had lost at least a whole stone
of weight. His father was dying, he knew; he could
see and feel him wasting away and Regulus wasn’t
sure if he should be as happy as he was. He felt
bad for his happiness, after all he was his father,
but the idea that he would be free of his heavy
eyes and very judging ideas was a comfort.

“You’re taller,” Orion said.

“That might happen to a boy my age,” Regulus

answered, sounding a lot more bitter than he
intended. “I need new robes, mine are short by an
inch or so.”

“Your mother will measure you and take that into

consideration while you’re away,” Orion said.

The confirmation that Regulus had nowhere to go,

no escape from the trip he did not agree to go to.

He knew his father had offered his support to

Voldemort by offering Sirius, and when the oldest
failed, Regulus took his place. And all that, Orion
had done because he knew he was sick – perhaps
too sick to offer himself when he knew he didn’t
have much time. It had been year at that point,
and he was slipping away from the world of living
quickly. Regulus wondered in silence how long he
had with his father still.

“Oh, it’s Miss Sage,” Orion said, voice sounding

breathy.

Regulus looked up automatically, confused by the

state of his voice and to why he was talking about
Anne so suddenly.

Anne was holding Lupin’s hand, hair a mess and

eyes half-closed while he stood beside Sirius, who
was smiling, but gave a quick kiss on Lupin’s lips
before taking Anne’s hand and leading her towards
Potter. The other boy smiled, embracing his
daughter and leaving all three bags for his father
and Sirius to carry, and they did without complain.
Mia put a hand on Anne’s back.

“She looks exhausted,” Walburga said, crossing her

arms.
Regulus had to admit that, though not out loud.

“Surely, she has been spending a few nights…

awake,” Orion said.

His stomach fell to his feet. Regulus looked at

Orion. How did he know? How could he even
suspect? There was no way –

“Oh, yes, she’s going out with that Snape boy, isn’t
she?” Walburga said, nodding. “I was impressed. I
rather like them together. Half-bloods, yes, but
rather smart ones. You should’ve told us that they
were having an affair when you brought her home
to meet us.”

“Would you have been more polite?” Regulus

asked, sounding bitter.

Orion glared at his son, hand around his shoulder

squeezing almost to the point of pain. Regulus
locked his jaw in silence as his mother glared at
him as well, hands going to rest on her hips as she
snapped her fingers.

Kreacher appeared with a ‘pop’.

“Get the boy’s things. He has a lot to do before he

leaves tonight,” Walburga said.

Kreacher nodded, getting the bag and giving a

glance at Regulus before sadly looking down and
‘popping’ away with the bag and his cloak.

“I leave tonight?” Regulus managed to ask, voice

not wavering out of luck. “I thought we would leave
tomorrow night.”

“Why? Do you have anything to do tonight?” his

mother asked, scoffing.

Regulus blushed.

“No,” he answered.

“Then you don’t have to worry about it,” Walburga

dismissed.

With one more glance, Regulus looked at Anne as

she walked into the public fireplace to floo home.
Their eyes met for just a moment before she looked
away, getting a handful of floo and mumbling her
destination, disappearing from his sight. He looked
away, meeting Mia’s eyes on the process – she
smiled at him discreetly, clearly pitying his situation
as he was almost dragged towards another
fireplace.

Walburga went through first.

Orion let go of his shoulder.

Regulus got some floo and stepped into the

fireplace.

“Leave your mother to believe Sage is to be

bethroated to Snape at some point in time,” Orion
warned in half-a-voice. Regulus felt like he was
going to throw up. “As long as you do make
mistakes, I don’t care what you do with your free
time. Don’t make me regret keeping quiet about
your taste in bed-warmers, Regulus, otherwise you
will regret ever existing in this world.”

Gathering all his courage, Regulus ignored his fear

and looked his father straight in the eyes.

“Don’t worry, Father, I already regret breathing in

this world,” he warned. With all his pent-up anger,
he threw this floo on the fireplace floor and made
his best to enunciate. “Grimmauld Place, number
12.”

The people there hated to admit, but there was

something lurking in the Hogwarts’ Express Station.
A change. Though no one would ever dare to say
out loud, most people knew that the Christmas
Break was just a mark – from then on, something
was about to be very different.

A new chapter was about to begin, but no one

dared to wish to read the next things happening.

Chapter 61: Chapter Sixty

Summary:
THIRD SEASON

Lily invites the Marauders and

Anne for a Christmas Party. Anne
gets a lot more than she
bargained for.

Notes:
Welcome to the third season of
From Eden, ya'll. I hope you have
fun.

TW: Implied sexual assault and

domestic violence.

Nothing new, really, but do keep

an eye out to not get yourself into
a bad situation, ok? Love you all
and leave a comment down below
with your opinions and tips so I
can do better, please.

THIRD SEASON

EVANS’ CHRISTMAS PARTY

In any other situation, Anne Potter would be happy

to actually meet her grandparents for more than a
few minutes, even if they didn’t know they were
her grandparents, but her mind just wasn’t in the
right place for anything like that, no matter how
much she tried to ground herself into her reality.

Everything looked perfect.

James was in his best muggle clothing, which was

dress shirt and brown trousers, since he thought
black trousers looked too formal and too much like
he a funeral, but Mia had refused to let him
transfigurate it into green to match Christmas
decorations. Peter had a black polo shirt and jeans,
he said it was supposed to slim him, according to
what his mother had read – he wasn’t allowed to
stay long since his mother couldn’t stay alone for
long, but she had insisted on not letting him be
rude and not show up. Sirius was quite
understanding of Peter’s situation, promising to
warn him a few minutes before midnight so he
could spend it with his mum since he was the only
one with a clock, after all he was the only one with
an outfit that went with it. Poor Sirius, once a
pureblood, always a pureblood with expensive black
trousers, black formal button-up shirt, cloak on his
wrist, even though he had a leather jacket over it
all. Remus had a very similar outfit to James’,
though he insisted the suspenders were not too
much a reach and kept them in place under his
beaten-up coat (he had refused to open Anne’s gift
early and therefore wasn’t using his new brownish
coat).

James stopped a few metres away from the Evans

house.

“Ok, everybody, time to go over the rules,” he said.

“Don’t talk about magic,” Sirius started.

“Don’t talk about James doing magic,” Peter added.

“Don’t talk about family traditions that involve

magic,” Remus said, rolling his eyes.

“Don’t talk about the magical war coming?” Anne

guessed.

James nodded, listening to his family and made a

proud face.

“Nice,” he said. “There’s one rule missing, though.”

“Don’t talk about James being in love with Lily,”

they all added, sounding quite bored.

Once more, James nodded with pride and clapped

his hand once.

“Ok, then,” he put his hands on his hips. “Let’s go,

guys! – and Anne, sorry, sweetheart, I forgot you
were a girl. We’re ready.”

Anne shivered once another breeze of very cold

wind hit her. She bit down her tongue to stop
herself from complaining. The tea length dress was
certainly beautiful in its blue-grey, but less than
ideal for a Christmas party, she had found out as
she forgot that muggle families didn’t have a
warming charm on their gardens – how stupid of
her, growing up muggle and forgetting how
muggles actually behaved after a single year living
with pureblood wizards. She fixed the tulle under
her skirts discreetly once the boys were looking
away and sighed, pulling the white coat around her
to warm her up.

“You know, that colour is exactly like Sirius’ eyes,”

commented Peter as James knocked on the door,
waiting for someone to open it.

That had been the reason why Anne had chosen

that dress. If it was Sirius’ colour, then certainly it
was Regulus’ as well. Of course, Peter didn’t need
to know that and he probably shouldn’t since she
didn’t trust him all that much and was mostly just
polite towards him.

She smiled at him, shivering.

The door opened.

The big, strong red-headed man Anne knew as

Lily’s father opened the door with a huge smile on
his reddish face. He was already tipsy, that much
was clear by the way he smiled even more with the
sight of Anne.

“Anne!” he announced. “Lily, Anne is here with a

group of boys!”

Anne couldn’t help but smile. He sounded so happy

with her presence, that made her quite glad.

“Hello, Mister Evans.”

“Come on in! Come on in!” he said, opening the

door further. “Before somebody screams that I’m
letting the hot air out, come inside.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Remus as he led the boys

inside.

James was pale. The man was far bigger than he

had expected and now he was slightly put off.
Sirius was smiling, looking around for something to
tease Lily about. Peter was just quiet since he
didn’t know anyone, therefore had nothing to say.

Mister Evans’ eyes widened.

“You’re Welsh?!”

“Yes, sir,” answered Remus.

“You must be Remus Lupin, then. My Lily talked

about you quite a lot, young man. Said you were a
great studying partner,” he said. His eyes
narrowed. Remus, sensing the reason, took Sirius’
hand into his, making the other boy turning to him
with a smile. “Oh. It’s great to meet you, young
man!”

James smiled, understanding the man. He certainly

would’ve liked Remus a lot more now that he knew
that he was gay, or at least in an actual
relationship. If only Regulus was gay or in a
completely different relationship. It took a moment
for him to understand that, in the present situation,
he was ‘Regulus’ and Lily was ‘Anne’.

Mister Evans was certainly a lot less excited to

meet the boys that were not Sirius and Remus.
Peter seemed inoffensive enough after a few
moments of talking to him, the time was mostly
spent stuttering and looking around the house.
James, however was certainly a lot more dangerous
by the way Mister Evans looked at him – a
handsome boy with clear charm and beautiful white
teeth.

“I’m James Potter, sir,” he presented himself.

Mister Evans’ eyes narrowed.

“Oh, the Potter boy,” he grumbled. James winced.

“Yes, yes. Welcome. Lily did say that you were
becoming a better man this year; let’s put it to
test, shall we? How are you doing, Mister Potter?”

“Good, sir, thank you for asking. And you? I hope

this Holiday is going according to plans,” he
answered politely.

Anne stood awkwardly beside Peter. It was painful

to watch. James was doing all in his power to make
himself liked even though he had barely made
through the doorway at that point. He was clearly
trying too hard, leaving it clear and in the open how
serious he was about Lily, which overprotective
Mister Evans clearly didn’t enjoy at first, until he
saw Anne’s small grin hidden between pride and
amusement. He had seen that expression in the
mirror several times before when Lily or Petunia
were doing something odd, but adorable
nonetheless and he had to admit that moment that
perhaps James Potter wasn’t all that bad.

“Come on in, lads,” said Mister Evans. “We have a

lot of muggle family here, so be careful, but
otherwise be free to do whatever. Dinner will be
served soon enough. Lily must be somewhere –
where is this girl, I swear I… oh, there she is. Lily!
Your friends are here!”

Lily ran towards them with a huge smile on her

face, white dress around her knees and a thick, but
sweet looking jumper over it, she jumped into
Anne’s arms as soon as she saw her.

“Anne! Anne! You need to see the new dress I got!

It’s the most beautiful shade of maroon,” Lily said.
“Also, Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas, Lily,” Anne answered.

Lily kissed her cheeks before letting go and quickly

making her way through the boys to greet them,
but it was obvious the bonus seconds that she
spent in James’ arms.

“I’ll introduce you to everybody, come along,” Lily

said.

And she did. And they did their best to remember

names.

Anne did, at least, though all her efforts were

useless when she was the last couple Lily was to
introduce them to.

“And this, finally, is my sister Petunia and her

fiancée, Vernon,” Lily said, though she sounded off,
almost disgusted by the sight.

Anne didn’t know Lily’s reason for it, but she knew
why her stomach churned violently enough for her
to find herself almost hiding behind Sirius, the
tallest of them in his all his 185 centimetres. She
felt safe behind him. Sirius towered about both
Petunia and Vernon easily; and they looked not all
too different from what Anne remembered them by.
Petunia still had her long neck, though this time she
wasn’t half-asleep and confused to why there was a
girl in her door, she was elegantly dressed and
clearly disgusted by the sight of Lily’s friends.
Vernon was following her lead, he still had no neck,
though he had several pounds less from the future
and his frowning lines weren’t as deep – he looked
as angry, lonely and disgustingly interested in the
way Anne was hiding as before.

She hated how he represented no danger to her

and yet she was holding onto Sirius’ shirt and
hoping no one would notice.

But James did.

He took a step to the left, getting in the way of

Vernon’s line of sight directly to Anne and crossed
his arms, greeting him politely, though his knuckles
were white. He had put two and two together, of
course, but he had no right to do anything at the
moment. That man in front of him had done
nothing wrong yet and he wouldn’t bring trouble
upon Lily by fighting her brother-in-law on
Christmas without an obvious reason.

He silently hoped Vernon would make the mistake

of offending someone so he could find an excuse for
a shove, at the very least.

“These are Remus, Sirius, Peter and James,” said

Lily, not even noticing the tension. “And that shy
girl over there is Anne.”

Vernon peaked. He saw the red hair and the wide

brown eyes. He didn’t greet her, nor did he greet
anyone, but his eyes did stop on her for a second
too long.

She was going to be sick; she was sure. She was

going to be sick all over the Evans’ expensive floor.
She wanted to disappear and die, or simply no
longer exist. She didn’t want his eyes on her; the
eyes alone were a lot heavier than his hands over
her body, his curiosity was a lot harder to deal with
than his lust.

Remus gently reached back, behind Sirius, and

touched Anne’s hand. Quiet comfort. Strong
presence. The silent way of promising her that
everything was going to be okay and that the man
was going nowhere near her as long as he was
there and, by the way James and Sirius were
standing, they agreed. Peter and Lily lost in sweet
oblivion tried to get a conversation going, but
Petunia swiftly changed ways and led Vernon away
to talk to an aunt that she clearly disliked.

“I’m sorry,” Lily said, blushing. “Petunia can be

nice, but not when Vernon in nearby, really. He can
be quite the arsehole; he thinks himself so
important, it’s pathetic that no one really knows
him other than Petunia’s stupid boyfriend – no one
in the family wants her to marry him.”

“Nobody in the family will talk to her soon enough,”

Anne said, glancing at the aunt that clearly disliked
Petunia back confused to why the girl had stroked a
conversation up. “Nobody can deal with Vernon for
long, that much is clear.”

“That is right, he’s impossible,” Lily said.

James smiled sadly at Anne. He hadn’t expected

Vernon to be there, but she had – she thought she
was ready to deal with seeing a younger and more
innocent version of him; clearly, she was wrong.
She would love to choke down the younger and
more scared version of her, but she could not, he
was too similar.

For a moment, Anne wondered if she had been the

first. She hated how she doubted it so.

After a few hours, however, she found herself a bit

freer from her fear and from the constant
unnecessary bodyguards around her. She stopped
herself beside the food table and made a small
plate, sitting near the window and quietly picking
on the food, swallowing small bites in boredom.

Perhaps boredom wasn’t the best word to describe

the myriad of feelings choking down all the fun that
she could be having. Anne was terrified. Regulus
was already out of England at that point and she
wouldn’t hear from him for days, maybe even the
whole break. Was he dead? Was he hungry? Was
he asleep already? Would he even celebrate
Christmas? – no, that last question was ridiculous;
ever since Sirius ran away, Regulus started to hate
Christmas and she was sure he would hate it even
more after being forced to see horrible things in a
holiday it was supposed to be good and kind.

Anne hadn’t been able to give him his gift yet. The
Resurrecting Stone weighted on her neck, stuck
tightly to the black leather of her necklace; she had
made it herself, she hoped Regulus would like it
and, therefore, not take it off… for his own safety.

She made her way out through the backdoor to the

backyard. It was small and mostly a patio, but that
didn’t stop the people from gathering there,
shaking in cold, smoke of cigarettes and pipes
choking. Anne didn’t see a problem with it, she only
made her way to the grass and watched the solitary
smoking girl on the corner.

Petunia was quiet near the apple tree they had on

the back, leaning against it and smoking her
cigarette with nervous glances around.

Anne must have made a noise, because Petunia

looked.

“You shouldn’t be here, go back inside,” Petunia

said.

“Do you have one to spare?” Anne asked, coolly.

Petunia was suspicious, clearly, eyes narrowing as

she looked around.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“Inside, talking to your family,” she answered.

Anne looked over her shoulder. “I’m not much of
party girl, I only came because Lily asked me to,
but I have limits.”

Petunia didn’t seem convinced.

“Aren’t your people party lovers?” she asked,

bitterly.

“Wizards and witches do like to party about

everything, you’re right, but I was raised Muggle,
like you,” Anne said. “I never really got much into
the community, I’d rather make my own, but
there’s only so much I can do without being rude –
James, the one with the messy hair, I’ve been
living with him since he’s family and I’m just now
getting used to it.”

That seemed enough. Petunia reached into her bag,

grabbing a pack of cigarettes and offering one to
Anne, though she made sure she couldn’t touch her
skin as she caught it from her. She lit it up and
Anne put it on her lips.

The coughs caught Petunia by surprise.

“Sorry,” Anne choked out. “I never smoked before.”

“I gathered,” Petunia grumbled. “Deep breaths,

slow, too.”

Anne did so, coughing slowly down before stopping

at once.

“This tastes horrible,” Anne complained.

“Helps with anxiety, though,” was Petunia’s answer.

As she put the pack back into her bag, Anne

watched the sleeve of her dress rise, the bruise
half-covered in makeup making an appearance.
Anne looked away quickly, taking another bit of the
cigarette; she could recognize the finger-marks
anywhere.

“Lily misses you,” was what Anne managed to say.

Petunia quickly fixed her sleeve, glancing at Anne

to see if she had seen it, but with Anne looking
away, she calmly fixed her posture and took
another smoky breath.

“Lily has her own family and I’m making my own

soon,” Petunia dismissed. “My parents like her a lot
more, after all she’s the special one. I’m just… plain
Petunia. It’s easy to forget about me.”

“It is when you’re avoiding them,” Anne agreed.

Petunia looked at her in surprise and offense. Anne
wasn’t supposed to agree. “What? What did you
want me to say? ‘I’m sorry’? I’m not. You brought
this up on yourself, choking yourself on jealousy
and envy. Your parents love you… you should
happy you have parents at all.”

“What? Why?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Yours

hit you?”

“Mine are dead,” Anne corrected. Petunia looked at

her in surprise. “I was raised by uncle and my aunt
with my cousin and my brother. My aunt would hit
me sometimes, but mostly make me do chores
around the house, but my uncle was a horrible
man… he abused me, my brother and even his own
son – of course, people like him have different
types of abuse on different people, don’t they?” she
looked at Petunia. She would know. “My brother
died not too long ago, and I think that if they were
better raisers, then he might have survived or…
lived a bit more before passing away. Both of us,
we never really lived, it was mostly trying to get
through the year.”

Petunia didn’t say she was sorry, but her eyes did.
She glanced at the patio and Anne knew that she
was thinking Vernon – things must have been…
similar to them. It wasn’t a surprise to see abused
people turn into abusers to see them trying to
gather the little power they have over other people
just like their abusers have over them.

Lily did say Petunia could be nice, but not when

Vernon was around. Did she hate Lily as much as
she did before Vernon poisoned her mind? Of
course, childish envy was expected; she had lost a
whole world she wanted to be a part of just
because she didn’t have the same talent her sister
did.

“That doesn’t mean you understand,” Petunia said.

“My whole life… I had to bend over backwards,
never breaking; I was never good enough for them.
Just because you don’t have parents, that doesn’t
mean I should love mine.”

“I can understand that. Sirius has terrible parents,

and I’m glad he got out. But yours are not bad…
they want you here, they love you, but you made
yourself look so strong that they don’t see why to
worry about you. You made your life already and
you’re only eighteen, aren’t you? But you have a
fiancée, a job and you’re looking for a house to live
in away from here already,” Anne said. “Why must
they worry if you don’t want them to? They just
don’t want to suffocate you?”

Petunia looked down at her feet, having the

decency to look ashamed for a moment.

“I did what I had to do to get out.”

“And that meant skipping away from an ‘abusive

household’ to an abusive husband?” Anne asked,
bitter. “Just know… the consequences of your
actions here might reflect not only on you, but on
your child as well.”

Petunia shook her head.

“You don’t know anything. Don’t speak of it.”

“I know that if you put some arnica over your wrist,

the bruise will go away quicker and the aloe vera
will make the swelling go down as well,” Anne
answered, finally looking Petunia in the eye. “I’ve
been there. I get it, as much you’d like to believe
that I don’t, I do get it. I had the very same bruise
on my neck one day just because I said my broken
toe was hurting and I didn’t want to wash the
dishes, because that meant standing.”

Petunia flinched with the mental image.

“Why didn’t you get out?”

“Because I had nowhere else to go,” Anne said.

And because nobody wanted to see her away from

that place, she added mentally. The abusive house
was the safest place for her; and that explained a
lot about her fucked up mind.

“I’m sure there were shelters.”

“And I’m sure they’d send me back there,” Anne

said. “Shelters are not always the best of places;
you need a support system that I didn’t have at the
time. One I have now. One Lily makes part of. Do
you have one?”

Petunia couldn’t say the same by the way she

looked down at her feet once more.

“No.”

“Lily would be proud to be a part of it,” Anne said.

“She misses you and speaks of you a lot. She
talked about you when I had a nightmare, she said
that you had night terrors when you were smaller
and she made sure I would sleep next to her for the
rest of the night so she could take care of me in the
same way she did you.”

“Things changed.”

“Because you changed,” Anne said. “Because you

made her change by pushing her way when she
tried to hold onto you. She wanted to come home
and tell you everything she was learning so you
could feel you were a part of it as well. Just
because you don’t have magic, it doesn’t mean this
isn’t your world, Petunia. What if your child was
magic? What would you do then? Ignore him and
refuse to send him to learn to control it? – you
know that’s part of your blood; your sister has it,
her child will have it. That blood came from your
parents and it might follow you, no matter how
much you run.”

“Don’t make me feel bad for not wanting to –”

“You have the right to feel, but you don’t have the
right to hate your sister for doing the same,” Anne
explained, cutting her off. “You were cheated of a
childhood you wanted, side by side with your sister.
Grief was expected. But you convinced yourself that
you were already defeated before you even started.
You have chances still; you have several shots yet
and you’re wasting them by staying with that man.”

Petunia had had enough to Anne’s cheeky

sentences and angry saying when she had nothing
to do with her life.

“You don’t know me! You don’t know Vernon!”

“Believe me, I know you two a lot more than you’d

like,” Anne stressed. Petunia glared at her. “I
thought I knew you, at least, now I’m not sure,
because I wasn’t expecting you to listen to me, but
you are, even if against your will. I never expected
you think I was right, but yet, here you are. You
could’ve walked away, sent me away… and yet you
listened and your argued, you engaged in
conversation,” Anne sighed. “If he’s hurting you –”

“He’s not.”

“When he starts hurting you, then, just know you

have a support system waiting for you to come
back to them.”

Anne watched as Petunia took the butt of the

cigarette and pushed it against the bottom of her
shoe before throwing it away over the fence to the
other house. She had no regrets over it, even as
Anne put her eyebrows up.

Petunia looked at her and shrugged.

“My parents don’t know I smoke,” was her answer.

“Your parents don’t know you’re hurt either,” Anne

offered. “Both situations, they wouldn’t judge you
much.”

Petunia watched her for a moment in silence, face

blank.

“Did your uncle… do something more than hit you?”

Anne was alarmed. Was Petunia… the victim before

Anne? The victim that Anne was scared for before?

“Yes,” she answered, truthfully.

Petunia hesitated once more, hands fixing her

sleeves in silence.

“Does it… feel better after a while? Do you still feel

like cleaning your raw?” Petunia asked in a whisper.

A breeze passed by, making both of them shiver,

but not only because of the cold, but also because
they both knew the answer.

“I still feel like that sometimes,” she admitted. “But

it did get better from every night to just…
sometimes, especially after I got away.”

Petunia nodded, silently making her way away from

Anne, no look back over her shoulder or hesitation.
She disappeared into the house, but Anne finished
a few more breaths of smoke before throwing the
cigarette over the fence as well, making her way
away from the cold.

“It was amazing to finally meet you officially, Mister

Evans, thank you very much for inviting us,” Anne
said, smiling a bit as she shook her grandfather’s
hand. “And you, Misses Evans, wonderful casserole;
do remember to give the recipe to Lily so she can
send me! I love it very much!”

“Thank you, dear,” said Misses Evans, kissing

Anne’s both cheeks. “You and James should come
by again when possible!”

Anne glanced at James, who smiled proudly for

being able to charm Misses Evans so quickly – a
single night and she was eating on his hand, much
like he had wanted Lily to do. Apparently, her
mother was a lot more romantic-based than Lily.

It was when Anne looked at Petunia standing

beside Mister Evans, face blank, but she –
surprisingly – offered her right hand in a cold, but
efficient handshake that Anne quickly took.

“Good to meet you,” Petunia said.

Anne smiled.

“You as well, Petunia,” she answered.

Such a formal goodbye that received such

surprising eyes of the whole Evans’ family, though
no one said anything, after all Vernon had gone
away earlier with a lie about something in his job,
so Petunia could be somewhat polite, but no one
had expected friendly from her, especially to
someone like Anne. Petunia was meant to go to
Vernon’s house to spend the rest of the break with
his family.

“Come on, Annie, let’s go home,” James said,

throwing his arm around her shoulder and leading
her away from Petunia, trying his best not to glare
– he knew the terrible things that woman would do
if given the chance.

What no one noticed or tried to see was the small

piece of paper Petunia had passed.

Her phone number.

Chapter 62: Chapter Sixty-One

Summary:
The Winter Break in Anne's vision.

THE POTTER COTTAGE

My dear Anne,

I know not how to start this letter, but I can try

with: I’m yours. Whatever you want to do, tell me
and I’ll help. I refuse to just watch and forget
everything anymore. It’s happening as your said;
things are getting worse and I can no longer refrain
myself from having opinions or views of the
horrifying things that are happening around me.

I’m unwatched for now. With Bella and her husband

and my own husband being away, I feel a lot safer
than I’d like to admit; they are my family and they
were supposed to protect me, isn’t this how things
are supposed to work? And yet, I do not trust my
own sister to keep my safe beyond what she was
ordered by the man she calls the Dark Lord. I’m
willing to pass anything you want to you; anything
you want and anything I know will go quickly to
you, though we must find better ways to
communicate or some type of code so both of us
will be safe at the end of things.

Anne, Lucius almost died.

He didn’t say anything to me at first, but I did hear

him on the fireplace with Regulus and Severus, who
were together just before the trip they left on – the
one I’m sure you are aware; it’s too big for
someone as informed as you not to know about. He
was complaining about trying to get rid of blood of
his favourite shirt and how to make the skin heal at
once since the spells he usually used weren’t
working. I confronted him once he was finished and
we had a huge argument, but he finally told me.
Disgusting things, Anne, that’s what the Dark Lord
wishes them to do. Lucius refused to participate on
a rape against an underage Muggle woman and he
was cut from rib to rib, Severus and Regulus had
not gone since they were in school, but now I can
only imagine what they were going to be forced to
do and I fear for my little cousin, for my friend and
for my husband – I do not fear for my sister, after
all I doubt that she would hesitate to do anything
that man asks her to.

So… here’s all I know until now.

The group is already in Albania in the day this letter

is written; 25 of December. They are looking for
someone in there, a woman, according to the
whispers Lucius heard, but he isn’t sure himself.
The Dark Lord didn’t tell anything to anyone, not
even Bella or any other of Lestrange, though they
are quite clearly his most trusted followers.

Dear friend, I fear for you as well, I must admit.

You are young and ambitious, but I fear that no
one is as strong or as mean as the man you wish to
go against, not even Dumbledore. He doesn’t
hesitate, he doesn’t fear consequences – nothing
happens in his heart, only in his head. No normal
human works like this, I’m sure. He has no past,
wishes for no future and his present is resumed on
the story of others.

You foolish girl, keep yourself alive, alright? For me

– for Regulus, if not for yourself.

From your official friend,

Narcissa Black-Malfoy.

PS: I hope you can understand my handwriting;

I’ve been told is quite ghastly, but I cannot change
it at this point.

Narcissa was right in one thing right away: her

handwriting was horrible and Anne took almost
fifteen minutes to understand the whole letter and
reread it several times to make sure she
understood it all in the whole context.

Her support was important, especially something

was official as the offering to be a spy this openly.
To have such explicit offer in a letter that she knew
Anne was most likely to keep, she was not only
professing an offering, but also her loyalty. Anne
could very well use that against her, but she
wouldn’t.

Anne sat on her room in the middle of the night, or

very early morning; she wasn’t sure. But that letter
took her sleep away. Regulus already was in
Albania probably looking for the one that Voldemort
wanted.

She hated how she was losing her sleep as she

thought of what and who Voldemort was looking for
and what he would do, or ask other people to do for
him, to get it. Regulus must be terrified. Severus
must be terrified. Even Narcisa, being alone in the
Manor, must be terrified for her husband and sister
– even if she says otherwise, after all Bellatrix was
still her sister in the end of the day.

She got up, unsure of what to do and unsure of

where to go. All she knew was that she couldn’t be
alone at that moment. Her anxiety was growing
and the feeling of choking was starting to get a
hold on her; if she stayed alone in the half-lit room
for too long everything wouldn’t end up well.

Anne made her way out of her bedroom.

Remus was in Sirius’ room and Peter was on

James’, so Anne made the quick decision of slipping
into her father’s bedroom.

It was dark, but as soon as she opened the door,

four eyes looked at her. James and Peter were
awake.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” Peter said.

“Hey, sweetheart, did something happen?” James

asked. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“I can’t sleep. Can I spend the night here?” she

asked.

Peter started nodding before James could. James

thought it was odd that Peter was so excited to
Anne to spend the night, of course, but he wasn’t
going to let his daughter spend the night alone
when she clearly was out of sorts just because she
was wearing a short nightgown, after all the house
was really warm by the Warming Charm that Monty
had put on just a few hours ago.

“Come to bed,” James said.

He scooted over. Peter fixing himself on the

mattress on the ground, sitting down to watch as
Anne walked into the room and got into bed with
James, shaking a bit in anxiety already.

“Christmas without Harry is weird,” she admitted.

“Your brother?” Peter asked.

“Yeah. He usually found a way to give me presents,

even when I couldn’t give him some,” she
answered. “We’d go out sometimes when we’d
spend the break away from home, we’d have fun.
And things might actually feel normal for a
moment.”

James was quick to hold her, gently petting her

arm in comfort.

“You have us now,” James said.

Anne hoped that would be enough.

Through the rest of December, Anne did her best to

keep herself with some grip of her emotions and
rest her mind, though it didn’t completely work.

Anne’s mind still was stuck on Regulus’ situation.

Last she heard, he had been Albania, but she knew
he had to make his way through the Romania and
Bulgaria still. They were looking for someone and
probably some other supporters around Europe. It
was no surprise there, after all in her own time
Voldemort had gone there to gather closed-minded
supporters and dark, old magic that survived the
centuries of fearful people trying to clean off the
world of magic they didn’t understand or know how
to use. He was smart enough to know that he could
get whatever he wanted if he spoke well enough to
the people eager for a leader that would
understand that not all old magic was bad magic.

But as New Years’ Eve got closer and closer to

them, the Potters insisted on making Anne’s mind
and body as busy as they could.

They moved to the Potter Cottage, first of all.

The Cottage was a lot bigger inside than outside,

but the yard was enviable by distance. According to
them, the cottage had a huge and old version of a
notice-me-not charm, so the muggles would see
just a beautiful garden, but no house, so it was
nothing surprising to see some of them stealing a
flower or so every now and then.

The brick pathway to the front of the house passed

through the small patio of bricks with a small round
white wood tea-table with three chairs, surrounded
by flowers. But inside, the cottage was surprisingly
big and beautiful, no matter how rustic it looked on
the outside. The mudroom was long mudroom with
an expensive magical rug that would clean shoes,
but not get dirty somehow. The mudroom led
straight to the stairs, but under the stairs, there
was a small space where a sofa was resting against
the wall that was filled with moving photographs.

“We need to get pictures with you,” Mia said as she

watched Anne seeing the moving people smiling in
a loop. “Sirius has a couple on the wall already, but
it’s your turn. I’m sure we can get a few good ones
this break.”

Mia was correct. The pictures went up to the 1930’s

or so, Mia smiling with her parents as a young
woman. Monty holding another girl, his now dead
sister, that was smiling as she stood proudly on the
wooden horse, Monty not letting her fall. Baby
James holding a realistic looking cub of a lion,
though it was just a teddy. A baby Sirius
photograph he had stolen, he had Regulus beside
him and they were standing, stoic and handsome,
though he had a mischievous smirk on his lips – the
photographer certainly found a small surprise after
the picture was taken. And then a family
photograph with James, Sirius and the parents
standing behind them.

Anne would never have a childhood picture there,

she knew, though she wasn’t sure she wanted one.
Some things were best forgotten. Still, her hand
went to her bracelet, touching it in silence.

There was only one picture with her, it was torn

and the water, sun and snow had taken its tool on
it. James and Lily dancing together – it was the
only picture she had of the two; though it belonged
to Harry, he would take it to her to make sure she
remembered she looked like her mum… that they
shared something, even if it was lost on time. The
picture was hidden on the bottom of her drawers in
the Manor.

“That would be nice,” Anne agreed.

Mia smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder and she

walked by, making her way through the house.

Anne followed her from the stairs to the kitchen. It

was a lot smaller than the Manor’s, but beautiful
nonetheless. Mia put two of the bags in the kitchen
– food for the night, it looked an awful lot, but it
certainly would be eaten whole by the way Sirius,
Remus and James were. With Peter away to visit
his sister in America, he had passed by the Manor
with his mother to say ‘happy new year’ before
leaving; quite sweet of him, Anne thought.

“On the right, that’s the music room. Sirius will be

there all day, be sure. He likes to play during the
break,” Mia said watching Anne peek to the closed
doors. “Left, that’s the parlour, there’s some nice
books there, you’ll like it. Upstairs, that’s my room
and Sirius’ since he’ll share with Remus. You don’t
see a problem with sharing with James just for a
couple of nights, right?”

“It’s fine, Dad doesn’t snore,” she dismissed.

“Let’s thank the deities for that, because we can’t

say the same for your grandfather,” Mia laughed.

Anne smiled a bit.

“I’m in the attic, then?” she asked.

Mia shook her head, shocked.

“But of course not, my darling. The attic stores

books and has a bathroom that we’ll all share, but
nobody lives there,” Mia said. “How inhumane to
live in the attic –” she stopped herself. Anne had
lived under stairs and in less than disable places
before. “We don’t do that in this house.”

Anne nodded.

“I’ll go up, put my bags down,” Anne announced.

“You do that, then go to the music room. I’m sure

Sirius will be happy to show you some things,” Mia
said. “He hasn’t stopped yapping about it ever since
you expressed interest in learning the piano.”

“I thought you were going to be the one to teach

me,” Anne said.

“Sirius is too excited for me to take that away from

him,” Mia laughed. “Do your thing. Get down when
you can. Take your time, rest up a bit if you want.
It’ll be a long night.”

And a long night it was indeed.

Anne did lie down in bed for good thirty minutes

before deciding she wouldn’t be able to get a nap
out of it and went down stairs to the music room
where James was – badly – playing the piano,
Remus was butchering the song on the flute and
Sirius was cringing in the corner of the room,
laughing, but looking like he was about to cry at
the same time. They didn’t stop when Anne came
in, they actually made the music louder, excited to
show off what they were practicing to her.

“Good?” James asked, hopeful.

“Shit,” she answered.

“Absolutely shite,” agreed Remus. “We rock,

Prongs! I better receive a compensation for my
fucked up work tonight, Pads.”

“Ew,” James mumbled.

Anne laughed, sitting down on the sofa beside the

piano.

“If my mother was here, she would absolutely have

a fit with the song,” said Sirius. “A very bad version
of Rebel, Rebel.”

“Wait, that was the song?!” Anne said, shocked.

“See? Very, very bad,” Sirius added.

And after that, the whole afternoon was spent with

Sirius trying to teach Anne the piano and convince
her to learn the flute as well and trying to keep her
ears away from the terrible advices and the other
two boys in the room, who absolutely did not play
the piano, though James insisted he was good on
the flute.

“I’m decent,” insisted James.

“He’s not,” Remus answered, sitting on the sofa

with his legs thrown over the armrest. “He’s
wonderful on the flute, really. I heard him playing
the really boring song –”

“Don’t call Mozart boring,” Sirius warned.

“Nah, mate, it was pretty boring,” agreed James.

“I like Mozart!”

“Normal people don’t like Mozart, mister,” Remus

said, glaring at Sirius. “Now, he was playing this
boring song, and then he saw me listening to it and
he immediately changed to Love of My Life. It was
such a new song and he had learned already!”

New… yeah. Anne supposed a 1975 song would be

considered new to them still. Still, that made her
chuckle under her breath. None of the boys, all too
focused on their discussion, cared to ask her about
it.

She watched it all; teenage boys were teenage

boys, midst war or not, she had learned that a long
time ago, but it was nice to see it anyways. They
were all smiling and all very interested in learning
more about each other, even if there was nothing
new there – those were friends, or even more, they
were family in a way Anne had never had before
that moment.

It might sound like a lie, somewhat. After all, she

had Harry, of course, but Rony was Harry’s best
friend and casual protection of Anne’s interests and
well-being, Hermione was the understanding bond
of the group, the one that showed the boys why
Anne was doing what she was doing when they
didn’t agree, both too hot-headed to listen. They
were there, but they were never hers. Not in the
way those boys were. Anne belonged and, amore
important than that, she felt like she belonged. She
could rely on those boys and listen to them with
gladness, because she knew and she had proved
that they would listen to her, had she developed a
need for it for some reason.

The foolishness and youthfulness only stopped at

dinner when they allowed themselves to dress up
to stay in, but look pretty for photographs only they
would see.

“Anne, come on!” Sirius urged her, standing on the

door of hers and James’ bedroom. “Everybody is
downstairs already.”

“I’m just fixing my robes, I want to look the best,”

Anne said, insecure.

Sirius rolled his eyes and walked into the bedroom.

“You look great already,” dismissed Sirius, looking

at her through the full-body mirror.

She was wearing white robes, which wasn’t a usual

colour for her. She was insecure; it made her hair
colour scream for attention and it made her look
slightly too pale for her taste, but James had found
her some old rouge from his mother and helped her
apply it, complaining that nobody had taught her to
do that before, though she had seen Hermione and
the Patil twins doing it. She looked alive, but she
still looked out of place – the robes were expensive
and made in Italy. They were loose mostly
everywhere, but the waist was tight and the
shoulder pads made her feel powerful, especially
with the gold flowers embroidered on them (with
actual gold).

“This is the first time my photograph is being taken

here,” she said. “I’m a bit nervous.”

“You look beautiful, Annie. Really, really beautiful –

just like your mum,” he answered. “Now, please,
come on. We need to take the photograph so I can
drink myself to the point where Remus has to carry
me to bed.”

He smirked at her, fixing her hair a bit and holding

her hand before kissing the back of her hand. With
his very clear support, she took a deep breath and
nodded before following him out the room and
down the stairs.

The whole family was gathered on the parlour. The

fireplace had been disconnected from the floo,
being lit and warm at that moment. The camera
was right in front of the fire, turned away from it so
the light could light up the family that was starting
to get ready to take the photograph.

“Annie!” James celebrated, two flutes of

champagne into the small party they were having
already.

“Anne, thank Merlin!” Monty said. “I see the waiting

had its perks, my dear. You look wonderful.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling just a little bit.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Mia said, fixing the camera

and looking at the two walking into the room. “You
look beautiful. I knew that robe would look
wonderful on you. It was mine, I just added the
shoulder-pads, made it a bit more… modern.”

“Very 80s,” Anne agreed.

Mia raised an eyebrow.

“I see the future!” Mia joked. “Muggle and

Wizarding fashion are very different.”

It was true.

In her first life, the Wizarding fashion seemed

somewhat late. It was very 1910’s with the long
robes and moderate silloutte, but right now the
Wizarding fashion seemed to like the future 80s a
lot more – shoulder pads starting to make an
appearance, leather everywhere, but gogo boots
were still there, surprisingly, and the robes were
shorter; tea-length and sometimes even going a
whole finger up the knee.

“Come here, dear, come here!” Monty said.

Anne made her away from Sirius, who stayed

beside Remus, who was in the far-left corner. The
settee chair was of dark green velvet and it was in
front of the boys. Mia sat down in front of Monty,
who put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at
her, she looked at the empty seat beside her –
James would be standing on the space behind
between Anne and Mia, Sirius and Remus on her
left. Anne smiled, sitting and letting the robes cover
her thighs, her heels clicking. She crossed her
ankles, putting them to the left side.

Mia smiled.

“And one…” started Mia.

“Two…” Monty continued.

“Three...,” said James.

“SMILE!” screamed Sirius, with a big smile, hugging

Remus.

The picture was taken.

Mia was looking away from Monty, smiling at the

camera, but Monty didn’t look away from his wife,
proudly glancing at the children of the house. Sirius
was hugging Remus’ waist, throwing his arm over
James’ shoulder, who laughed, smiling at the
camera. Anne threw some of her hair over her
shoulder, smiling bigly to make sure the world
could see how happy she was at that moment.

1977 started well and, for once, Anne allowed

herself to be truly and absolutely happy. Just for
one more moment.

Chapter 63: Chapter Sixty-Two

Summary:
Angst and War walk hand in hand.

Notes:
Warning: Walburga is a
manipulative bitch.

1977

Regulus’ Black 1977 started horribly.

He had fixed his leg and now the bone was back to
place, but there’s little he could do about the sore
spots that stayed behind as he lied in bed still dirty
and bloodied by the road he had taken. He wanted
to disappear and never exist again.

His world had fallen apart, but everybody else’s

seemed to keep turning and he hated how he,
selfishly, wished everything to stop just for a
moment – just one moment where he would grieve
by himself.

Regulus had killed someone.

His hands shook, they had no visible blood in them

and yet he could feel it all over himself. He had
broken in soul – he was no better than the man
that he was forced to follow and wished to be
nothing like. He had killed a man that had no idea
he was in danger until he turned, confused about
the young boy he saw holding a stick towards him
with a shaky hand; ‘hey, boy, what are –’ and he
never finished the sentence, the green light hit him
straight to the chest before he could. The family of
the muggle man would find some solace with the
idea that it had been a natural deal, after all that
was all muggles could see, but he would know the
truth, he would feel the weight of his body over his
shoulder forever.

Murder. He was a murderer.

He did his best not to sob too loud as he put his

hands over his mouth, trying to get everything out
at once. He was home alone, but even walls have
ears in his mind once he was that paranoid. He
couldn’t be alone, but he had no one to turn to at
the moment; Severus was dealing with his own shit
and he had no other friend.

So, he wrote his lover.

Dearest of Annes,

My heart, I hope not to disappoint you somehow,

but I failed to come back whole as you asked me
to. A piece of my soul was left behind by the things
I was forced to do – I take comfort in the idea that
you understand it was either me or them, and yet I
beat myself up for the idea of the blood in my
hands.

Anne, my darling, I beg of you company if possible.

Even if inconvenient, I ask of you to come either
way. I cannot be alone; I fear what my mind will
trick me into doing or thinking if I’m alone for too
long. Come to me, talk to me, embrace me at once.
I’m too tired to pretend not to be clingy and needy
of you in my arms and mind.

Mother is with Narcissa. Father is with the

Lestrange family (horrid people I’m glad to be
away).

Can you come over?

I suppose, I forgot to say ‘Happy New Year’.

From what’s left of me,

Regulus Arc. Black.

And he sent it, lying back in bed, shaking and

trying to keep the little soup he had eaten down in
his stomach. He felt like he didn’t deserve to eat
and he felt like he didn’t deserve to be alive at his
life led to that moment. He was better off dead; he
hung onto the thought that Anne needed his intel
and information to get everything done, so that war
could end quicker and impact less lives than it did
the first time she lived through it.

Regulus couldn’t stop himself anymore once the

smell of blood attacked his nose again, even if this
time it was his own blood – he turned to the side,
throwing up all over the carpet and choking several
times as he lied on his side, shaking and unable to
get up or reach for his wand to clean everything up.
He just cried in silence.

It was oddly resemblant of the day Sirius left; the

same feeling of helplessness and loneliness on the
bedroom he usually sought cover in. His shelter
somehow tainted by the world outside of it.

The door opened.

Alarmed, he looked up.

Anne was standing there in thick white velvety

trousers and a white turtle neck. Her hair was up in
a ponytail. She looked beautiful and innocent as
she stood there, wide-eyed and worried.

“Regulus!” she exclaimed.

Her wand was in her hand at once, waving it once

and getting rid of his mess before running to him in
his bed and sitting beside him.

He couldn’t hold himself back.

The sobs started as he threw himself on her arms,

she took him in well, his head resting on her chest
as she heard him wail like a child that scraped its
knee and needed attention about it. He was hurt
and scared. That was something she could
understand, sympathize and listen to, even if he
shared no words with her as he hung onto her as if
she was the only thing keeping him away from
drowning.

She did her best to emulate to do as James did to

her when she was scared of her nightmares of
flashbacks.

“You’re alright,” she mumbled. “You’re home now.

You’re safe and away from there. I’m here. You’ll
be alright. Take a deep breath. It’s done. It’s over.”

But it wasn’t and, by the way Regulus met her

eyes, they both knew that.

“I killed him,” he sobbed.

As if afraid of her reaction, he hid his face on her

neck. She didn’t stiff under him nor did she move
uncomfortable, she just petted his back and
allowed him to get it all, not caring that he was
dirty and sweaty.

“You’re alright now, Regulus. You’re with me and

you’re safe while you’re with me; you know that,”
she said. “You did what you had to do and I
understand that, anyone with half-a-mind will
understand. We all do that to survive. We all do
some things we’re not proud of to keep ourselves
alive.”

“I don’t like this,” Regulus grumbled against her.

“I know, I know,” she soothed. “I’m sorry you had

to go through that, I’m sure it was hard for you.
But you’re alright now. I’m right here, Little Prince,
right here and I’m not going anywhere until you
want me to.”

Regulus pulled away from the embrace for one

moment. His lips went towards her before he pulled
away.

“I vomited,” he reminded himself.

Anne laughed, amused by her reaction.

“Do you want to brush your teeth?” she asked.

“I don’t want to let go,” he said.

Anne smiled.

“No problem,” she dismissed. “I’ll go with you,

don’t worry. Come on, get up.”

Regulus did, pulling himself up from the bed and

not letting go on her waist as they walked towards
the bathroom. He didn’t care he sounded pathetic,
he just wanted Anne to be near because that meant
she was safe and, more important than anything,
on his sight, therefore he could protect her much
like she could protect him. That’s how they worked:
together; them against the world, if needed.

Anne was quiet, watching him brush his teeth.

She was searching on his face anything that

indicated that he wasn’t well in any way other than
emotional. His physical health was just as
important, but he was covered from neck to toe in
dark clothes and seemed so distraught that there
was no way she could do anything without his
request.

“Did you ever kill someone, Anne?” he asked once

he spat.

Anne looked away from his body, looking for

stiffness and difficulties moving, and went to his
eyes.

“It depends on what you’re asking,” she said,

looking a bit pale. “Did I even throw the
Unforgivable Death Curse? No. Have my actions
brought death upon people, both deserving and
innocent? Yes,” she admitted. “Regulus, it’s as a
said, we do what we must and no more.
Understand that I know that you wouldn’t do that
unprovoked or if you had any other choice.”

“I said ‘I’m sorry’,” he said. “There’s very little it

can do. I don’t think he even understood, I said it
in English.”

“I’m sure he caught the meaning,” she said. “I used

Crucio on Bellatrix before.”

He turned to her at once. Anne hurriedly looked

away; if she was telling that story in detail, she
didn’t need Regulus looking at her.

“What?!”

“When she killed Sirius. Harry was… off, his anger

blinded him, he was loud and caught a lot of
attention, so they held him back. I was faster and
there was no one trying to hold me; I got there
before she could even finish singing ‘I killed Sirius
Black’,” she told. “I attacked her from behind. She
didn’t see me coming, but she did look at me once
she was on the ground… and I smiled,” she looked
at his eyes. “I was provoked and I would’ve killed
her had I had the time to do so. But Vold—the Dark
Lord got there, stupefied me so harshly that I was
thrown back. I thought I was going to die that
moment and I prepared for it, I was ready to throw
the Death Curse at her because if I was going
down, she was coming with me, but Dumbledore
got there with Harry just behind him. Harry
protected me quickly and Dumbledore caught the
attention.”

“Do you think you would have regretted it?”

Regulus asked.

She shrugged.

“Sometimes I think so, but there’s sometimes that I

regret I didn’t do right away,” she said. “Had I not
been so angry, I wouldn’t have wanted her to suffer
and ‘Crucio’ wouldn’t have been my first choice. If I
had a better grip on my emotions when I was
fourteen, she would be dead and things would’ve
changed a lot. The torture I had to go through
would’ve been very different, maybe even better
than what I went through.”

“Bella is so… loyal to him.”

“She’s obsessed with him,” she corrected. “And it’ll

get worse. She kills without hesitation, without
regret and without the horrible feeling of the soul
breaking – you didn’t. You’re better person. Don’t
dwell on it.”

“That’s easy to say,” he grumbled, bitter.

“And hard to do, but necessary nonetheless,” Anne

said. “What you had to go through, it was a terrible
thing and one that you’ll have to live with for the
rest of your life. Make sure the life you took was no
wasted in vain. Make sure people after you will not
have to do go through what you did.”

Regulus didn’t need to know much more about her

past to know that it was exactly what Anne had
been telling herself as she grew up; every single
terrible thing she had live through, she didn’t want
anyone else to do so, so she was more than willing
to take it all by herself, carry the weight.

He held his hand out for her. Anne took it with a

small smile, understanding of his wish for touch.
They walked back to his room holding hands and
sat on his bed side by side.

“Things do get better?” he asked.

“Once you grasp the motive, yes,” she said.

His motive was her, no more, no less; no war.

A loud creaking made Regulus pale once more as

he jumped out of the bed, stumbling to the side
with the shock. Confused, Anne got up as well, but
didn’t get near the door because Regulus held her
arm tight.

“Under the bed,” he whispered.

Anne wanted to know what was going on, of

course, but she was smart enough to know it
wasn’t time to ask. She just threw herself on the
ground and quickly rolled under the bed, watching
as Regulus quickly moved his covers to block the
foot of his bed, leaving just a small opening where
she could see the very bottom of his bedroom door.

She stayed there for a moment and was ready to

roll out and ask what everything was about when
the door opened at once.

“Feeling any better?” a woman’s voice asked.

Anne felt her stomach drop.

Walburga was back.

“Yes, Mother, the resting made it a lot better.

Thank you for convincing Father that socializing
was not the best at the moment,” Regulus asked.

She bit her lip, hating how terribly genuine Regulus

sounded as she watched him thank the woman that
made his life a hell. He was so depended on her! He
was so… willing for her.

“It’s alright, I understand long trips can be tiring

sometimes,” Walburga said. Her voice sounded a
lot sweeter at that moment than it was the whole
dinner Anne had been present. “I heard from
Bellatrix about your little adventure and I can see
how it could be tiring. Winning from Roddy in a duel
is quite the feat, you do understand that, don’t you,
Regulus, dear?”

“Yes, Mother,” he said.

“I suppose I have been teaching you well,” she

sounded like she had just made a joke.

Anne caught the joke a second too late. The

tortures; that was what she was calling ‘teaching’
him to duel, when he had been unable to defend
himself and learning how to bear the pain of curses
and hexes. Anne’s lips curled in disgust as she
glared at the expensive leather shoes on the
doorway.

“Yes, Mother,” he said once more, this time voice

wavering.

“Did you just wake up?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I took some time resting, but I was

thinking on going through my school stuff. I
suppose I could use the time to study a bit.”

“Good boy,” she said. She took a step back,

starting to close the door slowly, but she stopped.
The door opened once more and Anne bit her lip to
keep herself quiet. “Regulus… you are aware I’m
very proud of you, aren’t you? What you did was a
very mature, stepping up when your brother (may
he pay for his decisions) failed to see the light of
the situation. I know you wanted to be a boy for a
little bit more before turning into a man, and that’s
why I’m pushing away engagements for now, as a
reward for your services.”

“I –” Regulus sounded choked up and somewhat

confused. “Thank you, Mum.”

Silence.

The door closed.

The heels clicked away and she probably went

down the stairs.

Anne didn’t move until Regulus was on his hands

and knees beside his bed, trying to look at her.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “I’m sorry, she wasn’t

supposed to be back already. I’m supposed to have
another hour or so by myself.”

“It’s alright,” she dismissed. “Are you alright?”

Silence.

She made her way from underneath the bed and he

helped her get up as his mind clearly tried for find a
suitable answer for her question, but he didn’t
seem to do so, because the silence elongated for
almost a whole minute.

“I don’t think she has ever said she is proud of me

before,” was all he managed to say.

Anne hated Walburga Black with all her strength as

she glared at the door.

Regulus was everything every mother was

supposed to be proud of. He was swimming
champion, he played instruments and was
academically gifted; he was kind and
understanding, he was strong and completely ready
to help those who needed and he could help. How
could anyone not be proud of him? He was so
brave! So smart! And yet, Walburga failed to see
his wonderful side, only seeing his failures because
that’s all she knew how to do – with Sirius, with
Orion, with Regulus; no one seemed safe from her
judgments and bitterness, even though none of
them had anything to do with the way she had
turned out.

He took a deep breath.

“Kreacher!” he called out.

With a loud pop, the elf appeared in his room, eyes

wide and he smoothed down his pillowcase. His
wide eyes stopped – surprisingly – on Anne before
going to Regulus, standing tall as he waited for his
orders.

“Young Master,” he greeted. “Miss.”

“Hello, Kreacher. Long time no see,” she said,

smiling at him. “How have you been?”

“Kreacher is fine, Miss,” the elf said.

“Kreacher, I need you to take Miss Sage –”

“Miss Potter, Master,” he corrected.

The two froze.

Anne turned to Regulus in surprise. She knew he

trusted the elf, but she hadn’t expected him to tell
him about her truth.

“I didn’t say anything,” he defended himself quickly

once he felt her eyes on him. “How do you know
that?” he asked the elf.

“Miss Potter certainly looks a lot like her father,

Kreacher saw yous in the train station,” he said.

Anne didn’t dare to ask the old elf who he thought

Anne’s father to be, she just smiled as best as she
could through her nervousness.

“Well, Kreacher, I’d be very happy if you could

somehow refrain yourself from commenting on it to
anyone,” she said. “And, if you don’t see a
problem, keep on referring to me as Miss Sage or
just Miss Anne.”

Regulus watched as Kreacher looked at her in

surprise before turning to him, searching for the
confirmation he was allowed to take orders or
requests from her.

“From now on, if Anne ever tells you anything, you

must obey her as if she’s the Mistress of the house,
alright?” Regulus asked. Kreacher’s eyes widened
as he nodded urgently. “Now, you will not tell
anything about your discovery to anyone and not
comment on it in front of anyone. Understood?”

“Yes, Young Master,” said the elf.

“Good. Now, pop Anne on the Potter Cottage and

then come back straight here, alright?” Regulus
said. “And do cut my mother some fruit. She’ll
certainly be distracted with it and leave us alone for
some time before starting to scream again.”

Kreacher nodded.

He offered his tiny hand to Anne, who smiled at

him and took it.

Regulus stood alone in the middle of his room on

the next second, hating every second of his life
again.

Chapter 64: Chapter Sixty-Three

Summary:
Anne, Severus and Regulus
discuss the Winter Break Trip and
its possible consequences.

THE TRIP

The fifth brought forth the full moon of the month

of January, but the Marauders were so happy in
general that none of them seemed very worried.
The day Remus was happy and content, then
Moony was somewhat easy to control.

Anne, however, was a lot less interested in the

good mood that seemed to follow the Gryffindor
Tower residents. It felt too much like a warning,
like the reminder that no one besides the ones too
deep in the dark knew that the war was coming.
The sweet bliss that most of them felt was no a
luxury Anne could afford, so she saw herself being
more and more alone in a place she once felt
comfortable, even if she was back only for two days
at that time.

So, once her dad and his friends were out, she
made her way through the corridors caring little for
the fact that she didn’t have the map with her this
time. She got to the corridor and paced until the
door appeared, she walked into the Room and
smiled when she saw Regulus and Severus.

The room was the odd version of the Slytherin

Common Room once more, no bed to be seen, but
with a coffee table in front of the sofa near the
fireplace. Regulus was lying on the sofa,
comfortable with closed eyes and relaxed body, but
Severus was busy exploring the room with great
curiosity, looking out the window that – surprisingly
– didn’t show under the lake, just the Forbidden
Forest and part of the roof of the distant empty
house of horrors in the Hogsmeade.

“Your friends are out there tonight,” Severus

commented without a single greeting once she was
inside the room and closed the door. She raised a
single eyebrow at him. “It’s the full moon.”

“Yes,” she said. “Did you learn your lesson and will
stay inside tonight, right?”

He turned to glare at her, but said nothing more.

Regulus sat down with a sigh, pushing his feet off

the sofa to give Anne some space to sit down if she
wanted, but she lingered near the door.

“Ignore Severus, darling, he’s in a bad mood

because he’s in pain,” said Regulus.

“Piss off,” Severus quickly answered.

Anne’s anger didn’t disappear, but it certainly

diminished as she saw Severus limp his way
through the room towards the sofa and sat down
on the spot that had been offered her. Regulus
glared at him, but said nothing more, starting to
get up from the sofa himself. Anne made a
movement with her hand to tell him to sit down
again, which he did.

She walked to the other side of the coffee table and

sat down, back to the warm fireplace and facing
towards the two boys.

“I can help you,” she offered.

Severus rolled his eyes.

“This is none of your business. It’s my body,” he

said.

“I’m only offering you to heal it, not to make it

mine,” she answered.

“You’re in a bad mood as well,” Severus mused.

“You’d be if you were in my place, I assure you,”

she said. “Everybody is so happy and oblivious.”

“And you are surprised, why?” he asked.

She glared at him once more.

Regulus crossed his arms and leaned back.

“Alright, you two, slow down. I get that you two are
having bad days, but can we, please, focus on
what’s truly important?” Regulus asked.

Severus turned to Regulus.

“Did you tell her?”

“I told her nothing.”

Severus sighed.

“If you weren’t so busy snogging when you met up,

maybe you’d have been able to tell her something,”
Severus said. “And then I wouldn’t have to be
here.”

Anne saw the hurt in Regulus eyes, so she jumped

into the conversation without even acknowledging
that she wasn’t wanted to.

“Well, if I weren’t so busy hiding under the bloody

bed because of his fucking crazy mother got home
early, we would’ve been able to talk after he
stopped vomiting,” Anne said.

Severus’ face went from mocking to blank in a

moment before he dropped a tone or two in his
skin, looking slightly ashy as he bit his lip. He didn’t
apologize out loud, but his silence was enough to
show the two that he wasn’t going to get further
into the subject than absolutely necessary.

“I told her I killed the man, but no more,” Regulus

admitted in a whisper.

Severus nodded.

Anne got up from the ground, putting her hands in

the pockets of the coat she had over her buttoned-
up pyjamas.

“I know a lot of terrible things probably went on the

trip, and I don’t ask you two to relieve it all and tell
me everything. Tell me what you think it was
important. Tell me what you think I need to know,
if you don’t wish to tell me everything,” she said.

The future potion’s master scratched the back of his

neck, uncomfortable and stiff at first before he took
a deep breath and nodded to himself, noticing
Regulus’ silence as a request for him to start.

“We left the country the same night we

disembarked,” Severus said. “We made a quick
stop in France to meet up Bellatrix and her husband
and then we got to Albania in the morning. We had
a safe-house to stay in, it was nothing especial
really – an old house, and a muggle one at that. I
thought it was weird, but there was nothing I could
say about it, after all we didn’t stay for long, just
took a three-hour break for us to sleep a bit before
we went on. He was looking for something, but he
didn’t tell us what it was. At first, I admit, I thought
we were looking for one of those things… those
horcruxes you told us about, but there was
something more in the way he was behaving.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He was stopping in odd places. Piss poor places,”

Regulus said, shivering a bit. “Anne, I was terrified
of there. We were in horrible neighbourhoods.”

Severus rolled his eyes.

“We have those here, too,” Severus dismissed. He

turned to Anne again. “But Regulus is right, we
were in odd places. The Dark Lord sticks to richer
places, usually, that’s why he has so many rich
people on his pocket.”

“I gathered,” Anne commented.

“We stopped at this… it looked like a club or

something, there were people fighting outside, so
we had to wait before we went in,” Severus
continued. “It was day, so it was all turned off and
all that, but it was club for sure. It smelled like
sweat and alcohol.”

“And not the good kind,” Regulus added.

Anne almost laughed. She forgot for a moment that

Regulus was a rich boy, used only with the best of
the best. It must have been shocking for him to go
to the very clearly socialist southern Albania of the
70s.

“Roddy speaks a bit of Greek, so he managed to

communicate with it and his hands with the owner,”
Regulus continued. “He was asking for a woman.
The Dark Lord said she was powerful enough to be
interesting and Bellatrix was in a bad mood for the
rest of the trip, really --”

“But she had been sold,” Severus cut him off. “We
moved out of Albania quickly, on the very same
day.”

“I heard the Dark Lord talking to Bellatrix in the

middle of the night while everybody was supposed
to be asleep in the little house that we made a stop
at in Serbia, he was comforting her, saying that the
woman was not the male type of interest, just
power. She was able to become a snake, but she
wasn’t an animagus,” Regulus said.

“We got to Romania in the 27th,” Severus

continued. “It was the usual thing. We stopped in a
safe house, a horrible and musty place, but
somewhere we could relax a bit before we
continued searching, but then he received a letter.
The woman was in the country, but the people that
had her had no interest in selling her… so we fought
them for her.”

Regulus looked down at his hands, frowning with

the memory of light flashes flying, the loud noise of
the battle making his wince, even if it was not real
anymore.

“They were all killed,” Regulus said.

“The woman was on a magical cage, naked,

beaten,” Severus said. “I gave her my cloak since
nobody seemed to care about helping her and, well,
Regulus was too nervous to even look at her.”

Anne rolled her eyes.

“I don’t need comfort about the fact that my

boyfriend didn’t look at a naked girl, Severus. I’m
not that insecure,” she dismissed.

Severus looked at her with a chuckled, amused

with the idea that he was protecting her
sensibilities as he glanced at Regulus, who blushed
deeply and looked back at Anne with an eyebrow
raised.

“Not nervous to look at her, just nervous in

general. He didn’t even see the girl until she
spoke,” he said. “He was too busy admiring the
holes in the roof of the barn we were in, filled with
fucking dead animals.”

Anne blushed for assuming, nodding as if saying

that she had understood and learned her lesson.

“And?”

“And she was taken with us back at the house.

Regulus, Rabastan and I were kicked out,” Severus
said. “I’m not sure what happened, but when we
got back there was a body that we needed to get
rid of. Rabastan took care of it while I cleaned the
scene.”

“And you?” Anne asked Regulus.

“I was helping Rabastan, burning before throwing

in the sea and all that,” Regulus mumbled his
answer. Anne took a deep breath once more and
nodded, wishing the story to go on. “The Muggle I
killed saw us, so I obliviated him and… Rabastan
said it wasn’t enough, so I had to kill him,” he
looked at his girlfriend. “I received more food that
night as a reward.”

He hadn’t been able to stomach the food. Bellatrix

had laughed at him. He had slept with the thought
of how wonderful it would be not to wake up.

Silence fell upon the room as Anne bit her tongue

to keep her from comforting him. She knew that
he’d hate to be comforted in front of Severus, who
clearly was uncomfortable with the emotion already
present in the room.

“Continue,” Anne said, turning to Severus.

“We got to Bulgaria on the New Year’s Eve,” he

said. “Met an old friend of Lucius. He was offered
monetary support and to gather more people in
that part of Europe.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Karkaroff, that’s the surname,” Severus said. “I

think his name is Igor or Ivan, or something like
that.”

Anne bit her bottom lip, the old face of the man
already on her mind as she thought of the terrible
things that she wanted to do with him in name of
Cedric Diggory. But, in silence, she just sat back
down and nodded, thanking them in a low voice
about the story and, consequently, about their
courage.

No kisses were exchanged, no touched brought

them to their high, but yet Regulus and Anne felt
more intimate than ever as he sat down on the rub
in front of the fire and took care of the bruises that
he hadn’t been able to heal himself and to the
grazes on his back from when he was duelling and
fell to the ground.

Severus had left after Anne had taken care of his

own. It took a lot of convincing, but he had allowed
Anne to take his clothes off and take care of the
cuts and bruises he had been waiting to heal
naturally, like a fool. He had watched Anne with
suspicion as she made sure not to touch his skin
with hers, fearing that would make him
uncomfortable or frightened – she spoke the whole
time in a soft voice, pretending not to notice that
some of the bruises and cuts were a lot older, most
likely done by his father at some point in time and
not yet healed completely. He seemed grateful,
though he had done nothing more than to whisper
his soft goodbye and disappear.

“Is it odd to see your professor half-naked?”

Regulus asked, laughing after she had told him a
joke.

“Oh!” she complained. “Regulus! Why would you

say that? Why would you even word it like that?!”

He laughed once more, pretending not to feel the

pain of a stab on his left side, but Anne had seen
the soft wince and quickly healed the slightly out of
place rib that he thought he had taken care of.

“He likes you a lot,” he commented.

“That’s good,” she said.

“I mean it, Anne, he likes you a lot,” Regulus said,

glancing at her face to see her reaction. “He would
never let me do what you did to him tonight. He
would never, in his whole life, admit how much he
trusts you, but it’s easy to see. You got to a side of
him that I never did, and you didn’t even try.”

“That’s why I got there,” she said. “The first time

he was remotely kind to me in this timeline I was
having a panic attack, the second time again. He
saw me on my downs and helped me through
them, I suppose he expects me to do the same for
him, much like the Slytherin he taught me to be in
my own time.”

Regulus allowed himself a small smile.

“I wish I could’ve met your Severus,” he said.

“You’d have hated him,” she said. “Too closed off

and very, very mean. Bad mood Severus of today
of his every day. I suppose he was always in a bad
mood, but still, you wouldn’t have liked him very
much.”

“Do you think Severus would’ve liked him?”

Anne shook her head before realizing that Regulus

couldn’t see her.

“No.”

The Severus she knew before this one would hate

the young one. He was a bit more open and
certainly a lot suspicious, but this Severus would’ve
hated the older one – he was everything that he
wanted to avoid becoming in the future.

“I’ve been thinking,” she started once she was done

taking care of his back. Regulus put on his shirt
once more. “I think I’d like to tell everything to
Severus at some point. Not now, of course; there’s
too much going on right now, but I’ve been
thinking that I trust him enough to know this.”

Regulus’ eyes widened.

“Oh, Merlin, yes!” he said. Surprised by his

reaction, Anne blinked. “I’ve been waiting for you
to say something like that. He can see something is
off about you and all that, but he doesn’t ask too
many questions because I like you and all that, but
he certainly is curious and… well, he’s my only
friend. I hate to keep this from him, but it’s not my
secret, so I kept quiet.”

“Thank you for that, by the way,” she said.

“Of course,” he dismissed, rolling his eyes. “The

thing is that he’d certainly be happy to know the
whole truth.”

And yet Anne hesitated about one thing.

Severus’ reaction about her parents’ identities.

The whole coming from the future, trying to save

the world from a wizarding Nazi and all that
certainly wasn’t as impressive in his mind, but the
idea that he had no give up on his obsession about
Lily and having a chance with her would hurt, and
she knew. She could see his eyes angry when he
saw James in Harry and hurting when she saw Lily
in him; it was the same thing with her, and it was
nice to not have that with him in this timeline.
Would Severus hate her if he found out she was
James’ daughter? Would he hate her even more if
he found out that she was Lily’s daughter?

“Do you think he’ll be angry?” she asked, voice

wavering a bit.

“I think he’ll be shocked,” Regulus said. “But no… I

don’t think Severus can be angry at you. He can be
annoyed, surprised and certainly can find in his
hear to be shocked with your audacity, but, no, I
don’t see anger as a response.”

“This visualization…”

“I hope it helps,” Regulus said.

“It does, it just worries me anyways. I don’t like

the idea of telling him the truth after so long hiding
it from him,” Anne said. “But I don’t like the idea of
keeping it away from him for longer, either.”

Regulus nodded, understanding her situation.

“This is your story and, if you wish, I can help you

talk about it, but I won’t force you to tell him
something,” Regulus said. “I do think it would be a
good idea to tell him everything, but I don’t think
it’s a good idea of force yourself into that
conversation… especially with Lily unaware of the
truth.”

Anne crossed her arms.

“I can’t tell her yet,” she said.

“Why?”

“How could I tell her that she’s destined to marry

my dad when she doesn’t even like him that much
yet? They just started a relationship,” she said. “It’s
not even public yet. I only told James because he
found out and I couldn’t lie my way out of it, with
Lily is just not the same. We just started to get
close, I don’t want to ruin it.”

“I can understand that,” Regulus said. “If I can, I’m

sure so can Severus.”

Anne smiled at him and he smiled back.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

Regulus nodded, kissing her forehead.

“Now, come on, you need to go back to the Tower.

It’s late and Lily will freak out if you don’t get there
soon enough,” Regulus said, now kissing her lips
almost in a goodbye. “Do you want me to walk you
there?” she shook her head, yawning. “Are you
sure?” she nodded. “Okay, then. Goodnight,
Princess.”

“Goodnight, Little Prince,” she said, kissing his lips

once more.

They walked out of the room, taking different

paths.

Chapter 65: Chapter Sixty-Four

Summary:
The Order of the Phoenix meets
again, and this time it's not Anne
against the world - Mia and Monty
are ready to fight beside her in
more ways than one.

A MEETING

Saturday, the 8th, brought certainly a surprise to

Anne.

Nothing had been decided, and yet she was warned

just a few minutes after dinner that there was an
Order meeting that she was ordered to go, which
made her upset and certainly tired of Dumbledore’s
idea that she had nothing else to do – she didn’t
have anything to do, of course, she was a student
in a boarding school, Saturdays brought nothing
more than boredom forth, but yet she had expected
him to be polite enough to at least pretend to ask
her if she had anything else to do before asking her
to go to a meeting.

But she was on his office a few minutes past ten

with the excuse that there had been a problem with
her grades, so they were trying to fix it all in one
night. She had no hour to go back to the Tower,
but she was going to have a slip note with her in
case she was caught walking back.

“Miss Potter, you’re finally here,” Dumbledore said

once she walked in.

She glanced at the clock on the corner of his office.

Five past ten; she was literally five minutes early.

“I’m not late,” she said.

“No, no, you’re not,” he said. “I’m just a bit

impatient. This meeting will certainly be a lot more
important than the usual ones.”

“Want to share the information?” she asked.

Dumbledore looked at her for a moment, putting

his hands behind his back and walking towards her
as she closed the door behind her back. He started
pacing.

“Well, we found one of the Death Eaters in France.

He’s dead,” he said.

“We killed him?” she asked, raising a single

eyebrow.

“No, of course not!” he said. “He was found dead in

the catacombs.”

Anne almost rolled her eyes. Of course,

Dumbledore would be one to say that they hadn’t
killed anyone, even if Anne didn’t believe him
completely. Perhaps he had been killed and
Dumbledore was just saying that because he hadn’t
been the one to throw a killing curse at him.

“And what was our spy doing in the catacombs?”

Anne asked.

“Following the Death Eater,” he answered. “With

him, there was a letter written by Rabastan
Lestrange, detailing what he was to do in there. He
failed. Somebody killed him before our friend got
there.”

‘Friend’. Sure. If that’s what he wanted to call

Arabella, then he was free to do so, but that Anne
didn’t think of her as a friend, she didn’t. As she
grew up, she always thought that the woman could
find some type of basic hygiene for a house so full
of cats; she was somewhat nice and gave them
food more than she probably could, but it was nice,
yet that didn’t make the old woman a friend.

“You should bring our ‘friend’ back to England,”

Anne said. “He’s back to town. I think he’s staying
in Oxford or around that. Besides… I have quite a
lot to tell you all, and I need all the help I can get
in finding him here.”

Dumbledore watched her for a moment before he

nodded once, understanding of her situation.

Alastor Moody hadn’t forgiven her for her reaction

after he and Dumbledore went to her house to tell
her that they had destroyed the bloody ring, that
much was clear. He was glaring at her as she retold
the story she heard from Severus and Regulus,
obviously holding back their names and too many
details, he also rolled his eyes and grumbled a few
things under his breath before Dumbledore gave
him a pointed look that made him stop.

He had forgotten she was a child and he forgot that

her grandmother and grandfather were standing on
her sides, glaring at him with no fear. He was an
auror, but her grandfather was the Head Auror still.
Besides, they were all gathered in the Potter
Cottage, so he needed to be somewhat cordial in
their home.

“What do you need then?” Mister Longbottom

asked.

“I need information on where the Dark Lord is,”

Anne answered.

Moody’s eyes narrowed. It was quite the odd way

to talk about the man, only Death Eaters seemed
eager to call the man the Dark Lord, and yet there
was Anne, ready to destroy him and calling him a
Lord.

“I thought you said he was around Oxford,”

Dumbledore said.

“I said that I was informed so,” Anne corrected.

“And though he seems to be around Oxford, I need
a bit more than that. I need a lot more than that,
actually. I want to know where and his schedule. If
the snake is with him all the time as I think she is,
I need to find a way to kill it.”

“It’s a woman!” Misses Longbottom said.

Anne looked away.

She shouldn’t have been all that surprised that

people were more than eager to prove they were
on the side of the light would somehow not want to
kill something that needed to be killed.

“She’s a horcrux.”

“So if someone is a horcrux, they need to die?”

Alice asked, shocked.

“Yes,” she answered.

Anne bit the inside of her cheek. That was what had
happened with her brother; he had been raised for
the slaughter. She didn’t feel bad for wanting the
woman dead, especially since she seemed more
than happy to follow Voldemort into his tirade.
Sure, he had ‘saved’ her from people that had
abused her, but that didn’t make him any less of an
abuser – not that Anne had a lot to talk about, she
didn’t have that experience, but her anger overtook
her mind above her sympathy.

“Anne –” started Monty.

“It’s the only way to break the horcrux,” said Anne.

“Believe me, we went through all we could to find
another way, but neither Dumbledore nor I found
anything even in the oldest of books of the
subject.”

“That is correct,” Dumbledore said.

“Is there many more left?” Fabian asked.

“The easier ones are done and destroyed,” Anne

said. “The ones left are the ones that I haven’t
found a way of getting yet.”

“We’ll find a way,” said Gideon, shaking his head as

if trying to comfort Anne. It was clear that she was
worried about it, but she didn’t think it was enough
to issue a comfort from a man she barely knew.
“We can just break in and do what we have to do.”

“That would only alert him on our plans,” she said,

shaking her head. “If he knows, then he might add
protection or, worse, make more.”

“I doubt there’s a lot of soul left to do more

Horcruxes,” Fabian said, bitterly.

“Many of us thought that horcruxes were a lost

thing in the past and impossible to recreate,”
Dumbledore cut him off. “And then Voldemort made
one, and then he made a lot more than one. I had
never seen anyone do more than one, and yet he
did, still as a child. We better not underestimate
him in any shape or form, even if it sounds
biologically impossible to create more horcruxes.”

Fabian nodded, looking nothing short of a child that

had been scolded by a teacher after saying
something stupid.

Anne leaned back on her chair, feeling Mia’s hand

on her shoulder while Monty sat beside her and
crossing his ankles under the table. He was
annoyed that Anne was there, he didn’t think she
should be there just yet, even if she had so much
information – she hated being treated like a child,
but she knew that coming from him it was nothing
more than a real and genuine showing of affection.

“It’s midnight, Albus,” Moody announced after a

moment of silence coming from the table as they all
thought.

“Alright, then, let’s finish the meeting for tonight.

Everybody agrees?” he asked.

The several heads around the table nodded, all

tired.

Anne, feeling the slowly sinking realization that she

would have to say goodbye to her grandparents
again, turned around and got up from her chair,
hugging Mia tightly as the woman caressed her hair
and kissed the top of her head before pulling away
with a wish for a goodnight and telling her to focus
on school.

Monty was the next to pull her into an embrace, not

caring that Moody seemed a bit shocked that he
was so physical with a girl that he was public an
uncle or so to, he didn’t need Anne upset or
thinking that he was somehow embarrassed of her.
So he held her tight, embracing her with a deep
breath and a sigh, taking her in as he pulled away
and told her rest well during the night.

“Bye,” was all she mastered the strength to

whisper.

Dumbledore waited for her before leading her

towards the fireplace.

He pretended not to see the longing look with the

idea of going back home as she mumbled
‘Hogwarts’ and threw the floo powder into the fire,
the green swallowing her at once.

“You better take care of her,” warned Mia before

Dumbledore could as much as get the powder from
the pot. “If anything happens to you, I’ll blame you
and I’ll take revenge without as much as a second
thought.”

“Mia!” scolded Monty.

“No, he needs to hear that!” she said. “You’re the

adult in the situation and she often forgets she’s a
child, make sure she remembers and more, make
sure you remember that.”

“She’s seventeen, Lady Potter,” said Dumbledore,

smiling at her as if he had not been scolded. “She’s
legally an adult.”

“Someone that never had a childhood, never stops

being a child,” Mia disagreed. “This is my child, in
one way or another, and I will protect her as such.
Her life in your hands either you like it or not, and
so is James’ and Sirius’, and I will make sure you
remember that every second of your miserable life
if your fail to protect them; not only them – their
friends, the other kids that have nothing to do with
this… they’re all entrusted to you.”

Monty hated how he blushed, not on shame of how

his wife was talking to a man he admired himself,
but on the shame that he had not been worried
about the kids before she had mentioned them. He
trusted him blindly. That was something he couldn’t
do with the life of his children.

“All of them are going to make it, Lady Potter,”

Dumbledore said almost sounding firm and Mia
could see the Headmaster in him, not the falsely
fragile old man he tended to portray when it was
good for him. “Every single one.”

But yet, they all knew it was a lie.

If there was a thing someone as old as those three

knew was that war takes people from both sides
without a judgment, Death swallows those who are
innocent and those who are tainted with blood all
the same, because war is cruel and unjust.

Dumbledore could say that everybody was going to

make it all he wanted, but they all knew – no
matter how much they wanted to believe otherwise
– that there was nothing any of them could do
about everything that was about to happen.

Outside the dark lingered as Dumbledore flooed

away.

“We can only hope our kids are going to make it,”
Monty said.

“That’s selfish,” Mia mumbled, feeling her eyes

stinging.

“Allow yourself to be selfish then, Mia. You’re not a

goddess, as much as I insist you look like one. At
some point, war bring causalities, all we can do is
protect those we love and hope we can soften the
blow of it all – let’s hope it’s not James, or Anne, or
Sirius or Remus. Let’s just… hope.”

“Hope will change nothing,” she sounded bitter.

“I disagree,” Monty said, putting a hand on her

shoulder. “It was hope that brought Anne to us, it
was hope that made us keep trying for James and it
was hope that made us shelter Sirius so he could
find a better life. Hope brought us all of our
children. Let hope help us keep them as well.”

And Mia sobbed in her husband’s arms, feeling the

dark creep in from the outside streets through the
crack under the door.

Death was coming.

And It had yet to decide its first of many victims.

Chapter 66: Chapter Sixty-Five

Summary:
Lily and James go public. Regulus
gets upset Anne and him can't do
the same.

Notes:
Those who like the story and have
tiktok ideas, tag me
(@aidecampos) and the best ones
will have their accounts posted
here and the in the wattpad
version of the story. I think it'll be
fun. What do you all think?

PS: SEXUAL CONTENT IN THE

CHAPTER

PUBLIC

The crowd was going wild as the last few minutes

of the game were counting; Gryffindor was losing
and the teenagers in yellow and black of Hufflepuff
was tearing up their vocal cords with loud cheers.

Anne didn’t want to be there.

The screams and noises of teenagers excited about

something were loud and, although she liked
Quidditch a lot, her head was hurting and she
certainly didn’t feel very interested in looking happy
as she watched her dad screaming at his
teammates for all the mistakes they were making.
Her mum was by her side, screaming her head off
in hopes that would help the team to be motivated
to get another goal in.

“You know,” Remus said, frowning beside Anne at

Lily. “If Hogwarts allowed it, you’d be a great
cheerleader.”

“I’m sure James is happy having a private

cheerleader,” Peter laughed besides Remus.

“Oh, stop it!” Lily said, blushing. “I’m cheering the

team! The whole team!” she turned to the people
flying around once more. “Go Marlene! Go! Go!”

Marlene flew by as fast as she could, probably

seeing the golden snitch by the corner of her eye,
but Sirius had just thrown a bludger towards her
and she had to fly out of the way as fast as she
could so she wouldn’t be thrown down. James
screamed Sirius’ name so loud in a scolding that
Anne understood from where she was, wincing in
sympathy for the boy that looked like nothing more
than a kicked puppy as he winced in his broom.

“James is in a bad mood,” Anne commented.

“He wanted to win,” Peter explained.

“He always wants to win,” Anne said.

“Well, today he wants more than usual,” Remus

said, smirking.

There was a joke in the sentence that Anne missed,

clearly, because Peter and Remus smiled to each
other, excited about something that was invisible to
her.

Lily screamed a high-pitched scream that made

Anne look at the game once more.

Marlene and Amos Diggory were competing to get

the golden snitch just a few inches away from their
hands as they flew quite close to the ground at that
point. They pushed each other with their bodies,
trying to get each other out of the way. Marlene
made a squeak as her broom leaned forward and
she fell, yelping, she rolled on the ground and
stopped.

Marlene didn’t get up from the ground.

The crowd went quiet. Marlene wasn’t the type of

player to stop playing for a small injury, usually
Madame Hooch had to insist to get her out when
she was too hurt, but she wasn’t getting up.

Diggory stopped and got down from his broom with

a pale face, running towards the girl on the ground.

James was standing beside her on the next second,

screaming for Madame Pomfrey as he kindly put
her to her side, pushing her ponytail away from her
face.

“What’s she saying?” Anne asked, turning to

Remus.

He frowned. The full moon had gone by already and

his ears were not as sensitive as they usually were,
but he was so nervous that he tried to listen.

“She thinks she broke her arm,” Remus said.

“Oh, Marlene,” Lily whimpered, eyes welling up in

tears. “I need to get down there.”

“You can’t!” Peter said. “Stay with us, we can get

you to the Hospital Wing fast, but don’t go on the
field.”

Sirius was running from across the field as fast as

he could to get to Marlene.

“Sirius said he can smell blood,” Remus

commented.

Madame Pomfrey helped James and Amos turn

Marlene on her back.

Peter gagged.

Her left arm was broken, indeed. The bone was

sticking out of the skin, blood soaking the grass
and the uniform.

Marlene groaned and closed her eyes tight so not to

look at her bone.

“Wait,” Remus mumbled. Anne turned to her and

Lily held her hand tight. “Fucking hell!”

“What?!” Lily said, eyes widening.

Marlene used her other hand to get James’ hand

and drop something inside of it.

“She has the snitch,” Remus said.

James screamed so loudly that Anne got alert

before she noticed it was a happy scream as Sirius
and Madame Pomfrey left to take Marlene to the
Hospital Wing, James had an arm over his head,
showing off the golden snitch.

The crowd went wild once more.

Lily ran to the edge of the bleachers, smiling and

screaming through her worried tears that were
giving way to happy tears. Marlene was going to be
alright and James had led the team to victory. And
more, that was her opportunity to do what James
had always dreamed of – she had listened to him
admit that fantasy to Sirius not too long ago and
had talked to the boys about it half-jokingly. She
had promised to kiss James on the mouth in front
of everybody if he won that game.

James took his broom, flying straight into the

crowd.

People started to get to him, trying to congratulate

him for the victory, but he walked past them
without a glance, just walking straight to Lily, who
smiled back at him – and then she jumped into his
arms, mouth attacking his lips on the same
moment.

Anne was one of the many screaming in celebration

and surprise.

Remus laughed at her reaction, hugging her from

behind and holding her shoulders to keep her from
jumping up and down in happiness. Peter was
laughing too, whooping and wolf-whistling at his
friends with the help of several other people in the
bleachers.

To Anne it was like watching Harry kiss Ginny in

front of everyone on her birthday party in the
Gryffindor Tower, but without Rony brooding beside
her to end her happiness. It was the same sense of
accomplishment; the same sense of a pure
happiness of something happening, even if it wasn’t
with her.

One more step towards her brother.

One more step away from her past.

Remus seemed to know what she was thinking,

because as he hugged her, he put his head on her
shoulder, resting his chin there for a moment
before he smiled.

“Everything is going to be alright,” he said on her

ear midst all the screaming.

And Anne smiled back at him.

Regulus seemed quite upset when Anne met him in

the Room of Requirement, arms crossed as he
looked out of the window to watch the lake through
the window, though all she could think of was how
the hell had he managed to know the exact angle
that the window in the Common Room of the
Gryffindor Tower seemed to have of the outside
world.

“Hi,” she started.

He looked over the shoulder before looking back

out of the window.

“Hi,” he answered. “Congratulation on your game.”

“I don’t play,” she joked. He didn’t answer. “Are

you upset that we won against Hufflepuff?”

Regulus turned, surprised at her guess.

“No! Of course not, Anne,” he said. “I assure

nothing of what I’m feeling right now has anything
to do with Quidditch besides the pain I have in my
legs from the training.”

She walked through the false Slytherin Common

Room and stood beside him, looking out the
window as well before looking at him to see him
watching her. He was leaning on the wall beside the
window and his face was sober.

“I don’t understand, then,” she said. “What

happened?”

He shook his head.

“It’s silly,” he dismissed.

“If that made you that upset, then no… it’s not
silly,” she disagreed. “Tell me, please, so I can try
to help you.”

“You can’t, unless you can change the whole world

in a single second so I can show you off around like
you deserve,” he said, smiling sadly at her. “To see
James and Lily together and see everybody happy
for them, it was quite painful to know I have to wait
a long time still before I can do the same to you.
I’m not one for big public gestures, but I can’t stop
imagining how it would be to walk hand in hand
with you and make them all stare, jealous that I
got to be yours before any of them could say the
same. I want to make them all know that I’m the
one worshipping you whenever I get the chance,”
he sighed. “I need to wait. I hate waiting.”

“You’re one of the most patient people I know,” she

laughed, taking off her tie. “You’re just upset at the
moment, My Prince.”

“There’s a difference between being patient and

liking to wait,” he answered. “I like to worship you,
Anne, and I want them to know that. I want them
to know that I like that, that I’m yours.”

Anne sighed in delight with that.

To see Regulus, the strong heir of the House of

Black completely willing for her, eager to do
whatever she told him to because he liked her,
almost like he was ready to kiss her feet as if she
was some type of goddess; at first, she thought it
would be too much, too fast, but no, she liked it.
She liked the feeling of power and strength that it
gave her insides.

There was a fire burning on her lower abdomen as

Regulus’ eyes met hers and he slowly walked to
her. He stood in front of her, slowly leaning down
to give the most chaste of kisses on her slightly
apart lips.

Anne almost whimpered with the power he had

over her even when he pulled away and just looked
at her.

With a shaky breath, Anne hugged him around his

neck and pulled him into a kiss, this one a lot
hotter and messier than the chaste and sweet kiss
from before. He didn’t try to stop her, actually, he
insisted on pulling her lower body closer to him.
Their bodies were flush to one another, fitting
perfectly. Breaths were quick as they pulled their
lips away from one another, but their foreheads
didn’t pull apart.

“Do you feel better?” she teased.

“That only makes me want you more,” he

answered.

“You have me,” she answered. She pulled away to

look at his eyes. “All of me, if you want to.”

He wasn’t sure what that permission seemed to

mean at first, but then she took his hand and
slowly led it down from her waist. Confused, he
waited as his hand automatically cupped her
behind, but before he could make a single move
about it, Anne’s hand left his writ suddenly and he
pulled back, but she looked at him and smiled,
unzipping the side of the skirt and letting it fall to
the floor.

“I don’t need a consolation prize,” he mumbled to

her.

“Good, neither do I,” she said. “I want more.”

He watched as she took her hands up and

unbuttoned every single button from her skirt,
letting it join her uniform on the floor.

Anne had lingerie on. Green lingerie with black lace

over it – and Regulus thought he was about to pass
out from the lack of blood in his head (at least one
of them).

“Oh, Merlin,” he mumbled before gulping.

“Touch me,” she said.

And she didn’t have to ask twice.

Regulus was kissing her, pressing her back against

the cold window in a second and letting her half-
dressed body to curl around him without fear as
she gasped with the cold contact directly to her
skin. She gasped once more when his erection
made its way to touch her lower stomach; as she
took back her breath before kissing him again, she
started unbuttoning his shirt – he pulled back,
looking skyward to let her have access to the one
button she was struggling with, the one right on his
collarbone.

“Want some help?” he teased.

She glared at him, though she smiled soon after.

Regulus undid the button himself as Anne undid the

other, pulling his shirt from inside his trousers to
help him shrug it off. It fell midst her uniform.

Anne giggled.

“What?” he asked, smiling amused.

“Your tie,” she answered giggling.

He looked down, smiling still, surprised that the tie

had stayed around his neck though he had no shirt
on. He took his hands away from her hips to untie
it, but she held his wrists.

“Leave it,” she insisted.

“Oh? You like it?” he asked.

“There’s nothing about you that I don’t like,” she

teased, flirtingly.

“Oh, you little minx,” he grumbled, pulling her into

a kiss again.

This time, her leg left the middle of his, going

apart.

“Can you hold me?” she asked.

“What?”
“Do you think you can hold me, I mean, am I too
heavy?” she asked.

“No, you’re not, but why – oh!” he said as Anne

jumped, throwing her legs around his waist.

She was suspended on the air only by her strength

around him and his hands that held her bottom in
place immediately. He put her against the window
once more, knowing that she would feel a lot safe
like this and the cold from the glass made her skin
get goosebumps. She gasped, making him smirk as
he left her lips and kissed down her neck and
collarbones, licking the skin here and there. He
grumbled something impossible to decipher against
her breast bone when her fingernails buried
themselves on his shoulders with her pleasure.

“I need to cut my nails, sorry,” she said, letting the

grip die.

“Please, don’t,” he said between a lick and a bite of

the top of her right breast. She laughed. “Were you
planning this? To meet me here – I mean, I love
the lingerie.”

“You have an accent when you say ‘lingerie’,” she

commented with a cheeky grin on her lips, ignoring
his question. It was a clear yes. Anne had planned
it all and she had probably rehearsed a thing or two
in front of the mirror. “Say it again.”

“Lingerie?” he asked confused.

She giggled.

Regulus rolled his eyes and he took a step back

from the window, making her yelp in surprise and
hold on tighter to his shoulders. He walked across
the room, putting her on the sofa before lying on
top of her.

“You’re heavier than I expected,” he admitted. “It’s

because you’re tall.”

“I’m not that tall,” she said.

“You’re almost as tall as me!” he said. “You’re tall!

You’re almost as tall as your dad, who’s taller than
me.”

With all her height of more than 170 centimetres

and being no more than 5 centimetres shorter than
Regulus, she tended to forget that people were
shorter than she was, especially women. After all,
her mother was a lot shorter than her, but her
father quite taller than her. And, of course, there
was Sirius and Remus, both tall men.

“You’re making me think of my dad, stop,” she

complained.

Regulus laughed.

“We can’t have that killing the mood,” he joked.

“No, please, otherwise I’ll start talking about

Sirius,” she threatened.

That only made Regulus laugh harder as he

struggled to go back to kissing her, but as he
laughed against her neck, his teeth gazed a small
patch of skin right under her ear.

Her hips bucket with a loud moan.

The whole room seemed to freeze as Regulus’

mood came back all at once, fire burning behind his
eyes and underneath his pale skin; fire burning her
as his hand touched the skin of her hip once her
underwear seemed to ride down a bit. With eyes on
eyes, Regulus led his hand down without an out
loud question, but with careful eyes over her face.

The pad of his finger brushed against her core over

the lace and she gasped, hands going to hold his
shoulder so she had the feeling she was holding
onto something, though there was no danger there.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

“Don’t,” she insisted.

“Anne?”

“Don’t stop, I just… I need to see your face,” she

answered. “I need light. I need more light.”

The fireplace roared at once, burning brighter as if

he had thrown another log there. The Room was
doing whatever Anne needed to keep going, to
keep being there with him. Regulus thanked it in
his mind and the room seemed to say something
back by making the whole room warmer.

With his eyes stuck on Anne’s brown eyes, he

touched her once more, following the slit over the
underwear with a bit of pressure. Anne made a
noise, but he whimpered when he felt the wetness
even through the fabric. As her chest went up and
down, he could see the coat of sweat starting to
appear as she struggled to breathe well with the
delicate movements of his fingers over her.

Her hand quickly reached for his belt, undoing it

quickly and throwing it to the side, buckle hitting
the rug. It made a low thudding noise. But none of
them heard it, because all they could see was each
other, and all they could hear was their rushed
breaths. Her fingers brushed his erection before
cupping it at once.

Regulus kissed Anne to keep his pathetic needy

noises inside.

“No,” she said. “I want to hear.”

He laughed, embarrassed that she had caught on.

She undid the button from his trouser and pulled it

down. He was flustered at first, after all Anne had
never seen him without it, but she didn’t seem to
care at all, her eyes weren’t on the bulge on his
blue underwear; her eyes were stuck on his,
waiting for his consent to look and to touch.
Regulus nodded, knowing that he would give her
anything she wanted as long as she expressed it.

Anne’s hand touched the erection and pulled him to

a kiss, he allowed himself to indulge, moaning
against her mouth as she gave a tentative light
squeeze. His hands quickly went back to the middle
of her legs, this time caressing the edges of the
underwear, making her part her legs even more,
giving him more access. He pushed her underwear
to the side and she put her hand inside of his,
wrapping her hand around the skin of different
texture.

Regulus seemed happy with just caressing her as

she gave him a tentative tug.

“Regulus,” she moaned.

“Hm?”

“Inside,” she insisted. “Your fingers. Inside. Now.”

He smirked with her order, but followed.

She threw her head back with a moan so loud that

Regulus was taken aback, his finger being squeezed
inside of her, liquid wetting the two fingers. Her
legs tried to snap closed, but he held them apart.
She pulled them apart herself after a second.

“Good girl,” he said.

She whimpered.

“Reg, move, move!” she said.

With his other hand holding the underwear to the

side, he started moving his fingers, making her hips
start to roll against his hand. Her hips stuttered and
her hand around his shaft tightened.

He groaned.

Her hand softened.

“No, no, like that, keep going,” he said, closing his

eyes for a moment.

He could feel the burning on his back and the

tugging on his insides warning that one of the most
powerful orgasms he had ever had was coming,
especially when he opened his eyes and saw Anne
lying back, hand working on his him, the other
squeezing her breast covered by her bra, hips
rolling time and time again against the mount of his
hand.

Regulus came so strongly that his vision went white

for a moment as his eyes rolled back and his body
fell forward against her, painting her stomach and
hand in white spurts. Her squeal made him think he
was going to cum again – and then he felt the
fluttering of her walls and her hand flew to grab his
wrist, holding him in place. He was squeezed as her
eyes shut tightly and her body shut down for a
second. Her hips stuttered once more and then she
relaxed.

Slowly, Regulus withdrew his fingers from inside of

her as she made a small noise.

Her eyes were almost closed as she watched him

lying down beside her, not wanting to leave his
weight over her for more than necessary.

“Jesus Christ!” she breathed.

Regulus turned to look at Anne.

“Who?”

“Anyone listening at this point. Holy fuck!” she said.

He laughed so hard that his already tired body

started to complain.

Chapter 67: Chapter Sixty-Six

Summary:
Regulus and Sirius have a talk
they were delaying for some time.

BROTHERS

Regulus watched the child trip over nothing and fall

face first on the grass with a blank face before
hearing the laughs of his colleagues, but he looked
away, pretending the Prefect badge on his chest
didn’t weight a bit more than usual as he pretended
not to see anything. He didn’t laugh, so if he
pretended to be too distracted with his book then
he wouldn’t be scolded for being a kill-joy.

The Secrets of the Darkest Art was not discreet and

he had struggled against the magic of the book
itself to transfigure the cover to a normal and
unassuming book, but the magic was running out
and he could feel the cover turning from the red
velvet to the black and purple hard cover. He had
gotten the book from Rabastan, who was sitting
beside him, laughing hard of the muggle-born first
year that was crying because of the bloody knee.

Although he did think it was quite dramatic to cry

about a scraped knee, his stomach only churned
when he saw who it was. A first year of Gryffindor,
who now was holding Remus Lupin’s hand to get up
and had Sirius Black right beside him with the
angriest face Regulus had seen in quite a while.

Rabastan was too busy with his eyes tightly shut,

laughing to notice the hex coming his way.

Regulus was fast, urging a shield before his

colleague even knew what had happened, only
looking up because of the loud whooshing noise the
spell made as it was throw to another direction.

“You little shit!” Sirius screamed.

“It’s not polite to attack someone who’s distracted,

Sirius,” warned Regulus, dropping the book and
getting up.

Sirius’ eyes stopped on the book and narrowed

back at Regulus.

“Tell that to your friend, you poor excuse of a

Prefect!” he screamed. “I don’t know why she
trusts you,” he added in a low voice. Rabastan was
getting up and he didn’t seem to listen. “You’re
nothing but dirt.”

“If I’m a poor excuse of my job, then I ask nothing

about what you feel over your boyfriend’s title,”
Regulus answered, lip curling in disgust. “Day after
day, he looked the other way as you attacked
Severus!”

“Don’t act like he didn’t attack us, too!” Sirius said.

Rabastan leaned against the tree, noticing that he

had no reason to fight. He had started, but Regulus
was about to finish it. Besides, he understood quite
quickly that was a family matter and he didn’t want
to be involved in it, much like Lupin, who was
healing the boy’s scraped knees and hand palms.

Sirius attacked once more with a non-verbal spell

and Regulus was quick to defend himself against it,
rolling his eyes over how easy it was.

“If that’s the best you can do, there’s no surprise in

how terrified Anne is all the time,” he mocked.

He didn’t see the next one coming, he just felt his

legs leaving the ground as his body rotate and feel
hard against the earth once more, making him bite
the inside of his cheek to keep himself from making
a noise. Still on the ground, he threw a hex against
Sirius, who didn’t have time to defend himself – the
hair started to get shorter before it fell from its
roots at once, blood appearing on the top of his
bald head.

Sirius screamed in pain as Regulus tripped while

getting up. He had hit his hip hard on the ground
and now it was difficult to walk. Nothing was
broken, but it certainly felt a little off, a bit more
than just a bruise about to form, maybe a small
problem with the muscle?

“Come on! MORE, YOU BASTARD!” Regulus

screamed, throwing another hex.

It felt odd to use such a bad word, but it felt right

when directed to Sirius.

Sirius threw an impedimenta before he threw

another hex. Regulus felt his toe nails disappear
with the most painful burn he felt in a long time
coming from Sirius (though it was nothing
comparing to what he would get from his mother or
Bellatrix). He yelped this time, doing his best to get
his shoes off, but he was incapacitated as he fell to
his knees for a second before throwing a stupefy
towards his brother.

Sirius received it straight to his chest, falling to the

ground breathless, coughing and gasping.

While both were recuperating, they heard Rabastan

calling for Regulus and Remus running to Sirius
after he pulled the first-year away from the scene,
he was trying to calm down his boyfriend, but
Rabastan was cheering Regulus on.

Regulus was on his hands and knees, controlling his

breath and tears, when McGonagall screamed:

“Mister Black!”

Both Regulus and Sirius tensed up, both for

different reasons.

Sirius feared that she would take too many points

from the house; they were already too behind on
the Cup of Houses and he didn’t want to be the one
to mess up his last year’s chance. James would
never forgive him if he was kicked out of the team
again. Anne would never trust him again with any
information if she found he threw some of it against
Regulus’ face on their argument.

Regulus feared the Dark Lord would find out he was

making a scene in school, even if it was against his
blood-traitor of a brother. He had been warned to
keep under the radar by his parents, by his cousins
and by Anne herself – if he failed, the pain of
disappearing toenails was the least of his problems.
The last crucio he received was still fresh on his
mind.

“100 points from Gryffindor! 100 points from

Slytherin! – duelling on the castle like this. So
much blood!” she was struggling to say, clearly
shocked with the state of both of them. “Detention
both of you! What a disgrace!”

“He’s the disgrace!” Sirius jabbed.

“How mature,” Regulus groaned.

“Enough, or more points will be taken!” she yelled.

“Now, both of you to the Hospital Wing right now.
And no fighting on the way. Mister Lupin, please
escort both of them and then come back because
I’ll need your retelling of the story… and I know
you’ll be fair.”

Remus was so fair that they both had the worst

detention ever with Flitwick when the night came
and Sirius was very upset when his boyfriend didn’t
defend him from something like that.

“Stop complaining,” Regulus said as they corrected

some essays as Flitwick was under a soundproof
bubble correcting the last year assignments. “He
did what you accused me of not doing. He was a
decent Prefect.”

“As if you know what the word decent mean,” Sirius

said, lip curling in disgust.

At the angle Regulus was sitting, he could see some

resemblance between Sirius and their father. They
did the same lip curl when bothered by something
someone did or said in front of them. Regulus had
the good sense of keeping his mouth quiet about it,
though his lips twitched (the very same way his
mother’s lips did when she was amused about
something; a rare occurrence, but a rememberable
one).

“I think Anne can tell you I can be more than

decent when I try,” he teased.

It was a risky thing, teasing Sirius about his Annie,

but a fun one to do. Though part of Regulus was
more than thankful for Sirius’ protectiveness of
Anne, after all he was doing what he couldn’t do for
her, it still annoyed that Sirius saw danger to her in
him when Regulus wanted nothing but real
happiness to her.

“You little –” he started, putting the quill down.

Flitwick was looking, so Sirius filled with quill with

ink once more and pretended to go back to work.

“I don’t understand why you hate me so much,”

Regulus mumbled.

He hated how hurt he sounded, so he swallowed

down his saliva forcefully while his throat closed off
a bit in emotion.

“What? I don’t hate you, Reggie,” Sirius said.

Regulus didn’t correct him over the nickname. “I’m
just very disappointed in you every time I see you.
I hate myself, then. Seeing how you turned out
makes me guilty.”

“You are,” Regulus said. Sirius turned to him in

surprise. “Do you want me to tell you it’s not? Do
you want me to tell that the hell I’m going through
it’s not happening because you failed your duty as
an heir?” that was exactly what the older one
wanted, but he knew it was everything he wasn’t
going to get. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for it,
then. Because it’s your fault.”

“You sound like a spoiled brat.”

“I sound like a hurt younger brother, because that’s

what I am,” he responded. “You left.”

“I got out to survive,” Sirius answered, frustrated

that Regulus couldn’t see the world in the same
way he was doing. “You could’ve done the same
when it was your turn!” Regulus scoffed loudly,
rolling his eyes. “What?”

“Tell me. Where would I go?”

Sirius blinked, confused, but surprised by the

question.

“You have friends. You are a popular boy, and I’m

sure you’re close enough to Snape that he would
not turn you away in case of emergency,” Sirius
said. “Snape is your James, isn’t he?”

Regulus shook his head.

“As if Snape is in a better condition than I am right

now,” he scoffed.

“What do you mean?”

“My home life is terrible, as I’m sure you know, but

his is as dreadful as mine,” Regulus said. “Why
would I go there if I’m trying to run away from
exactly that? You think you’re disappointed in me?
Well, realize that I’m the best version of what could
come out from that family.”

Sirius shook his head.

“You’re making excuses.”

“Oh, am I now?”

“Yes,” Sirius exclaimed. “If you hate it so much,

why don’t you just come with me then? I’m sure
the Potters wouldn’t mind. I’m sure Anne would be
very happy.”

Regulus ticked the last essay giving the terrible

grade of ‘T’ to the fifth-year Hufflepuff that had
insisted that there was a connection between
South-American indigenous magic and European
mainstream magic and therefore the closed practice
should be taught in schools outside of South
America. He put the quill down and turned to
Sirius.

“I can’t.”

“See? Excuses,” Sirius said, looking away and going

back to reading the essay.

“I can’t because Anne asked me not to just yet,”

Regulus said.

“Stop throwing the blame on her.”

“I’m not. I’m following her request,” he said. “I’m

doing it for Anne. I’m holding on because Anne
asked me to, so I can help in this horrible state the
world is. I’m doing it for Anne’s sake.”

Sirius turned to look back at him again.

“For Anne? Holding onto the ideology of a world you

loved ever since you were a child for Anne’s sake?”
Sirius scoffed this time. “Don’t make me laugh if
your horrible lies, little brother.”

“I’m not lying!”

“And I’m not a fucking idiot! Why would you do that

for anyone?” Sirius said. “Your little affair can
survive this.”

“It’s not an affair,” Regulus said. “It’s more.”

“Why would you do that? Why would you put

yourself through this?” Sirius said.

“Because I love her!”

Sirius froze for a moment, watching Regulus sitting

beside him before glancing at the distracted
professor on the big table several metres away
from them.

“As if,” he grumbled. “Don’t play with words such

as that, especially not with Anne. She can get hurt
easily and I will not hold back at all if you do hurt
her for some type of sick amusement. I protected
you when James was upset about your dating-thing
going on, but I will not move a single muscle if you
hurt his daughter.”

“I love her,” he insisted. “Sirius, I really do love her

and I’ve been trying to find a way to tell her that
for almost two weeks at this point. I’d do anything
she asks me to, especially if it’s to save her life.”

“You –”

“I’m her spy,” Regulus said. “I’ll keep being her spy
for as long as I can bear that place and those
people.”

And Sirius, for once, knew he his brother was

completely honest.

Sirius couldn’t stop watching Anne in her smallest

of tasks as she did her homework with James lying
in Lily’s lap on the sofa behind her. Peter had
noticed that and was very uncomfortable as he
pointed out the situation in a whisper to Remus,
who laughed it off, saying that he was nothing but
distracted, but when Anne got up and walked
across the room to get a quill from Marlene, Remus
understood that Sirius was watching Anne like a
hawk, not just zoning out in her general direction.

“What’s wrong with you today?” Remus whispered

on his boyfriend’s ear as Peter stroke up a
conversation with Anne about Divination, even
going as far as allowing himself to get his tarot
cards. “Is this about your brother?”

Sirius blinked.

“My brother said some things…”

“Are you jealous of her again?” Remus asked, quite

tired of the conversation topic. “She’s seventeen.
I’m sure she can take care of herself with her
boyfriend. She’s a smart girl, and she comes to talk
to me from time to time.”

“About Regulus?”

“About feelings, in general,” Remus said. “It

stopped a bit ever since we started dating. I think
she’s a bit embarrassed coming into our room in
the Manor. I tried talking to her about it, but I think
she’s embarrassed catching us doing something.”

“Oh,” he said, rolling his eyes and pretending his

cheeks were blushing. “But we’re so virginal!”

“And I think she wants to keep us like that in her

mind,” Remus said. “Now, what about Regulus?
What did he say that made you look like Anne is
about to burst into song at any moment? It’s
starting to get creepy.”

The boy sighed.

“He told me he loves her,” he admitted.

Anne giggled from her place as Peter looked

confused at his cards. Lily peaked over her shoulder
to watch and even James got up from her lap to
watch the interaction with attention.

“That’s sweet.”

“No, it’s not. He’s very serious about her,” Sirius

said, looking quite worried. “Do you know what
happens when a Black is serious about someone?
They get married quickly. It’s fucking terrifying.”

Remus almost wanted to ask if Sirius was serious

about him, but he bit his bottom lip before it could
escape. He kept in the same subject.

“And how is that a problem?” Remus asked.

“Anne can’t fit in the family, even if we ignore the

blood status situation she has going on,” Sirius
said.

He caught Anne looking at them.

“What are you two talking about?” she asked

narrowing her eyes. “Are you talking about me?”

Sirius blushed.

Remus started chuckling.

“Yeah,” Remus admitted. “We’re saying you’re

lucky you’re not marrying Sirius, but I’m fucked.”

“Language!” James grumbled, still interested in the

new tarot deck Peter was showing off. “And Sirius
would never, in a million years, even dare to think
about Anne like that. He’s not stupid enough.”

“Why is that? Why would you be fucked?” Lily

asked.

“Lily, dear, language, please,” James said again.

Sirius tried to shrug the conversation off, laughing

a bit uncomfortably.

“Because I don’t fit the criteria of the traditional

base – starting, I’m a man,” Remus said. “What
else, love?”

Sirius blushed even more.

“Well, you don’t play two instruments and don’t

speak two languages. You can’t paint or dance for
shit and you certainly can’t sing,” Sirius said. “And
you’re a half-blood with a furry little problem.”

“See? I’m useless!” joked Remus.

Anne glared at him, not liking the joke.

“Well, I’m a woman, so I’m certainly above you in

the criteria thing,” Anne said. “I can’t play any
instruments and I can speak French very badly. I’m
not a good painter, but I’m a good dancer –”

“You’re not,” James said, shaking his head. “You’re

pretty, though.”

“I don’t think modelling could fit in the hobby we’re

looking for here, James. I’m trying to marry Sirius
Black, stay out of my business,” Anne quickly
answered. Lily laughed, throwing her head back.
“Now, I’m a decent singer.”

“If you sing me to sleep, I’ll have nightmares,”

Remus disagreed.

“Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling,

Clementine!” sang Anne, purposefully as bad as she
could.

Lily laughed harder, closing her eyes tight and

covering her ears with her hands.

“Dreadful sorry, indeed,” James said, cringing.

Anne laughed.

Chapter 68: Chapter Sixty-

Seven
Summary:
Regulus shares a part of his life he
had never shared before.

CHERRY WINE

“You know, your brother is a fucking bitch, really,”

Anne announced as soon as she walked into the
Room to find Regulus doing his homework there,
sitting on the rug, using the coffee table to put his
books and notes. He looked up in alarm with her
loud voice, but smiled at her nonetheless. “He
destroyed me yesterday night!”

“That sounds so wrong. Must I be worried,

Princess?” he asked, putting his quill down and
making space of her. “I am known to be jealous.”

The coffee table wasn’t big, but they made their

legs fit under it side by side, using the sofa to lean
against and she shoved her body against his, a bit
too violently as if she was a tired rag-doll. He had
to hold her sitting so she wouldn’t fall on his lap.

“Worried about my self-esteem, you mean, then

maybe,” she said. “Sirius will never see me like that
and I can assure I won’t see him like that, either.”

“What did that boy do now?” he asked.

“Brought to my attention that I’d never be able to

marry him,” she said against his chest.

“Believe me when I say, Anne, that’s for the best,”

he answered. “I’m sorry he broke your heart,
darling, but nobody should marry him, like, ever.”

She chuckled.

“As if I’d ever want to marry him,” she seemed to

shiver against him. “Can you imagine? Ew! Is just
that, if I wanted, I wouldn’t be able to.”

He blinked several timed. He was feeling very

confused.

Had he studied too much and now his brain wasn’t

completely functional? It had happened a few times
when he was on his fourth year, but still it was a bit
surprising that it had happened again when he was
so relaxed about his grades and all that.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m following, Anne,” he

said.
She pulled back, sitting right on the floor and
looking him in the eye.

“If I wanted to marry him, I’d need to talk to

idioms and play two instruments and have an
actual artistic hobby that most certainly could be an
acceptable job for a woman in his family, like
dancing or painting,” she said. “Then, he brought to
my attention that, if for some miracle I was married
to him, our children would need to be able to do
the same,” she sighed. “I get that he was all
sentimental and nostalgic after the detention he
had with you – which, by the way, we still need to
talk about, mister – but did he need to just show
off how useless I am to traditional wizarding
standards?”

Anne didn’t understand why Regulus looked so pale

and then started blushing so deeply in so little time,
until he started coughing, choking on his own saliva
in his panic to swallow down his shame.

“That conversation might have been my fault,

actually,” he said, his blush even colouring his
forehead at that point. He blushed in the same way
Sirius did; the whole face.

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Want to elaborate on that?”

“Not really,” he grumbled.

“What did you say to him that made him say those
things to our group of friends?” she insisted.

“Well, I might have said I was very genuine about

how I feel about you,” he admitted, scratching the
back of his neck, trying to look as relaxed as
possible, though he was very nervous. “Sirius might
have taken it as a sign that I want to marry you
and, therefore, was telling you some of the usual
rules about the family, though he did forget the
whole blood status thing.”

“Oh, no, he didn’t,” Anne said, shaking her head. “I

just didn’t really comment on it because I thought
you’d find it out of place coming from Sirius, but
since this started with your whole family, it does
make sense. I did think it was weird that he still
remembered the rules of the Black when he’s quite
literally a Potter now – did you know that he has
access to the Potter’s Vault?”

Regulus looked down. He was right then, though he

hated it; Sirius was no longer his brother, either
they admitted it or not.

“I really like you, Anne-Girl,” he said.

Anne turned to look right into his eyes.

“I like you, too,” she answered.

“I mean it. I really, really like you,” he said.

It was not much, but it was the closest thing he

could get at the moment to what he really wanted
to say to her. The ‘I love you’ was in the back of his
throat and he had to swallow it down, though it was
hard as he watched her smile at him with some
excitement.

“I know,” she said. “I really, really like you too,

Little Prince,” and she leaned, kissing his lips.
“Now, do you need any help with your homework? I
finished it yesterday before Sirius started talking
shit.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” he said.

Still, all he could feel was the way the smell of her
embraced him, ruining him to anyone else in the
world.

In moments of war, happy moments are

temporary.

Happiness dies slowly, disappearing into the air so

slowly that most don’t notice it going away and life
getting harder until numbness is all they have left
and sadness attacks the emptiness they refused to
accept at first.

While Regulus thrived as a Quidditch player, Prefect

and the second in the classroom, behind only to Lily
Evans, his family was falling further apart. His
mother was more and more lost into her own head
and madness, creating a whole new world she could
live where troubles did not exist and she was as
perfect as she had always wanted to be. His father
was slipping away quicker now, leaving him behind
with his terrible excuse of a mother and thinking
that leaving a will would be enough to not let his
only heir hate him, unable to phantom a way to tell
him that he was dying.

While the world outside of the gates of Hogwarts

seemed to get darker and colder, the seventh years
were distracted by the shiny and new concept of
paid internships after school was over as they were
gathered in the Great Hall without distinction of
Houses, eager to listen to their heroes and families
talk about their jobs.

Lucius Malfoy spoke of being the youngest Board

Director of Hogwarts and how he had grown
interested in it because he planned on having an
heir sooner or later, so he wanted to make
Hogwarts acceptable (he winked at Anne discreetly
as if they shared a secret or an internal joke; she
just looked at him and did not wink back or
smiled). Slughorn’s friend came from South London
to talk about an internship he wanted to give to the
best student in potion in the Mastery of Potions of
United Kingdom – they’d work half a day and study
the next half, all expenses paid for six months.
Even a woman from Gringotts came to share all her
experiences as the last intern Gringotts had in their
program for Curse Breakers. An old witch came
accompanied by her son, who translate her hand
signals with ardent passion about Herbology.

“This is the most boring shit I had to sit through,”

Sirius admitted on Anne’s ear. “And I’m counting
Snape’s essay reading last year when he got an
‘O’.”

“Shut it,” Remus warned.

Sirius rolled his eyes and lied his head on his

boyfriend’s shoulder as he yawned a bit too loud.
James glared at his friend since Lily seemed very
interested in the whole talking going on, though
he’s rather to be anywhere else. Peter had fallen
asleep forty minutes ago, open mouth and droll
rolling to his chin; Anne had cleaned it at first, but
she gave up on the third time she thought it was
necessary.

Anne now looked at Regulus sitting across from her

in the ‘U’ of rows of students. He was already
looking at her, raising his eyebrows.

‘Excited?’ he seemed to ask.

She faked a yawn, putting a hand over her mouth.

‘Boring,” she had answered.

He smiled at her, rolling his eyes at her silliness.

“Severus Snape!” announced Dumbledore with

great happiness in his voice.

The name caught both of their attentions.

Severus had just now been picked to have the paid

internship in Potions. He looked extremely confused
and he looked around, trying to make sure there
was no other Severus Snape besides him to receive
the 100 galleons prize and the promise of a good
job once he was done with silly school things.

Slowly, he rose from his chair, hands shaking near

his thighs.

Regulus was the first to clap, some of the Slytherin

students following soon after. Ravenclaw and
Hufflepuff joined, ignoring the hesitant silence of
the Red House. Anne started clapping soon after,
her first clap being so loud that it woke poor Peter
up, who clapped out of reflex; Gryffindors followed
suit, clapping. Someone in Hufflepuff whopped.

Even James had a small grin in his lips as he leaned

towards Anne.

“You did say he was a good professor,” he

mumbled in her ear.

“He’ll rock this,” she dismissed his teasing.

James smiled before hugging Lily’s side with laid-

back manners as he stopped clapping.

Severus was made to stay still beside the man

called Patroclus for a photograph he certainly didn’t
want to take, but he looked slightly happy as he
looked towards Anne, almost as if looking for her
approval in his decision to be cordial with the man
that had touched him in the shoulder and back of
the neck, Anne smiled at him.

As the boy dressed in black sat down, clearly not

enjoying the attention he had gathered, another
name was announced.

“Beatrice Wallance!” Dumbledore said.

Beatrice was a small muggle-born girl from

Ravenclaw with jet-black hair pulled back in a very
messy bun kept in place by her wand shoved in the
knots, she had very dark skin that looked
amazingly good with the Ravenclaw shade of blue
and bronze. However, what was surprising about
her appearance was the wonderfully light green
eyes that looked feline-like in intelligence and
smugness as she approached the very distasted
Lucius Malfoy. The picture was a lot less awkward
than the picture between Severus and the
Patroclus, but Lucius was stiff and disgusted for
having to touch the shoulder of the girl.

Once the picture was taken, Lucius quickly made

his way away from the girl, going back to the roll of
chairs where all the representants were sitting at.
He didn’t say a single word about it to anyone, just
crossed his arms, crossed his ankles and enjoyed
the silence that followed as Beatrice took her seat
back, smiling at her friends petting her back in
congratulations.

Anne dragged herself closer to Sirius, feeling a chill

going up her spine in the way Lucius glared at
Dumbledore and mumbled under his breath
something.

“What’s wrong?” Remus asked, somewhat feeling

her tension.

“Lucius isn’t happy about Wallance’s internship,”

Anne mumbled.

“Yeah, because he wasn’t the one who decided it,”

Sirius said, looking at her blankly. “His boss did,
but he certainly didn’t think coming to school to
meet the newest generation of workers was
important enough, I mean, he never comes. I don’t
think Malfoy knew who had been picked though, he
certainly looked surprised.”

“That man didn’t even try to be discreet about it,”

James complained.

“Did you expect a known wizarding Nazi to be

discreet about being a Nazi?” Lily asked, raising her
eyebrows.

Anne snorted, surprised by the way Lily seemed

completely relaxed about the idea that she was
hated by the man as well. James didn’t think it was
funny, though, he looked completely horrified.

“She’s right,” Sirius said, smiling at the red-headed

girl. “You know what, you might be a good fit for
this group, Evans.”

Lily rolled her eyes.

“What internship did she get anyways?” Remus

asked.

“In the Ministry, I’m not sure where. Probably

educational wise if Malfoy is here after his whole
silly speech,” James answered.

Once the clapping and the whispering died down, it

was the Herbology’s turn into finding a good fit and
apprentice for their business.

Dumbledore smiled as he read the name.

“Lily Evans!”

Lily looked surprised, looking at James as if waiting

for him to tell her she had heard him wrong, but
the boy beside her just smiled, letting go of her lap
and starting to clap and whoop in absolute delight.
Confused, she looked at her other friends, all
seeming to be excited about her internship almost
more than her. She stumbled as she got up, looking
at James once more in confusion.

She was pushed forward by Sirius and she

stumbled.

The old woman smiled bigly as she saw the young

girl looking confused. The woman offered her hand
as Lily got closer; she took the hand, smiling
happily at the woman who turned to her son, who
whispered something to Lily. Lily smiled even
brighter to him as she nodded. They gathered
together for a picture.

“Go Lily! That’s my girlfriend!” James screamed.

Anne smiled, giving thumbs up to Lily when the

photograph was taken and she looked back at the
group. Marlene, somewhere in the back, copied
Anne, though she was screaming so much that she
was about to throw up.

Lily, blushing, sat down beside James.

Anne noticed that Severus was clapping, lips

twitching every now and again.

It was no secret that Lily loved Herbology more

than anything else in school, always getting the
highest grade in the year and never really studying
it in despair as the other students because she
seemed to already know everything that there was
to know about it.

“Good job, Evans!” Sirius said, giving her a huge

kiss on the cheek, almost throwing himself over
Anne and James to get to her. Lily pushed him
away, laughing. “You’re breaking my heart.”

“Sod off, mate,” James said, helping Lily to push

him away.

“You’re amazing, Lily!” Remus said.

Lily smiled at him, unable to answer him through

the whole noise of the group. She was certainly a
well-liked person.

“Alright, settle down, settle down!” said

Dumbledore from where he stood. Silence
swallowed the room. “Wonderful job, Miss Evans,
but now… to the next. Here, I got the name. It’s
Regulus Black!”

Anne clapped loudly and Sirius had to almost

physically hold her back from getting up for a
standing ovation and whooping. She knew what
was the last internship spot that there was: a
Curse-Breaker paid internship in Gringotts.

Regulus wanted to be a Curse-Breaker; she knew.

“That was what he was wanting,” Anne mumbled to

Sirius.

He looked surprised.

“He wants to be a curse-breaker?”

“Yeah!” she said, smiling.

Severus was looking at her when she met his eyes

while Regulus walked forward with confidence that
was enviable. He wasn’t smiling, but he looked a lot
more comfortable, leaning back and legs a bit
spread while Regulus charmingly smiled to the
camera.

That photo certainly would be sent to his mother.

“Congratulations, to all chosen,” said Dumbledore.

“You’ll need to keep contact with the employers
throughout the year and graduate with acceptable
grades if the internship will be kept. Everything will
be decided by you and your employers, the school
is no longer accountable for it.”

And Anne wasn’t sure what that was supposed to

mean as she bit her tongue, watching Regulus
sitting down and Dumbledore’s lips frowning.

“I didn’t think I was going to get it,” Regulus

admitted on the Room’s version of the Black Music
Room in his house. He was sitting in the piano
bench, Severus was near the sheets of music
stashed away in the shelves on the walls and Anne
was sitting lazily on the sofa. “I mean, I thought I
wanted to be a curse-breaker, but I’m not sure
anymore.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure anymore?”

Severus asked. “It was all your talked about last
year.”

“Yes, last year,” he said. “Before… everything.”

Anne blinked, confused.

“I don’t see how that would change.”

“I mean, I’m not the same person,” he said. “I’m

interested in it, of course, I mean I’m good at it
and I certainly can get a lot of money through it,
but I’m not sure I want to work with it every day
for the rest of my life anymore. So many Dark
Spells makes you go through the worst type of
feelings you could have and now I don’t think I
want to revive everything I had to go through.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Severus said.

“He’s being sensitive,” Anne corrected. “He’s just

aware of his own feelings instead of shoving them
down and ignoring them.”

Severus scoffed.

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“You’re Slytherin enough to know my answer before

you bloody asked,” Anne attacked back.

Regulus sighed.

“Can’t you do anything without arguing with each

other?” he asked, annoyed.

Anne laughed.

“I’m not arguing, I’m making a joke,” she

answered.

“Hm,” did Severus. She hoped that meant he was

agreeing with her.

She rather liked young Severus, he was a lot more

open than the hesitant man that had tried to keep
her alive when she was dragged into danger a lot
more of time than she had expected in her first
school year. Old and young Severus had the same
taste in humour: teasing, jabbing at each other and
then pretending nothing is happening. It was rather
funny to see others reacting to them without
knowing they were both quiet well with the
outcome form the joke.

Regulus turned around, giving them his back and

watching the piano.

“Life is a lot different from before,” he said.

“War does that,” Severus said in the most similar

tone to comfort he could find in himself.

“I wish it didn’t,” Regulus continued. “The life from

before wasn’t exceptional, but it was certainly
better than this constant… fear of being found out,
of being killed or worse. I wish I was back and just
focused on the bloody piano.”

Anne frowned.

“I’m sorry, I think I was a bit distracted,” she said.

“What does the piano have anything to do with the
war?”

“If I focused on the piano enough, I wouldn’t be at

Hogwarts,” he said. He turned to look at her. “But
then again, if I did, I wouldn’t have met you.”

Severus rolled his eyes, turning to go through the

sheets of music on the shelves to give them the
feeling of privacy. He was grateful, however, that
Anne didn’t start to get starry eyed and say soppy
thing to one another, which was what he imagined
they would do to each other when they were alone
– or worse, but he didn’t want to imagine the
‘worse’ of snogs and shags he didn’t know about.

“Where would you be?”

“The Wizarding Music Academy,” he answered. “It’s

in New Orleans.”

“I can’t imagine you there for the life of me,” Anne

admitted, trying not to laugh. He rolled his eyes. “If
it’s any comfort to you, I can’t imagine myself there
either. We’d do good in Avonlea, though.”

Regulus smirked.

“Hey, Sev, can you imagine yourself in Avonlea?”

he asked. “I told him the story,” he explained to
Anne once she looked surprised.

“People would hate me there,” Severus answered,

turning to them. “Absolutely would not to go
church.”

“You, Severus and I living together in a single

house,” laughed Anne. “I’d be seen as whore.”

“A cute one,” Regulus cooed.

“A whore nonetheless!” Anne laughed.

“Anne would be hated there as well,” agreed

Severus, a twitch in his lips appearing to be almost
a smile. “She’d totally sleep in church.”

She looked at him in offense.

“Just so you know, I was raised going to church

every now and then by my uncle and aunt when
they were almost forced to go every holiday to
make a public appearance as good people by
adopting me,” she laughed.

Severus stared at her.

“Aunt and Uncle?” he asked.

Anne had made a mistake. She had dropped her

guard and she told the half-truth when Severus
knew nothing more than the lies she had spread
around the school – she was good in keeping track
of every lie, but in a place as big as Hogwarts with
people knowing different lies it was hard to not slip
sometimes.

“Yeah, I lied,” she said. “I don’t want to get too into

it yet, but in general, I didn’t have a chance to
grow up with my parents. They passed when I was
a few months old, so my brother and I were raised
by my uncle and aunt… we don’t really talk
anymore, for good reason,” she took a deep breath.
“Summary, I understand you and Regulus a lot
more than I’m comfortable to explain.”

Severus didn’t need more explanation. He pushed

his curiosity to the side as Anne looked hopeful at
him.

“Alright,” he dismissed. “Now,” he turned to

Regulus. “What did you want to be if you’re not
going to be a Curse-Breaker?”

Regulus smirked.

“A singer and composer,” he answered.

“No!” Severus said, frowning. Anne frowned again.

“I hate music!” was his poor explanation. “My
mother would stop humming at all, it made me go
absolutely crazy for some time during the summer
that I literally spent winter break outside before
Hogwarts so I didn’t need to hear her,” he turned
to glare at Regulus. “And Regulus hasn’t stopped
humming either and I’m very close to give up on
him.”

“Please, don’t,” laughed Anne.

“I won’t… yet,” Severus grumbled.

Anne turned to Regulus.

“This is amazing! Show me something!” she said. “I

asked Sirius to play the song you sent me, but I
never heard you sing.”

With the lack of hesitation of an experienced singer

and pianist, his fingers started moving over the
white and black keys with his eyes still slightly on
her – he had been waiting for her to ask.

“This one…” he mumbled, fingers still playing a

melody. “Is about my mother.”

Severus slowly made his way to the sofa and sat

beside Anne.

“Her eyes and words are so icy, oh, but she burns,”
Regulus started singing. “Like rum on the fire. Hot
and fast and angry as she can be, I walk my days
on a wire. It looks ugly, but it’s clean. Oh, mama,
don’t fuss over me. The way she tells me I’m hers
and she is mine, open hand or closed fists would be
fine; the blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.”

Anne could somewhat understand his words without

asking for his explanation. Growing up with
Walburga’s blank face being a major red flag, a lot
worse than her actual angry face must have been
confusing for a child and really scary as well. The
confusion and unsureness he must have felt,
always stepping on egg shells around her. But she
had seen that she had two sides – both hateful to
her, but not as much to him. There was a woman
inside of her that he was terrified of, yes, but she
was still his mother and he had been raised and
taught to love and respect her, even if he didn’t
expect the same in return. She would torture him if
she wanted, but she would say she was proud of
him once he killed someone.

Now, grown, he could understand that she had

been raised in the same way she was raising him.
Her parents taught her it was the right way and she
was doing it in hopes she wouldn’t fail her duty,
much like he was afraid to fail his.

“Calls of guilty thrown at me all while she stains the

sheets of some other, thrown at me so powerfully
just like she thrown with the arm of her brother.
But I want it; it’s a crime that she’s not around
most of the time,” he continued.

What Anne didn’t know was that there were two

occasions where the abuser would get worse: when
his father was out cheating and she was drinking
herself to stupor or when Uncle Cygnus was there
and she wanted to show off how dangerous and
rigid she could be with him, the heir of the House
after her older brother failed to have boys.

“Her fight and fury is fiery, oh, but she loves like
sleep to the freezing. Sweet and right and merciful,
I’m all but washed in the tide of her breathing. And
it’s worth it; it’s divine, I have this some of the
time. The way she shows me I’m hers and she is
mine, open hand or closed fists would be fine. The
blood is rare and sweet as cherry wine.”

Anne needed to get him out.

He still thought of Walburga as blood, as someone

worth saving. The way she had told him that she
was proud of him had messed him up quite greatly,
perhaps more than he had noticed. But Anne
noticed, and so did Severus.

Regulus needed out.

But he wasn’t ready to ask out for real yet.

Chapter 69: Chapter Sixty-Eight

Summary:
The Black Brother learn to deal
with their first real taste of grief.

ALPHARD BLACK

Regulus tried not to look too shocked or touched by

the letter in his hands, but he couldn’t even pretend
that he didn’t care.

Alphard Black was dead.

Alphard Black had committed suicide. He had been

disowned and outed as gay, all in a single day. His
uncle was dead because for something that Regulus
himself had: attraction for men.

His eyes quickly went to the Gryffindor table,

wondering if anyone was going to tell Sirius that his
favourite uncle had killed himself, but the boy
seemed carefree as ever, laughing and being as
loud and obnoxious as he usually was in the
mornings. It felt like it was falling upon himself to
talk to him and to end all his happiness.

The memory on his mind was happy. He was

thirteen when he found out why Uncle Alphard
wasn’t married, though his mother (the mother of
Regulus’ own mother) had tried several times;
contrary to what Walburga had said, he didn’t mess
around with lots of women, he just had a… best
friend. Mister Yaxley was a great guy, also single,
who liked to liked to play music so he had a lot to
talk about with Regulus – one summer, when he
was all too excited to tell Mister Yaxley about the
song he composed, he walked into the music room
without announcement and saw the most shocking
of scenes. Uncle Alphard and Mister Yaxley were
stuck in an intimate embrace and they jumped
apart once they noticed Regulus. A secret was
born. And the small part that Regulus had tried to
ignore, the part that thought Evan Rosier to be all
too pretty, wasn’t as disgusting in his own mind
anymore because, if his loved Uncle Alphard could
do that, then certainly could he.

Now, as he got up from the table in silence, he

ignored Elizabeth telling him ‘good morning’ as he
walked by and ignored when Severus frowned at
him, trying to talk to him about the reason he was
walking, shaking, as he went towards the
Gryffindor table.

Severus understood where he was going and

jumped up, running towards him and holding him
by the arm a bit too tightly. Regulus didn’t even
wince.

“I don’t what happened, I don’t know what you’re

thinking, but you can’t go to her right now,”
Severus whispered. “I can go there and try to talk
to her and –"

“Not about her,” he whispered back.

Severus didn’t move and didn’t let go.

“You look pale,” he mumbled, glancing around.

“They’re watching.”

“Let them. I need to talk to Sirius,” Regulus said.

He looked at the letter in his cold, shaky hand. “He
deserves to know.”

Still not understanding, Severus looked at the

letter, recognizing quickly Narcissa’s handwriting
and the sentence ‘Uncle Alphard is dead’. He looked
away, giving him the privacy Regulus needed.

“Go, I’ll say that you’re just telling him. But be

quick about it. Mark a meeting if you think it’s
necessary, but don’t dwell,” Severus warned.

Regulus nodded.

When his friend let go of him, Regulus went back to

walking towards the Red Table, ignoring as other
tables and other people started to stare at him in
interest and very clear excitement of the fight that
they thought it was about to break out.

Peter Pettigrew was the first to see him, stopping

mid-sentence of the story he was retelling of his
winter break, happy about how his mother seemed
better from the illness she had contracted right
before Christmas. When he seemed to freeze as he
saw the pale boy walking towards them, Remus
Lupin turned around with his hand already flying
towards his hip where the wand was shoved in an
improvised holster he made – Sirius had one
identical to it tied around his hip, so Regulus
thought that perhaps they made it together. James
Potter turned soon after, hand flying to touch the
small of Anne’s back.

She didn’t flinch, but she looked startled as she

turned away from the conversation she was having
with Marlene.

“What’s happening?” she asked, looking at James,

then at Regulus and then at the very stiff Severus
whispering furiously to Elizabeth in the Slytherin
Table. “What’s going on?”
“Sirius?” Regulus said. His voice wavered, finally
letting him sound like the prepubescent he was
feeling like. “I need to talk to you.”

Sirius was rolling his eyes as he turned, but his face

went blank and focused once he saw a letter in
Regulus’ shaky hand. He slowly got up from his
seat, towering over Regulus with ease. He was
starting to pale as well in worry.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Uncle Alphard is dead,” he announced in a low

voice. “He has been disowned of the family and
burnt off the tree, but… I thought you deserved to
know.”

It was like the world had stopped to Sirius, that

much was clear by his eyes alone and by the way
he leaned against Remus arm holding him in place
when he almost stumbled back, face turning a
sickly shade of grey before going green. His body
seemed to be wanting to be choose between
throwing up and fainting, his hands starting to
shake.

Anne was standing beside Sirius and making sure

he was sitting on the next second. She turned to
Regulus.

They stared at one another as he locked his jaw. He

wanted to throw himself in her arms, he wanted the
comfort she could give him, but there was nothing
she could do to make the pain go away or to make
people stop staring at him as if waiting for him to
react to something they didn’t know about.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, sounding so

genuine that he had to hold his breath to hold back
the tears.

“Thank you,” he said cordially, his head making a

small nod of politeness. “Well, the message has
been delivered –”

“How?” Sirius croaked. “How did he die? Who killed

him? Was it You-Know-Who? Did he go against the
family or something? Why was he burnt off? He
loves the family!”

“Nobody killed him, it wasn’t an assassination,”

Regulus said. “He did it himself. Mother found him
and the letter beside him,” he looked round. “We
could mark somewhere to meet to talk about it.
Here’s not the place.”

It was a suicide. That only seemed to make things

a lot worse than it already was to Sirius, his eyes
filling with tears as he started to cry openly.

Anne had to look away to hold herself from crying

as well, but James wasn’t as lucky. He was already
crying as he jumped from beside Lily and running
to his friend, leading him up from the seat and then
dragging him out of the Great Hall before the tears
turned to sobs, protecting Sirius’ pride, after all
Sirius hated to admit it, but he was still a Black –
he does not cry in public like a child.

Before she noticed, the Marauders were already

walking out, forgetting about her and focusing only
on the hurt one in the pack. McGonagall was
moving quickly, forgetting her breakfast and
running out of the Great Hall to get to her boys
before she even thought of asking Regulus what he
had said.

Anne turned to her lover once more.

“I’ll get him to talk to you in the Room tonight,” she

said. “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Regulus.”

This time, his own eyes tried to fill with tears. His
occlumency took over; it had been some time since
the last time he had to use occlumency to stop
himself from having a physical reaction to his
emotions. Anne had made him allow himself to feel
thing and act upon his feelings and thoughts
without hesitation in their little world. He had
forgotten the Black world wasn’t the same.

Once more, he envied Sirius.

He turned around and walked out of the Great Hall,

pretending not to feel Severus moving right behind
him in the second she got to the double doors.

The Room had taken the appearance of the Potter

Cottage music room, the place where Sirius felt
comfortable and completely open. A place where he
had the latest happy memory. He was holding onto
it.

Grief wasn’t a feeling he was all that familiar with;

he had heard of it and thought of how it would truly
feel. He had even thought he had felt it when he
escaped home and mourned for the childhood he
had lost to the abuse, but true and genuine grief
was a lot deeper. It was like a hole in his stomach,
sucking any other feeling that not sadness and guilt
for something he didn’t commit. It was like the
world had been broken and he had been dragged
away from it and now was put back in the
shambles, walking around places and memories
that had been happy that now felt bitter and cold.
It was hard to explain – Sirius couldn’t help but
think that he had no idea how Anne was doing okay
at all; she had lost everything, a lot more than him,
she had lost her brother and watched horrible
things happen to other people she loved… and yet
she seemed to be trying to be happy. Sirius didn’t
want to be happy; he didn’t even want to try.

Remus had his hand on his shoulder, but Sirius

didn’t want to be touched. He stayed silent, not
wanting to say anything because he didn’t want to
hurt Remus, after all he didn’t even have a reason
to not want the comfort he was being offered.

Anne seemed to somewhat understand the wave of

mixture of feelings he was having, because she was
sitting beside him in silent support, watching the
door of the Room and lost in her own thoughts.

“Did you know it was going to happen?” Sirius

asked.

Anne turned to him in surprise.

“Yeah, you said your uncle had passed away, but

you never mentioned when or that you two were
close,” she admitted. “I didn’t think about him until
now, Sirius. I’m so sorry. If I had known anything
like this was going to happen, I’d have started
working on bringing him –”

“No,” he cut her off.

He wasn’t sure what he was saying ‘no’ to, but

Anne was quieted.

She and Remus exchanged a quiet look as if Sirius

couldn’t see them probably thinking he was crazy.

James was with Peter talking to Dumbledore,

McGonagall and James’ parents to explain that
Sirius would take a few days to deal with the death
in the family and go the funeral, though they
weren’t even sure there was going to be a funeral.

The door opened.

The first one to walk it was Severus Snape, as stoic

and blank as ever in the face, but his posture was
stiff as he watched the still pale Regulus Black walk
in with his hands in the pocket of his trousers.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” Severus said. “We had to

find a way to get Rosier off of us. He hasn’t let go
of Regulus a single second today.”

“Why would Rosier be worried about you?” Sirius

asked to his brother.

“He thinks I still have a crush on him since last

January because I slept with him,” was his blank
answer as he sat in the other sofa, crossing his
arms. Anne was surprised that he had admitted his
sexuality so openly so suddenly, after all that
information was new to her and it seemed to be
new to Severus as well by the way he stared at his
friend. “Nothing important as for now. I came here
to talk about Uncle.”

“Yes, the stupid and selfish suicidal uncle we have,”

Sirius said.

Regulus glared at him.

“You’re not the only one that liked him, so I ask

you to respect him,” he said firmly. “I’m not even
allowed to mourn his loss according to the rules –”

“Fuck the rules!” Sirius said.

“And that’s what I’m doing by paying his funeral

under the covers, Sirius, but if you don’t respect
me or Alphard’s memory with your stupid jokes and
anger, I will get up and leave you to find out
everything on your own.”

Sirius bit the inside of his cheek. He had noticed

they had different ways of grieving, but that didn’t
seem to be making the situation any easier for
either of them.

“Start with why the hell is Snivellus here?” Sirius

asked.

Regulus got up from the sofa.

“Come on, Snape, we’re going back to the dorms,”

he said.

Sirius paled, jumping from the sofa at once and

stuttering.

“I’m sorry,” he said loudly. “I just mean that I don’t

understand why is Snape here.”

“I don’t understand what Lupin is here for if you

brought Anne, but I’m not questioning your support
system, am I?” Regulus said. “I came here thinking
you’d have brought Potter and Pettigrew with you
as well, but I guess you and Potter can be pulled
apart by tragedies.”

The small jab at the fact that Sirius spent half of his
life in a prison went over Severus’ head, but not to
the others in the room.

“Regulus, Sirius, both of you, please, calm down,”

Anne said. “Let’s deal with what you have to deal
and then you argue and get all your emotions out
at once, but let’s be mind-oriented for now.”

“Anne is right,” Remus said. “There’s a lot of

questions going on in your head. I can see them
from here. Ask them and if Regulus know them,
he’ll answer.”

Severus sat on the sofa, looking patiently at his

friend who was still standing. Regulus sat beside
him, making sure their legs weren’t touching in the
small sofa, noticing that Anne was doing the same
with Sirius.

“I think it’s for the best for Regulus to tell what he

knows at once,” Severus said. “If Black has any
questions in the end, then he’ll ask.”

Sirius nodded.

Regulus nodded.

“Alright, no interrupting,” Anne warned Sirius.

Regulus took a deep breath, preparing himself.

“Uncle was found dead this morning, but he has

been dead for a couple of days. Mother found him
after he didn’t answer a letter she sent; at first, she
thought it was pettiness, after all he known for it,
but nothing came the next day and then the next. I
suppose it started as pettiness and he killed himself
half-way through,” Regulus said. “Oddly enough, he
went muggle style with the whole rope thing. Three
letters were found. One to Mother, one to me… and
one to you.” Regulus reached into his pocket,
taking the letters into his hands. “I didn’t open
mine yet and there’s a spell that only allows you to
open yours for a few more days before anyone else
can.”

“Why?” Sirius asked.

Anne was about to scold him for interrupting, but

Regulus seemed to be expecting him to, because
he had leaned back on the sofa.

“I suppose he was already having trouble with his

mental health ever since Mister Yaxley and his
broke up,” he said.

Sirius’ eyes widened.

“You knew?”

“Ever since I thirteen,” Regulus agreed. “But the

thing is… Yaxley got married. The aurors think he
might have killed himself on the day of the
wedding, but they’re still running tests on him to
make sure.”

“Uncle Alphard would never just do that for a man,”

Sirius said.

“As I said, I think he was already having trouble. I

think it was just the last drop,” his brother
answered.

There was a heavy silence in the room for a few

seconds.

“I have a lot of arrangements to make,” Sirius said,

sounding more like a comment to fill the air than a
real sentence that he wanted a reaction or
response on. “If he’s disowned, I mean it was a
suicide after all, it was expected… then he can’t be
buried with the family.”

“He cannot,” Regulus agreed.

“I’ll find somewhere,” Sirius said, getting up and

getting the letter from Regulus. “I’ll find a place for
the funeral as well. I can deal with everything, I
have some money left with me, so don’t really use
your money – I don’t want family money involved
in this shit.”

“Not family money,” Regulus said, blushing a bit.

“My money. From when I was younger.”

Sirius looked up in surprise.

“From when you sold my clothes to the girls in

school?” Sirius asked, surprised. Blushing even
more, Regulus nodded. “Holy shit, you still have
some of it. I thought I had 50%!”

“More like 10%,” Regulus mocked, rolling his eyes.

“I worked hard for that money! I wasn’t going to let
you just get money out of me without doing
anything to gain it. You just existed and you
thought you were entitled to the money.”

In any other situation, Anne would’ve teased

Regulus and said something about his entrepreneur
within, but Regulus seemed too ashamed and too
stuck on his uncle’s death still for her to say
anything.

The door opened again.

James and Peter walked in, both tensed up, though

James seemed a bit more relaxed than the last
time Anne had seen him.

“Sirius, I’ve done it!” James announced.

“He had the most amazing idea ever. Brilliant!”

Peter said.

All turned to look at the two.

“Your uncle is to be buried in my family lot in the

cemetery, so you don’t have to worry about
arrangements. Mum and Dad will take care of
everything for you, you two don’t need to worry
about a single thing!” James said, looking quite
proud. “I mean,” he added, looking a bit
embarrassed, “if you two agree with it, of course. I
just know that you can’t burry someone that
committed suicide in your family lot.”

Sirius almost started crying again and Regulus

nodded once as if thanking James, though he
couldn’t find a voice to say it out loud. The
gratitude was the same between the brothers, but
they showed it differently. Sirius ran to James and
into his arms, Regulus just froze in place.

Anne stood up from the sofa, watching Remus

watching the small interaction between his friends
between his friends. He had wanted Sirius to seek
comfort in him, but he knew Sirius enough to know
that he would never want comfort coming from
anyone but James, his soulmate – platonic
soulmates were always something Anne had never
understood and thought it was a dramatic way of
saying good friends, until she knew how it really
was between Sirius and her dad.

Those two were soulmates.

“The funeral will be at the 16th,” James announced.

“Potter Manor can be used.”

Regulus hated the letter he had received from his

mother at the fifteenth; she had mocked every
single centimetre of the timeline of life of his uncle
and all his appearance before bitterly commenting
that the Potter always took in the Black strays,
even going as far as calling it an obsession.

He wondered what would be her reaction once he

also ran away from her. Would she see herself as a
problem finally? Would his father show any type of
emotion other than anger or frustration?

“Are you ready?” asked Severus.

“The story is –”

“You’re sick and Madame Pomfrey took you to St.

Mungus because you can’t keep the potions down,
so you’ll need to take it through the vein,” said his
friends, nodding. Severus frowned. “Are you sure
you don’t want me to go with you?”

“It would get too much attention,” Regulus said,

shaking his head. “I can deal with it by myself.”

He was in black robes. It had been quite some time

since the last time he had worn it. He had lost worn
it in his grandmother’s funeral when he was ten,
and now he had made it fit his almost-adult body
with a spell McGonagall had taught them a few
weeks before – classes were working for
somethings, at least.

Severus seemed to want to say something else, but

he nodded once before closing the door and leaving
for class.

Regulus moved quickly towards the Hospital Wing,

pretending not to notice his hands shaking before
he shoved his hands into the pockets, trying not to
feel other muscles of his body shaking.

In the Hospital Wing, Anne, Sirius, James, Remus

and Dumbledore were already waiting for him, all
with sober faces and in silent.

“Mister Black,” greeted Dumbledore. “I’m sorry for

your loss.”

“Thank you,” he answered politely, not really

looking at the headmaster. “Forgive me for the
delay. I had to wait for everybody to leave and the
younger Yaxley didn’t seem to want to go to class.”

And he had been waiting for his face’s bloat to go

away after the whole night crying as silently as he
could, even under Muffliato.

Anne seemed to know that, because she looked at

him with a blank face, but reached for his hand
without any type of judgment or pity in her
feelings. He accepted her hand and held it,
squeezing it tight for a small moment before
looking at the headmaster.

“Everybody ready?” Dumbledore asked.

“Yes,” James said, hand petting Sirius’ back as he

nodded.

Sirius didn’t have the same power over his

emotions as Regulus, because his face was bloated
and his bags under his eyes were screamingly
black. He hadn’t slept and, by the way James
looked, neither had James.

Regulus knew that under the spells, Severus' eyes

were much like theirs, having spent the whole night
worrying about him as quietly as he had been
crying.

Chapter 70: Chapter Sixty-Nine

Summary:
Sirius has more money than he
cares for in his bank account.

WHERE IS HOME

Sirius Black had no idea of what do with so much

money now resting on his account. He had never
thought Uncle Alphard Black had so much money or
that he would give him so much of it after almost
months without talking to him. And no matter how
much Sirius tried to forget, Sirius still thought of
how all that money that now was his was Black
money.

“It doesn’t matter,” James had said, rolling his eyes

with a small shove. “It really doesn’t, mate. It’s
yours now.”

“It does matter,” Sirius had disagreed. “It matters

to me because I don’t want to use their money.”

“It’s not their money, it’s yours now and, before, it

was your uncle’s,” Remus had jumped into the
conversation.

But still, as he looked at the letter that came from

Gringotts warning him about the will that was left
to him, he didn’t feel good about that money. His
uncle’s or not, that money had come from his
grandfather and, before that, from his great-
grandfather – all of those got money made out of
horrible things happening to the world. His family
always had a talent of making out in a thriving
position in wars and times where their own
population was being persecuted and killed off. His
family was a reunion of con-artists, murders,
thieves and liars hiding behind money and a
surname that no longer seemed as attractive nor
demanded as much respect as before.

He found comfort in Peter’s silence. He found

shelter in his lack of questions, just quiet
understanding.

“I thought my mother was going to die,” he had

commented a couple of days after the funeral. “I
even wrote my sister about it and she wrote back
for me to shove all the money up my arse and that
she wasn’t going to come back to England for shit. I
guess her husband didn’t like the idea of leaving
America either. I’m sure she would be happy to talk
to you, if you were interested in venting.”

“I don’t want to vent, I want the world to stop,”

Sirius complained.

“Well, I can’t do much about that, sorry,” Peter

answered.

But no one seemed to know what he was feeling as

much as Anne.

“Do something scandalous with that,” she said in

the moment they met. “Get that money and buy
something that your family would freak out about.”

And it took two more days for him to have the idea.

When everybody was united in the Common Room

of Gryffindor, after he already had the decision on
his mind, he ran in front of the fireplace that Anne
had been using to warm herself up, blocking the
heat for a moment. That made her glare at him.

“It’s cold,” she complained. “It’s February, Sirius,

leave my fire alone.”

“You’re always cold,” Lily dismissed her complaint.

“Your cold is not important at the moment, my

dear,” Sirius said, hand quickly touching the top of
Anne’s head as if he was about to rub it like she
was a dog. “Now, listen up. I know what I’m going
to do with the money,” that caught the attention of
the group. “I’m buying an apartment.”

“That’s so cool!” Marlene said. “Good job!”

“Amazing, mate!” James said.

“Found one already?” Lily asked.

“What?!” Remus exclaimed. “This is brilliant, Sirius!

Congratulations!”

And although all the group started to talk over one

another, all excited to know more about his
decision and the apartment they were imagining,
the fact that Anne was completely silent, however,
did take some of his happiness and excitement
away even when she forced a smile to calm him
down once that she noticed that he was watching
him carefully. There was a shadow around Anne as
she sat silently near his legs, looking at the gap
between him and the fireplace, watching the fire.

When everybody made their way out to their beds

at the end of the night, he stayed behind, knowing
by the way Anne had pulled her legs to her chest
that she wasn’t going to sleep any time soon.

“What happened?” he asked. “I thought you were

going to be happy that I was following your
advice.”

“I meant a telly for your bedroom or another

leather jacket, or even a bloody motorcycle,” she
said, laughing bitterly. “I’m sorry for this, Sirius.
I’m really happy for you, I’m just being selfish.”

“You’re allowed to be selfish,” dismissed Sirius.

“What happened? Talk to me.”

She sighed.

“I didn’t mean to kill the mood, I’m sorry,” she

said. He smiled at her, dragging himself to sit
beside her, throwing an arm around her and
looking at the fire at well. “I just thought that… I
just got you back and I didn’t want you to move
away, but I’m being selfish. You’re eighteen, you’re
allowed to move away and have your own life if you
want to, I mean, it’s expected and I’m sure Remus
will be very excited to move in with you once you
two are ready, I could see it on his face when you
said you were going to buy an apartment.”

“You’re not losing me just because I’m moving

away, Annie,” he said, bringing her closer to him
and turning his head to look at her.

“I know, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m

just being silly.” And yet, just being silly, brought
tears to her eyes. Grunting in annoyance, she
cleaned her eyes harshly. “See? Silly!”

“It’s understandable –”

“No, it’s not. You’re an adult, I’m an adult. You’re

not my fucking father and I’m supposed to be
alright with my friends having their own lives
without sounding like a clingy toddler,” she
explained. “This is embarrassing. Sorry.”

“No, of course, this isn’t embarrassing,” Sirius said.

“It’s understandable. You have me all to yourself
and you know you’re going to miss me,” he teased,
smiling. She chuckled. “If you don’t want me to go,
I won’t.”

“I won’t be the reason you will leave your wish

behind, Sirius,” she said. “You don’t need to take
care of all my wishes, I’m not a child. I can deal
with you leaving, but only if you promise to visit as
often as humanly possible – no! As often as
wizardingly possible!”

“Wizardingly?” he laughed. “Is that a word?”

“It shall be from now on,” she insisted, throwing

herself to the side, head resting on his shoulder
and snuggling closer to his side.

He kissed the side of her head with a small smile.

She was so vulnerable and open at that moment; it
didn’t look like the hero he knew her to be, it just
looked like his best friend’s daughter.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. You don’t

need to worry about my visitation schedule,” he
promised her.

“Sirius –”

“No, I’m not doing this for you, I promise,” he said.

“Hearing you say that, it made me realize that I
might not be ready to live alone. I might buy a flat,
but… home is still home, with you and James and
Mama. Maybe Lily, too, one day.”

“And Remus,” Anne said.

“And Remus, once he’s ready,” Sirius nodded, lying

his head on top of Anne’s. “Is that good for all of
us? No, it’ll be chaos and we’ll drive Mum mad, but
it’ll be fun for sure.”

“Do you think we can get Grandma to scream at

Remus?”

“In the first bloody week,” Sirius agreed.

She finally smiled genuinely.

“I was being serious about the motorcycle,” she

admitted.

“I know, and don’t worry, I’ll buy it, too, I just

couldn’t say anything in front of Remus, otherwise
he’ll freak out on me,” Sirius admitted back in a low
voice.

She laughed.

Dear Mum,

I know, I’m not one to write, I usually just send my

messages through James’ or Anne’s letters, but this
time my message is a bit personal and I wanted
more than just permission, but I want some help to
understand this.

With the money I received, I had thought of buying

a flat in London, but now I’m not so sure I’m ready
to live on my own, so more than just wanting to
spend a bit more of time back at home, I had
another request. I know that in this family people
usually live with their parents until marriage, but I
can’t marry, can I? So… I had the plan on moving
to London and bringing Remus with me, but with
my change of mind I feel like I failed to show him
how serious I’m taking this relationship.

He's been pulling away. His father found out about

us and has been quite mean with the letters, and
with his mum being quite sick, I’ve been quite
worried about giving him support – I don’t really
know how to ask for help and I might have pushed
him away a few times in the start after I lost Uncle
Alphard, but I already apologized and he still seems
a bit hesitant. He thinks I don’t like him enough to
let him see me vulnerable or whatever, which is a
lie, a huge one at that… I just can’t let anyone by
James and you, Mum, see how ugly I am when I
cry, is quite embarrassing. Would he stop loving me
if he sees me bloated and red? I doubt, but it’s a
reflex to me at this point.

So here’s my request that my rambling had been

preparing you for:

Can I ask Remus to live with us?

He’s been trying to get away from his father for a

while and I think it’s time that I show him a bit
more of this side of me, even if he thinks I’m doing
this for pity. I’ll show him that it’s not it with time,
but before I ask him this, I wanted to ask you and
Dad.

Thank you for listening to me,

Your second son,

Sirius Black (Potter?)

Dear Sirius,

My dear boy, but of course. Remus is always

welcome to our house for a reason, because I have
been expecting him to move in with us much like I
had been expecting you to ever since I met you –
though his started when he ran into our house with
no shoes on, hair a mess, trying to see you when
you escaped. I had never seen the so calm and
collected Remus so scared, and that was when I
knew you two belong with one another. Besides, I
like having someone to take my morning tea with,
since you and James seem to find impossible to
wake up before eleven in the holidays.

Make sure to let him know that he’s more than

welcome. Just tell me if you’ll share your bedroom
or if I have to ask Coco to prepare another one for
him, for whatever reason. I don’t want him to feel
like this is a sleepover or temporary, he’s allowed
to stay for as long as he wants – even if that’s
forever. And also make sure to let him know this is
not made out of pity, but out of love – from you
and from me. And warn James for me, too, dear;
he’s not all that discreet and he might make a
scene if he finds out with an audience nearby and
you know how Remus is quite shy about his
personal life. Is Anne aware? She’ll be very happy
for you two, she loves Remus very much and she’ll
be happy to let herself get closer if he’s living with
us; I had never seen her so happy as I did in the
New Year’s Eve with you all together.

Now, propose to him the idea.

About the marriage thing, I do feel bad that you

two will not be having this opportunity any time
soon. I want to see my babies standing in the altar,
professing their love to one another with no fear,
much like I want to see James and Anne in the
same situation.

You have your answer.

Make sure all my children get back home in one

piece, you included, young sir.

Please, do me a favour on keeping an eye on Anne

for me. She hasn’t been writing as much as she
usually does back home and I think she might be
upset about something, maybe something with her
boyfriend? I know that it might not be you the best
of people that ask her about this, but her intimate
life might be the cause – I’m sure you are aware at
some point to what happened to Anne, and I know
that their relationship has been developing quicker
now, but she might have some trouble with it
anywhere. You are experienced and might help her
understand what things like this are supposed to
look like or feel like, even if they involve your
brother. If you think you cannot, do write back and
I’ll deal with it myself, do not worry, I just thought
that she might be more comfortable doing this with
someone her age and she seemed close enough
with you. Thank either way already, my love.

From your mum,

Euphemia Potter.

PS: Do keep the Potter at the end of the name,

Sirius, and after you’re done with school, we’ll
make this official.

Dear Lady Potter,

I write this letter in response of your invitation. I do

hope you know what I wouldn’t usually accept the
housing offer so easily; I’m not one to take things I
didn’t earn and I didn’t expect to see myself using
Sirius’ position in the family to get myself out of
trouble, but I see no other way. My father has told
me not to get back home if I’m taking the
relationship with my boyfriend seriously. I have
nowhere else to go and no one else besides your
family to trust completely.

I will repay your kindness one day, I promise. I will

do my best to be useful in the house while I look
for a job too, I won’t even let most people know
I’m a werewolf just so I can get a job faster. I have
a few plans and places in mind, so I hope my
promise will be reassurance enough for you.

And, if I’m allowed to ask a small favour of you, I

ask you to keep – somehow – in contact with my
mother. I have been refused contact through
telephone and my letters come back unopened
because my father has locked all types of
connection with the wizarding world just so I can’t
get in touch with her. Perhaps you have a friend in
the muggle Health Department that might check in
on her every now and again, just so I know she’s
alright… or at least alive. Understand, Lady, cancer
is violent in Muggles and it cannot be healed with
two or three sessions of invasive potions; it kills a
lot of Muggles and my mother doesn’t seem to be
an exception, she’s sleeping away quickly and I
don’t want to miss a single milestone as she fights
back. Maybe she’ll survive, though the doctors said
otherwise.

With hope and gratitude, I sign away,

Remus J. Lupin.

Dear Remus,

Since you agreed to share a room with Sirius by

what he told me, I got him a bigger bed.

Your mother is alright, alive and walking in the

garden two times a day. Your father found some…
trouble in his work and might not have his job for a
lot longer, but your mother’s health condition will
continue improving by a friend of the family that
took interest in the case for his residency.

You will not pay me back. I think it would be alright

if you took a gap year before jumping into the adult
world, you children will have a lot more to deal with
than work and job hunting. I’m interested in your
money, but I am interest in company in morning
teas.

Your newest friend,

Euphemia, or just Mia – no Lady Potter, or else

you’ll be thrown out of the house, you never called
me that before and you will not start that now that
you’ll live under my roof.

Love,

Welcome home.

Chapter 71: Chapter Seventy -

Summary:
Easter Break comes by and Anne
and Regulus go back home.

STRESS

April the 8th, brought forth the Easter Break once

more and, with it, the clear mark of Anne being
around for more than a year.

Lily and Marlene were still asleep when she woke

up, excited to go home once more. Unable to
control herself from her excitement, she quickly
made her way out of the dormitory and down the
stairs towards the Common Room before making
her way up to the boys’ dormitory, opening the
door just a crack and peaking in, but everybody
was asleep – the curtains of the bed were open in
Remus’ bed.

She slipped into bed, smiling at him once his eyes

fluttered open lazily, clearly used to someone
slipping into his bed.

“Hey,” he mumbled. “I thought you were Sirius.”

“I know,” she said, lying down. “Can I stay here?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” she dismissed, snuggling closer to her.

Remus took a deep breath as he rolled in bed to

turn towards her and hug her close. It had been
just four days since the last full moon and his sense
of smell was still strong enough for him to get the
smell ever so similar to James’. It was comforting
how sweeter it was, though still familiar enough for
it to not be new.

“Nightmare?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I had a wonderful night of sleep,

just wanted company. I thought of slipping into
Lily’s bed, but she kicks before asking question.”

That took a smile off of Remus’ lips.

“Try to sleep a bit more,” he said. “We still have to

hours before leaving for the train.”

She nodded, head resting on the pillow with a deep

breath and finally allowing her body to relax
through her happiness and excitement.

Remus went back to sleep quickly, still comfortable

with the body beside his. Anne, however, didn’t fall
asleep, she just lied in bed in silence, unmoving
and hoping that the hours would move quickly.

She felt like a child should feel in a Christmas

morning, lying in bed trying to keep herself down in
bed, but nothing seemed to be happening. If she
could, she would jump in James’ bed until he woke
up and run into Lily’s room and wake her up as
well. She wanted everything to be ready and start
the new world. It was silly. She was just going back
home for a second Easter, and yet… It was exciting
to have somewhere to go back to. James would go
with her, and Remus and Sirius. She missed Mia
and Monty.

Peter woke up soon after, sitting in bed and putting

his shoes on and freezing as he stood as he saw the
red-head moving in Remus’ bed to look at him
when she saw the movement by the corner of her
eyes. She didn’t smile, but her eyes did narrow for
a moment.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” he said.

He made his way to the bathroom on the other side

of the room and gave her a quick smile before he
disappeared inside.

Anne sat down on the bed, looking at the door of

the bathroom. Peter looked weird. He was very red
on the face, not in the nice blushing of seeing a
girl, but in the way that he looked like he was
feverish.

Remus woke up with the movement. It had been

almost an hour and a half since he had fallen asleep
and he was ready to get up at that moment.

“What time is it?”

“Nine,” she answered, eyes still stuck to the

bathroom door. “Was Peter weird last night?”

“No,” he answered, sighing and sitting down. “Still

hesitant about him?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and turning to

Remus. “I think he’s sick. He looks sick. He just
went to the bathroom and he was walking a bit
weird, I think he was a dizzy or something. Do you
think he’ll be alright?”

That woke Remus completely, putting his hand on

his face and scratching before getting up from the
bed. He had tank top and trousers on.

“I’ll check in on him, don’t worry,” he said.

Remus dragged his way into the bathroom and

Anne could hear him talking to Peter inside of it,
the door closed and muffling the noises. A minute
later, Remus walked out, gave her a thumbs up and
went back inside – this time he took a few minutes
before walking back out, this time face washed,
hair fixed and teeth brushed. He sat down on the
bed and smiled just a bit at her.

“He has a fever, but no rashes,” he said. “He thinks

it’s just the stress. He has been diagnosed with
anxiety, after all, so it might be. It happened
before.”

“Stress?” she asked. “Of school?”

“Of going back home. Things are bit… difficult to

him at the moment,” Remus said. “I won’t get into
it; I mean is not my story to tell and you clearly
don’t know anything. But it might get you to
understand him a bit better. Peter only has his
mum.”

“Yeah, his dad died,” Anne said, nodding. She knew

that. “He was two when he died, wasn’t he?"

Remus frowned.

“His dad is very much alive; he just tells everybody

that he died because he’s embarrassed that his dad
walked away from the family when he was a baby.
It was him, his mum and his older sister ever since
he can remember,” Remus admitted. “He found his
last week and, well, he didn’t want him when Peter
wrote him to get in touch and all that, you know? It
took a lot from Peter to act normal. His father told
him to go back home and not contact him again
because he’s married and has a little boy now.”

Anne felt her throat tighten as she tried to swallow

down her pain.

“And?”

“And his mother and his sister had a huge fight on

Christmas. His sister has been living in Ohio for a
few months now, but she doesn’t come back to visit
his mother and she got upset because she was sick
and still Hailey didn’t come, always asking them to
go to America to see her at all. Now, they’re barely
talking to one another,” Remus explained. “It’ll be
the first time they’ll literally only have one another.
And there’s also the fact that school’s ending and
he has no idea of what to do, because he needs to
take care of his mum and all that. There’s a lot
happening to him… he’s scared and lonely.”

“I understand,” she mumbled. “Do you think he’ll

be alright?”

“If keep him from spiralling down into his own

mind, yes,” Remus said.

He seemed to want to continue the sentence, but

he held himself back and Anne didn’t seem to
realize as he still watched the bathroom door.

The sway of the train made Anne giggle as she

kissed Regulus, her back against the sliding door of
the compartment they were sharing.

With Severus away to talk to Evan Rosier about a

spell they were making, they had the compartment
all to themselves for the rest of the trip and they
were both very happy to what it was leading to:
getting rid of all the stress.

His hand was getting her legs apart by rubbing her

over the underwear under her skirt. Anne pulled
away at once, taking a gasp of air as she held on
his shoulder to keep herself from falling as her
knees buckled.

“Woah, there,” laughed Regulus.

“I’m – Oh, Jesus!”

“Who is that guy? You talked about him before!”

Regulus said.

To shut him up, Anne pulled him by the unbuttoned

shirt, kissing him harshly on the lips and nibbling
on his bottom lip with desire. His hand disappeared,
but before she could complain, his hips took its
place, rubbing himself against her to the point
where she was almost on her tip-toes by how hard
she was squeezed in between him and the door.
Noticing her condition, Regulus was quick to put
her legs around his waist and lift her off the
ground.

As she pulled away once more to kiss his neck,

making him sit down and straddling him, his
hardness only made her moan. She looked at him
as his arms went around her waist in a hug.

“Thank you for meeting me. I don’t think I could

convince myself to go back if I didn’t know I’d have
you here with me,” he said.

“I know, I’ve been neglecting you,” she answered.

“No! No, Anne, you’re amazing,” he said. “The thing

is that I missed you and I’m glad that you’re here
since I didn’t have time to just… be with you.”

“You mean kiss me,” she teased.

“I mean being with you,” he corrected, firmly. “We

don’t need to kiss for me to happy of being with
you.”

Anne threw her head back, allowing him to rock her

back and forth.

“You’re too sweet for your own good,” she moaned.

Regulus leaned forward to kiss her neck and then

licked down to her sternum. Her shirt was
untucked, but closed, so she let him open the first
few buttons, revealing her red bra.

“Red?” he teased.

“Well, it couldn’t be pink,” she teased back. “I’m

red-head after all.”

“Don’t worry, I like red,” he kissed her sternum

once more. “Though, I do prefer you in green.”

“The whole world does,” she teased, laughing.

“I’m the only one who gets to see you like this, so
let the world burn outside of this compartment,” he
dismissed.

Though he said that, she got up from his lap and he

froze, unsure if he had said or done something bad.

“I want to try something,” she announced.

He relaxed, ready to get up.

“Alright –“ he started, but she pushed him back on

the seat. “What’s going on? Anne, what are you
doing?”

And she kneeled down in front of him.

Regulus was sure he was about to faint right then

and there. Anne Potter was kneeling down in front
of him, excitement in her eyes filled with actual
happiness. The idea of having someone in their
knees in front of him was exciting; the knowledge
that it was something new, but a win coming from
Anne made everything a lot better.

“Tell me what you like,” she asked, hands

unbuttoning the buttons before unzipping it.

He lifted his hips so she could pull his trousers

down and she pulled his underwear down. He held
his breath as he closed his eyes, feeling her eyes
over him a lot more than the feather-light brushing
of her fingers over his thighs. He opened his eyes,
looking down at her, watching her curious eyes
drank his cock.

“I don’t really know, I only had it once,” he

admitted. “Evan is not really good at it.”

Anne smiled at him.

Her hand wrapped around his length, already

awake of how to go up and down. But that was
when she leaned down, lips touching just the head
in a quick kiss before she put the head inside of her
mouth, lips wrapping around it.

Regulus made a noise, a quite loud one. Something

between a moan and a whimper.

Anne looked up, surprised by the noise, but lips still

working just around the head. She made a small
noise around him, making the voice tremble around
him shaft and making his breathing stop for a
second and his hand fly to pull her hair into a
ponytail, he didn’t pull it or push it to guide her, he
just wanted to make sure he could see every detail
of her work on him.

She closed her eyes to focus on her work, allowing

her lips to relax a bit and opening her mouth just a
bit more to let her tongue swirl around the head as
she took a mouthful of it. She retracted instantly
once it went too deep and she had some difficulty
breathing. Her hand moved up and down once as
she pulled back, sitting on her ankles to take a
deep breath.

“Are you alright? Did I do something?” he asked.

“I breathed through my mouth; bad idea,” she

answered. “I need to breathe through my nose.”

“You don’t need to do this, Princess,” he said.

“I want to,” she insisted.

Her hand moved again, this time several times as

she licked and kissed the sides, rubbing her lips
lightly around it and, finally, liking the slit. Regulus
threw his head back against the seat, closing his
eyes tight to keep himself under control. He didn’t
want to snap his hips and scare her away; both for
her sake and for his, he needed some self-control
to still exist.

The hand that was no holding her hair gripped the

seat and he took a shuddering breath as she tried
to take as much as she could without gagging or
forcing herself. It was less than Evan had taken,
but, somehow, she made it feel so much better –
so much better that he almost lost control when her
finger touched his balls.

“Anne,” he said in a warning tone.

“Hm?” she did.

Her voice vibrated around him and he had to hold

his breath.

“This will not take long,” he warned.

Anne didn’t seem to mind though, still caring for

her ministration, though her hands disappeared
from his skin and soon her understood why as he
let go of her hair once her head moved away from
him: she had taken off her bra, pulling back for a
second to slid the shirt and the bra off. He smiled
at her and she smiled back, teasingly throwing the
bra at him – laughing, he watched and she put her
shirt back on, though the front was completely
open.

“Shall I take this with me?” he asked.

Anne just smirked, letting him decide the answer.

Without fear, he put it to the side, making his brain
remember to put it into his bag once they were
done.

His balls were cupped and all his logical thought

disappeared from his mind and all his could think
was of Anne. How her hair was smooth and shiny,
how her skin was smooth and warm to the touch
and how she had gotten a few kilos since the first
time he had seen her naked. He couldn’t count her
ribs anymore, he noticed as his fingers ran across
her sides, making goosebumps appear and her
shiver; that reaction made her breast rub against
the inside of his knee. He moaned… She was
wonderful. She was brave, and kind, and pretty –
and wanted him.

“Anne!” he warned, voice pitchy. He sounded

urgent even to his own ears, but the pool of heat in
the foot of his belly was hard to ignore.

She continued for a second, shoving as much as

she could manage of him into her mouth before
pulling back at once, gasping for air.

Her hand gripping him had the perfect pressure,

getting him to his high seconds after as spurts of
white painted her hand, breast – even a single
spurt managed to paint her of white across the
cheek. She winced in surprise, but laughed as
Regulus sighed boneless on his seat.

“I take it that you liked it,” she offered.

“Absolutely,” he managed to choke out.

Lethargic, he pulled a handkerchief from him blazer

– thrown to the side – pocket and gently cleaned
her cheek before blinking. He was still feeling giddy
and dizzy from the orgasm. Anne noticed this, so
she took the cloth from him and cleaned her hands,
meaning to clean her chest soon after.

And then she felt the wards breaking.

She reached for her wand so fast that Regulus only

had time to do the same, but not ask questions.

Their wands were pointed at the door when it

opened at once.

She saw somebody peek in and the door closed at

once.

Poor Remus Lupin would have to live with the

memory of his goddaughter on her knees in front of
her boyfriend, breasts exposed and wand pointed
at him with great distaste of being interrupted.

“Sorry!” he said.

“There’s a reason the door is warded,” Regulus

answered, loudly, annoyed.

“And there’s a reason I know how to break the

wards: emergencies,” Remus said. “Anne, get
dressed, your dad wants you.”

“Now?!” she asked.

“I did you a huge favour by coming to get you

instead of letting him bloody find you in this…
position,” he sounded disgusted and Anne knew his
face even without having to see it. He was frowning
and, if he was anything like his adult version, he
had his lips curled in a nervously awkward,
annoyed smile. “He wanted to come. I offered
myself before Sirius could, though. Be grateful I
can keep a secret – and can find a bloody Erasing-
Potion.”

Dramatic, Regulus thought as he watched Anne

cleaning herself quickly and getting up. As she
closed her shirt, he put his trousers on and
gathered her jumper and tie, folding them and
giving them to her, waving his wand with a
brushing-hair spell. She smiled at him as she
shoved her shirt into her skirt and pulled her
jumper over her head.

“I owe you one,” Regulus said, awkwardly, knowing

that Remus was listening. He scratched the back of
his neck, shifting his weight of leg.

Anne laughed as she took the tie from him.

“You sure do,” she dismissed. “What does he

want?” she asked, louder this time, to Remus.

“Your help with an engagement ring. And I need

your help to stop him from proposing to Lily just
because she punched Evan Rosier in the face,”
Remus said.

That called Regulus’ attention and he opened the

compartment door at once.

“Inside!” he ordered.

Remus, surprised by the tone of his voice, went

inside, though his lips curled in disgust, refusing to
do anything before opening the small window, not
complaining out loud of the smell, but his
heightened sense making him dizzy just with the
idea of someone of his pack having sex in that
place.

“What?” Remus asked.

“Evans punched Rosier in the face?” Regulus asked.

“Why?”

“Because he tried to lift up her skirt to tease her,”

he said, looking in between Anne going pale and
Regulus locking his jaw. “Just to tease her about
her knickers or something, he didn’t mean to touch
her in any way.”

“Fucking bitch,” Anne complained.

“Rosier has lost his mind!” Regulus said. “I’ll have a

talk to him –”

“You cannot!” Anne said.

“But I must!” he insisted. “He cannot go around

antagonizing people all the time. It’s bad enough I
had detention because of him before; one more
complaint about him, and it can get him killed.”

“Then leave him to die,” Remus said, confused to

why Regulus couldn’t do just that.

“And let my decision be seen as unloyalty to

someone in the cause? I’d rather die,” Regulus
said. “At least die before they find out, because I
will be killed either way, but I’d rather go without
the torture, you know?”

Remus hesitated.

Anne sighed.

“I need to go, Little Prince,” she said, shifting her

weight.

“Alright,” he mumbled as an answer. “I’ll see you

soon, Princess.”

She leaned, kissing him full on the lips; mouths

closed, a simple peck in respect of the watchful
godfather in the corner of the compartment, still
lost in his mind of thoughts and – now -terrible
memories.

After a whole moment of Remus shoving two pieces

of bubble-gum into her mouth, complaining about
not being able to forget what he saw and explaining
how James had almost fainted when he saw Lily
punching Rosier straight in the nose, Anne and
Remus went to the compartment where the
Marauders were gathered at and she had a stern
talking to with a besotted James. She wasted the
rest of the trip saying that all the engagement rings
that James had access would not make Lily marry
him until she was ready to do, so he needed to stop
even thinking about asking her.

Regulus, however, had stayed alone in the

compartment. Bored and unrelenting to the clear
solitude that often came after Anne left him for too
long; that was something he had never imagined
having before she had him, he had always been
happy to be alone and enjoyed having the company
of his thoughts, but since Anne came into his mind
and he opened up more than he ever thought he
would, it was odd to have no one to share his
thoughts. It wasn’t just Anne – with her help, he
had opened up in general and quite enjoyed
sharing his thoughts and melodies with Severus,
the only one he trusted enough to let hear
everything.

The loneliness made him uncomfortable as he

started to scribble lyrics down on his small
notebook. He had just gone through a religious-like
experience under Anne’s eyes and attentions. He
had been so focused that he didn’t feel the train
stopping or the excited chattering outside, only
looking up when his door was opened.

Severus leaned against the doorway.

“You seem to have had a good day,” mocked his

friend.

Regulus closed his notebook.

“Well, I’m not one to kiss and tell,” he answered.

“Always the gentleman,” dismissed Severus.

“But of course, I was raised like that,” Regulus said.

“My mother is already waiting for me outside?”

Severus shook his head.

“Just your cousin Narcissa today,” said Severus.

“Your elf already took your bag home and Narcissa
is going to take you out for dinner before getting
you back home.”

He felt coldness washing his stomach and guts.

Something was wrong. Severus had not mentioned
anything about Lucius, which meant that he wasn’t
there and, therefore, whatever it was the
discussion she clearly wanted to have with him had
nothing to do with Death Eater issues. It was
family. Something had happened with his family,
and not something good by the way his heart was
skipping a beat out of anxiety.

“Were you invited?” Regulus asked.

“No, I was informed your presence was required,

however, as fast as you could make it,” Severus
answered. “Is there… anything happening?”

“Nothing I was made aware of,” Regulus said,

shoving his quill on his pocket and notebook in his
small handbag. “But most likely than not,
something happened. I’m guessing Bellatrix is
pregnant again.”

Severus shook his head.

“I doubt it, she was seen in a mission for the Dark

Lord yesterday,” Severus said. “Whatever
happened, I don’t think it has anything to do with
Lucius or Bellatrix.”

And he was right.

In the moment Regulus stepped down of the train

and hugged his cousin for half a second before
pulling back, he knew something a lot worse than
the idea of the Lestranges having an heir had
happened or was about to happen.

Narcissa had always been a good liar and a good at

Occlumency, but not to Regulus, and especially not
when she didn’t want. He supposed whatever she
had to say was so bad that she wanted him to
guess before she had to say anything; eyebrows
almost together as she refused to look into his
eyes, her hands were holding themselves in front of
her body to stop them from shaking, she looked
pale and tired.

“Who died?” he asked. “Was it Mother?”

Narcissa looked up.

“Nobody died,” she said. There was an ‘yet’ at the

end of her sentence that would forever haunt
Regulus. “Let’s go for dinner, yes? I’ll explain
everything to you then, alright?”

“Say it now,” he insisted. “Do not make me invade

–”

“Do not dare give me orders, Regulus, I’m doing

you a favour,” insisted her. “This is the type of
news you want to hear privately.”

And once more people were right about his wishes

and reactions. He wondered if he was that easy to
predict.

At the dinner table at Malfoy Manor while Lucius

was away at meeting in the Ministry, Narcissa made
him sit down, take a bit of water while the table
was being put in place and filled with food. That
was when she decided he was ready to listen to
whatever she had to say, finally.

“Your father is sick,” she announced clearly. “He

has Platos.”

It was like the world was turning around Regulus,

but he had been frozen in place. It was scary for
him to know his father was dying, but it was scarier
for Narcissa to see his eyes going glossy and in to
cold, uncharacteristic silver coloured.

“How long does he have?” he managed to choke

out.

“The Healers say that Christmas, at the latest,” she

answered. “He has been getting worse since he was
diagnosed in late January. We decided not to tell
you until everything was put in place, but they
don’t want to tell you yet and I refuse to keep this
from you any longer. I’m going against them
because I think you deserve to know.”

“Just as I was getting used to things, they’ll change

again,” he complained in a low voice. He looked up
at his cousin once more. “I don’t know much about
Platos, just that’s genetic. I thought it was just… a
lung condition giving him some coughing, I didn’t
think it would be --”

“You won’t have it, Regulus,” she said, shaking her

head as if he had been worried about something
like this. “Nor will Sirius. It often skips one or two
generations and it only affects purebloods males,
which means that if you have children with anyone
that’s not pureblood, you’ll be fine.”

She meant to say ‘Anne’, he knew. If he stuck to

Anne, his future generations would be fine. She had
no idea that he planned not a single child in any
point in time, always too afraid to be exactly like
his parents – the ones he had been told several
times that he was so similar to.

“The pains?” he asked.

“Already started. He can barely get up from bed if

the day is too cold,” Narcissa said. “The coughing is
getting worse and the pain in his back is… strong.
The problem that they tried to hold from you was
that he started with the blood.”

“He’s coughing blood already?” Regulus asked

surprised. “And the Healers said until December?”

“I don’t think the Healers knew about the blood,

Reggie,” said Narcissa sadly. “I only found out
because I saw it happen when I went for a quick
visit three days ago. Your mother has been taking
care of him, but she has been… decaying.”

“She has been going crazy, you mean,” he said

bitter. “She has always been a bit mad.”

“Things are getting worse, Regulus, she’s starting

to become increasingly paranoid, she has been
talking to herself and I think she stopped showing
for a few weeks before your father managed to get
her into the shower again,” Narcissa said.

Regulus was losing both parents at the same time

in very different ways and Narcissa knew that
between letting one die and trying to make one
survive when they couldn’t take care of themselves,
the easiest one was clinging to Orion. If Orion
survived, Walburga would be kept in control for
longer.

He blocked his face from her eyes with his hands,

sighing.

“Was she taken to Healers?” he asked.

“She refused to go, but I went to talk to them,”

Narcissa said. “I said that they were there to see to
Uncle Orion, but they were taking a look at her.
One of them was a Muggle Doctor as well, a
psychiatrist, he called. He thinks it might be some
type of Schizophrenia, but he’ll need to do more
tests to be sure. I talked to my father as well and
he said that she had acted like this before when
they lost their younger brother, but she stopped
after, he thinks it’ll stop and that’s just the stress,
but I don’t think so.”

“Mother has been losing her mind for a long time,

Narcissa,” Regulus said. “When Father dies, she’ll
have nothing left to hold onto. She’ll go completely
out of her mind once he’s gone,” he took a deep
breath. “Let’s just hope nobody is nearby when it
happens.”

Regulus knew that stress had nothing to do with

what was about to happen to him.

Chapter 72: Chapter Seventy-

One -
Summary:
The Potters recieve the Evans for
lunch during the break.

EASTER LUNCH

James Potter was shaking as he sat down on the

sofa of the parlour after peeking out of the curtains
into the street once more. He had been doing that
for almost half-an-hour, though his family still had
ten minutes before Lily Evans and her family came
to officially meet one another for Easter Lunch.

Anne was lying on the other sofa, legs over the

arm-rest and head lying on Remus’ lap as they
teased James in whispers to themselves, calling
him a ‘puppy’ more times that James cared to
count at that point.

“You don’t need to be so nervous, mate,” Sirius

complained as he walked into the parlour, finally
ready after being called out by James several times
for his long time in the shower. “It’s just Lily and
her parents, and, well, her weird sister, I suppose,
but they already know you.”

“It’s not just Lily Evans and her family; it’s my

girlfriend, now officially, and her family coming to
meet my family,” James explained. “I don’t even
know what to say about Anne. Anne? What’s our
story? Are you my cousin, my sister or… well, you
can’t be my daughter and you can’t just be a
random girl living with me.”

“A random girl living with you,” teased Anne.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“That’s not –”

“Just tell them I’m your cousin,” Anne said.

“Nobody asked even when you broke your mother’s
story about me being your half-sister with your big
mouth and stupid misunderstanding that you chose
to address in public, which, don’t do it again,
please.”

They had yet to decide to talk about the moment

Lily, James and Anne had gotten in an argument
with the whole misunderstanding growing more and
more with rumours. Anne knew that if she ever
stopped to think about, she would end up arguing
with her dad and she didn’t want that, so she just
pushed it away, knowing that James didn’t want to
think about that day either.

“Lunch’s ready!” Mia announced.

Coco appeared on the parlour with a loud pop.

“Young Master James is to be informed that Coco

will stay here and yous need to go to the kitchen to
help Mistress Mia,” Coco said, clearly fixing her ears
to make her look presentable for the visits they
were about to receive. “Miss Anne is to be informed
that she needs to put shoes, too.”

Anne sighed, not wanting to put shoes and walk

with them inside the house. She rather liked being
barefoot since she felt so comfortable there. But
she put the shoes on and made sure her pretty
light-blue coloured tea-length dress was
appropriate enough as she made her way into the
kitchen to see Mia giving two pots to Sirius as he
made his way into the dining room to put it in place
while Remus took plates and stalked away. James
made his way soon after.

Anne stood in the corner.

“Is Regulus feeling any better, dear?” Mia asked.

“He’s…” she couldn’t find a word. “I don’t know how

to help him.”

Mia stopped her job of putting mashed potatoes in

a pretty bow and turned to Anne, back resting
against the counter.

“You cannot,” she admitted.

“I should,” Anne disagreed.

“But you cannot,” Mia insisted. “His father is sick

and he’s training to finally be the Heir he was told
he needed to be just a couple of years ago, but he
still needs to keep in mind that after his father
died, his mother will be his responsibility.”

“That’s a lot for a sixteen-year-old,” Anne said.

“It is a lot for anyone at all,” Mia said. “He needs

time and space to put his thoughts in order and
your presence might feel like comfort or just a
reminder that he needs to be strong for you. Let
him fall apart alone for once and, when he’s ready
and calls you over, you go and pick him up, like a
good friend would do.”

She didn’t need to say out loud for Anne to learn to

be his friend again and not try to heal him with
physical affection that he couldn’t find in Severus or
Sirius. To hide away in carnal pleasures would not
heal him, just confuse him a lot more than he was
already – but Anne knew that and she accepted the
reminder with a small smile and grand gratefulness.

“I wish he could be here,” she admitted.

Mia leaned away from the counter, going to Anne

and embracing her before a harsh kiss on the top of
her head, making her giggle, tearing her away from
her sadness momentarily.

“Alright, Miss Juliet, go on and take the mashed

potatoes to your dad,” Mia said, shoving the bow
into her hands. “Your Romeo is safe away.”

For a second if almost sounded ‘safer’ away, but

Anne said nothing as she walked away with mashed
potatoes and the order to get James to come back
to get the cups from the kitchen.

They had barely made the table look good enough

when the doorbell rang.

“They’re here!” James stage-whispered, panicking.

“Where’s Monty?” asked Anne, starting to panic.

“In his office, I’ll get him!” Sirius said, running out
of the dining room as he could.

Remus occupied himself fixing the last few details

on the table as they all heard Coco making her
trained introduction to the four people awkwardly
standing in the mudroom as they took off their
coats.

Mia quickly made her way towards the group.

“Welcome! Welcome!” Mia said quite loudly. “It’s

such a pleasure to have you all in our home. Come
on in. Thank you, Coco, you can have the rest of
the night off,” she kept on saying without a pause.

James fixed his shirt while Anne looked at Remus,

who was already looking at her with a grin.

“Anne!” said Mister Evans. “Good to see you again,

my dear.”

“Mister Evans,” she greeted back. “Misses Evans,

what a wonderful dress!” she added. Not a lie and
not flattery. Misses Evans was wearing the most
beautiful shade of pink that went perfectly with her
blonde hair. “Hey, Lils. Hello, Petunia.”

Petunia made a small noise in acknowledgment, but

nothing more. Lily, however, ran to Anne,
embracing her before jumping into James’s arms,
giving a quick, chaste kiss before jumping to
Remus’ arms, who clearly was happy to see her.

Right at the moment, Sirius ran down the stairs.

“Mum, Dad told me to tell you that he’ll need a few

minutes because he’s in a call with the Minister,”
Sirius announced. “Oh! Hello, Evans! Welcome to
the humble Potter Manor.”

Remus smiled at Sirius, seeing how excited he was

to have Lily and her family over. He had even
cleaned his room, though nobody was supposed to
go to his room beside him and Remus, his romantic
roommate, as he jokingly has presented Remus to
Mister and Misses Evans before adding ‘boyfriend,
in case you couldn’t tell,’.

The pleasantries were nice enough, but there was a

quick change in the mood when Monty ran down
the stairs.

“Anne!” he called.

She jumped up from the chair on the table.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“What did you do?!” he asked.

She blinked.

“Nothing on purpose,” she said.

“So, you’re telling me that Bellatrix Lestrange has

been asking around about you and your family
because you did ‘nothing’? Do you have any idea of
what you could have done? Do you know what she
can do if she finds out you’re who you are?” he
asked, narrowing his eyes. “Were you caught –”

“We have visits, dear,” said Mia.

Monty seemed to see Mister and Misses Evans with

the two daughters watching the interaction with
interest.

“Oh, I wasn’t aware you were all here already,

forgive me,” he said a lot calmer. “I’m Head Auror,
so you know, work never stops, even in the days
off.”

Lily blinked, turning to her parents at that moment.

“Aurors are like police offices and detectives. He’s

the main one, the leader,” she explained quickly.
“You know, my father is a police officer as well, a
muggle auror, I mean.”

“That’s wicked!” Sirius said, jumping into the

conversation, hoping to move it along. “How is it,
Mister Evans? Does it have so many guns as in the
films?”

“That’s not something to ask, Sirius!” James

scolded.

Slowly, Anne sat back down at her seat. Monty

made his way to sit on the head of the table, on the
other side of Mia’s side of the table.

He looked quite upset still, probably because the

bloody Minister of Magic had called to make sure he
knew that known Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange
was asking around by the girl he had public called
niece and about her ‘Canadian’ family, even the
‘deceased’ ones, trying to find a way to track a
family tree for her. There was only one reason to
why she was doing this: her relationship with
Regulus was quite known. She was trying to see if
there was any way to get her name dragged
through the mud to make sure there was no way in
hell that he could marry her.

The talk walked away from Anne towards police

officers and the crime rate near Spinner’s End and,
before his marriage, Swansea County in Wales. To
Sirius wanting to join the Aurors and James quickly
accompanying him to explain how the trials for the
recruits started – they compared the trials to both
people.

Anne started floating away from the table, mind

somewhere else.

Until she felt eyes on her.

She looked up, surprised to see Petunia watching

her. She looked back at her with wide eyes, blue
going around the room as her breath started to get
quicker. No – that wasn’t anxiety. It was the
warning that Petunia needed to talk to her. So, to
make her stop staring, Anne nodded at Petunia with
a calm face, trying to calm her down to make sure
they would have a moment to talk later, after the
dinner and after the whole group was too distracted
to account for them.

Petunia looked away when Lily called her name.

“’Tunia,” said Lily. “You wanted to be a teacher.

Listen, Mia was a teacher before she started in law
enforcement.”

“I taught young magical children at home if they

had magic too powerful to wait until school and,
before that, when I was a teenager, I taught
children and teenagers to play piano when I was in
Germany,” Mia repeated the story. “What type of
teacher do you want to be?”

“A normal one,” Petunia quickly answered. There

was tension in the room. “Children, I like them.
Teach them to write and add, subtract… all that…
normal things,” she tried to fix, swallowing down
some saliva. She reached for her glass of water,
sipping it gently. She looked uncomfortable, but
certainly a lot less disgusted than what Anne had
expected her to. “Are magical children taught
that?”

Lily seemed ready to have an attack, eyes wide and

very surprised.

“They are,” James answered gently. Petunia looked

at him, finally seeing why Lily liked him so much.
“There tutors that teach at home if the child is too
dangerous for the Statue of Secrecy, and by that I
mean that they’re too powerful, such as me, or that
their family is too closed off to mix with Muggles –”

“Such as me,” Sirius said.

“Such as Sirius,” James agreed, smiling at his

friend. “Then tutors come and teach them at home.
But Remus here, for example, studied at a muggle
school since he’s a half-blood and is aware of the
muggle customs a lot better both of us together.”

“You, Anne?” Petunia asked.

Her stomach grew cold as she struggled to answer.

“I went to a muggle school,” was her answer at

first. “I… My aunt and uncle weren’t all that rich; I
mean, they had a good situation and all that, but
they couldn’t care for three children at once with
home-tutors and I wasn’t raised aware of the
magical world. I went to a ‘normal’ school, I
suppose.”

The room grew cold as well as her memories

dragged her away from the warm and welcoming
company in the place she felt more comfortable and
safe with, and she was back sitting in the bathtub –
she wasn’t sure if the reason Aunt Petunia and
Uncle Vernon were arguing was about her or about
something else… she thought for a moment Petunia
had figured it out and was going to stop Vernon
from doing those things, but no saviour came; her
clothes were too far out of reach and she didn’t
want to move. She was glad Harry was asleep
already. Dudley was sick, so he wouldn’t wake up
for any reason. Even with all those people in the
house, she was alone.

“Annie, sweetheart?” James’ voice brought her

back.

She blinked, noticing everybody staring at her. She

was gripping her glass of wine.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing she mumbled.

James had been crouching down beside her, not

daring to touch her.

“It’s alright. You got… distracted. It happens to

everybody,” his hand was gripped on the arm of
her chair. “Do you need anything? Do you need
some… time?”

She shook her head.

“No, I just really got out of it for a second,” she

dismissed. “What are we talking about anyways?"

There was hesitance. People often did that when

they didn’t want to go back to the subject they
were before she had gone out of the conversation.

“We were talking about one of my students,” lied

Petunia, knowing that everybody in the table knew
she was lying, but none of them said anything
about it, just nodded and went along with it.
“Infantile autism, he has. Good boy, doesn’t speak,
but… good boy.”

And the conversation quickly moved away from

Anne to how Petunia had a lot of patience to deal
with the little boy, though Anne knew by the way
that Petunia looked away that she hated how her
parents were talking about the boy as if he was too
behind from the others to be friends with them.
She liked the boy.

Anne held on in reading Petunia’s facial expressions

as best as she could until the dinner came to an
end.

That was when Sirius led the families to the music

room to entertain them as the goodbye-tea was
being finished, especially after Anne insisted on
making it herself to have some time alone and
away from all the noise.

“Are you alright?” Petunia asked from the doorway.

Anne turned to look at her. “I slipped away when
your long-haired brother started playing Queen. I
don’t like it.”

“He’s not my brother and Queen is great, Petunia,”

said Anne, crossing her arms and leaning against
the counter. “Three minutes and the tea will be
ready, you’ll be free to go without being seen as
rude, I promise.”

“What is it between you and James, anyways? My

sister doesn’t seem to be jealous.”

“There’s nothing to be jealous about between us,”

Anne answered. “You seemed to want to talk
before.”

Petunia took a deep, quick breath in, making

Anne’s whole-body tense up.

“I’m planning on breaking up with Vernon,” she

answered.

“In the future, or near future?” Anne asked.

“Near future. I’m trying to find the right moment

for it,” Petunia said. “I don’t know. I’m scared of
doing it when we’re alone and I’m not sure I want
my parents nearby when I do that, he tends to be…
verbal about what he did to me.”

‘What he did to me’, she had said. Anne had

noticed right away. It was never something they
did, it was something he did to her, very clearly
against her will.

“And you’re ashamed,” Anne guessed.

“And I’m ashamed,” she agreed quickly. “I thought

of asking Lily to go with me when I talk to him, but
he would totally be suspicious about what she was
doing there when we meet each other again.”

“Because she never goes on your dates with you,”

Anne said.

“She used to, when I was younger,” Petunia

admitted. “But my parents didn’t really care once I
was engaged.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“That you told me that I needed a support system

and I need you to be part of it. I need you to come
with me to break up with him once I’m ready and I
need a way to communicate with you ever I ever
need, I mean, I noticed there was no phone here
and you have my number, but you never called
back,” Petunia said. “What can I do to talk to you?”

Anne smiled.

“Petunia, do you know how to get a public owl?”

“No,” she said, curling her lip. “That sounds

disgusting.”

“Well, let me explain it to you.”

Chapter 73: Chapter Seventy-

Two -
Summary:
There are preparations for the
start of the war, but children still
need to go to school.

PARTING ONCE MORE

“AGAIN!” screamed Monty.

Anne wanted to try it again, she wanted to do more

than try to get up from the ground, but her muscles
weren’t answering to her mind. If it was a real duel,
she would be losing, or worse, dead.

“EXPELLIARMUS!” she screamed, still on her knees.

Monty rolled his eyes as he defended himself with

ease. He, non-verbally, send another spell on her
direction. She felt herself rolling before she felt her
head hitting the floor harshly, making her yelp as
she scrambled to get up.

“Are you telling me you survived a war and you

duel like a child?” Monty said, waiting for her to get
up. He crossed his arms. “It’s no surprise you
needed someone to always protect you. You can’t
defend yourself for shit.”

Uncomfortable, James and Sirius shifted against the

wall of the empty room that once had been their
father’s office. He had gotten rid of everything to
train the kids.

“Stop it, Dad!” James said. “You’re hurting her.”

“James, shut it!” Remus said.

“No, mate, look at her!” Sirius insisted, worried.

“She got the attention of Bellatrix Lestrange, she

needs to learn how to deal with it now. This is her
own fault for not being able to keep herself away
from the spotlight; the Slytherin in her didn’t die
enough for her to fix herself into the Gryffindors
without a hitch. I know, my wife is just like her,
sons,” Monty said. “She survived a war before, she
can survive another if she stops holding herself
back in fears of hurting me and starts attacking me
for real. Come on, Annie! As hard as you can. Don’t
be a baby. Hurt me!”

“I can’t do that,” she said.

Blood?

There was blood inside her mouth.

She spat.

Oh, look, there was a tooth as well.

Did she grind her teeth enough to break one of

them?

Funny, she didn’t remember the pain.

She tried not to throw up with the metallic taste,

just spat again and curled her lip in disgust. She
was ready to try again.

“I’m an adult. I’m the Head Auror, I think I can

deal with whatever you, my dear teenage girl, can
throw at me,” said the grandfather. “Come on,
honey, do your worse. Make sure I can trust you,
little girl.”

Little girl. She hated it. She had been called that
before and the patronizing undertones hadn’t gone
away from her mind yet.

Standing now, Anne focused her magic from her

core to her arm, feeling the warm liquid-like energy
pass from her body to her arm. The strongest spell
she had thrown in a while.

“Alarte Ascendare!” she screamed.

Monty flew up, arms going around his body trying

to find something to grab before he hit the peak of
his height and falling as fast as it was possible, he
threw a spell down, falling, but managing to not
break anything, already throwing a disarming spell
towards her. She defended herself quickly, taking
steps back quickly. Another forceful spell coming
from him made her fall on her behind since not
even her shield was able to protect her from the
impact.

With a good Bat-Boogey Hex that Ginny taught her,

Anne got up.

Monty laughed.

“Good girl!” he screamed.

He looked at someone behind Anne.

“Crucio!”

But that wasn’t Monty.

That was Mia.

Anne was quickly to jump out of the way, knowing

her shield wouldn’t be strong or fast enough after
such a tiring session of training, especially to a spell
coming from behind from someone she didn’t even
hear or see entering the room.

“Mum!” screamed James.

Sirius was pale against the wall, holding James’

arm for dear life. Remus had to hold him up to keep
him standing.

It wasn’t hard to think of what he was thinking as

she recognized the distant blood in Mia’s family
tree.

“Expeliarmus!” Anne tried again. She was blocked.

Frustrated, she tried again. “Stupefy!”

“Impedimenta! Crucio!”

This time she didn’t have time to run or jump. It hit

her straight to the chest.

Anne fell to her knees. A million needles prickled

her feet at the same time right on the nerves, her
heart was shattered a couple gazillion times and
her head exploded, teeth shattering and choking
her, cutting down the inside of her throat. She
didn’t even realize she was screaming until she
coughed from straining her throat.

“If I was a real Death Eater,” Mia said, watching

Anne struggled to breathe on the floor. “You’d be
dead.”

Anne couldn’t answer, but she still had her wand in

her hands. It was her grandmother teaching her a
lesson – her very sweet, very kind, but very
powerful grandmother who had grown up in
Slytherin and in England in a mixed magical
neighbourhood during the Second World War; she
knew how to play dirty when needed. She was a
retired Auror, she knew when the stop and she
knew when to press.

But James and Sirius didn’t understand her as well

as Anne did.

So, Anne took her revenge.

A Knee-Reversal Hex made the woman scream in

pain before falling back, unable to use her legs until
Anne said otherwise.

“But you didn’t kill me and, if I wanted, you’d be

dead now,” Anne said. “Kick the wand away from
the hand, Misses Auror. I was taught that the hard
way.”

“Were you taught to never stop watching your

backside?” Monty said, grabbing Anne by the back
of her shirt and pulling her up. “I don’t think you
were. So… here we go, fix your grandmother and
we go again.”

“Dad, she’s tired, she was just –” James stopped

himself, eyes going wide. “Anne, your nose is
bleeding!”

Anne raised her hand towards her nose, fingers

brushing against the philtrum of her lip and coming
back painted red. She was tired and her body and
magic were exhausted as well, but in a real battle –
in a real war – nothing was making the others stop,
not a bit of blood and surely not screams. She
could do better. The blood was nothing but her
body telling her that the Crucio had worked very
well in her body.

“Again, Grandpa.”

Monty smiled at her.

Mia cleaned her throat, not wanting Anne to forget

about her presence.

Several preparations were being made over the war

rapidly approaching, especially after Regulus didn’t
answer her during Easter Break a single time, nor
did Severus, which caused her to panic slightly,
finding solace only on the fact that she would see
them again in school and find out what happened
there.

Going back to Hogwarts couldn’t come fast enough.

And when the day came, she stood in the platform

in silence while Sirius, Remus and James said
goodbye to Mia and Monty. She looked around as
discreetly as she could, trying not to gather
attention, looking around and pretending to find
people that were already looking at her, waving
excitedly to them, even to people that she had
barely ever talked to, who surprisingly waved back,
though some had confused faces of, only waving
back to not leave her embarrassed or something
like that – rather sweet of them, she kept thinking.
But all her thoughts abandoned her when she was
Regulus Black standing beside Narcissa Malfoy, who
was holding onto Walburga Black’s arm as if it was
her lifeline, keeping the woman in place as Regulus
said his polite goodbyes, gave a quick bow and
made his way into the train sparing her nothing but
a quick glance. Anne tried not to feel disappointed.
She knew things needed to be like that, but it still
hurt when his cold, grey eyes passed over her as if
she just another person in that school, as if she
meant nothing to him.

Severus Snape appeared soon after, now seventeen

and an adult, standing tall and confident in front of
Narcissa, giving her and Walburga a quick, but
lower bow than Regulus before he looked straight
at Anne, giving her a single nod in acknowledgment
before walking into the train without a bag in hand,
letting it float behind him. Anne almost smiled –
she knew something that most people in that
platform had no idea: with Severus being
seventeen, he had made his father go mental with
Occlumency and Legemency, messing the man’s
mind so much that he was seen unfit to take care
of the house he lived in and of Severus, who
quickly was made a legal adult for muggles as well
and the man was taken away after Severus said the
horrible things he used to do, and everything was
blamed of his mental condition. Severus was
working towards his freedom and nobody there
seemed to notice how the iron around his ankles
and wrists were looser.

“Annie? Are you mad at us?” asked Monty.

She turned.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

“Are you mad at Mia and I? We were just training

and I know that Mia shouldn’t have used –”

“It’s fine,” dismissed Anne. “Your training is

certainly more effective than others I was forced to
take part in and, believe me, it’s not safe to say the
spells you used out loud. Even here, walls have
ears. That’s not a normal punishment for children
and, although you’d be applauded by some
purebloods, being discreet would be appreciated by
me,” she smiled. “We don’t want me to get more
attention than I apparently already get, even when
I’m not getting in trouble in school.”

“Try to keep that like that, please,” said Mia,

smiling.

She was kissed in the forehead by both of them,

love promises on her ear before she was let go.

With her father and uncles, she made her way into
the train feeling like nothing short of a celebrity.
Sirius was in front of her, her father and Remus
escorting her sides as if she was about to be
attacked by any second.

They wouldn’t stop following her around when they

could since they had seen her fight Monty – she
going well, she was listening and learning from
him, but they seemed to find her abilities lacking
still. No surprise there, she wasn’t famous for her
duels. She was good in Potion and spells, but
hexes, jinxes and curses were never her biggest
flex. She had, however, a strong shield that did get
some attention during her war after blocking three
stupefies at the same time, protecting Professor
McGonagall’s back as she protected her own front.

“James, don’t you and Remus need to find Lily and

go to the Prefect’s wagon?” Anne asked. “Sirius,
come on, let’s find a compartment.”

“We can walk you there,” James said.

“But you don’t need to,” Anne said. “I already have

Sirius with me.”

“Is Sirius enough?” James asked.

“Sirius is enough!” Sirius exclaimed, blinking

several times, quite taken aback and offended by
James. Remus laughed. “I’m enough, aren’t I,
Moony?”

Moony didn’t even hesitate, he just nodded, looking

away from the very young girl he had been
observing, she had been struggling to balance
herself firmly enough to pull her bag up, but her
dad had run closer and helped her, giving one last
kiss in her face before running back to stand beside
the mother. He clearly had his mind somewhere
else as he agreed that Sirius was strong enough to
protect Anne on himself.

“Alright then,” James said, nodding at Remus

before looking back at Sirius and Anne. “Find the
compartment and save us a place and… Anne, I
mean it, stay in the compartment. Don’t go off
looking for your… friends.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’ll talk to them when I get to Hogwarts. I don’t

think it’s very safe to talk to them in the train,” she
said. “I’m not stupid.”

“I get it, and I know, Anne, I’m just asking you to

be safe,” James insisted.

“I will. I have Sirius with me,” she said, smiling at

him now.

James nodded and smiled back before taking

Remus’ arm and leading him away towards the
Prefect Compartment at the end of the train.

Sirius and Anne stood there for a moment before

starting to walk.

“Now that we’re alone,” Sirius mumbled.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Peter hasn’t been… present anymore,” Sirius said.

“I made a comment to James and Remus, they said
that it’s because his mother is sick and because of
his sister’s situation and all that, but I thought that
you might understand me a bit more. I mean, you
know his destiny.”

“Things are different now, Sirius,” Anne said. “My

mere presence has already changed quite a few
things. Some situations haven’t happened yet, for
example the Prewett twins are still alive, and some
situations have sped up, like Nagini’s existence and
the turning of her into Horcrux.”

“But is it possible –”

“It is, and I’ll keep an eye on him and I’ll get my
people to keep an eye out for him as well, but that
doesn’t mean that he’s already turning Dark. He
might really just be busy with his mother and sister
and, when we left Hogwarts, he was sick himself,”
she said, sighing in defeat. “I hate not knowing and
I know you hate the anxiety it brings to you too,
but you need patience.”

“Patience,” he scoffed.

“Yes. I know it’s hard, but it’s necessary,” she

insisted.

Sirius looked down at his feet, his boots kicking the

carpet slightly.

“Fine,” he sighed.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault, Anne. It was just a

thought.”

“And I’m sorry that I can’t help more straight

away,” she said.

“It’s not your duty to help me every time I have a

thought about the war that it’s starting,” Sirius
said. “And Mum and Dad said, we need to focus in
school this year and on having fun. And, for that,
you have me! And… the party I’m going to throw.”

She turned to look at him in shock.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“Do parties have to have a reason?” he asked,

pretending to be very confused. “It’s just a party,
Anne. And you’re going to have fun in it, I
promise.”

“You’re scaring me,” she said.

His smirk grew and he threw an arm around Anne,

grin just looking malicious at that point, making her
even more scared, knowing that there was no way
of stopping Sirius from that moment on.

Chapter 74: Chapter Seventy-

Three -
Summary:
Anne is back in school and
Severus and Regulus finally talk to
her, but not at the same time.

Notes:
Guys, I miss the comments. I
really hope you're enjoying it too
much to comment lol, because I'm
starting to worry a bit since the
views are dropping as well. If you
guys have any advice, feel
welcome to say so.

LACK OF COMMUNICATION

The letter was clear with time and place for the
meeting, so Anne wasn’t nervous when she got to
the Room of Requirement, but she certainly was
surprised when she walked in and already found
Severus waiting for her there.

“Hi!” she said, sounding more excited than she had

expected her to. “I was surprised when to send me
the note. It got me a bit worried, it said it was
urgent.”

“And it is,” he answered, drawing on the ‘s’. “Or I’d

rather like to believe that you’d think it to be.”

“Did something happen?” she asked, frowning in

worry.

“A lot of things happened,” he said, looking away

from her.

“Does this have anything to do with the fact that

neither you nor Regulus wrote to me during the
break?” she asked.

She took the opportunity as Severus created an

answer to look around the room and try to guess
what was it.

The room was lit up, but it didn’t make it warm nor
make it look warm. The fireplace was lit up as well,
the fire cracking every now and again in the middle
of the two old sofas of dark red colour with a dark
wooden coffee table. The carpet was old as well and
probably one day had been white, but it was
nothing more than a yellowish grey. It was
Severus’ house after his mother died, clearly.

He looked at her looking around, watching as the

realisation came into her face. He expected
judgment to come soon after and maybe distaste
by the dirt – he hated the dirt as well, but either he
liked it or not, it was home. But nothing but curious
eyes turning to his came as Anne confidently made
her way further into the room and sat down in one
of the old sofas.

“So?” she urged him to star. “What happened?”

He made his way to seat across her in the other

sofa.

“Regulus was spared from the meetings during the

break, but I fear I didn’t have a sick, pureblood
father to help me,” Severus said. “I was called in
and spent the whole break on Malfoy Manor while
the family was away in Germany, celebrating.”

“Alone in the Manor?”

“As if,” he scoffed. “The Dark Lord brought some of

the Inner Circle to stay there and is insisting of
making the Manor the headquarters. If he manages
to do so, I’m sure Abraxas will be happy on
sponsoring the whole movement, which I’m sure
you have guessed already.”

“Financially, he’s far behind the Order of the

Phoenix at the moment,” Anne said. “I’m not really
worried about his money. I think that, although rich
people like his idea, they’re too greedy to share the
money until they are completely sure he’ll have
power. What I’m worried about, it’s the idea of him
getting more pull in the Ministry – that’s the part
we’re far behind,” she finished with a sigh.

“Indeed,” he said. With a long pause, he took a

deep breath. “Now, while I was there, we had
important talks about the next...” he stopped.

Severus was trying to sugar-coat it all. It was

surprisingly sweet. The older Severus that Anne
was used to didn’t do ‘sugar-coating’, it was silly
and it took too much time, he liked being
straightforward and direct, but there he was: acting
as if the fairer sex was fragile.

“Attack?” she gave the word, offering.

“The next attack, yes,” he said, looking at her in

evaluation. “And with that we talked about
strategies on how to win.”

She nodded.

“Did you talk of dates and places?” she asked.

“No, but we did talk of spells,” he said.

There was a gleam on his eyes that made Anne’s

eyebrows raise. He seemed happy as if the game
he was playing with her.

“What are you implying?” she asked, narrowing her

eyes.

“That I have a list of invasive spells that were

created by the Death Eaters during the break and
what they are supposed to do – some I even
gathered who created it,” he said, taking a small
piece of parchment folded in two. “And some of the
counter-curses, from the ones I created.”

Her eyes grew wide as she jumped up from the

sofa, almost not holding herself back from jumping
into his arms in gratitude.

The spells that nobody knew, especially when done

non-verbally, had been one of the biggest reasons
people were dying during the war. If the Order had
the counter-curse already, they would be safe
enough to go on missions with some of the people
being able to go back home, hurt, but alive.

She took the paper from his hand, trying not to

show him that she was shaking.

“I could kiss you right now,” she admitted.

“Please, don’t,” he grumbled, taking his hand away

from hers.

“A hug, then?” she offered with a smirk, knowing

that he would refuse.

He looked at her, his best in glare in place. Until his

lips twitched and he blinked once.

“Fine,” he relented.

Her eyes went wide once more.

“Wait, you’re not taking the piss, are you? Because

I’m going to be very sad if you are,” she said.

Severus’ lips twitched once more before he got up

from the sofa he had been sitting in and, looking a
bit uncomfortable, he opened his arms to her and
held his breath for a second. Anne was about to
faint when he looked away from her, waiting for
her. She smiled to herself, hugging him gently and
not throwing herself in his arms as she would’ve
done with Regulus or anyone else. He was
uncomfortable and tense at first, barely breathing
until Anne pulled back. It had been a quick hug, but
it had been a huge thing for both of them – it was
the first time she had been so intimately touching
Severus Snape in her life.

She smiled at him.

“Can I have another?” she asked, raising her

eyebrows.

“Maybe as a wedding gift,” he teased back. “You

have what you want now, fuck off.”

She couldn’t help but laugh as she shoved the piece

of parchment into her pocket and said her
goodbyes before leaving the room. She didn’t see
she left Severus smiling just a little bit when the
door closed.

Regulus watched Severus leaving the bathroom

near the bedroom dressed in his sleeping clothes.
He had been late from curfew after studying in the
library, but he had been late for the library as well,
which meant there was almost twenty minutes of
his presence unaccounted for.

“Where were you?” Regulus asked, getting up from

his bed and walking to Severus bed as the older
boy sits down on his bed.

Severus glanced around, seeing that the other

occupants of the room weren’t paying attention to
them. He dries his wet hair on the towel, looking
back at Regulus with a blank, bored face on.

“With your girlfriend,” he answered.

Regulus quickly paid a lot more attention than

before, eyebrows raising in clear surprise, maybe
even a bit of shock. If that had come from anyone
else, he would’ve been angry and perhaps a bit
weirded out, but coming from someone he trusted
so much as Anne and Severus – whom he had seen
the relationship first-hand – it was just surprising.

“Whatever for?” he asked.

“Because I wanted to talk to her about the break,”

Severus said. He didn’t get too much into it, not
wanting to be overheard.

Regulus stiffens, the sides of his jaw moving visibly.

There was a lot he still needed to talk to Anne

about his break, things that he had held on so she
wouldn’t be worried as he was trying to deal with
everything so she wouldn’t have to share that
burden.

Severus seemed to know what he was thinking

because he frowned, clearly judging him still for her
decision. He had a small argument with Regulus
during the break once he had heard everything.

“Don’t worry,” he said, lips curling a bit in distaste.

“Your secrets are safe.”

“You don’t have the right to judge me, Severus,”

Regulus complained, sitting down on the end of his
own bed.

Severus threw the towel over the small wooden

table where all the boys put their towels.

“I think I do,” he said. “This will hurt her a lot if you

keep that away from her for even longer.”

“And since when do you care?” Regulus asked,

frowning.

Severus turned to look at him.

“She’s a nice girl, she’s… a lot more fragile than

what she makes us believe,” Severus said. It was a
lot coming from him, he knew that himself. “All you
need to tell her is truth. Tell her about your father
and the whole situation that comes with it. It won’t
be hard, Regulus, she’ll understand. It wasn’t your
fault.”

“How do I say that my family is watching her?”

Regulus asked, clearly upset, but schooling his
body to look relaxed for the sake of the others that
were talking amongst themselves, laughing a bit
too loudly around them in the room. “She’ll freak
out. She knows my family well, Severus, she knows
what they’re capable of.”

“If you word it like that, certainly you’ll drive her

mental,” Severus said, crossing his arms and
putting his legs forward, relaxing them. “If you just
tell her the rest of the context, she’ll understand.
She’s intelligent enough to see the pureblood ways
behind your family’s decisions.”

Regulus’ tongue poked the inside of his cheek in

frustration as he tried to keep himself quiet. He
wanted to scream for Severus to get away from his
business, he wanted to tell him that he could deal
with all that without his ‘help’, but he couldn’t.
Severus was right, and he knew that.

“Anne has a lot on her plate,” he said.

“And this lack of communication will put more in

there,” Severus snapped. “She’s worried about you.
She said you didn’t write to her during the break. I
thought you kept in contact with her.”

Regulus frowned.

“She didn’t write to me either,” he said.

“I assure you that she thought it wasn’t safe to do

so,” Severus said rolling his eyes. “Regulus, you…
need… to… talk… to… her.”

Regulus looked down. He knew he had lost the

battle.

He needed to talk to Anne.

Anne couldn’t help but feel lighter and happier on

her way back from Dumbledore’s office. She had
written down in a more organised way and with her
own handwriting to protect Severus’ identity all
about the spells, adding the little things she knew
that Severus hadn’t written down. Dumbledore was
going to show it to Monty and Moody, who was
going to show it and teach the counter-spells and
warn about the curses to the most trusted aurors in
the Ministry. She didn’t even need to worry so
much anymore.

But she had been two days back at school and

Regulus had yet to contact her.

Or so she thought before she saw him standing the

empty corridor on the way to the Gryffindor Tower.
He looked up at her once she walked near and
smiled, opening his arms.

At first, she tensed, looking around to make sure

they were alone before running towards him and
throwing herself in his open arms.

“I was so terrified when you didn’t write!” she

mumbled in his ear. “Are you alright, Little Prince?
Do you need me to heal you?”

“I’m fine. Really, I am,” he answered. “Physically,

nothing happened to me during the break. I kept
my head down and mostly cared for my father.”

‘Physically’, he had said and he had seen the effect

it had on her whole-body. She had tensed up,
hands starting to shake as she took a step back to
a good distance for a good conversation. She had
been holding all those feelings back, he could
notice, and he could feel guilty for the way her
eyebrows almost touched each other as she clearly
urged him to go on and talk to her about it.

“Regulus, what happened?” she asked.

He took a deep breath, offering her his hand. She

took it and allowed him to lead her to an empty
classroom. He closed the door, but didn’t lock it,
just put a silencing charm on it.

“Anne,” he started. He hesitated; her hands were

shaking too much. “My father found out Anne Sage
is dead.”

Anne’s body grew cod as her stomach dropped.

“Is that –”

“He has told the rest of my family,” he continued,

cutting her off. “I had to lie a bit, but not too much.
I kept you safe. I kept you a half-blood.”

“What did you say?” she asked, leaning against the

biggest desk, the one that had been the
professor’s.

“You are a Potter to them now, Fleamont Potter’s

daughter with a half-blood in Canada,” he
answered. “In Canada, you and your mother lived
for a years before she passed away and you went
to live with your uncle and aunt, muggles, that
didn’t take good care of you and that made your
brother pass away. You were taken away because
of negligence and Fleamont found out about you
and took you in,” he nodded, trying to keep it all
calm. She nodded back, just copying his body
language without meaning anything. “You are a
half-blood, but a higher standard one now. You are
more respected now.”

She hid her face in her hands, taking a deep

breath.

“Is that why Bellatrix has been asking about me?”

she asked, voice muffled.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Are you serious? She has been asking about you?

Who told you that?” he asked.

“My grandfather received a call from the Minister

himself, he warned him to take care of me,” she
explained. “Bellatrix has a… reputation already,”
she took another deep breath, looking a bit shaken
and pale as her face was taken away from her
hands. “Why has she been asking about me?”

“Because they’re trying to find me a wife,” he

answered.

She went even more pale.

“And I’m being considered?!” she asked in disbelief.

Regulus scoffed a laugh.

“I wish. I would want nothing more than to marry

you and leave all of this behind without a second
thought,” he said. “But no… you’re not. I suppose
she’s just trying to find more about to try to find
me someone somewhat similar to you, so I’d hate
my wife less when the time comes.”

She looked down. The exposed part of her chest

was going up and down too quickly, he realised at
once.

“I’m a bit dizzy,” she mumbled.

Regulus never moved so fast in his life. He was

standing beside her in a second, forgetting all about
the space he had wanted to give her to not
suffocate her and just making sure she was lying
down on the bed, raising her legs with his hands to
try to get her blood-pressure up again.

Slowly, he put her feet down once her breathing

seemed to calm down. He walked towards her
head.

“Anne?” he called out.

“I’m alright,” she said. “I’m sorry if that was a bit

dramatic.”

“I can understand the shock,” he dismissed.

“Regulus, she must know, then,” she mumbled,

worried, eyes still closed. “She has to know we are
together.”

“No!” he exclaimed. “I’d never do that to you,

Anne, never! I told her that I liked you when she
asked me why I was always hanging around you
and when she refused to take friendship as an
answer, but I made sure to say you rejected me
when I came to you. I protected your honour; I
said that you didn’t want to sleep with me without
an actual relationship and courting and when I said
I couldn’t give that to you, you rejected me and
now we’re friends,” he explained. “She doesn’t
believe in female-male friendships, so I said I’m
trying to change your mind, but you’re not allowing
me anything.”

She opened her eyes, face soft.

“My honour is the least of my problems,” she said.

“I just had to try,” he said. “I could never allow

someone to just say bad things about you. Let
them believe you are nothing but a future
conquest, but I’ll not make them believe you to be
a whore.”

She closed her eyes again.

“You should’ve told me,” she whispered.

Her voice sounded so broken that Regulus had to

look away, guilt eating him up.

“How could I?” he asked. “How could I just throw

more things are you, Anne? I was trying to deal
with all this so you didn’t have to.”

“Well, not telling me just made me worry even

more that Bellatrix was somehow on me, but I
suppose that allowing her to do some research will
not end badly. She won’t find anything. No one
knows me,” she said.

“I’m so sorry, Anne, really,” he said, voice

wavering.

Slowly, she pushed her body up. Regulus’s arms

went around her waist as he supported her and put
his hands on her back to stabilise her as she sat
down. Once she was sat and secure, she didn’t let
him take his arms away, just embraced him and he
took her in without a word.

Her smell ever so familiar and ever so comforting.

Nothing could ruin her to him. The smell of jasmine
and strawberries, the smallest of touches of the
smell of something he could ever only describe as
pure and genuine love – he had only ever felt that
coming from her, so he assumed it to be love.

“Don’t hide things from me again,” she warned.

“Never again,” he said, it almost sounded like a

vow.

He would vow anything to her if she asked. He

would vow his life at that very moment to her if she
as much as implied that she wanted it.

There was a moment of silence as they took back

some energy of their old-selves from their happy,
intimate moments.

“You know,” she started, his eyes closing at the

sound of her voice right beside his ear, “you hug a
lot better than Severus.”

“I know,” he dismissed. And then it hit him. “Wait a

minute. What?!”

She laughed, hiding her face on the crook of his

neck.

Chapter 75: Chapter Seventy-

Four -
Summary:
Anne sneaks into the Slytherin
Dorm for some quality time.
James seems to be growing up,
but Lily's is boiling up with
questions nobody asks.

Notes:
Tw: Explicit Sexual Content in the
first part of the chapter, but it can
be skipped if wished and just go
for the fluffy parts in the second
and third part, my darlings. Thank
you very much.

I'm excited to see your comments

on this one, after all Regulus-Anne
are back.

SLYTHERIN DORMS

If Anne was still upset about him keeping secrets,

she didn’t show to Regulus, but Regulus still felt
guilty even though she had insisted everything was
alright. That was why Regulus was awake in the
middle of the night and that was also why Anne
was sneaking into the Slytherin dorms in the middle
of the night, both unaware of what the other was
doing at that very moment, but as people always
say, great minds think alike.

Regulus was silent, listening to the sounds of

breathing coming from the other beds, looking at
the boring ceiling, willing sleep to come and take
him away from his anxious and annoying thoughts
when he heard a small creak of the floorboards. A
small and usual thing to happen, indeed, maybe
even a mistake of a boy half-asleep, but a mistake
that nobody in the dormitory would’ve made.
Everybody knew about the third floorboard from
the door and nobody stepped on it – Rosier had
even joked before that it brought bad-luck and,
although it had been said in a mockery, nobody
dared destiny in times of war and no boy had
stepped on it ever since.

Whoever was in the bedroom, knew nothing of the

floorboard.

Regulus had his wand in hand in a second, eyes

narrowing to see through the dark as he got to his
knees on the bed, moving slowly to not make noise
as he leaned to the side to peak through the
curtains.

Nothing. There was nothing. No movement, all the

curtains on the beds were closed and –

An invisible hand covered his mouth in the moment

he relaxed. He threw his hand up, ready for a non-
verbal stupefy when the head of the invisible
person appeared and, although it was dark and he
was confused and scared, he would know that
messy red hair anywhere in the world.

“Anne!” he whispered.

She smiled at his reaction, trying not to laugh as

she pushed him to the side, entering his bed and
closing his curtain.

“Hi,” she whispered back, taking the rest of the

Invisibility Cloak away from her body. She was in
her pyjamas. “Can’t sleep? Neither can I.”

He threw a locking charm and a silencing spell

quickly before he turned to look at her.

“You scared half of my life away,” he complained,

voice now in a normal volume.

“I didn’t mean to, really,” she said. “I thought you’d

be asleep,” she added the lie. “I just wanted to
surprise you, I’m sorry. I can leave if you want me
to.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Of course not!” he said, face softening at her.

“When have I ever asked you to leave me, Anne?”

She smiled at him, leaning towards him for a quick

peck.

“I had to break into the boy’s dormitory to get the

Cloak and then I had to wait for an hour and a half
outside until somebody walked in,” she said. “Did
you know that Yaxley’s little brother was shagging
a Hufflepuff and he got here just now. If I was a
Prefect, I’d totally give him a detention for lacking
of pleasure for her.”

Regulus frowned.

“You watched them?”

“I heard them,” she corrected. “She was

complaining.”

“About what?”

“That he never went down on her,” she said,

throwing the cloak to the end of the bed and lying
down. Regulus still was sitting on the bed while
Anne seemed very comfortable in his bed. “I mean,
he didn’t need to do that, but apparently she
always goes down on him and she was expecting
something back, but he walked away.”

“What an arse!” Regulus said.

He felt his lips tugging to the side as the idea filled

his head. Anne was so relaxed, eyes fluttering
closed as he lied beside her, that he couldn’t help
but feel slightly guilty that he planned on keeping
her awake just a little bit more.

He cleared his throat and her eyes opened.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Can I… kiss you?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “When did I say no to you,

Regulus?”

He grinned, leaning to her and kissing her. At first

it was just a peck, then he kissed her bottom lip
with great care before carefully passing his tongue
over her lips. She didn’t make a noise as she
turned her body towards him, slipping her own
tongue into his mouth first, smiling softly when his
hand touched her face.

The hand that had been on her face slowly made is

way to the side of her neck, his fingers brushing
against her collarbone before he sweetly squeezed
her shoulder, brushing her arm before letting it rest
on her hip.

“What are you doing?” she asked, pulling away with

playful narrowed eyes.

“Well, I can’t have you unsatisfied like some poor

Hufflepuff lass, can I?” he asked, smirking.
“Besides, didn’t I say that I owe you one in the
train?”

She smiled at him.

“I don’t expect anything like that back,” she said.

“You haven’t been sleeping well, so if you want to
just sleep, we can.”

“And if I don’t?” he asked.

“… Then we also can,” she said in a lower voice.

He frowned.

“You don’t need to, if you don’t want to, Anne, but I
need you to tell me with as many words,” Regulus
warned.

She shook her head.

“It’s not that I don’t want it,” she admitted. “It’s

just… nobody has done it before and I’m a bit
nervous.”

“We don’t need to,” he insisted.

“I want to,” she insister back. “But I don’t know

what to do.”

He shook his head at her, just smiling away her

nervousness.

“You don’t do anything. You just lie back and

relax,” he said.

And Anne did just that as Regulus kissed her lips

once more before making sure she was
comfortable, lying on her back and looking at the
ceiling as he worked his kisses from her cheek to
her neck. He kissed the artery, feeling the
accelerated heartbeat right under his lips jumping
another beat. He smirked as he nibbled her earlobe
gently.

Her trembling gasp was what gave him the

confidence to keep going. He went down, licking
her collarbone and opening her pyjama shirt slowly,
kissing not stopping as he smiled to himself. There
would never be a day where he would see her
breast and wouldn’t enjoy it as much as he did at
that moment; white skin with goosebumps, pink
nipples standing tall for him.

Anne’s hands went to his hair as he bit a bit too

strongly under her breast, just to the left of her
ribs.

“Ouch,” she complained, mockingly glaring at him.

She didn’t seem to mind too much.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he laughed.

Her voice disappeared once he got to her stomach.

She made a small noise that sounded a bit like a
whimper, but she gasped in the end when he got to
the foot of her belly and licked before nibbling the
skin.

His fingers hooked around the waistband of her

sleeping trousers and pulled down, biting his lip to
keep him from making any noise when he saw her
underwear. When Regulus was younger, just a silly
little teen with his thirteen years of age, he had
never though such a small piece of fabric would
have such an effect on him, but there she was with
white lace covering her as she kicked her trousers
away, eyes stuck on his as he looked back at her.

Anne knew why he was waiting.

She nodded.

Regulus leaned forward to kiss her one more time

as his hands worked to get her rid of the
underwear. She helped him, keen to find out what
was going to happen to the pool of heat inside of
her. But then Regulus was gone, pulling away
quickly from her and knelling on the bed as he took
one of the pillows and bringing it close to him.

“Hips up,” he said.

She did it just that.

The pillow was put under her hips, comfortably

letting her rest as her legs spread slightly. He took
a moment to watch the shaved slit in front of him.
He was painfully hard in between his legs.

He started by kissing the inside of her knees before

going up to her lower thighs and slowly going to the
high thighs. Anne gasped when he kissed a few
fingers away from her heat, hips stuttering.
Regulus chuckled, holding her hips down.

“Patience,” he warned. “It’s necessary sometimes,

miss-everything-at-the-right-time,” he mocked.

“I don’t have patience at the moment!” she

complained. “Regulus, please!” she insisted, looking
down at him with eyes shining.

She looked so pleading that Regulus didn’t hesitate

before he kissed right between her legs. Anne’s
eyes rolled away from him skyward as she gasped
loudly, hands flying to the pillow under her head to
keep herself from grabbing at Regulus.

His hands held her thighs apart in the very moment

they started to shake, threatening to close around
his head. He couldn’t even dare to look up, afraid
he would start giggling because he could already
see her chest going up and down quickly in his
peripheral vision and wouldn’t be able to stop
himself from giggling at the effect that he had on
her. So, he licked her from the hole to the very top,
sucking in her clit once she threw her head back
with a long moan. She was so loud – he was very
happy about the fact that he had a silencing charm,
though part of him even wondered if it would hold
for long with the way she was moaning and
gasping.

One of the hands holding her thighs let go and

pressed on the foot of her belly before he reached
up, dragging his hands over her skin. She looked
down, mouth agape and eyes barely open as she
led his hand towards her breast. He smiled into her
heat, sucking in once more and making her eyes
flutter closed once more.

At this point he was mostly lying down on his

stomach, his erection grinding against the
mattress. He didn’t need much more than her taste
and her sounds to make him so close to dirtying
himself. He tried not to get too excited about all of
it, trying to keep himself focused on her, but there
was very little he could do to focus when her hips
started moving with his mouth, stuttering against
him as her loud whimpers and moans made him
lose complete control of himself.

Regulus wasn’t sure who came first. He felt himself

dirtying his underwear in the very moment Anne
got her hands in his hair and pulled, mouth forming
a silent scream as she shook. He squeezed her left
breast and a loud whimper came from her mouth.

He waited for her to come back down to pull away.

Anne was half-sit in his bed, her upper body

supported by her elbows so she could look at him.

“I didn’t have time to warn you,” she said in an

apologetic tone.

“It’s fine,” he dismissed. There was a wet patch on

the pillow under her hips and that made him bite
the inside of his cheek to keep him from smiling
and embarrassing her. He pulled the pillow from
her hips and put it to the side, wet patch down. He
gave her a peck and she smiled. “Why are you
looking at me like that?”

“My turn,” she answered, her smirk growing.

Her hands touched his chest, slowly going down. He

stopped her.

“You don’t need to,” he dismissed.

“I want to, don’t worry,” she answered.

He shook her head, blushing.

“You really don’t need to,” he insisted, smiling

sheepishly at her.

She understood without making him say it out loud.

“Oh.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

She rolled her eyes.

“As if there was something to be sorry about, I just

think that makes you even more attractive in my
eyes,” she said. “You got pleasure out of pleasuring
me. How much hotter can you get? You’re already
fit as it is.”

He chuckled with her comforting words, pulling her

for another peck. He reached for his wand to clean
himself mid kiss, smiling into the kiss in silence.

“What about sleep now?” he asked.

She nodded, lying her head on his chest.

Never in his life James Potter had thought he

wouldn’t be able to sleep if Lily Evans was in his
bed, but there he was, watching one of his girls
sleeping and watching the other by the map in his
hands and the low light of his wand lightening
everything inside his bed.

“James,” complained Lily, opening his eyes. “You’re

still awake? What’s wrong with you? Are you
studying right now, in the middle of the night? Are
you alright, are you sick?”

James shook his head, putting the map down on his

lap, the ink in its downside, smiling nervously at
her. All Lily could see was the old, stained
parchment and it still raised questions enough.

“Not really studying,” he said.

“Then go to sleep,” she said.

“Anne isn’t back yet,” he said. “Marlene said she

needed the bedroom for the night for her and
Dorcas and she doesn’t know it yet.”

“She’ll figure it out once she finds the door locked,”

Lily dismissed. “We don’t lock the doors at night
since boys can’t go up the stairs. Maybe she’ll come
over here or just sleep on the Common Room –”

“Anne would never sleep in the Common Room,”

James dismissed, cutting her off and rolling his
eyes in irritation without thinking twice. “A man can
easily have access to her.”

Lily looked up to his eyes since he was sitting. She

seemed more awake now.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He blinked, finally understanding what he had said,

sharing a part of Anne’s life in more details than he
had intended.

“Nothing, Anne just doesn’t like sleeping in public,”

he lied.

James knew he was a terrible liar and Lily had

caught him trying to omit the truth way too many
times after pranks to not recognise the way his
bottom lip trembled. He took a deep breath,
knowing that he had been caught by the way that
Lily’s eyes narrowed.

“James,” she said in a warning tone.

“Not my story, Lils, sorry, but I’m sure you must

have a… guess about what happened,” he said in a
low voice, though they were protected by silencing
spells. Lily didn’t answer and that was how he knew
that she had her own suspicions about Anne’s fears
and odd thoughts “What I can tell you is that I
know where Anne is and that’s why I’m so worried
about her. But I show you this, you cannot talk
about this to anyone.”

She slowly sat down, frowning in worry.

“Sure. What happened?” she asked.

He took the map and turned it upwards once more,

showing it to her. Her eyes widened as she saw her
own name besides James’ on his bed in the drawing
of the Gryffindor Tower where he was pointing.

“My mates and I made this map a couple of years

ago,” he explained. “This show everything and
everyone in Hogwarts at real time, all the time.
That was how we would get away with the pranks
before we turned them down.”

“Oh, God, James, this is –”

“Wrong, I know,” he mumbled, blushing and

looking down at his lap.

“An amazing piece of magic. Look at this! This is

amazing!” she said. “Who else knows about this?
You can get a job simply by showing you did this to
the right person; did you know that?”

“We were bored during the summer and gather to

do something, it wasn’t much,” he dismissed.
“Nobody can know about this, Lily. We can get
totally expelled because of something like this,
alright?”

“I won’t tell a soul,” she promised in return. And

her eyes caught something else. “James, why is
Anne’s name like that?”

He looked and felt himself freeze.

Anne Potter.

He had forgotten her real name was showing up at

the map when he showed it to Lily and, now that
she was watching the name beside Regulus Black’s
name in his bed, he could feel himself growing pale
under her eyes as she turned to him.

“Well –” he started.

“Don’t lie to me,” she warned.

He bit his lip.

“I can’t tell you,” that was his answer. It wasn’t a

lie and she could see it in his eyes as she frowned
in annoyance. “Lily, I’m sorry.”

She frowned, crossing her arms.

“I didn’t ask questions when you dismissed your

mother’s lies about you and her being brother. I
know you’re not brother and sister, you don’t act
like brother and sister,” she said. “I didn’t ask
questions when I found out you two sleep in the
same bed sometimes and that you know things that
nobody else seem to know about Anne. And you
can’t tell me the truth in the one time I ask you?”

“I can’t,” he said. “It’s not my story to tell –”

“Again,” she complained.

“What I can tell you is that Anne and I don’t have

anything that should make you worried or jealous,”
he said, she scoffed in answer. “I know that you’re
not one to be jealous easily, that’s why I say this.
Anne is family in more ways than one, but I cannot
tell you exactly how until she gives me permission.”

“This is ridiculous,” she complained.

James frowned.

“I’m trying here!” he exclaimed.

“You’re trying,” she scoffed. “This is always about

Anne. Always! I know that if something happens,
you will run to her before you even think twice. I’ve
seen you do it and I thought it was cute, but I don’t
understand it and I hate it!”

He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Heaven’s forbid Lily Evans don’t understand

something,” he mocked, this time his voice was
loud.

Her eyes went wide and hurt, she seemed like she
had been slapped across the face.

“I can’t believe you said that,” she mumbled.

“Understand something, Anne is my responsibility

–”

“She’s quite grown!” Lily augmented.

“Not to my eyes!” he exclaimed back. “Anne is my

responsibility until the day that I die, you being in
my life or not. So, if you choose to stay, which I
really hope you do because I love you and because
you know that and I know that you love me back,
you will need to understand that my relationship to
her is surely more important then you can
understand and you don’t need to know every
single detail about it.”

Lily shook her head, her lips forming a thin line.

“Does someone know the truth?” she asked.

“Me, my parents,” he said. “Sirius, Remus. And I’m

quite sure Regulus knows a lot more than he shows
to me. I have the slight impression that Severus
Snape thinks more than I thought he did, because
he looks a me weirder than he did before.”

“That’s quite a lot of people.”

“People that she chose to tell,” he explained. “I love

you and I want you to know, but I don’t think
you’re ready and I don’t think Anne’s ready to tell
you anything yet. Can you just… trust me for now?”

Lily looked at the map once more before looking

back at him, eyebrows raising in as she took a deep
breath.

“Can you promise me something, then?” she asked.

He nodded, listening closely. “Just answer me one
thing. You are not married to her because your
parents asked you to or… or something like that,
are you?”

“Of course not!” he said, almost laughing.

Lily sighed in relief.

“I guess I can wait, then,” she said.

And James Potter was more sure than ever before

in his life that he was in complete love with Lily
Evans, the coolest and most intelligent human
being he had ever set eyes upon.

Breakfast was busy, people were talking loudly and

some people were even laughing, though it was
early in the morning. Perhaps it was because Anne
had slept so little, but so deeply that her head was
pounding as she sat beside Lily and rested her head
on her shoulder.

“Good morning for you, too,” Lily said, chuckling.

She sounded a bit uncomfortable or taken aback,
but Anne made no comment on it. “Are you alright,
dear?”

“Headache,” she explained.

But even the worst of headaches couldn’t stop

someone like Anne from feeling someone watching
her, so she knew James’ eyes were on her since the
moment she walked into the Great Hall and,
weirdly, he had yet to blink.

“Do you know in how much danger you put yourself

into last night?” he asked. “I know where you were.
I saw you on the Map.”

Anne’s head lifted off from Lily’s shoulder in

surprise and disbelief that someone had dared to
do such a thing. First, Lily didn’t seem all that
surprised, as if she had expected such
confrontation to start first thing in the morning.
Second, James had dark bags under his eyes,
which meant he had watched for her most of the
night.

“You stalker,” she accused. “You’re starting to get

creepy, really.”

“Don’t start with me, young lady,” James said. “I

don’t care what you do with your boyfriend, we
agreed that it’s none of my business last mistake
that I made, but that doesn’t give you the right to
steal my Invisibility Cloak and sneak into another
Common Room, especially that one! Do you know
what could’ve happened to you if you were caught?
They wouldn’t take lightly to know a Gryffindor was
in there, especially you, Anne. You’re connected
with me and the Marauders and, worse, you’re a
half-blood. Think twice before you put yourself in
danger like that,” he took a deep breath, starting to
talk in a very low voice once he noticed that some
people were watching. “Your boyfriend can’t protect
you without putting his own neck on the line and
you know that, so don’t make sure a silly mistake
out of… late night calls, or whatever you wish to
call it.”

She had expected a very different nag coming from

James, one that she had heard before or something
like that, but he looked just worried. There was no
anger or jealousy in his eyes, just clear and
genuine worry for her well-being.

James was learning to be a good father a lot

quicker than she had expected, putting away his
toxic jealousy to make sure she was happy and
protected above all else. His parents had taught
him right and Anne was continuing his education in
a way that would make Mia proud if she was there.

“I’m sorry,” was all she had to say and he would’ve

melted into doing whatever she wanted. “You’re
right,” and that made him even softer to her.

“Don’t do it again without at least a warning to my

poor heart. I’m an old man,” he joked.

Anne smiled.

“Fine,” she dismissed.

“Good, all resolved!” Lily said with a smile on her

face as she watched the two with smart eyes,
taking everything in. “Now that everybody is on the
same page about sneaking into Common Rooms,
which is very clearly against the rules, young miss,”
she winked in a false nagging tone, copying James.
Anne smiled. “We can eat. Go on, eat up! Before it
gets cold. The chocolate cake is amazing, Annie,
you should totally get some – here, get some of
mine.”

Anne smiled at her mother.

“Thanks.”

“More, dear?”

“I’d want some orange juice,” Anne admitted.

“I’m going to go get it,” Lily said, jumping from her

seat and walking towards the Ravenclaw table.

Anne turned to James.

“What happened?” she asked, pointing at Lily with

her head.

James sighed.

“You don’t even want to know,” he grumbled. “But

she sorts of saw your name on the map and
freaked out a bit. She wants the truth. I told her
that you’d only tell her when you wanted to and
was ready to. She understood that, but she’s…
interested. You know how she is when she’s
interested into something – hyper-focus all around,
so get ready for it for some weeks.”

Chapter 76: Chapter Seventy-

Five
Summary:
Alcohol in a party leads to Lily
finding out a bit more about Anne

SCARS

Lily Evans’ hyper-focus was powerful, but nowhere

near as powerful as Sirius Black’s wishes for parties
in the Gryffindor Common Room.

There was no time for her to watch the interactions

and guess time and time again what was going on
between her boyfriend and Anne because she
needed to make sure Sirius Black wouldn’t poison
someone by buying too much alcohol or finding
drugs too strong for everybody from the fifth-year
and up.

Fortunately, that gave Anne plenty of time of trying

to have some alone time to gather her thoughts
and prepare herself to tell Lily, her mother,
everything. Lily was busy with the party and
Marlene now had a girlfriend who was very clingy
(in a sweet way, of course, because Marlene herself
was a clingy person).

She was starting to think it was a good idea when

the time came to actually participate in her first
Marauders’ Party.

As she walked into the boys’ dormitory, she caught

the oddest scenes happening.

James was standing in front of Remus, Sirius and

Peter, pacing in front of the boys sitting on the floor
listening to him with all their attention.

“…you can get her drinks, of course, but you need

to keep an eye on her,” he was saying. “If she
wants the Laughing Potion or the Dizzying Potion,
you can give it to her, but do keep in mind that,
from that moment on, she’ll be your responsibility,
because if she falls and hits her head, I’ll open your
heads in return.”

Anne didn’t need to know much to know that the

‘she’ he was talking about was her.

“And what if she wants you all to leave her alone?”

she said from the doorway.

All the boys sitting on the ground leaned to the left

to see her and smiled, James turned around
completely, face still serious.

“Usually Remus briefs us,” Peter started right away,

eager to explain how parties usually are for them.
“I guess James is just worried about you.”

“Well, James doesn’t need to worry about me,” she

answered to Peter, though she didn’t look away
from James. “I’m being serious, James, I’ll be fine.
I’ve been to parties before and I’ve drank before
with and without you nearby. I’m willing to have
fun and all that, so, please, don’t ruin it for me.
Thank you. Just worry about yourself, you were in a
terrible situation last party.”

He rolled his eyes at her, but smiled nonetheless.

“Sure, ma’am. Your orders,” he teased.

She walked further into the bedroom and gave a

small twirl.

“Good enough?” she asked.

“It looks nice,” Remus agreed.

“Hm,” was all James said as he sat in his own bed.

“You look gorgeous,” Sirius said.

Peter stayed silent, but his wide eyes said a lot.

She was looking good, she decided by the way the

boys responded. She was using Lily’s dress; it was
very muggle style. A white dress with flared sleeves
and considered a mini-dress, but she was
comfortable with it, especially since her hair was
down and relaxed, the Potter style of messy and
curly present to those who had watchful eyes.

And it didn’t take long for the Common Room to fill

up with people from all Houses. There were no
uniforms anywhere, but she could recognize some
of the people already drinking and lounging around
the Common Room from where she stood, watching
Remus get fourth years and down straight to bed
with Lily helping him.

“In the moment you feel uncomfortable, you go

straight to your bedroom,” James warned. “I’d say
for you to get to mine, but –”

“You don’t trust the boys to behave tonight,” she

guessed.

“Sirius can be quite a clingy drunk,” was all James

answered.

Something that was proven right thirty minutes into

the party where Sirius and Remus were already
kissing against the wall, though Remus’ clear
hesitation in the daily life to be public in his
displays of affection. It was so open that Anne had
to look away and walk towards the drink-station.

A tequila shot later and she was feeling a bit better.

“This is rather pathetic,” said a slow voice.

She smiled, not even having to turn to know who

that was.

“Hello, Severus. Enjoying the party?”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I heard a lot about the

Marauders’ parties and I even came to one in
Fourth Year before I was thrown out, but I had
forgotten how pathetic it looks from the outside
point of view.”

She turned around, looked at him before looking

out at the young people dancing, singing and
drinking, some snogging in the corners of the room
and some even going up the stairs for something
more than snogging.

“What are you doing here, then?” she asked.

“Being Regulus’ page boy again, because what else

could his half-blood friend do for him?” he
wondered out loud bitterly. “He has gone out
tonight, wishes he could be here and all those
disgustingly sweet things he insists on saying, but
couldn’t write because of watching eyes, but
something big is coming up,” he turned to look at
her to find her already watching him. “Don’t ask, I
don’t know either. And however touching your
confidence in me and my climbing on the ranks,
you need to remember that I’m still a half-blood
like you. I have more information than many, but
less than the purebloods in the Inner Circle.”

“You're part of the Inner Circle,” she said.

“Only when convenient to them,” he answered.

She looked down at her pretty shoes. It was too

easy to forget in the way that Severus behaved
that he was considered a low-foot-soldier even in
the highest rank of the Death Eaters. All his
confidence and superiority were nothing but a
defence act.

“I thank you,” she said. “Anything else?”

He looked around.

“No,” he sighed. He watched for another moment

and his eyes met James Potter’s eyes; it hit him at
once that he and Anne looked quite alike for
cousins, their eyes were too much the same. “If I
were you, I’d use this night to have fun. This might
get you a long way, Anne.”

“Are you sure you don’t know anything?” she

asked, voice wavering as she forced a nervous
laugh.

He turned to look at her again.

“I don’t, it’s just a feeling,” he dismissed. He looked

at James once more, but he was gone and so was
Lily. Trying to hide his shiver, he looked down at
his own shoes before blinking a few times to get to
look at Anne. “Are you ever going to tell me the
truth about you?”

“Truth?”

“James Potter is not your cousin, or your brother,

or your lover,” he answered. “He’s somehow more
than any of those things.”

Of course, Severus Snape would be the one to

know something was off just by watching them.

“He is,” she admitted.

Pushing himself away from wall he had been

leaning against, Severus took a deep breath as if
he had been expecting nothing less than a vague
answer coming from Anne, so he didn’t seem too
disappointed.

“As I said, enjoy tonight, Anne,” he dismissed.

Anne enjoyed the night all too much.

She had to be three shots of tequila and too much

firewhiskey into the party when she stopped
remembering anything that was happening around
her, so most of the night she had were flashes and
things that other people told her.

James said that he had been quite happy with Lily

‘talking’ near the window when he heard several
people cheering. At first, he had assumed it was
Sirius doing something stupid as he usually did
around two hours into the party, but he saw Sirius
standing near the drink-table with wide eyes and
slightly ajar mouth, Remus only then turning to see
what was all that cheering about.

“Oh my God!” Lily said.

He turned to look as well.

Pandora and Anne were standing on the coffee

table of the Common Room, both dancing and
shirtless. Well, Pandora was shirtless; Anne’s dress
was open in the back and pooling around her waist,
the scar old coming from the middle of her
shoulders disappearing under the dress.

“Oh, no. No!” James said.

Fortunately, Peter Pettigrew was standing right

beside Anne in a second, trying to grab her by the
arm to get her down and screaming something to
one of the boys from Hufflepuff reached out to
touch her and went as far as pushing another very
drunk boy when Pandora had to kick his hand
away.

James almost dropped Lily from his lap as he

started running towards the girls, getting both of
them on his shoulders and getting them down of
the table at once. Pandora giggled when her feet hit
the ground and she quickly moved to walk besides
James as he tried to put Anne down, but she was
so drunk that her knees were slightly weak.

“You’re killing my vibe,” Anne complained. She

looked at Pandora. “Did I say it right?”

“Yes!” Pandora celebrated with a small squeak.

“Let’s dance some more.”

“No! No more dancing!” James said.

Pandora flinched away when somebody brushed her

shoulder. It was Sirius Black throwing his jacket
over her shoulders, so she smiled at him when she
noticed what he was doing.

“You’re so kind, Sirius Black. So different from what

Regulus said in third year,” she commented before
smiling at Remus.

Sirius frowned, clearly wanting to ask questions,

but then Anne tripped over her own feet and fell
against James, who quickly held her in place and
put her against the wall to keep her standing.

“I said that when you weren’t feeling well, you

would go to your bedroom,” James scolded.

“That would be nice. I could use going to my

bedroom,” Anne answered. She leaned in. “I need
to pee!” she added on his ear, a bit too loud by the
way Remus raised his eyebrows. “But I can’t really
walk the stairs, can I?”

“You certainly cannot,” Sirius said with a grin,

crossing his arms.

Anne turned to him.

“You’re sort of handsome,” she said suddenly.

Sirius smiled.

“I know,” he dismissed. “But you’re too drunk for

me to feel good about myself right now,” he turned
to James. “We need to get her to bed.”

“My pyjamas might be near her size,” Peter said,

trying not to look too much at the cleavage
apparent. She had a white lacy bra, she looked
amazing. He sneaked a glance right when Anne
laughed at Sirius. He had to look away and hold his
breath. “James, I think you need to dress her.”

James only then noticed that she was in quite a

state of undress, quickly getting in front of her and
forcing her arms back into the sleeves of the dress
and glaring at her when she whined a complaint.
He didn’t zip her up, but the dress stayed in place
over her shoulders because of the sleeves.

“Where’s Lily?” James asked.

“Over there, with Marlene and Dorcas,” Peter said,

pointing.

Lily seemed to feel that James was asking about

her, because she looked away from the laughing
Dorcas and frowning Marlene to smile at the group
of boys around the half-naked gir and then
frowned, quickly making her way over.

“Is she that drunk?” Lily asked.

“Absolutely pissed,” Remus said.

Lily cringed.

“What do you need?” she asked.

“You’re so beautiful. I love when people say you’re

beautiful, because that means I’m beautiful, too,”
Anne said.

Sirius hissed at her to keep her in silence, but that

only made her giggle, completely ignoring how
obvious she was being.

“I’m going to take Anne up to my bed, but I need

you to change her clothes, alright? You’re going to
need help, so I’d ask Marlene to go up with you or
something,” James said.

“Can’t you do it?” Lily asked, uncomfortable.

Though they had been living together, she had

never really seen Anne naked. Marlene had
commented about a few scars on her back since
Anne didn’t seem shy about changing in front of
her.

“I’m not taking her clothes off, Lils!” James argued,

loudly.

“Well, she’s your –”

“I’m not taking her clothes off, Lily. I can’t. She’d

freak out!” James insisted. “It needs to be someone
else. It needs to be a woman.”

“I can help,” Pandora said. “We’re getting to

become really good friends. It’s our second
meeting, I believe I’m trustworthy enough,” she
nodded to herself as if that had been an impressive
speech. “Besides, she’s the person with the least
amount of wrackspurt I know, sober or not. I think
it’s impressive, don’t you agree?”

Lily blinked at Pandora, completely unsure if

whatever that creature was and if its presence (or
lack thereof) was impressive at all, but she forced a
smile at her with as much kindness a drunk
teenager can master before agreeing on her help
and asking her to call Marlene and Dorcas over.

As she walked away, Lily turned to the boys.

“Whose bed is she staying in?” she asked. They all

hesitated. “Well, somebody has to watch her so she
doesn’t choke in her own vomit or something.”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said. “I’ll watch her. I gave her

the drinks.”

“Well, she drank them out of her own wish,” Peter

said. “She’s quite grown, Sirius. I can watch her.”

“I’m not putting my –” James stopped himself for a

second. “I’m not putting my Anne into your bed,
Worms. Sirius, you’re on watch tonight.”

“Yes,” agreed Sirius, looking down before

apologizing to Remus in a low voice.

Lily rolled her eyes, thinking the way the boys

seemed to float around Anne all the time to be
pathetic. She wasn’t jealous and she certainly didn’t
think it was envy, but it was the unsatisfied
curiosity eating her up slowly from inside out. Still,
she did her best with Marlene’s help to drag Anne
up the stairs to the Marauders’ room, Pandora and
Dorcas following behind.

“I’m alright! I don’t want to go home!” complained

Anne.

“She’s very drunk,” Dorcas said.

“She is,” Pandora agreed. “Hi, I’m Pandora!”

“Oh,” Dorcas said out of surprise, she had never

expected talking to Pandora before. She was quite
the odd girl, but mostly harmless unless somebody
talked too much about her ‘fake’ creatures. “I’m
Dorcas Meadows.”

“I know,” Pandora said, smiling. Nothing came after

this, Pandora only kept smiling until they walked
into the bedroom. “Oh, this is the smell of a
masculine bedroom!”

Lily sniffed the air, but she smelled nothing. It

smelled mostly like James and Sirius’ colognes,
though she could smell a touch of sweetness from
Peter’s perfume, since he didn’t like the smell of
‘masculine’ smells.

Anne was put on Sirius’ bed as she lied back, eyes

dropping in sleepiness as Marlene and Lily sighed in
relief now that her weight wasn’t shared between
the two.

“Beater or not,” Marlene commented. “Anne’s

starting to get heavy now that I can’t see her
bones.”

“Let’s start?” Dorcas said.

“I’m going to turn the shower on, a cold shower

might sober her up,” Marlene said, quickly moving
towards the bathroom. “Dorcas,” she called out
once she was inside. “Get Peter’s pyjamas in his
trunk, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dorcas said, moving to the trunk.

Anne was left with Lily and Pandora. The blonde

smiled at the drunk girl almost falling asleep, but
Lily sighed in exasperation as she got Anne’s arms
and pulled her up to sit down as Pandora moved to
the back to get the sleeves off since she was
already unzipped. Slowly, the two got the dress off
her hips as well.

That was when Lily froze.

She had seen the scar on her back coming from her
shoulders, but she had never seen to what point it
stopped. It didn’t, she found out as she watched it
disappear under her underwear and between the
buttocks. There was another scar that she couldn’t
see through Anne’s every-day clothing: it was oddly
purple and it hugged her frame. It came from
underneath her boob to the opposing side of the
hip.

“What the fuck?” Lily said in surprise.

“Hm,” Pandora did, as if seeing scars as bad as

those was a normal part of her life. Where could a
person get a scar such as these? “A muggle scar,”
she commented.

She was pointing at Anne’s back, Lily noticed.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“There’s no magic coming from it, it was made in a

muggle manner – knife, most likely. It’s thin and
very straight,” Pandora explained. “Not surgical,
but straight enough to be done by a person, not by
accident.”

There were scars on the knees as well, she found

out as Dorcas got closer to put the pyjamas on the
bed and Marlene yelled the shower was ready.
Those scars were normal, Lily had some of them as
well from when she would fall down as a child or
when she would scrape herself climbing over trees.

What she didn’t see was the small birthmark right

under the purple scar, slightly showing. Lily had no
idea that she had the very same birthmark, and so
did Harry Potter.

“Whatever she went through, James, it must have

been bad,” said Lily, sitting on his bed as he started
to lie down already in his pyjamas, kicking the
blankets like a chid to give her some space. She
made her way to lie down beside him, also in his
pyjamas. “The scar…”

“The one in her back?” he asked.

“You’ve seen it?” she asked.

“She has this pretty dress that shows her back,” he

explained, plopping himself up a bit better with his
pillow. “She has it from her last house, talked to
my mum about it but didn’t really explain anything
to me, said I’d be too angry.”

“Oh, but I’m not only talking about having the

scar,” explained Lily. “Pandora said that there’s no
magic coming from it, so it was done in the muggle
way and she even guessed it was a knife.”

James just nodded, jaw locking in silence. With the

little he knew about Anne’s past life, being hurt
with a knife wasn’t too far-fetched.

“Alright,” he mumbled.

“The other one, however, took me by surprise,” she

admitted.

James raised his eyebrows.

“Other one?” he asked.

She nodded, making a slashing motion from under

her breast to the opposite side of her body in an
awkward diagonal angle, hands shaking slightly to
show how the scar was uneven.

“The purple one,” she further the explanation. “The

cursed one.”

But James didn’t respond. He knew nothing of that

one.

“I just saw her without a shirt, Lily, there was

nothing there,” he insisted.

“Marlene, Dorcas and Pandora were giving off

guesses while I showered with Anne,” Lily said. “I
think she’s using the Abscondo Charm. Do you
know it?”

“I’ve heard it before, of course, I do have a mother

and, now, another woman in my house,” he said.
“Glamours aren’t that strong.”

“A good abscondo is,” she disagreed. “If a person

does the charm right, it lasts through hours or, if
you’re very strong, while you’re awake, like a semi-
permanent charm connected to one’s
consciousness. I’ve never seen an actual case of it,
only heard Flitwick talking about it during classes
last year. To know Anne is powerful enough for that
is really big, James.”

He swallowed drily.

“How bad is it?”

“Really bad,” Lily admitted. “It looked Dark, like a

curse or something, not just a hex gone wrong. I’m
not good in identifying magic, but Pandora is and
she said it wasn’t something she had seen before
and Marlene was a pale as a ghost. Marlene could
feel it, James! Anne’s abscondo is so strong that it
can hide the magical strands that are shared out in
the world.”

James sighed, closing his eyes and pushing the

worst of his thoughts away.

“Anne had a really bad life before she managed to

get away,” was all his answer.

“I can understand a bit better now,” Lily admitted.

“The whole she’s my responsibility thing. I’m not
completely sure of what that means to you and
what she is to you, but I can understand it better.
She’s your family.”

“Yes,” he agreed, watching her.

“And she would be your family in any life you had.

Even if she didn’t share any blood with you, she
would be your family just like Sirius would be your
brother in all your lives. Just like Marlene would be
my best friend in any life I could ever imagine
having,” Lily said. “Perhaps it doesn’t make much
sense when I try to explain it out loud, but I can
understand it now and I’m sorry I made a case out
of it and lead us to having a row.”

“We didn’t have a row,” James disagreed, shaking

his head.

Lily laughed, passing a hand on his hair. He leaned

away to fix it up by messing it up even more.

“The fact that you think that wasn’t a row is really

cute, but it was a row,” she explained. “And I
admit, I was jealous.”

“I know,” he said, winking at her.

She laughed once more, kissing his cheek, but

leaning in to whisper in his ear in a threatening
matter.

“If you ever tease me about it, though, I’ll cut your
bollocks off.”

Chapter 77: Chapter Seventy-Six

Summary:
Anne and Regulus have their first
time. Regulus thinks Slytherin
Anne is a lot hotter than he
remembers.

Notes:
TW: EXPLICIT (AND BADLY
WRITTEN, PROBABLY) SEXUAL
CONTENT AND BARELY A
MENTION OF TORTURE THAT HAS
NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SMUT,
THOUGH.

FIRST TIME

The glass from the small bottles of potions were

well-protected inside her bag, but still Anne walked
a bit slower than normal to make sure there was no
danger to spill anything or for the sound glass
against glass to be heard. One look at the content
of the bottles and everybody would know of her
intentions.

Anti-Pregnancy Potions were very easily

recognizable. Their slimy shimmering green content
grabbed attention and the smell of it was so sweet
that it made people gag, but the taste was even
sweeter; it was like drinking two portions of sugar
in one of water, but without the grains.

She had taken her very first dose the night before
for a test and she seemed to be dealing well with
the after effects. Some dizziness when she got up
or turned too quickly, but no weakness or
tachycardia. Anne supposed she was doing a good
job in keeping everything in her stomach as well
since she even forgot that sometimes one could feel
nausea at the first few doses, and she ate normally
during lunch in the Great Hall.

“Come on, Anne, we’re late!” complained Marlene.

“Are you still dizzy?”

“No, I’m fine,” Anne dismissed.

“You really should start checking your sugars and

blood pressure. You always look like your about to
pass out when you do physical activity. It’s no
wonder you refuse to play Quidditch,” Marlene
grumbled.

Anne rolled her eyes.

“We’re not that late and you don’t even like

Potions, Marls. You just want to go by in front of
the Charms classroom to see Dorcas,” complained
Anne.

“Oh, I’m sorry if I want to see my girlfriend,”

Marlene said, frustrated, but blushing under Anne’s
eyes.

“You saw her at breakfast!” Anne exclaimed.

“My relationship with her isn’t a secret, Anne. I’m

allowed to want to see her as much as I can and it’s
not weird to want to be with her 24/7, you know?”
Marlene said. “I know this is your first time dating
and all that, and I know you’re not the clingy type,
but I am and Dorcas likes it.”

If Marlene had said something to attack Anne, it

would’ve been easier to deal with, but having to
keep her relationship with Regulus was secret had a
lot more pull on her than she wanted to admit.
Seeing Dorcas and Marlene now publicly together
also didn’t make matters any easier; she wouldn’t
admit it out loud, but her jealousy made her
annoyed and frustrated, even when she didn’t want
to be anything other than happy for the two.

Marlene didn’t seem to realise what she had said,

because as she walked by in front of the Charms’
classroom, she waved to Dorcas as the other
winked back at her before Flitwick called for her
attention as well and made a movement with the
wand to close the door. Anne walked behind her
friend in silence, trying to keep her head up as
much as she could without looking too annoyed,
after all she didn’t say those things on purpose and
she certainly didn’t mean to hurt Anne in the way
she did.

Still, Anne didn’t say anything as she walked by the

smiling blonde to go to sit beside Regulus, ignoring
the fact that she could feel her eyes following her
silent body walking away in confusion.

“Afternoon,” she mumbled.

Regulus watched her for a second before looking

away as if he was moving around the ingredients to
keep himself busy.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she dismissed.

“You can just say you don’t want to talk about it,
but I thought we agreed on no lies,” he said back.
“Did someone do something to you? You look
angry.”

“Marlene just doesn’t really have much tact

sometimes,” she explained poorly.

That wasn’t enough for Regulus, she knew, but he

didn’t try to pull for more information as he looked
over her shoulder to Marlene crossing her arms and
refusing to help Severus at all in the new potion,
but his friend didn’t seem to care much, pushing
her chair further away from the table with his foot
and freely moving around gracefully as he usually
did in a potion’s table.

“She’s a Gryffindor,” he answered as if that was

explanation enough.

That brought Anne a smile on her face.

She took a deep breath, reaching for the knife at

the same time as he did. He brushed his fingers
against the back of her hand before pulling away
and getting the other knife.

Anne put her bag down on the ground underneath

the table as she usually did, letting it go gently so
the glass wouldn’t rattle. After that she focused
mostly on cutting all the beetle wings in small
pieces since they weren’t meant to crush them this
time, even though the book said they were
supposed to do so.

What she didn’t notice Regulus looking down with a

slight frown as he watched the small flasks barely
showing inside her bag. He knew he shouldn’t look;
it wasn’t even his bag and it was disgusted of him
for being so curious, but at that point he couldn’t
look away. He had recognized the potion. His father
had shoved that potion in his hand when he was
thirteen and said that he needed to make sure the
girls drank that before sleeping with them, even if
he had to shove them down their throat. He had
never used them before, only sleeping with Evan
Rosier before Anne came and ruined him for
everybody else and always making him go back to
her. Still, he knew that shimmering green.

He pretended it was nothing much and that it

meant nothing, still he couldn’t help but have to
physically cover his mouth from keeping himself
from getting too into his thoughts to the point of
asking Anne what that meant.

If she was walking around with those in her bag it

was either one of the two things. One, she was
going to give them to someone else after brewing it
(it was common for teen girls to brew them and sell
them), though he couldn’t help but wonder why,
she didn’t need the money and certainly had
independency enough to not go around doing
something like that, which could lead to
suspension. Two, she was drinking that and it
meant that she needed to talk to Regulus soon
before she was ready to take the next step. Either
way, he certainly had questions to ask.

“Regulus?” called a voice in a laughing manner, so

loud that he looked up.

Evan Rosier was looking at him over Elizabeth

Fawley’s shoulder, she seemed to be blushing.
Regulus blinked several times, trying to get back
into himself. He was still trying to understand what
was happening when Anne turned to him.

“He asked what you were looking at and asked if it

was my leg,” she said, voice sounding so bored that
Regulus tried not to wince.

“Shut up, Sage, nobody is talking to you,” Rosier

attacked.

Anne looked up at Rosier, lips twitching just enough

to know that she had tried to force a smile through
her annoyance, but it almost looked like she had
curled her lips back like a wolf before the attack.

“Careful with your words, Rosier. I was polite, you

could have the decency to do the same,” Anne said,
though her jaw was locked.

Regulus was starting to get worried as Evan’s smile

dropped before his smirk appeared.

“Why would I do the same for you, half-breed?” he

asked.

Anne’s hand around the knife tightened and

Regulus tensed up. He knew Anne had a lot of
control over her reactions, but he also knew that
she took her blood status very proudly, showing it
off without fear. Still, he knew that Evan Rosier was
a lot crazier about blood purity than his own family
was, keen on doing anything to get attention from
his father and the Dark Lord. Those two personality
traits certainly didn’t get along.

“You know the best part about us ‘half-breeds’?”

Anne asked, slowly putting the knife down as
staring Evan’s eyes. “We have the best of both
worlds. Curses, jinxes, hexes? All of them, we do
know them and we know how to use them just as
well as you do, because we have magical family.
But what about the muggle sides? What do you
think of muggles, Rosier?”

“They’re weak and pathetic,” he spat the words

towards her.

Anne chuckled drily.

“I thought so too for a moment, but then I was

proved wrong,” she said, smirk stamped on her
lips. “They don’t have magic, so they need a lot
less to hurt people. Knives like this are the least of
their problems; they have so many types of torture
and they learn it every day in things such as
televisions and films. Oh, you don’t know what that
is. The telly is a box that shows images and
sounds, films are stories that they make with
actors… like a theatre, but at home. Waterboarding,
pulling toe-nails one per one, pulling teeth… so
much! And they learn from it since so young,
because all they have to do to watch is pushing a
button.”

However much Regulus felt proud, he needed not

to pretend much to be freaked out, but nothing
won from Evan Rosier’s pale face watching Anne
gently running her fingers on the blunt part of the
sharp blade of the knife before getting it in her
hands once more and smiling before going back to
cutting the beetle wings.

“Was – Was that threat?” Evan Rosier asked.

“It was a comment, of course,” Anne answered.

“We were having a normal, polite conversation,
weren’t we?”

“What?” he asked.

“Did I get it wrong?” she asked, blinking innocently.

“Forgive me, Rosier, I think my half-blood self
doesn’t understand the whole pureblood Slytherin
conversations, you know? It’s quite… complex to
my little Gryffindor brain.”

Regulus knew that Anne was no Gryffindor. He

would forget about it sometimes, especially when
she was amongst her friends, getting along
perfectly well with them, but in moments like those
were certainly a punch in the face of a reminder
that Anne was not all that different from him.

Slytherin Anne was so hot! Perhaps Regulus was

just in the mood, especially after seeing the potions
in her bag, but Anne cutting Evan Rosier, a feared
Death Eater already in his seventeen-year-old
angry mind, so nonchalantly in the middle of class
without even getting Slughorn’s attention was so
hot that he felt light-headed.

He had been so focused on her that he didn’t see

the explosion coming until it was too late.

Evan and Elizabeth’s potion had just exploded.

“My, my!” Slughorn screamed from his place near

Lily Evans, who had wide eyes and was running
towards them as well. “Did it get on anyone?”

“Me! Me!” Elizabeth yelped, getting rid of her

jumper, which was already starting to burn
through. “Ouch!” she yelped again.

Slughorn got rid of the slimy content from her skirt

before it could burn through as well and Lily Evans
tried to get rid of it from Elizabeth’s socks and from
the ground. However, Evan wasn’t as lucky, his
face was burnt before Slughorn could help him at
all.

Regulus, in horror, turned to Anne, but she hadn’t

moved from her place, still chopping ingredients in
silence and not even looking at the boy groaning
and complaining loudly in pain. That was when
Regulus understood that Anne had been the one to
do so with wandless magic.

Regulus fell in love all over again.

Hands were touching everywhere, lips were kissing

everywhere, legs were intertwined as they fell
against the wall of the inside of the Room of
Requirement. There was no time for breathing,
there was no time for talking and there was no time
for thinking at all – not that Regulus could think at
all at that point.

Anne put her hands in his chest, caressing him over

the messed up and crooked shirt before finally
pushing him against the wall, getting her own back
away from it and taking a deep breath, gasping for
air before trying to speak, but not having the words
for it.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Regulus exclaimed, letting go of

her at once. “Did I do something wrong? Did I
touch you wrong? Anne? Anne?! Tell me what to
do.”

“No, Reggie. Just…” she gasped again. “Time. A

minute.”

While Anne breathed, Regulus didn’t move a single

muscle, barely even breathing with his back
completely against the wall, not daring to move in
fears of spooking her away from him with a
mistake.

“Regulus?”

“Yes, darling?” he said.

“What’s up with you? You were never this…”

“…Desperate,” he offered when she didn’t the word.

She nodded. “I’m sorry, I’ll try to control myself a
bit better, really, I will.”

“No, please, don’t, it was totally hot, I just want to

understand if I did something right,” she said,
smiling a bit to him.

He sighed in relief. He hadn’t spooked her

somehow; he had just confused her.

“You stood up to Evan Rosier and messed up his

potion with wandless magic,” he said. “That’s what
you did right. Amazing! So hot!”

She smiled, trying to hold back her laugh as she

attacked Regulus’ lips once more, hands going back
to caressing his chest and opening the first two
buttons of his shirt as she kissed his cheek before
kissing his neck. He sighed, smiling to himself, the
feeling taking most of his mind and fogging it up –
he could feel her lips on his skin, her teeth grazing
against some of the most sensitive parts after she
sucked the skin in, licking it soon after to make him
forget the pain that usually came with it.

He opened his own shirt quickly, shrugging it off

without much care. His hand caressed her face
before leading her face up again towards his and he
leaned down to kiss her again, carefully turning so
she would be the one against the wall.

“Jump,” he said.

She nodded, gasping for air when they pulled apart.

He put his hands on her hips before she jumped
and put her legs around his waist, her back still
against the wall as she opened the front of her shirt
– he smirked, her breast in his face’s height. Once
she shrugged it off and he held her, stepping away
from the wall as she got lower, her face in the
same height as his, this time.

“Beautiful,” he grumbled, kissing the valley

between her breasts.

“Want this off?” she asked, talking about her bra.

He nodded, dumbly. Anne laughed, leaning towards
him for another kiss. “You need to either put me
down or put me against the wall again, Little
Prince.”

“You’re safe.”

“You’re going to drop me,” she warned.

He held her behind now, not looking away from her

eyes. It passed confidence enough to her that he
would be able to hold onto her as she got her
hands away from his shoulders to unhook her bra
in the back, quickly letting it fall to the front before
shrugging it off before throwing it to the side.

“Bed?” he said.

“Am I that heavy?” she asked, smirking.

“No, but I want both hands to touch your whole

body,” he answered.

“Then, yes, bed,” she said. He took her to the bed,

lying her down gently as if he was putting an infant
down, hand cradling her head. She laughed,
pushing him off of her. “Fuck off, Regulus, I’m not a
child.”

“You’re as fragile as,” he teased.

“I’m going to kick your face,” she warned.

He smirked, not seeming to care much about

receiving a kick in the face as he took a breast to
his mouth and sucking the nipple, cupping her
other breast before squeezing it just lightly. She
could barely feel it, but the feeling of the tip of his
fingers brushing against her nipple made her bite
her lip. He took the breast away from his mouth
before changing, giving the attention he gave to
the first one to the next one. The wet nipple now
being touched was very sensitive and had her
shaking as she bit the inside of her cheek.

“Oh, Jesus, Regulus,” she hissed.

“Good?” he asked.

“Great!” she corrected.

He smiled at her before kissing her stomach and

licking his way down to the very foot of her belly
right where her skirt started. She smiled to herself
when he didn’t ask permission to unzip it and take
it off with a little help of her pushing her feet to the
bed and raising her hips. The skirt was off and that
made her underwear – a black laced one this time –
see the light of his eyes.

His finger brushed over the fabric and she gasped

loudly. Regulus could barely breathe at this point,
she was so wet that he could feel her through the
fabric, his fingers becoming hot. That was when he
tried to get his hands into her knickers.

“Not fair!” she said. “I’m almost naked, but there

you are. Trousers off!”

He rolled his eyes.

“Well, I didn’t have a bra to take off,” he laughed.

“Off!” she insisted.

He got up from the bed, taking his belt off without

much thought and letting it fall to the side, ignoring
the loud noise of the metal hitting the wooden floor
of the fake bedroom copying Anne’s bedroom in the
Potter Manor. He unbuttoned his trousers and took
it off before kicking it to the side.

“May I eat you out now, Miss Potter?” he asked,

raising his eyebrows.

“How polite of you, Mister Black,” she teased.

“I know, I know. I was raised right,” he teased

back.

She threw her head back, laughing so loudly that

his amusement turned into self-consciousness as
his erection hesitated, but the stupidly innocent
jiggling of her breasts as she laughed made it come
back full force. Anne laughed at him with great
force, but the tenderness in her eyes made him
smile at her.

“I don’t want that today,” she said.

Regulus’s shock took him by surprise, but he forced

his smile not to move.

“Sure, we don’t need to do anything you don’t want

to,” he said.

She propped herself up by her elbows and took one

of his pillows to put it under her back so she could
see him a bit better.

“I don’t think you understand, Regulus. I don’t

want anything other than you today,” she
explained. “I have something to tell you; I drank
my first Anti-Pregnancy Potion yesterday and I
drank another one today. I wanted to be ready,
because I feel ready. I want to have sex with you,
but only if you want to have sex with me.”

He scoffed out of surprise.

“When would I ever not want to go not have sex

with you?” he asked.

She smiled at him.

Regulus leaned over her, kneeling down in between

her legs to kiss her. Anne kissed him back with
such passion that he was out of breath before he
could count to ten, all his blood rushing down his
body to pool in his erection.

Anne parted her legs even more, hugging his hips

and rubbing her underwear on his, grinding against
his dick. There was no hesitation this time as they
pulled away to breathe and Anne reached down and
took his underwear out – his dick was out now and
she quickly cupped his balls, the other hand
reaching down to envelop the shaft and move it.
Through his surprised moans, Regulus reached
down to take her own underwear and with a little
wiggle of her hips, it was off. With his fingers
brushing her clit before reaching the entrance and
entering just a little bit.

Between trying to breathe, have a hold on their

pleasure so it wouldn’t finish too quickly and
enjoying it enough to not let the mood die, Anne
and Regulus weren’t sure how long they stayed
touching each other.

Anne was the first to try to move position, leading

his erection to her entrance.

“Are you absolutely sure, Anne?” he asked,

panting.

“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”

“Yes,” he answered.

And with that, he reached down, putting himself

inside of Anne and slowly leaning his hips in,
thrusting so lightly that she didn’t feel it at first.
Once he was completely in, though, there was no
way she couldn’t feel it.

She moaned loudly, back arching, hips stuttering

against his and mouth open in a silent scream. She
had never felt so full before in her life; Regulus
wasn’t overly big, or thick, but he seemed to be the
perfect size to fill her and make her completely
happy. Not that Regulus was much better than her,
gasping and panting against her neck, head down
as he tried to give her some time to get used to
him inside of her and not fall apart by how hot, wet
and how he could feel her heartbeat echoing across
his body.

He pulled back a bit, kissing her lips before moving

his hips.

Anne moaned, hugging Regulus with her arms as

well as her legs.

“Hey, little koala, I need some space to move,

unless you want some cockwarming,” he teased,
kissing her cheek.

Anne blushed even more, arms letting go of his

torso.

Regulus, however, didn’t see the blush, his eyes

were on the pillows. He reached for them, getting
one of them and pulling it towards them. It hit
Anne in the face and she complained, but with a
small apology, he raised her hips and put it under.

“What are you doing?” she asked, frowning,

frustrated that he wasn’t moving.

“Something I heard Sirius talking about before,” he

said.

That was when he first moved, thrusting against

her with some strength and Anne knew that he was
right. Her vision went wide for a second as she
yelped, asking Regulus to continue when he
stopped for her feedback. Regulus seemed excited
about the new addition because his moves started
quickly again, chasing after his high and making
sure to hear Anne’s moans with attention.

Once his movements became erratic, his hand

automatically left the place it was resting near
Anne’s head, keeping his weight away from her to
her hip and then pushing her lower stomach gently
down as he thrusted.

Anne came first, a loud scream as she held onto his

wrist (of the hand pushing her down) and almost
clawing his back with the other. She became so
tight inside that Regulus barely had time to react as
he screamed her name, legs shaking and no longer
managing to hold his kneeling weight and he fell
over Anne.

She didn’t complain, but Regulus moved in the

moment he could feel his legs again, throwing his
whole weight to the side and lying beside her as
they both took back their breaths.

With all the courage he could gather, he looked to

the side and said:

“I love you.”

He didn’t expect answer, but it came in the next

second.

“I love you, too,” she admitted.

Chapter 78: Chapter Seventy-

Seven
Summary:
Lily finally hears the truth about
Anne from Anne herself.

Notes:
TW: Past child abuse/domestic
abuse

LILY EVANS’S TRUTH

May 1st came and went, but since it was a Sunday,

Lily decided not to celebrate her eighteenth
birthday until the next Saturday, but still, she spent
the day with Marlene, Dorcas and Anne, watching
the very tense match of Gryffindor against
Slytherin. That was when Pandora and Mary came
to sit in the Gryffindor’s bleachers.

“Happy birthday, Lily,” said Mary, smiling at her.

“Thanks, Mary,” Lily said. “Not wanting to sit with

the Ravenclaws today?”

“They’re not all that excited about the match

today,” Pandora said. “They’re not cheering as
much.”

“The Ravenclaws are quite divided at the moment

between who to cheer on, so they decided not to
cheer at all,” Mary explained. “We thought we’d get
more excited and blend in if we were here.”

Anne smiled at her when their eyes met.

Mary and Anne weren’t that close and, even in her

life before, Anne had only met Mary once. She was
a muggleborn, born and raised in Muggle Central
London by a father who was a carpenter and a
mother who was teacher in a Secondary School.
After finishing Hogwarts and the war growing cold,
she married a muggle teacher and lived a normal,
muggle life for as long as possible, she had two
children and raised them as normally as she could
through the trauma of being one of the only ones to
survive the war. Still, children grow and magic
appears – she had to explain to her husband who
she was and the world she lived in and what she
had survived to be there. Her three children got
magic. Her three children went to Hogwarts and
were younger than Anne; Anne had even tutored
Emilia, the youngest of them all, in Charms once.
Harry and Hermione had saved her from the
Muggle-Born movement that Umbridge had started,
but Anne did think she had recognized them at all,
though her eyes did stop on Anne once the
Polyjuice’s effect ended.

“Are you feeling better, Anne?” Pandora asked.

Confused, Anne turned to her.

“Better?” she asked.

“You had a terrible hangover yesterday,” Pandora

said.

“I didn’t drink yesterday,” Anne said, blinking.

“Really? How odd,” Pandora said. “You’re not one to

be as distracted and lost as you were yesterday.”

Anne blushed. There was no secret to why she was

like this. In the last two days before that one, when
Anne and Regulus had their first time, she felt
herself out of orbit whenever she was slightly
bored, always thinking about him and sighing to
herself.

“Oh,” was all Anne said.

“Oh?” said Lily, raising her eyebrows. “You’re

blushing.”

“I am not,” Anne dismissed.

“Tell me,” Marlene said, leaning towards Anne with

the most terrifying grin on her lips, hands still
holding Dorcas’, trying to warm them up. “Tell me,
tell me, tell me. Please. What happened? Oh! I can
see a smile. I can see a smile!”

“Stop!” Anne laughed.

“Anne, tell us. Did what I think happened really

happened?” Lily asked.

“Did you and him have sex, finally?” Marlene asked.

Dorcas looked slightly confused.

“You’re dating?” Dorcas asked.

Marlene laughed.

“See, I told you not to worry about Anne and that

she wasn’t interested in me at all,” Marlene teased
her girlfriend. “I’m all yours. And Anne is very, very
straight.”

Anne blushed even more, remembering when she

was new to the school and Marlene had flirted with
her for days and she didn’t notice it at all, oblivious
to the way the girl was trying to ask her out.

“Not that I want to get into further details about

the boyfriend I’m not supposed to publicly have,
but yes, I did have sex with him and this is where
the conversation ends, thank you ever so much,”
Anne said, rolling her eyes at her friends.

Pandora smiled at her.

“At least you’re not pregnant.”

“Pandora!” Anne said in scandal.

“What? It would be difficult to fight in the war if you

were pregnant,” Pandora said, confused to why she
was being scolded.

Anne blinked again.

“How do you --? Pandora, how do you even know I

want to fight?” Anne asked.

“You’re not all that discreet about it,” Pandora said.

Lily and Dorcas ended up nodding, agreeing with
her, though Marlene could only laugh. “I’m serious,
Anne, you need to be more careful when you glare
at people. It’s very obvious. However, you do have
good Occlumency, but you need to learn to hide,
not just block.”

“I’m good at hiding,” Anne said, frowning. If she

wasn’t, she would be dead already and she knew
that.

“Not when you drop your guard. It might feel safe

here, but it’s not,” Pandora said.

Her eyes seemed to shine lightly as she looked

away, suddenly distracted by something in the
pitch. Still, even without her attention, all the girls
shivered. Pandora was known for… just knowing.
She knew people, she knew things and she knew
information that wasn’t ever shared.

It fell on Anne at once.

Pandora was good at Occlumency, perhaps better

than her or even Severus. But her strength was a
Legilimency and she knew what people were
thinking because nobody thought they needed to
hide from her. Her oddness and quirkiness were
surprising shields as she was recognized as out-of-
it and certainly harmless since she was never
paying attention to conversations, after all people
lied, but their minds didn’t.

Anne knew that she needed Pandora.

“Let’s stop this gloomy conversation on my

birthday, ok?” Lily said. “Look, I think Sirius is
trying to hit Evan Rosier. It’s a pity you’re not
playing today, Marlene, you should totally hit him
as well.”

“You hate the boy,” Marlene laughed. “I wish I was

playing, but my cramps are killing me and the
potions make me dizzy. Between falling off a broom
and watching my friends killing the Slytherin
snakes, I think I’d rather watch.”

Anne watched as Sirius held onto his broom tightly

with his legs, swinging his baton as strong as he
could without falling off the broom, letting the ball
chase Evan Rosier as he tried his best to throw the
ball at the next player.

Regulus, she found him quickly with her eyes, was

very calm. Too calm, perhaps. He was hovering
over the game, not in the middle of under it as
most seekers usually did, he wasn’t even moving,
just… floating over there.

“Regulus won’t find anything like this,” Anne

complained.

“Regulus is smart, he knows what he’s doing,”

Pandora answered.

“He is one of the best seekers the school has ever

had, I hate to admit,” Marlene agreed. “If he’s
hovering above the game, I’m sure he has a reason
and our little seeker should just follow him around.”

“Urie is not one to follow other seekers, he tries his

own techniques,” Lily said.

“And he’s bad at it,” Dorcas complained. “You’re so

much better than him, Marls!”

Anne’s lips twitched. However, it was true that

Marlene was better than Hayes Urie as a Seeker,
but coming from Dorcas’ mouth, who certainly
didn’t like nor understand Quidditch, it was just a
way to get in her girlfriend’s good side.

Lily smiled at Anne as they both thought the same

thing.

“Hello, girls!” said a loud voice. Remus stumbled a

bit, but sat down beside Lily, hugging her
shoulders. “Happy birthday.”

“You’re pissed!” Anne laughed.

“No,” said Peter walking behind Remus and sitting

down beside him. “Just very high. He made a new
friend in Hufflepuff who pays for tutoring with
something green that is, most certainly, not Muggle
money.”

Anne laughed, covering her mouth.

“Don’t let James find out that you appeared high in

front of me, he would freak out,” Anne said.

“Fuck James,” Remus said. “He’s such a buzzkill

sometimes. I mean, I’d leave you to dance on the
table with Pandora a bit more before getting you
out. You were having fun. You’re never having fun;
you just pretend you do.”

“Are you calling me boring?” Anne asked.

Lily started laughing.

“Yes,” Remus said.

“Remus!” Peter scolded.

“No,” he changed his answer. Anne smiled, amused

and not feeling hurt at all. “You’re just usually so
serious.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Focused, then,” he changed his vocabulary.

“Alright, then,” she dismissed. “Enjoy your high,

Moony, when you come down, you’ll tell me those
things again just so I know that you really mean
them.”

“Mia and Monty told us to enjoy our last year and

your mind is not really working like that,” Remus
continued. “Things are going to change once we’re
out of here, Anne, we might as well enjoy it
completely for now.”

The eerie feeling that usually followed after such a

good outing with her friends didn’t come that night,
but the worry for not worrying kept her awake
enough to hear Lily getting off the bed and walking
towards her bed.

Lily opened the curtains and smiled when she found

Anne awake.

“You should be asleep,” she playfully scolded.

“So should you, Miss Prefect,” teased Anne back,

pulling herself up and sitting down, back against
the pillow and the headboard of the bed. “I’m just
not sleepy tonight. What about you? What
happened?”
Lily shrugged.

“Can I get into bed with you?” she asked.

Anne nodded, pushing herself a bit to the side and

giving Lily enough space for her to climb into bed
with her and cover herself with the blanket as well.
It was May, but it was a colder May than Scotland
was used to; too humid, bringing more rains that
usual, but finally letting the few students with
allergies to have a break of their sneezes and
coughs for a few more weeks.

“Are you going to tell me what happened now?”

Anne asked.

“I can’t sleep either, my mind doesn’t seem to stop

working with all the thoughts I have,” Lily
explained. “I know there’s something big coming,
we all can see it on your face and on the
newspapers, but it’s not nice to know that we are
going to be involved in it, either we like it or not.
Especially me, I’m a muggleborn. I didn’t choose
this life and I didn’t choose to be hated, but I’m still
going to have to fight for my place in a world I was
presented into at eleven-years-old.”

“I know how you feel,” Anne said. “All your life you
were seen as weird outside of here, and once you
get here and you think you’re going to fit in, there’s
still people who see you as less than and… odd.”

Lily nodded, lying her head on Anne’s shoulder.

“There will be a war, and I don’t even know how to

tell my parents that,” Lily admitted.

“Do you want my opinion or are you trying to talk?”

Anne asked.

“Opinion.”

“Don’t tell them,” she said. “They’re going to be

worried and want to help, but there’s nothing they
can do for you or for anyone in this part of the
world, Lily. If they know and are actively trying to
help you, they’re going to die.”

Lily shivered.

“But how can I not tell them? Don’t they deserve to

know?” she asked, voice going lower in a whisper.

“Lying is not always bad. Sometimes there are lies

that are made to try to make the situation lighter,
and they’re called half-truths. Tell them that there’s
something big happening in our world, something
that you don’t want to be involved in, something
like a… inside fight of government. It isn’t a lie, nor
it is the whole truth,” Anne said, head leaning back
as she looked at the ceiling. “Wars are dangerous
even for those who are not involved on it, Lils.
Ignorance is truly a bliss, especially if you have
someone protecting them. I have an idea about it,
of course, but…”

“What are you talking about?” Lily asked. “Have

you been thinking about protecting my parents?

“I’m talking about talking to your sister again,”

Anne said. “You might need to explain to her in
detail. Petunia has been willing to listen to you and
about our world if you have the patience to listen to
her trauma as well – you were taken away from
her, pampered by your parents and she was left
alone. All she wanted was to be like you and she
showed it in a childish way, anger was the only
feeling she could show even when she was feeling
sadness. I’m not asking you to forgive her, I know
how hard forgiveness can be, but I’m asking you to
be rational and understand that the safety of your
parents might be a point of interest between the
two of you.”

“You’ve been communicating with her,” Lily said,

surprised.

“A bit. When I can, I write. When she has a

question or something to say, she writes to me.”

“She never did it before to me,” Lily sounded bitter.

Anne didn’t have an answer. She knew Lily enough

to know that she probably wrote to Petunia several
times expecting an answer, but nothing ever came
from her, only from her parents.

“As I said, if forgiveness isn’t on the table, perhaps

cordiality might be the best answer for the
moment,” Anne answered.

Lily looked at the papers on the wall behind the

bed.

“Is that the list of people you have to forgive?” she

asked.

Anne turned to look at the names put in separate

divisions, the handwriting clearly done in the
middle of the night and barely understandable for
anyone if not Anne herself.

“That is the list of people I wish could forgive me,

but might never have the chance,” she answered.

Lily nodded, looking at the extensive list, curious,

but with the knowledge of not asking questions
until Anne allowed her. Unbeknown to her, Anne
was gathering the courage to tell her everything
she had never asked, but always wanted to, biting
her lips to keep herself quiet enough.

“Lily, if I tell you something, can you make me an

oath of not telling anyone that doesn’t already
know until I want you to?” she asked.

“What?”

“Not an Unbreakable Vow or anything like this, but

can you promise on your magic that my wishes will
be respected if I tell you the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth to you?” Anne insisted.

Lily watched Anne under the half-shadows of the

bedroom, hesitant to promise anything to someone
when both of them were sleep-deprived and
certainly tired. Still, there was that look in her eyes
– James’ look when he got to his knees and begged
her to stop crying for Severus and promised her
that he would take care of it if she wanted him to;
James’ look when he got to her after she wandered
out and found Remus’ werewolf version outside,
saved by Anne. James’ serious look, the worried
one that he couldn’t fake.

“Yes,” she promised. “I promise.”

“I understand Petunia a lot more than I might want

to let on,” she said. “I grew up with my Aunt and
Uncle, as I told you, and they weren’t all that nice
to me, nor was my Cousin. My brother and I lived
there under the stairs for most of our lives, sharing
the cupboard in suburban house until my brother
turned 11 and he went to Hogwarts. We grew up in
London, Lily, not Canada as I told you all. I lied.”

Lily felt her body grow cold. Anne had told that lie
for a reason. Anne always lied for a reason.

“Alright? And what was his name?”

“Harry,” she answered. “Harry Potter. Your son…

like I am your daughter.”

“This is not a funny joke, Anne.”

“I’m not telling a joke, I’m sorry. I wish I had more

careful words to say, but story is not careful and I
do not know how tell it in any other way, no matter
how many times I tell it,” Anne admitted, eyes
holding back her tears as she watched Lily flinch
away from her when she tried to touch her. “I’m
sorry. Really, I am. But this is a story you need to
hear. You asked James to hear the truth, and I’m
tell you the truth.”

“How can you be telling the truth?”

“Listen to me, and I’ll repeat everything again

under Veritumserum if want me to. But my name is
Anne Lily Potter and I’m your daughter, born in
1981, a few months before you were killed in your
own house, saving me and my brother from death,”
Anne said. “Where I came from, you’re a hero.
James is hero and so is Harry. I came here because
it’s my turn to be a hero.”

Lily could feel her hands shaking. She knew Anne

to be a good liar, but not that good, not to the
point of feeling hurt like that, not to the point of
flinching with the name of her brother and –

“Aunt and Uncle,” Lily mumbled, finally looking into

Anne’s eyes as she took in the information that fell
to her mind. “Did you grow up with Petunia?”

“Yes,” she said. “And I forgive her.”

There is an unsent letter under Anne’s bed.

To Petunia Evans-Dursley,

I admit it’s hard to forgive someone that never said

sorry or that believe they did nothing wrong, but
the fact that I might never see the version I met of
you makes a lot easier to understand how you
became who you are in 1996.

There’s little I remember from my very young age

and all the memories I have are of you, somehow.
If you’re not in them directly, there’s always
something of you in there, reminding me of
everything you made me go through.

Still, the very earliest of memories I have, it’s of

you – it’s odd to know my first memory is of
someone I hate, but I suppose it was expected
since you’re everything I have ever known – I
remember waking up with the sound of your voice
and of the pounding on the cupboard door; Harry
was sick and nowhere be seen, he had spent the
night locked on the bathroom so he wouldn’t make
a mess of the house by throwing up somewhere he
wasn’t supposed to. I remember how I thought the
house grew colder with your voice and how I
couldn’t understand how all the warmth within only
seemed directly to Dudley. And, alone in the
cupboard, I wondered if you slept as well as I did,
and by that I meant almost nothing at all.

I couldn’t understand how a grown up could live

and sleep with the fact that they could harm
children with their own arms. I only understood
that you were the ones to harm us because you
knew we wouldn’t survive Vernon’s punishment,
and yet I believe there was a part of you that
enjoyed hurting us. He hurt you and you hurt us –
you had to hurt someone, otherwise you would’ve
hurt yourself. I know how it feels. My anger
sometimes feels like I need to hurt someone before
I hurt myself, but I never did and I survived. I
suppose you never learnt to control yourself,
because Vernon never controlled himself near you
and your parents were never violent to you before,
so you thought that was Vernon’s way of showing
he cared, by… correcting you.

That wasn’t love. Part of you knew, that was why

you hated us so much. We were children made out
of love. Dudley was a child made out of marriage,
but nothing more than that.

Through my life, I hid away from you. You’d always

come around and find a way to punish me, and if
you couldn’t, you’d find something wrong with me
so you could punish Harry for not taking good
enough care of me, since I wasn’t your
responsibility. You made me feel guilty for my
brother’s wounds simply by existing and that is
something that it took me a long while to
understand that it wasn’t my fault. You took my
armour and shattered it time and time again with
simple words and simple looks.

But I forgive you.

I forgive you if I can believe that it wasn’t against

me all that hatred. If that hatred was yours and
yours alone and I was just a target, I can forgive
you. I forgive you if I can believe that it wasn’t me
whom you detested, but the sister that managed to
be happy until the end, the one I resembled to
much that you refused to let my brother call me the
nickname my mother gave me for the name we
shared.

I was raised by you reading between lines, reading

expressions and reading body language before I
could write my own name correctly. And through
my whole life, I tried my best to make you love me,
even if it was the turbulent and odd love that you
showed to Vernon, the bipolar that sometimes
made you pause with the pills he needed to take to
sleep on the sink, wondering if the next move in
your head would be smart or would lead to your
death. I know how it was. I stopped myself from
doing the same things that were your mind several
times.

And I know that you knew.

You would pause whenever you saw me and Vernon

alone and hesitate to leave me there with him. You
called him into the bedroom more than once
because you thought that if his attention was on
you, it wouldn’t be on me. You didn’t know how to
stop it without putting yourself on risk, so you let it
happen and looked away.

Still, I forgive you.

I forgive you because I know it wasn’t because of

me that you didn’t stop it. It was because of you.
You were a coward and you were insecure. Still,
you though that you survived his weight on top of
you time and time again, so you knew I could
survive it as well. You were made to believe that
what happened to you wasn’t that big of deal, so it
wouldn’t be that big of a deal if happened to me as
well.

I forgive you for your ignorance.

It was against yourself that you were fighting. It

was yourself that you hated.

And I forgive you.

Your only niece,

Anne L. Potter

Chapter 79: Chapter Seventy-

Eight
Summary:
Lily deals with the truth

Notes:
My first test is tomorrow and it
gave me a whole breakdown that
led me into the worst anxiety
attack I had in years, so I went to
my phone and... boom, triggered
my PTSD with a song and had a
flashback. FUN!

I wrote this chapter in less than

an hour and didn't read it again at
all, so do tell me about any
mistakes and tell me your
thoughts. I hope you all will like it
anyways, thank you.

POTTER FAMILY, THE 70S GENERATION

It was easy for Anne to forgive Petunia after she

understands that trauma might have different
responses after years of hating her with all her
heart, all the blame shifted from herself to Petunia
and then to Vernon. Petunia enabled him because
she had been brainwashes into believing that it
was… normal.

Lily, however, needed a whole night of crying and a

whole morning of thinking without even going to
class to understand that her sister did bad things in
Anne’s timeline, but not on hers yet. If her family
didn’t enable Vernon to keep on abusing her, then
Petunia wouldn’t enable him to do anything to
anyone else. Petunia was still her sister, still was
the girl that taught her to plait her hair and
brushed from the ends to the roots when her
mother wasn’t as careful. Petunia could be kind
when she wanted, or when she was allowed to.

It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was comprehension

and compassion that made her write to her sister
one more time.

Dearest Petunia,

I wish my letter will be received with happiness and

eagerness that you never showed to me. I have a
lot to tell you and a lot that I wish you to tell me
and, although I don’t have much to say in this
letter, I wish this small piece of parchment can be
the open gateway you needed to go back to
communicating with me.

Anne informed me that you know how to have

access to public owls now, but you can answer it
through my own owl. All you need to do is close the
window and give Penny some food before sending
her away once more, she will understand she ought
to wait for your response.

Thank you for trying,

Lily.

Dearest Lily,

I should be the one thanking you for trying when I

didn’t try for so long for you. It hurts me that I
didn’t have the courage to reach out to you before
you had to reach out to me, but yet I am thankful
for the opening you gave me.

I see Anne has been talking about me a bit and I

worry she has said too much. There are things I
want to talk to you face-to-face and not on paper
(and yes, I’m writing this on normal paper with a
pen, I’m sorry, but quills and parchment are not for
me, Lily; there’s a line I will not cross). Vernon and
I hit a rough patch and I wish to resolve this and
Anne and you can be home and help me with it.
Don’t worry, I will explain this to you, but I want
you to be with me when I do that.

Though it hurst my pride badly, I apologize. All my

anger was never directed at you, it was at myself
and the fact that I failed to be as special as you,
but I do not think you can see our life through my
eyes.

Lily you are so loved.

The whole town wished nothing but children like

you. You were smart, polite, beautiful and kind.
Even though I was older, I was in your shadow,
always trying my best to do everything you couldn’t
the best I could – you did baseball, I did ballet. I
wanted to be different from you, I wanted to be
better than you. And I was managing to stay afloat,
having my own group of friends. And then
Hogwarts came. You were taken away from me and
gone to a place I couldn’t follow, doing something I
could never compete against you on, because I
simply didn’t have the pre-requirements.
Embarrassingly, I wrote to your headmaster,
begging him to let me into the school. I was a child
and I was spiteful like one, so when he refused me,
I shifted my anger away from an old man I had
never met towards you: reachable, within reach of
my harm.

I was never this frustrated in my life and I think I

am just now starting to learn to deal with it as I
find my true calling in being a teacher. This
something I love. I love teaching, I love children
and I love that they teach me just as much as I
teach them. I never needed to be better than you, I
was right in one thing, I just needed to be different.

I’m sorry I mistreated you and I promise I will learn

to be better.

Your sister and, if wished, someday friend,

Petunia Evans.

Petunia,

My sister, how happy I am that you are happy. This

letter has brought nothing but tears to my eyes
and, for the first time, good ones. I am proud of
the woman you are becoming and I wish to say
that I have always looked at you with great
admiration when we were children – you wanted to
be different from me, but I always wanted to be
just like you, ‘Tuney.

I can see by your beautiful handwriting that you

true calling was being a teacher. I’m sure all the
children love you and I’m sure that you’re going to
be an amazing mother one day, if given the
chance, opportunity and place.

Confusing as it was my last paragraph, I mean that

Vernon is indeed not the person for you and if by
fixing things you mean making things right with
him, you cannot count on me. If my fixing things,
you mean leaving him, I will hit him myself for you.
I always want to slap him when he’s talking, so it’ll
be a dream come true, not a single wand involved.

Besides, it’s for the better that somebody needs to

obliviate him (make him forget about magic) once
you’re done, so it’s good that you have witches or
wizards by you when you do that. You need to be
as quick as you can, because emotional damage
and shock might make the process easier and
quicker; the less time you need to be in the
presence of that horrible man, the better.

Petunia, I wish you could be here right now so we

could talk about all the things we missed in our
anger.

Having said that, I believe it’s my turn to apologize.

I have been an awful sister to you as well, throwing
in your face all my magic when I knew you were
upset out of pettiness without understanding the
true consequences those actions brought upon you.
If I knew I was hurting you this deeply, I would’ve
stopped, I promise you this much. I’m sorry for my
childishness.

Your sister and, in the near future, your friend,

Lily Evans

The shift inside the relationship between Anne and

Lily wasn’t hard to see and, contrary to Anne’s and
James’s reaction when James found out, they
seemed a bit more distant from one another. Anne,
then, stuck herself to James, not blaming Lily. Lily,
however, stuck herself to Marlene and went as far
as cancelling her plans with James.

“Did something happen?” James had asked.

“No,” Anne lied.

James didn’t believe her, though nothing in her

body or face seemed to tell him that it was a lie.
But Lily wasn’t as good of a liar as Anne, she didn’t
have as much experience as her. So, James went to
her.

“Did something happen?” James asked her, then.

“No,” Lily lied.

Her nose twitched and she looked away, unable to

look into his eyes for too long.

And James knew as he watched Anne walking away

from the library with Sirius and Remus, head down
and clearly worried, that the truth was out and that
Lily just didn’t know how to react to anything. He
sat down beside Lily on the library table.

“She told you,” he guessed.

“How can you deal with it so well?” Lily asked, not

looking at him, but clearly relieved that James
already knew and that she was allowed to talk to
him about it. “You seem so jovial and laid-back
about it.”

“Believe me, when I first found out, I wasn’t,” he

said.

“You were,” she disagreed. “From the moment you

met her, you treated her like the princess that I’m
sure you want.”

He shook his head.

“I did what I could to make sure she was alright,

but just because I acted like it, it didn’t mean I felt
it,” he said. “Our situations were certainly different,
Lily, I had Dumbledore with us and he mediated the
whole interaction until he seemed sure I wasn’t
going to freak out. You didn’t, did you?”

“No,” she said. “She told the night before the last,
on my birthday.”

James sighed, uncomfortable. Having something as

big and clearly heavy on your birthday certainly
didn’t make Lily feel any better.

“Why did you act?” Lily asked.

“I just had to take one look at Anne and I couldn’t

do anything else,” he admitted. “After she was
done, I turned to tell her to give me some time so I
could think things through, but then I saw her eyes
so… hopeful. She expected nothing from me, really,
but I suppose there is a part of her that she can’t
control. Her whole life she didn’t have anyone but
her brother and I thought that she deserved
someone more.”

“You’re seventeen,” she said. “Your daughter has

your age! And you found out that you married me
and had two children before you were killed, too.
James, how can you act at all? Don’t you feel
scared?”

“I was, but not anymore,” he said, shaking his head

and reaching for her hand, he held it and she finally
turned to look at him. “Anne came here to change
everything. What happened to us won’t happen
again. We will be just fine and I don’t have a doubt
in mind that Anne will make things right this time
around.”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears.

“I don’t know how to get to her,” she admitted.

“She’s my friend, but I don’t think she can be my
daughter.”

“Why does things have to change at all?” he asked.

“She’s your friend? Well, be her friend. As I said to
you not too long ago, if you want me at all, you’ll
have to get used to Anne being around. Now that
you know the truth and understand, I’m sure you
can get what I’m saying. If you want her to be your
friend, she can be, but she is my daughter. If you
hurt her, you hurt me.”

Lily rolled her eyes, making the tears roll down her
cheeks.

“You are doing this so right,” she admired.

“I had a bit more of practice than you, but I can tell

you that I can’t change nappies at all,” he teased.

She laughed with a disgusting noise before moving

from her chair to sit on his lap and hug him tight.

“She lived with my sister…” she mumbled with her

face hidden on his neck as she kept on crying. He
rubbed her back, comforting her. “The things my
sister did to her. I don’t understand how she can
forgive her and keep contact with her. She didn’t
really talk, but I feel like Vernon did worse.”

“She didn’t tell me either, but we all can guess

what happened,” he said. “I believe that he is the
one she can never forgive.”

“She’s been through a war before and is adamant

that she will go through another one, and happily,
she added,” Lily said. “I don’t know what she has in
mind. If I were her, I’d get out of the country as
quick as possible.”

“She knows we all will fight. Take one good look at

Anne and think. Do you really think she would leave
us behind?” he asked. “There’s not a chance she
will leave anyone at all behind, if it’s possible to
save everyone. She’s convinced that she can save
most people, so she’s not going anywhere. She’s
already saved my parents.”

“What?!” Lily asked, pulling back to see his face.

“Apparently, they were supposed to be dead

already. When she got here and told me, I asked
my parents to talk to her and meet her. My father
was supposed to be sent to a mission in Egypt, but
since the ‘emergency’ came, they sent other
people. Three men caught the drangonpox while
they were there. Anne said that they were
supposed to have caught it and died,” James
explained. “I don’t know what I’d do without them,
so I believe in Anne. I believe her presence will
make everything different.”

There was a moment of silence as Lily cleaned her

tears and watched James’ true words comfort her.
But then her bottom lip shook and she hugged him
again, muffling her sobs so she wouldn’t be called
out by Madame Pince.

“She befriended my sister!” she exclaimed on his

neck mid-sob. “I forgave my sister because of her
and now I know why she forgave my sister.”

James frowned.

“What? Why?” he asked, confused.

“Because whatever he did to Anne, he’s doing to

Petunia right now,” Lily kept on crying.

And James decided that whatever was to happen to

Vernon Dursley, it would be through his hands and
he would be very happy to see the light going out
of his eyes slowly as he took control of the
situation. Maybe, Vernon would feel as scared as he
made the women in his life feel.

Remus sniffed and winced a bit. It was May 4th, the

night after the full moon, and smells were still
attacking him. Having Anne hugging Lily with
James standing right beside them only made the
smell stronger.

The family shared a similar scent, though Lily’s

stood out and would keep on doing so until the
magical tie of the wedding made her a Potter. The
smell of wet forest and jasmine, though jasmine
came mostly from Anne, as she mixed strawberry,
which also came from Lily.

“Headache?” Sirius asked in a low voice, sitting

beside him in the Common Room, also watching the
scene of the family talking in front of them. “It’s
nice that Lily knows. Now, I can tease her even
more about it.”

“Don’t,” Remus said. “She’s just not getting used to

it all. Let her have some time off the jokes, then
you can go and tease her after that experience
period.”

Sirius barked a laugh.

“Experience period,” he repeated. “This is not a

summer job, Moony. She’s her mother, either she
likes it or not. But you’re right, I need to hold back
my jokes for a bit, otherwise Prongs will have my
head.”

“And poke your body with his antlers,” agreed

Remus.

Sirius shivered with the mental image.

“Have you seen Peter?” Sirius asked.

“Not really,” Remus answered. “Last time I saw

him, he was talking to a Hufflepuff girl, so I assume
he’s snogging somewhere in the castle,” he tried to
lighten up the mood, but he saw Sirius’ frown as he
bit the inside of his cheek. “Look, I know you’re
suspicious of him, but you can’t keep acting like
this. He’s innocent until proven otherwise, Pads.
He’s still our friend.”

“Who certainly can kill or get people killed,” said

Sirius in a grumble.

“You don’t know that,” Remus said. “We talked

about it before, Anne insisted that her inside people
don’t know anything about Wormy doing anything
wrong connected to the Death Eaters. He’s
probably just doing something else with someone
else, inside the castle, like most students. He’s still
our Wormtail, he won’t betray us.”

“How can you know? That’s how betrayal works,

you don’t think it’ll happen and you don’t think it’ll
be that person, but then it happens and you get
hurt… or killed,” Sirius said, crossing his arms.
“There’s something off about him, I just know it. I
can feel it.”

“You were always the most suspicious of us,”

Remus said. “You’re almost always wrong.”

“I know, I can’t read people and all that,” he said,

rolling his eyes. “I heard that joke before.”
rolling his eyes. “I heard that joke before.”

“But this time is not a joke,” Remus insisted. “You

really need to stop glaring at Peter whenever he
moves.”

“I don’t like how he’s acting.”

“Then talk to him about it,” Remus said, rolling his

eyes in exasperation. He sighed. “If I didn’t have a
headache before, you gave me one now. Merlin,
Sirius, he’s your friend ever since our first year
here, you can talk to him about anything. And don’t
look at me like that,” he opened his mouth to say
something. “No! – don’t say ‘like what?’ because
you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s bad
enough that we need to keep an eye on those
bastards who we already know for sure to be Death
Eaters, and now you want us to suspect our best
friend? The war is coming closer and closer to us,
can’t we just enjoy the little time we have left?”

Sirius couldn’t blame Remus too much when he got

up and walked up to the dormitories, but he
couldn’t help but feel hurt. He was just sharing a
concern and it had to be somewhat valid after Anne
told them who had been the traitor the first time
around. Still, he had to know that it was the night
after the full moon and that Remus was very tired
and still sensitive to everything and would be for a
couple more of days.

He pulled his legs up, knees against his chest and

watched Anne smiling as Lily spoke of something.

He closed his eyes and wished to disappear.

Chapter 80: Chapter Seventy-

Nine
Summary:
A new character brings more
politics to the table.

Notes:
The story will start moving along a
bit more now. I hope you can bear
with me.

BARTY CROUCH JUNIOR

Anne’s hands were sweating and she cleaned them

off on her jeans.

Regulus was late.

Regulus was never late! Regulus wouldn’t just

forget the meeting they had arranged. Something
had happened and her mind was going wild,
thinking of what it could’ve been. Was Evan Rosier
was following him around again? Did the Dark Lord
send word? Did someone hurt him? He wasn’t one
to not send her word if something had happened to
him, he wouldn’t make her wait for long.

But there she was, almost two hours after the time
they had agreed to, still waiting for him with the
start of panic settling into her empty stomach. Her
hands were starting to shake and the constant
sweat was making her annoyed, but she couldn’t
pay too much attention to it since she was trying to
control herself so she wouldn’t fall on the mistake
of having a breakdown, or worse, a panic attack.
She was reminding herself to breathe constantly
and steadily, but it didn’t feel like it was enough air
on her lungs.

He wasn’t dead, she was sure. He couldn’t have left

Hogwarts without Dumbledore sending her word
and he couldn’t be killed in Hogwarts… could he?

No matter how much she tried to keep herself from

wondering, the questions were there and the image
of Regulus lying dead somewhere in the castle. The
image of Moaning Myrtle came to her mind. She
had been killed in Hogwarts and during classes.
Anything could happen and no matter how much
Dumbledore insists that Hogwarts was the safest
place on Earth, it wasn’t. Harry had attacked Draco
Malfoy in the bathroom, Anne had been attacked
near the dungeons by some Ravenclaw girls after
she had surpassed them in D.A.D.A. in her second
year because they had tried to get Remus’
attention. All those things happened right under
Dumbledore’s nose and he did absolutely nothing –
the girls had not been caught red-handed; Harry
didn’t get anything other than a slap on the wrist.

Anne was so nervous she was starting to get

nauseous. Dread was settling on her throat, making
it even harder to breathe. Anne knew something
had happened to him; she knew. She knew, she
just knew. She had heard that when you love
someone as much as she loved Regulus, then she
would be able to feel when something happened.

Sure, she had always been an anxious girl and at

that point her constant fear was barely a
background noise. But still, she felt like she was
sitting in a cage, waiting for the hunter that caught
her to come back to eat her.

She took off her jumper, suddenly feeling hot. She

held the collar of the shirt she had underneath and
shook it, trying to get her body temperature to go
down. It didn’t seem to be helping.

A loud click made her turn to the door, shaky hand

reaching for her wand at once.

She was ready, whatever came next, she was going

down swinging.

“Anne?” called out Regulus’ voice.

Every single part of her wanted to relax in relief,

but she made herself go even tenser. She couldn’t
trust her feeling, she needed to be rational. Her
hand was shakier now, she wanted to drop her
wand and run into her arms without hesitation, cry
out of relief and tell him that she had been so
worried. But she didn’t, she was smarter than that.

“Tell me something only you would know!” Anne

exclaimed, watching a very confused Regulus
stepping into the room.

“What?” he asked, walking further into the room.

“What do you mean? What do you want to hear?”

“Not a step closer, or I’ll attack!” she insisted. “Who

said ‘I love you’ first?”

“I did, and I didn’t expect you to say it back,”

Regulus said, raising his empty hands in surrender.
“Am I supposed to ask you something back?”

But Anne had not dropped her wand, suspiciously

watching Regulus leave the door slightly open to
the corridor. Her eyes narrowed.

“Why were you late?” she asked.

Regulus blinked once as if he was just then being

brought back to the reality of the situation he was
in. He looked over his shoulder for a second, seeing
something through the crack of the door and
nodding to himself before turning to Anne.

“I had a little meeting with a younger Slytherin who

needed help, you know, being Prefect and all, but I
thought that you’d might like to know about this as
well,” he said, looking at the door again and
opening it a bit more. “Barty Crouch Junior has
been having trouble at home and his father has
been trying to get in contact with the Dark Lord to
show support.”

With Eugenia Jenkins leaving the Ministry of Magic,

ousted as incompetent, and Harold Minchum
getting into power, things were a bit hard to deal
with politically. Sure, Minister Munchum was
certainly firmer and more prepared for the war that
was about to come by the way he threw more
Dementors on Azkaban and the hand-picked aurors
that he allowed to see confidential documents and
share only necessary information with those people
underneath them; besides, he was a good friend of
Monty and shared more information with him,
which left Anne quite informed, but still… the war
was coming with whoever it was on power. That
wouldn’t change.

A young boy walked into the room and, this time,

Regulus closed the door and locked it.

Barty Crouch Junior was younger than Regulus, she

knew that, she had met him and seen how young
he was, barely reaching thirty at the time he tried
to kill her brother. But there he was, barely a
teenager now. He had long dark brown hair pulled
back and tied in a low ponytail with something that
looked like a shoelace, his brown eyes still had light
and hope in them, but the constant trembling was
there. He looked like a scared dog, not able to fight
back.

“Hello,” she said, hesitant.

She tried her best to push the image of the man

licking his lips compulsively away from her mind.
The boy slowly licked his dry lips.

“Hello, Miss,” he answered.

She was older than him, she reminded herself. He

was nothing but a young teen in need of help.
Regulus had brought him to her and Regulus would
never put her in danger on purpose.

“How can I help you, Barty?” she asked.

He looked back at Regulus, who nodded and gave

him a slight push in the back, urging him to talk to
Anne honestly.

“Regulus said that you’re good with healing spells,”

he said, he sounded embarrassed. “I might be in
need of medical assistance, but I don’t want to
Madame Pomfrey. Regulus said that she would
need to call authorities.”

“Authorities?” Anne asked, confused. “Barty, who

hurt you?”

He looked at Regulus again, biting him bottom lip a

bit too strongly by how the skin around it went
white for a moment before he turned to Anne once
more and took a deep breath. By the way his eyes
were determinate as if he was doing something
very hard, she didn’t need an answer out loud, but
it was good for him to be able to say it – at least,
he knew it wasn’t normal.

“My father,” he answered.

She looked at Regulus, meeting his eyes already

watching her. The question was clear: ‘is it
constant?’ and the answer by how he looked down
at the ground was even clearer, ‘yes and everybody
knows’.

“Come here, let me see,” she said, reaching her

hand out to him. “Tell me, Barty, how old are you?”

“Fourteen,” he answered. “Yesterday was my

birthday.”

“You don’t say it! Happy birthday!” she said,

turning to him with a smile as she made him sit on
the bed. “Look, I know it’s weird to show the
wounds to someone and that your father told you
to keep it a secret, but you don’t have to.”

“If I tell, he’ll do something to my mum, I just

know it,” he said, shaking his head. “Miss, you
cannot tell anybody!” his eyes were wide as he
looked over her shoulder to Regulus. “You said she
wouldn’t tell! You promised that she wouldn’t tell
anyone!”

“She won’t!” Regulus said.

“I won’t,” she agreed. “Don’t worry, your secret is

safe with me. I just think it’s for the best if you told
a grown up.”

“I did,” he said. “I told Regulus.”

Anne almost laughed as she smiled just a little bit

to Barty as she took long looks at his face,
unmaking the glamour covering it. Sixteen-year-old
Regulus had skipped a year, was Prefect and on the
Quidditch team, being seen as one of the best
Seekers of the century in the school-level and
certainly was admired by his pureblood and poise.
It was no surprise that the younger kids would
always be around him, asking for help with
homework or help with family matters. As Prefect,
he was told to help and, as Regulus himself, he
liked helping the children – actually, he rather liked
children in itself.

What was surprising, however, was the extent of

hurt that Barty had.

His left eye under the glamour was almost closed

by the bruise around the cut on his eyebrow. His
bottom lip was busted, but that was probably from
him licking and biting it, it was too small to have
been done by a slap or punch.

“Did your father do this to you yesterday?” she

asked.

He nodded.

“We met at Hogsmeade and he took me out of the

village for dinner, Dumbledore allowed it,” he
explained. “I think I shouldn’t have said anything
about Evan Rosier being annoying.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, starting to heal

the lips first, since it was easier.

“My father wants me to make friends with the

known Death Eaters, maybe if I get their attention,
then the Dark Lord will turn to him,” he answered.
“He wants to support him, but I think it’s a rather
idiotic idea. Not that I said that to him, of course,
but those are my thoughts nonetheless.”

“Well, I can testify that Evan Rosier is indeed

annoying and that supporting the Dark Lord is a
bad idea,” Regulus said.

“Hear, hear,” added Anne, winking at Barty.

His lip was ready, so it twisted in a small smile. He

wasn’t too small of a child and he knew that the
two older teens were trying to calm him down, but
still he felt grateful that they were distracting him
from the constant burning of the wounds on his
face and body.

It took almost five minutes to heal his eyebrow and

get the bruise to go away and that was how he
knew that it was bad, but Anne’s face didn’t betray
her as she focused solely on making sure he was
feeling alright and getting Regulus to ramble about
how classes on his fourth year were the very best
and that he missed fourth year.

“Barty, are you hurt anywhere else?” she asked.

“There are a few bruises under my shirt, but… I

don’t think there’s anything broken, don’t worry,”
he dismissed quickly, blushing and getting the end
of his shirt and pulling it down, though nobody was
trying to take it off.

“If you don’t want me to see, I can teach Regulus

to do it, but somebody needs to take a look at it,”
she insisted. “Look, I won’t touch you, I just need
to know what I need to heal, ok? I’ve been there
before. It’s not nice to show something you got
hidden for so long, right, especially when the
bruises are already going away and you don’t need
to make so apparent again. I understand. But I
need to see it.”

His fingers holding the shirt twitched before he took

a deep breath and pulled it over his head, taking it
off completely.

Anne held her breath and she could feel Regulus

moving from the seat to stand beside Anne. She
had expected bruises and maybe a few burns, but
those marks under his shirt were… cuts, cuts that
formed words. "BASTARD' - "USELESS" - "GOOD
FOR NOTHING" - "TRAITOR".

A cursed blade.

Hermione’s screams were too loud. I couldn’t

breathe, I was too weak and the pain was still
there. Too long under Cruciatus, Bill would say once
he saw me, but at that moment all I could think
was that if I didn’t die, I’d forever be a failure,
because there was no way I would ever be able to
move again.

Hermione’s arm had been branded by a cursed

blade, the word ‘mudblood’ forever being used on
her, even if in silence, even if it was only by her
own mind. There is no way to heal or make the
cursed blade wound disappear.

There would be scars forever.

“I know a way to… make it better,” Anne said. “I’d

need a few days, but I can make the scars look
better and stop hurting so much.”

Barty blushed, about to bite his lip again, but

remembering that she had just healed it. He
stopped before he could hurt himself again in front
of her and took a deep breath.

“I don’t think you can make it go away,” he said.

“I didn’t say away, I said better,” she answered. He

looked up at her in surprise. “Barty, where did your
father find that dagger that he uses on you?”

Regulus was standing just behind her, she noticed

at once when he put his hand on her shoulder as if
trying to give her some type of support. Maybe he
had noticed that she had tensed up with the
wounds, but although he seemed to not like to see
the wounds as well, he was quite happy to give the
two people some support with a closer presence.

“I don’t know,” Barty admitted. “It’s been two years

since he got it and I… I don’t know where he found
it.”

“Did he use it on your mother as well?” she asked.

“No, Miss,” he mumbled.

Anne shook her head.

“You can call me Anne, Barty,” she said.

He didn’t want her pity and perhaps her offer could

be seen as it, but she seemed slight offended that
he was calling her miss all the time, so he just
nodded and dismissed it as Anne being a
comforting woman.

“He never used it on my mother, Anne, just on

me,” he answered.

Regulus’ anger was about to burst, so he took a

step back. He couldn’t believe a man so famous for
charity work and kindness as Mister Crouch could
go as far as hurting his son to that extent – he
knew he would hurt him, but so would most
pureblood parents, but under the glamour there
was an abused boy, not a scolded child. And to
threaten to kill your own wife… it was low of him,
and Regulus was disgusted that he had ever talked
to the man in a polite tone.

“I’ll make the blood stop for now. Give me a few

days and I’ll find a way to heal you, alright?” she
said.

He nodded.

“Thanks, Anne,” he said.

“There’s nothing you can thank me for,” she

dismissed.

Yet, she added on her mind.

And Regulus seemed to hear her thoughts because

he met her eyes and nodded a single time, clearly
at her service.

They stayed in silence for as long as Barty rambled

about how his classes were going, though he would
stop every few minutes asking if he was being
annoying. Anne would shut him up by shoving more
chocolate on his hands and mouth and he would go
back to talking about his daily life in the safety of
the castle, away from home.

At some point, the chocolates made its effect and

he fell asleep on the bed, leaving Anne and Regulus
sitting on the bedside, unable to master words to
explain to each other the anger and disgust they
were feeling.

“I thought I had it bad,” was all Regulus managed

to say.

“You do have it bad,” she answered. “I lived with a

Saint when compared,” before Regulus could cut
her off and say something about her life being bad
as well, she stopped the odd competition. “Jesus
Christ, Regulus, that on his face and body is just…
more than torture… that’s literally a homicide
waiting to happen. He’s going to kill him one day.”

Regulus shrugged.

“Or the other way around,” he said, hopeful.

“Not if I kill that man first,” she said.

“You can’t touch Mister Crouch, he’s powerful, just

slightly too dumb to be in the Inner Circle already,”
Regulus said. “I knew there was someone big trying
to join and that the Dark Lord was hesitant because
he had a really big mouth. I should’ve imagined it
was Crouch, especially when Little Barty started
following Evan around.”

“What’s especial about Evan?” she asked.

“He doesn’t really have friends, so when people lick

his boots, he’s easy to manipulate,” he looked at
the younger boy sleeping. “Easy enough for Barty
to try, but not easy enough for him to manage. He
was being used almost as a slave by that stupid
boy, so I took him with me, said I needed help with
carrying books and then… I saw the hand.”

“What about it? There’s nothing there,” Anne said.

“It was shaking when he grabbed the third book.

He broke it before, I’m sure,” Regulus explained.
“Sirius’ does the very same when he carries
something heavy. So I pushed a bit, he pushed me
back, so I broke his very weak Occlumency shield. I
saw it and he told me,” he shrugged. “I promised
him I would teach a stronger shield, so I might
need to bring him around sometimes.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “He’s quite… grown-up.”

Regulus rolled his eyes.

“He’s fourteen, not eleven,” he teased.

“Well, I don’t know how children are usually

supposed to act,” she said back, pushing him
lightly.

He smiled back at her, pushing her back just as

lightly.

It took a moment more, but eventually their smiles

died down as Regulus watched Anne’s head working
on a way to make the wounds hidden away better
now that they weren’t bleeding anymore.

“I think I’ll take him in,” Regulus suddenly said.

She turned to him, raising her eyebrows. “As a
ward,” he tried to explain. She shook her head,
trying to tell him that she still didn’t understand.
“My family is more important than his in the eyes of
the Ministry. I can take a ward if I don’t have any
younger siblings as a companion or something like
that, usually a helper.”

“A slave?” she offered the word.

“More like a manservant, but with title, if you want

to go that medieval,” he said. “He would move in
with me after he turned fifteen, so all he’d have to
do was survive the summer. He would still go to
school, but in the Holidays, then he’d work for me,
away from his father and mother. His father would
be happy enough that he’s doing whatever I want, I
might put on a good word for Mister Crouch and
hope that he’ll mess this all up himself. With some
luck, he’ll get killed by the Dark Lord once he starts
talking.”

“And get the blade,” she added.

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“How would that help? You’re not a Curse-Breaker,”

he complained.

“But you have the knowledge to try and find

something,” she said. “You’re known for collecting
blades; daggers, swords, knives, you have it all.
Nobody is going to find it weird. You might say that
Barty made a comment when you were talking
about your daggers and that he said Mister Crouch
had one that looked like yours or something. Buy it
from him.”

“It’s not that easy. He wouldn’t give me a cursed

blade like that, just because I want it,” Regulus
said.

“Don’t buy it with money, then,” she said. “You said

you might put on a good word for him in the Inner
Circle; there’s your bargain.”

His eyes widened, a smile appearing on his lips as

he almost vibrated in excitement. He could help
Barty now, without putting his own neck on the life.
So, he held both of sides of Anne’s head and pulled
her face near to his, kissing her lips firmly.

“You, my love, are a genius!” he said before leaning

in for another kiss.

Anne giggled in a low tone before leaning back at

him to kiss him deeply, glad that Barty didn’t seem
to wake up.

Chapter 81: Chapter Eighty -

Summary:
Anne finds herself wrapped around
her memories of Hermione's
creation to get Barty well again.

Notes:
I might not uptade for the next
week, but do bear with me. I have
tests and my dog's having
convulsions, which he never had
before. Thank you for supporting
me, everyone.
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

BARTY’S HEALTH

After the fateful day 14th of May, when Regulus

took Barty Crouch Junion officially as a ward, the
boy seemed a lot healthier, receiving some
presents from his mother at breakfast mail and
Anne relaxed a bit after that as he gained weight
with Severus’ potions.

The Potion Anne had been making was taking a lot

longer than she had expected and it only was ready
by the time they got to 31st of May. The paste was
ready, but there was no plausible way Anne would
let him test it before the wounds were closed – with
arnica and two very strong powders (octopus’
powder and madrake root in powder) there was no
way it would be painless. Still, she only got to the
very specific point of the potion where it was
boiling, but there was no colourful smoke coming
out, it was the early hours of the morning of the 1st
of June.

She gasped when the familiar smell came to her

nose. It was like standing beside Hermione as she
drank it after the Shell Cottage. She had created it
with the help of the very smart potioneer, Fleur
DeLacour. It was surprisingly simple, but a
combination that nobody had thought of before: 1
litre of water boiling hot, Chizpurfle Carapace,
Essence of Comfrey in oil and Griffin Claw Powder.

“Fuck yeah!” she croaked, quickly covering her

mouth.

Nobody seemed to wake up, but she kept herself

quiet anyways, smiling to herself as the light
started getting through the window and shining on
her small lab on the ground.

She took the big flask beside her and filled it with
the potion. She took the third paste pot she had;
the paste she had made enough for five pots, but
she had filled three to give to Barty, the rest she
had thought of using on herself, maybe she could
get rid of most scars she had on her body.

The last test was ready to be made. She took a sip

of the potion herself.

The effect was almost immediate. The burning of

the hidden scar burned enough to make her yelp,
but just as soon as it came, it went away.

Confused, Anne reached for her wand and took off

the glamour just to see the odd vision of the purple
scar moving as if it had its own heartbeat before
another burn in just a small part – there was a
small cut right under her breast and, since she was
braless under the shirt, she could see the odd pink
liquid coming out of it. Surprised, she took a knife
and with the blunt end of the blade, took the liquid
to examine after, trying her best to ignore the
overly sweet smell that came from it. The cut
closed itself soon after. The purple seemed to be
slightly lighter now.

She pulled her shirt down and took the knife with
the pink liquid, throwing the liquid into a small flask
and closing it tightly.

Well, at least she knew the potion worked well

enough. Hermione’s arm had bled through a whole
day and a whole night before it stopped and closed
off completely, the paste then made the scars leave
from the angry-red to a pale creme, before going
white and thin.

She took the flask and the pot and put inside a
small pouch before closing it tightly, putting it in
her bag and starting to get rid of her small lab on
the ground, trying not to drop anything or make
any loud noise.

“What are you doing?” asked a voice in a confused

and concerned whisper.

Marlene was sitting on her bed, just a small fraction

of her curtains open.

“Hi. Sorry. Did I wake you?” Anne asked,

mumbling.

“No, I woke up with Dorcas moving. What are you

doing?” she asked in a whisper again, but a bit
louder.

“Cleaning up. I’m done with a Potion’s experiment,

I wanted a recommendation letter from Slughorn,”
she lied the explanation.

“It’s Sunday morning,” Marlene complained, rolling

her eyes. “Grades aren’t that important, Anne. Go
to sleep.”

“I’ll go in a second. I just want to clean up,” she

said.

Anne had no plans on going to bed for sleeping,

both she and Marlene knew as Marlene rolled her
eyes again and closing the curtains of her bed. Still,
Anne smiled at the closed curtains and waited a
second before finishing cleaning up with her wand
and carrying the caldron and empty ingredient
glasses, flasks and pots to their places.

Once she was done, she went back to her bed and
lied down. She didn’t go to sleep; she just lied
there and plotted her next steps.

Since it was Sunday, she had the time and

opportunity to walk around the castle, however that
meant that the mail through the owls were less
common and could get too much attention. Still, it
was too early for her to try to send word to Regulus
in private, maybe he wasn’t even awake.

She sat down on the bed fifteen minutes after,

sliding away from bed and quickly getting her robes
over her nightgown, making her way out of the
dorms, down the stairs and up the stairs to the
boys’ dormitory. She walked in as silently as she
could, tiptoeing towards James’ bed.

She saw female shoes beside his bed.

Anne froze in place. She knew those shoes to be

Lily.

She hesitated.

“They’re just sleeping,” said a voice.

Peter was standing at the bathroom’s doorway. He

was just leaving, walking back into the room. He
leaned against his bed, hair still messed up from
sleeping and eyes barely open.

“The map and the cloak, are they with him?” she
asked. “Good morning, by the way, Peter.”

“Barely morning, Anne,” he dismissed, sitting down

on his bed. “The cloak is with me. I needed it
yesterday to sneak into the Prefect’s Bathroom, the
map is with Remus, I think. It was, the last time I
saw it.” She smiled at him, quickly moving towards
him and getting the map from his hands once he
offered it to her. “It’s nice that they adopted you.”

“I’m sorry?” she said.

“The Potters,” he answered. “James said that

you’ve been officially adopted now and all that. I
think it’s nice that you have a nice family again,
even in the midst of a war coming and all that, you
had time to make friends and make a new family.
It’s not everybody that has that opportunity. It’s
hard to have a nice family in the war. Be grateful.”

She tried her best not to frown or narrow her eyes.

Those words coming from anyone else would be
seen as a compliment or anything like that, but
coming from Peter in that way sounded nothing
more than bitterness. Perhaps it was envy or
jealousy, but such feelings coming from someone
with the history of Peter Pettigrew, it was
concerning.

“I am grateful,” she said.

“You don’t sound grateful,” he said, sitting on his

bed. “You’re often complaining about James and –”

She frowned, in disbelief of his reaction.

“And now I’m complaining about you getting

involved in my life,” she cut him off. “This is none
of your business.” He blinked, surprised that she
snapped back at him. “Sirius said you’ve been
quite… distant from them and he’s been concerned
with you. Don’t come at me for being ungrateful for
my family when you don’t know anything about me
and you’ve been ungrateful to your own family.”

“You don’t know about my family,” he said.

“I know enough about you, though,” she said.

“You’re scared of what’s coming next and I’m not
talking about the war. I’m talking about the fact
that everybody here knows what will happen next
and what they want to do and you’re feeling like
you’re missing something. Let me tell you, Peter,
you’re not. You’re confused, that’s all. You have a
lot on plate and it’s quite alright to just… take your
time, but it’s not quite alright to attack everybody.
You’ve been rude to Remus before and he has been
looking the other way because you’re under a lot of
pressure. You’ve been rude to James before and
he’s looked the other way as well because he’s a
proper mate.”

Silence. Peter was hesitating to answer. He knew

she was right, but still, the hurt didn’t seem to go
away.

“Have you noticed you said nothing about Sirius?”

he said in quite a low voice.

She blinked a few times.

“What about Sirius?” she asked.

“I’ve been rude to him several times and he has

said nothing because he didn’t even notice,” he
said.

“It’s Sirius… he’s rude to everybody. It’s literally his

sense of humour. What are you on about?” she
asked.

“He used to pay so much attention to my stories

even if he mocked me for it, he knew that my
mother did a driving test and the date, he knew
when I liked a girl before I noticed it… and then…
nothing. He doesn’t pay attention to me anymore,
it’s like we aren’t friends anymore,” he said.

Anne felt her stomach dropping to her feet as her

jaw went slack.

Those words were simply not the words she had

expected. Peter’s problems were not with her
taking the Marauder’s attention, it was of Sirius not
paying enough attention to him anymore, not even
with the jokes, mocking and uncontrollable teasing
that usually followed him and his friends. Those
were the words of a jealous teenager that had too
much in his plate to care for stupid things such as
crushes and likings, but that couldn’t avoid the
feelings piling up inside anymore.

Peter Pettigrew was in love with Sirius Black, and

Anne wasn’t sure he had even noticed up to that
point.

“Oh, Peter,” she said, voice sounding more pitiful

than she had intended. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t seem to have been expecting her

reaction, but the words ‘I’m sorry’ had its effect of
him, because his eyes filled with tears. He couldn’t
find his words to tell her that it wasn’t her fault,
because there was part of him that did feel like it
was her fault. Everything in their group seemed to
change when she showed up.

“Just get what you need,” he said, rolling his eyes

and closing his curtains.

The small points of Severus Snape, Regulus Black,

Elizabeth Fowley and Bart Crouch Junior were
walking in a small group through the corridors. It
was bad enough that she would have to end up
outing herself more and more to Barty, but all she
knew about Elizabeth was that she was a nice girl,
but no more – she sat beside her in the wedding
and never talked to her anymore and she certainly
didn’t protect Anne from the attacks and rude
things the Slytherins would say about her since
Evan Rosier’s proclaimed hatred for her.

Still, the potion had a ticking time passing through

and she needed Barty to drink it. She didn’t have
much of an option as she stood in the corner of the
corridor behind them, shrugging off the cloak and
putting it away before preparing herself to seem to
just be walking by.

“Oh, morning!” she said, falsely excited.

Regulus was the first to turn, disbelief and

confusion on his face as he stared at her.

“Good morning,” he greeted back.

“Anne,” was Severus’ cold greeting.

“Anne!” Barty said, clearly holding himself back

from running towards her or waving. He had
started liking the girl, even if she didn’t often talk
to him; the way Regulus talked about her certainly
helped.

“Hello, Sage,” Elizabeth said, a small and

uncomfortable toothless smile on her closed lips.

Elizabeth was polite, but she was uncomfortable

near Anne. They didn’t know each other well and
Anne certainly didn’t match her calm and collected
energy; even when Anne was sitting beside her in
the wedding, calmly watching the ceremony, she
felt like Anne needed to be somewhere else.
Perhaps it was the lion in her, but Anne always
seemed to have several things going through her
mind and it was hard not to try to guess what those
were as the snake she had been raised to be.

“Hey,” Anne answered. “Regulus, that potions we

were talking about that day; the one my friend
created.”

“Yes?”

“It’s ready,” Anne finished.

Barty’s eyes started shining, but his feet kept firmly

planted on the ground, undaring to move towards
the girl smiling at him.

Regulus turned to Severus and Elizabeth.

“We’ll catch up in a moment,” he said.

It was a clear dismissal that Elizabeth caught

quickly, but Severus didn’t move a single muscle,
too curious about the effect of the potion Anne was
taking off of her bag. All he did was ensure
Elizabeth that he would come find her in the library
later, but did not walk with her, just watching Anne
show the potion.

Sure, Barty didn’t think it looked too appetizing, but

a potion that she said would help him in a way that
his mother, someone well-versed in a healing,
couldn’t do, then he was excited to try either way.
It was dangerous to try potions he wasn’t sure
where came from or what was inside, but he
trusted Anne and, more than that, he trusted
Regulus.

“What’s in it?” Severus asked.

“Don’t even try stealing my recipe,” she teased.

“I’m curious now, but not that interested to the

point of stealing work from someone else, Sage,”
he teased back.

Anne ended up smiling at him. If this Severus met

the future Lockhart, he sure would throw a hex. It
was no surprised the constantly frown and disgust
in his face when he was forced to sit beside that
man during the meals in school, she loved watching
it in her first year because that Severus could only
watch in amusement and disgust, sometimes
holding back a clear rolling of his eyes, but this one
– the one from the 70s – still didn’t have that self-
control or professionalism, if he didn’t hex Lockhart,
he would throw a punch.

“Here, Barty,” she said, offering him the flask. He

took one look at the brownish liquid and then
looked back at her. “I swear is not as bad as it
looks. It’s not good, but I swear that you won’t
gag.”

He opened the cork. The smell assaulted him and

made him cough, but he took a deep breath, held it
in and drank it all at once. Anne was right, he didn’t
gag, but he certainly winced with the taste and the
aftertaste made him shiver.

Before he knew what was happening, Anne was

holding him and dragging him to another corridor.
He tried to ask what was going on, but the pain
came so strong from so many parts of his body that
he had to bite his lip to keep himself from
screaming or complaining at all. All he did was hold
onto Anne and, when Regulus appeared by his side,
to Regulus. Severus was standing in front of him,
carefully lifting his shirt to watch the dark
substance ooze from his half-open wounds… and he
watched it close soon after.

“Severus, can you get a bit of it and put it on this

glass,” Anne said, offering the future potions-
master a flask. He took it. “Then, can you clean him
up, please?”

He didn’t answer, but Barty could feel him using a

quill to transfer some of the substance to the flask
without magic, unsure of how it would react. Then
the handkerchief touched his skin and he waited for
the pain, the burning that usually came from his
wounds starting to bleed again, but nothing came.

His wounds were closed up completely.

“Are you dizzy?” Regulus asked.

“Yes,” Barty answered.

“Help me sit him down, Regulus,” Anne said,

holding Barty tight in the very moment his knees
shook and gave out. Regulus grunted. “Oh, fuck!
Fuck! Fuck,” she said several times.

Barty’s sleepy, but confused eyes went wide

towards her.

“Miss, you’re saying horrible words,” he said.

Regulus chuckled as he sat the young boy on the

ground against the wall. Barty was shaking quite a
bit now that the pain was going away and he was
left with nothing but the odd sensation that his
body seemed lighter and almost empty. It would
pass in a few minutes, but it was certainly
uncomfortable.

Anne stood upright, cracking her back as she took

the paste from her bag and gave it to Regulus, who
put it away in his robes’ pocket

“Barty, you need to put it over your scars before

you go to sleep, you’ll need to use it a few days
and it stinks badly, so be careful about it, but
otherwise, you’ll be just fine,” Anne said. “And we
talked about you not calling me ‘miss’ anymore.”

Severus watched the scene, crossing his arms and

taking a look around to make sure there was
nobody coming.

“Thinking about mastering in potions as well,

Anne?” Severus asked.

“Hardly,” she said. “I’m good, but not a passionate

potion-maker.”

“You should be a Healer, then,” he teased, looking

over his shoulder at her for a moment before
looking away once more. “I can picture you in a
Healer outfit.”

“I think that’s his way of saying you’d look good in

green,” Regulus teased, winking at Barty and
poking his side gently, Barty started nodding. “See?
Barty agrees as well.”

Anne smirked, winking at Barty as well before

turning to Severus with the grin growing on her
lips.

“I tell you one thing, Severus, I should’ve been a

Slytherin,” she chuckled drily, “well, maybe in
another life. But you would be a Slytherin in all
possible timelines in this universe.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Severus asked,

frowning.

But Regulus knew what that meant as Anne

dismissed Severus’ curiosity, smiling gently at
Barty and urging him to get up to take him to the
kitchens. That small nudge she had given Severus
could only mean one thing: Anne was ready to tell
Severus Snape the truth about her life.

Notes:
I made a few tiktoks about From
Eden. If you have any titkoks to
make, do post them under the
hashtag: #fromedenfanfic

Chapter 82: Chapter Eighty-One

Summary:
Severus Snape gets the truth, all
details at once.

Notes:
extremely triggering chapter

nothing explicit, but the implicit sa

and child abuse is pretty heavy
here

THE WHITE BATHROOM DOOR

VERY TRIGGERING CHAPTER: SEXUAL

ASSAULT, CHILD ABUSE AND DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE

Severus Snape never in his life had felt so

confused, but obliged so quietly to a summon of
someone that barely seemed strong enough to hurt
him if needed, but he was scared of Anne enough
to receive the small note and just put it away,
convincing his future self that whatever the girl had
to tell him at eleven at night in the Room of
Requirement was important enough to get himself
at risk of being caught wandering around the
corridors with Regulus in the middle of the night.

He wore something other than his school-robes this

time. He wouldn’t dare to say that, but he was sure
that Regulus could see it, but he was excited to
subtly show Anne how much better he was doing
now that his father had no access more than
absolutely necessary to the house’s account – he
had clothes that fit him now and his hair was better
taken care of now that he had asked Regulus to
teach him, his shoes no longer made his feet hurt
and his school supplies were of the better condition
there was. He wouldn’t dare flaunt it or show it off
in malicious means because he knew how it was to
be on the other side of the political see-saw, but he
wanted Anne to see. He wanted Anne to be proud
of him.

If completely honest, he wasn’t sure why, but he

felt like he needed to impress Anne somehow. She
had taught him a lot and put him in touch with
feelings that his survival had made him put aside.

When he met her, he had been forceful, insistent

and annoying to the point of making her (and
others, he later found out) uncomfortable and
awkward by second-hand embarrassment since he
had never been too good in reading social cues.
Still, she had looked at him with more force than he
had been expecting and with some off admiration
that soon faded into disappointment when he had
forced his way into her mind. She pushed him off
with a flawless technic that made him envious for
weeks. While he sulked, Regulus scolded him time
and time again, already seeing something that he
couldn’t on the red-headed girl. So, then, he
apologized, or the best next thing. In that library,
seeing her shaking, wide eyes and distant, clearly
afraid of something he couldn’t hear or see made
him understand that her ‘annoying’ and ‘academic-
rival’ persona was something that she used to put a
barrier between the others and her. He thought it
was over and that he had seen what Regulus had
seen on her: the scared little girl flinching away
from his touch, gasping for air as she shook sit on
the library table with runes all around her. But then
the day of the train came. It was then that he truly
saw what Regulus had seen; the girl was stumbling
away, gasping for air, eyes wide, skin pale and
hands shaking and yet she hadn’t asked for help,
not for embarrassment, but because she had
another focus: getting to safety, but less than five
minutes later she seemed put together again,
looking at him in the eyes and asking for
communication with a known smuggler.

She was brave, cautious, smart and, more than

anything, strong in a way that he couldn’t see, but
could feel. She was the contrary of his father, and
yet so alike at the same time that it took him a
moment to understand that he wasn’t afraid of
Anne, but that he respected her somewhat.

While Tobias Snape was big, intimidating,

unforgiving, unapologetic and terrified every
waking and sleeping moment of anyone around
him, Anne was big, intimidating, unforgiving,
unapologetic and yet made him feel safer than
ever, because she was on his side and that ruthless
girl would stand beside him even if the sky fell, as
long as he was loyal to her and didn’t hurt those
that she was loyal too.

Tobias was his monster no matter what right and

what wrong he did, he would forever haunt and
hurt him even if he wasn’t present in flesh. Anne
was somebody’s monster, but not his and she could
never be because he never intended on betraying
her.

“You forgot to tie it,” said Regulus suddenly.

He turned, glancing at the mirror in front of him.

With Evan at some girl’s bed and the other two

boys asleep, he was free to fix himself on the main
dormitory

Regulus was ready in his expensive emerald green

silky robes and was quick to tie the undershirt of
the robe with a complicated, but small knot as he
took a step back to look at Severus in clear
admiration.

“Should I be worried about dressing up to meet my

girlfriend?” Regulus teased. “You’re looking sharp,
mate.”

“I don’t think I can take Anne’s attention more than

a few hours a day, Regulus, your girlfriend is safe
from me,” he teased back. He saw Regulus glaring
at him. “Say what you want, but she can be
annoying when she wants.”

“Believe me, so can you,” he quickly defended her.

Severus grinned to himself as he put on his shoes

as if he had been expecting Regulus to jump on her
defence as soon as he started teasing her, after all
Anne wasn’t there to tease him back herself.

“Let’s go,” Severus said, nodding once.

They made their way through the corridors only

jogging once when Regulus ‘felt’ the presence of
Madame Pomfrey walking by, and by that ‘felt’ he
meant that it was her turn of watching that part of
the castle and he was quite scared of her since she
had pressure to know how he had broken a few ribs
and didn’t buy his silly Quidditch story as an
excuse. Still, they got to the Room with their hearts
barely racing and paced in front of the door a few
times before they walked in.

Severus stopped dead on his tracks as soon as he

walked inside and saw the reunion of people.

First of all, he was taken aback by the image the

Room had taken in red and gold, a lot warmer and
a lot more comfortable and cosier than Slytherin’s
Common Room. He had never been to the
Gryffindor Common Room in a normal day, only
during parties when the chairs and sofas were put
away and there was nothing more than a warm
fireplace and odd decorations all over the place.
Second of all, Anne wasn’t alone as he had
expected her to be; James Potter, Sirius Black,
Remus Lupin and Lily Evans were with her, turning
to look at the double door that had opened as
Regulus and him walked in.

“Hello,” Regulus said oddly formal as he closed the

door after Severus was inside. Severus clearly
noticed that it was his way of not letting him out.
“Good afternoon to all of you. Hi, love,” he added at
the end when he saw Anne smiling a bit to him.

“Hi,” she answered.

Severus’ eyes narrowed at her, clearly taken aback

and quite suspicious of her motives now that her
company was shown.

“Afternoon, Anne,” he said, politely, but ready to

run away if needed.

“This is not a prank, I promise,” she said as soon as

she took a good look at his eyes. “I just have
something to tell you and I thought they would like
to be here, I mean, they told me that they wanted
to be here and… well, I actually wanted to show it
to you since telling you might not be enough and
I’m short on Truth-Serum.”

He crossed his arms, still not walking any further

into the room and ignoring how uncomfortable the
fact that Regulus was leaning against the door was
making him. He just wanted Anne get up from the
sofa she had been sharing with Lily and walking
towards him.

“What are you rambling about? Be direct,” he said.

“It’s late.”

She ignored the way he had subtly said that he was

uncomfortable and wanted to leave the room,
innocently looking him up and down.

“I like your new robes and haircut,” she offered.

A peace offer that he would be stupid to take. Still,

Severus was a fool for loyalty and took the offer.

“Thank you,” he said.

Sirius shifted uncomfortably on the chair he was

perched on beside Remus, knowing that no matter
how much he wanted to make fun of Severus’ effort
into his appearance, Anne would curse him to the
next day and Remus would never talk to him again.
Besides, he had just gained Regulus’ attention and
he had nodded with a soft grin on his lips and that
was much more than he had in a long time.

Anne shifted her weight to one leg to the other and

looked at Regulus. The boy was quick to leave the
door and walk towards her with arms apart as she
slipped into them for a hug before a quick kiss.

Regulus glanced at James, who was looking at the

ceiling, very interested in the odd mark in there
that he had never seen before. He let go of Anne
soon after and Lily poked his side to make him look
down again.

“Why did you call me here?” Severus asked. “And

why the company?”

“The thing I want to talk to you about is very

sensitive and I thought I deserved some moral
support. You’ll understand once we start, I promise,
but before I want to tell you a few things,” she
said.

“Go on,” he urged.

“Can we sit? I’m shaking a bit,” she admitted.

His eyebrows twitched in worry that Lily recognized

from the say she fell off the tree near their house
and walked it off as if nothing had happened. He
insisted to tell her parents that she had fallen even
though she had not but a scratch on her, but he
was too worried to make her annoyed by his
cumbersome manners.

Anne sat down on the ground near the coffee table,

Regulus beside her and Severus across from on
her.

“Anne, what is happening?” he asked once more.

“Give her some time,” Remus snapped.

Severus turned, ready to glare at him, but Anne

chuckled. He looked back at her in surprise.

“Forgive Remus, he tends to be overprotective

when I’m sensitive, Severus,” she said. “He mustn’t
be, however, because I’m fine.”

Regulus held back his smile while looking at Remus,

knowing very well how he must be feeling. Regulus
had been scolded enough times for being too
overprotective, but learned his lesson soon into the
relationship with her. Still, the Black was distracted
by the way Lily Evans was watching him. He looked
back at her curiously.

“It’s a pleasure to… officially meet you as Anne’s

boyfriend,” she said, voice wavering.

He couldn’t stop a chuckle.

“Yes,” he said, turning away from Anne to offer Lily

his hand for a handshake. “A pleasure… ma’am.”

The teasing went well with the charming smile he

threw her way because she smiled back at him,
shaking his head, but that didn’t seem to make
James Potter like him any less as he saw the boy’s
lips turning white as their formed a line. He smiled
at him as well, but soon looked away. No matter
how handsome James Potter was under his eyes,
he would forever be Sirius’ annoying friend and now
he was his father-in-law (sort of) and it made him a
bit awkward, if he was honest.

Anne watched the interaction and gave James’ leg a

shove. The boy glared at his daughter, but gave a
forced smile back at Regulus.

“I’m so confused,” Severus complained.

“I’m going to drop my Occlumency shield to you so

I can tell you my story,” Anne answered at once.

Silence.

“You don’t need to, you can just tell me,” he said.

“You’re a sceptical and I know, for a fact, that you

would never believe me if I didn’t bring you some
type of evidence, which I don’t have,” she
explained. “My story is long and it could take too
much time to talk about it and it might trigger me,
showing you might trigger me as well, but…”

But save the other from relieving her trauma with

her, she meant to say and Severus knew that as he
bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from
asking anything.

“And you decided to just put me in your

memories?” he said, confused. “Why would you be
comfortable with it?”

“Because I know you’d do the same with me if I

already didn’t know your story,” she answered.

He shook his head.

“Anne, that’s… personal… intimate.”

“I can deal with it,” she insisted. “There will be

memories that I will skip –”

“Then you’re not dropping the shield –”

“I just don’t want you living through that part of my

trauma,” she said. “I promised myself that it
wouldn’t have an effect on me again and I’m trying
and I promised that… he wouldn’t have any power
over me again, so I’m trying to just push it away.”

He wanted to say that it wasn’t how it worked and

that he had tried doing that already, but… he didn’t.
Anne would find out about that on her own at one
point or another. And he didn’t have the courage to
say that with the way James Potter seemed to
shrink behind Anne, clearly knowing what she was
taking about.

“Alright,” he accepted.

Anne took a deep breath.

“Alright,” she repeated.

He took his wand, fingers wrapping around it slowly

and carefully, giving her time to change her mind,
but she didn’t. Anne didn’t hesitate or try to look
away from his eyes.

And, suddenly, he was in her mind.

Severus Snape was crouched down beside the little

girl with dirty, matted red hair inside the smallest
crawl space he had ever seen in his life. There was
a small makeshift bed inside there and two shelves
cluttered with broken and old things. The little girl
was hugging her knees, trying her best to make
herself even smaller than she already was, looking
through the cracks of the small door, she seemed
very adamant that she wasn’t going to fall asleep,
but her eyes were heavy and her head would
sometimes sway from one side to the other. Until a
moment that her head didn’t sway, but she was
looking to the side.

He finally saw the young boy lying beside the girl.

He was still… too still, too pale, too sick. He had
dark hair that was messy and dirty and clothes that
were too big on his skinny form.

“Harry?” she called out.

“Hm,” he did.

“I’m hungry,” she commented.

Severus blinked, wondering how that was an

important memory to Anne.

“It’s locked, Anne, we’ll eat in the morning,” Harry

dismissed.

“No, Harry, I’m really hungry,” she insisted. “Aunt

Petunia didn’t let me have dinner because she
found Dolores. She watched you eat tonight, so you
didn’t bring me anything this time around.”

In one of the shelves there was a torn-up piece of

cloth that had been tied to give the resemblance of
a baby wrapped in cloth with a very small head. In
Anne’s mind, that was a doll. In anybody else’s
mind, that was plain cruelty, especially after her
Aunt Petunia had taken scissors and torn it up in
anger because she was lulling the ‘baby’ to sleep
instead of cleaning the dishes as she had been
ordered to do, but since Harry was doing it already,
Anne didn’t think she needed to help.

That was the moment that Severus Snape

understood that he wasn’t in a child’s hiding place
in a house or in a crawl-space at all, he was in a
cupboard and that was Anne’s and that boy’s
bedroom. He felt sick in the stomach.

“I’ll skip breakfast so you can eat mine, alright?”

the boy said, his voice was slightly hoarse. “Now,
please, Anne, lie down and go to sleep. I’m tired.
I’m not feeling well right now, Anne, I really need
to sleep”

“I’m hungry,” she insisted.

He knew that Anne couldn’t be much older than five

or six at that point, but Severus certainly was
annoyed by her insistence on food. However, he
didn’t have much time to dwell on it, because
Harry’s eyes rolled to the back of his head and his
whole-body locked before it started shaking in a
 whole-body locked before it started shaking in a
convulsion that Anne didn’t know what to do with.

She screamed.

Anne screamed as loud as she could with all the

strength her body had and with all the power her
lungs had. A scream so loud that Severus was sure
could wake the dead, if they were in town.

By the noises coming from all around, it worked.

Footsteps were heard and Severus froze – the steps
came from over them and he understood as the
door unlocked that he was under the stairs, living
with two children in a cupboard.

“What is it, girl?” asked a fat man, peeking into the

cupboard. “PETUNIA!” he screamed.

An ugly woman with a familiar long face came to

peek as well. She grabbed the girl to get her out of
the cupboard and simply watched as her own
nephew wiggled and shook, unable to stop himself,
too lost in the fever that she didn’t even know he
had up to that point. Anne cried in silence beside
her, knowing that she would get hit if she made a
since sound.

Petunia Evan’s scared reaction as her eyes filled

with tears didn’t make Severus any more
sympathetic to her situation after he knew what
she had done with those children.

There was a moment where memories were thrown

forward at him, passing through in rapid speed as
he barely paid attention, still too shock of the
things he had seen, digesting the disgusting
reaction of the girl he had seen several times
growing up and even played when he was nine or
so.

A memory slowed down and he watched with

attention.

Anne was older, hiding behind the broken and old

sofa in a house in the very middle of nowhere as
her cousin and her brother hid somewhere else.

The tall, big man at the door was friendly and

clearly the saviour by the way he wanted to take
Harry away from there, saving her brother’s life by
presenting him another world where he could be
safe, admired and loved. But he was the enemy at
the same time because he wanted to leave her
behind for a whole year.

And as the man that Severus quickly recognized as

Hagrid took Harry away a few months later he
understood why Anne was worried.

Everyday, he followed as she did every single chore

around the house, struggling every day with things
she had never done without Harry’s assistance or
without his orders. She was the sous-chef, he
would say like he had seen in TV one day, but now
that she was thrown to be the chef she was a hot
mess and wanted nothing more than to disappear
as she burned her hand once more at the pan she
clearly didn’t know how use and that was too heavy
for her to manoeuvre all by herself.

The slap came before Severus even knew who had

hit her, making the knife she had been using to cut
the carrot slip from her hand and cut her finger.

“You little useless bitch!” the fat man said. “The

carrots are too thick, make it thinner. The soup
gets too vegetable-ly if you don’t.”

“Sorry, Uncle Vernon,” she said, lips wobbling as

she held back as much as she could of the tears of
pain. Her little finger was cut vertically; the cut
wasn’t deep, but it certainly was hurting enough to
make a 10-year-old child cry.

And the rest of the year was like that. But once
Harry was back, he took over everything and she
sat to the side, watching him do everything and he
told stories of his first year in Hogwarts in whispers
in fear of being caught talking about something he
was supposed to pretend it didn’t exist.

“… and Professor Snape is so scary, but he’s the

best Potion-Master Hogwarts has had, or so said
Professor McGonagall. Professor McGonagall is
soooo nice! She gave me biscuits and talked to me
for almost a whole hour!”

Severus couldn’t breathe for a moment.

Things seemed to promise to get better to Anne as

he watched more and more of her life.

Anne went to Hogwarts. He watched her get sorted

into Slytherin and he watched his older version
watch in surprise as the girl that looked just like
her mother when looking away from him sit at the
table Lily would never have been allowed to. He
watched as his old self watched and protected her
and her brother and his awful friends for years. He
thought he would see nothing more.

Harry’s fourth year, however, brought forward a

different girl.

As soon as summer started, the memories were

blocked and locked away from him and, though he
carelessly tried to reach for it, he was pushed away
and forward and time. He allowed himself to be
moved away, catching a glimpse only of a
bathroom door closed and flashes of light coming
from the inside every few seconds.

He watched as the future Severus watched her

from far away, not daring to get too close to the
girl that looked terrified when Professor McGonagall
touched her shoulder as she walked by to talk to
Severus. Something had happened and he didn’t
know what. Until the memory slowed down again
through the Triwizard Tournament and Anne stood
in front of his classroom desk, hands shaking.

“Professor, how can a girl get pregnant?” she had

asked suddenly.

Both Severus’ choked at once.

“Miss Potter, I don’t see how that’s an appropriate

question,” he scolded. “You’re too young. You can
get a family when you’re older, but for now the
question should be how to avoid it. If you want, I
can get you some potions and –"

“Professor, I need to know how a woman come to

be with child,” she insisted. “I need to know if I’m
going to have his child.”

The truth fell to his head at once. The flinching, the

fear, the shaking, the… stillness of such lively girl.
He tried not to believe it, but the way her tears
were gathering as he took too long to answer, he
knew that his fears were correct.

“Sit down, Miss Potter, I believe we might need to

talk,” he said.

“I talked to Dumbledore and he said that… perhaps

keeping it a secret might be for the best interest in
the moment, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask if I
could be. I mean, pregnant, you know? I never… I
don’t understand how it works,” she explained.
“Aunt Petunia said I needed to be away from boys,
but never more than that. Professor, I fear I might
be with child… he touched me.”

“Anne, who did?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But it does! It does matter. He can be expelled!”

Severus insisted.

He said it too loud because Anne flinched away

from him, not believing that he would ever scream
at her.

“He will not, sir. He’s not a student,” she said.

“A professor, then?”

“Sir, he’s not in school at all,” she insisted.

For a moment, he thought that she was protecting

someone, not wanting the attention that a
persecution could bring to her case, but then he
invaded her mind and, unable to protect herself,
she allowed him. The Severus in the past didn’t see
what he did, but he saw his reaction – the paleness
was sickening and the name ‘Vernon’ passed
through his lips without a sound before he just
watched Anne fold herself in half and throw up all
over her shoes and on the floor as he shook in
place, hearing her sobs and desperate apologies.

“Anne –” he started.

“Sir, I’m sorry for the mess. I can clean this if I can
find my wand,” she was stuttering. “I’m so sorry,
really. I am.”

Severus knew that Lily would never forgive him if

he had allowed what happened to her daughter go
unpunished, but first he needed to right his wrong
of leaving Harry and Anne crying as he stood in the
doorway, watching her dead body grow cold. He
cried and grieved and then… left, like the coward he
was. That memory that he had seen the year
before as Anne experimented with memory-magic
was the one he hated the most.

The Severus in the past couldn’t help but hate the

Severus in the future. There was no way that the
boy he was now would ever allow his version of a
man walk freely after abandoning two crying,
confused and scared children.

Anne cleaned her vomit.

“Anne, you aren’t pregnant,” he said, firmly and at

once.

“I am not?” she said. “Then… why can’t I eat? Why

can’t I sleep? Why can’t I do anything without
throwing up my guts?!”

“That’s your body trying to cleanse itself,” he said.

“But there’s nothing to clean. You’re fine and
healthy. What he did to you will have no effect on
your physical health,” he explained once she
seemed confused. “A touch such at those cannot
make you with child. Perhaps you would be more
comfortable talking about this with Madame
Pomfrey if not with me,” she shook her head,
refusing to move from her chair. “There has to be
penetration with his intimate parts, not just his
fingers, and he has to finish himself inside of you.
That’s how pregnancy occurs.”

“I am… clean, then,” she said.

“Yes, you are,” he said.

And as he thought the memory would move along,

he saw Anne getting up from her chair and jumping
into his arms, blabbering like a child and shaking
like a cat in his very tensed up and awkwardly
placed arms around her shoulder, not moving a
single inch.

Then the memory moved along as he watched Anne

walking into his classroom after classes were over,
sitting in the corner as he worked and cried herself
to exhaustion, sleeping several times in a sitting
position on the student desks near his desk. He
watched as his older version did little to support her
besides existing there and letting her cry without
questions. He wondered if he had talked to
Dumbledore about it behind Anne’s back or if he did
something against Vernon without the girl knowing;
he hoped so, because he would never forgive
himself for not doing so. The girl there clearly had
been looking for a father she never had and the
closest thing she found was the man that hated her
father the most, the only one that allowed her to
feel and did not blame her for it – he didn’t tell her
to not let Harry see it, he just enabled her to do as
she pleased and then made sure she felt alright
enough to leave the room before curfew.

Soon enough, however, Anne buried all that disgust

of herself away once the war seemed to break for
real, taking Sirius Black away from her and leaving
her with a brother that had only half of a mind.

And the war started, taking away the very little

childhood she had left and throwing nothing but
inhumane feelings towards her: hunger, cold, fear
and hopelessness. All those feelings that a person
shouldn’t feel, but most importantly those were
feelings that a child shouldn’t feel living in the
woods, always in the move and on the run from
people that wanted her and the people she cared
about dead. There was no dignity in the way they
lived, there was no respect for the bodies of the
people she loved that were never found or were
found and thrown to the side.

Anne died little by little.

Until Remus Lupin gave her another chance.

Severus Snape hated how grateful and admired he

was of a Marauder as Remus consoled Anne after
she walked to him, covering in Severus’ blood, too
in shock to explain anything. He gave her the box
and started saying.

“You need to run and hide, I need to find Tonks and

we’ll go for Teddie and –”

He fell, dead, right in front of Anne.

And Anne turned and ran.

Severus Snape was sitting across from Anne.

“Are you going to be sick?” he asked.

She shook her head, though she was holding her

breath. She was holding onto the coffee table with
a lot of strength, enough to make her knuckles
white.

“You tried to look,” she accused.

“It was an instinct, once I understood it was a

memory you were trying to block, I walked away,”
he said. “I’m sorry, Anne,” she nodded to him. “I
did teach you well, though. Your shield is very
organized.”

She forced a small smile, though the memories

were still vivid and shallow on her mind as she tried
to bury them deep once more, focusing on good
things. With memories so messed up, it was hard
to compartmentalize them once more; to put
painful and good memories from the past in its
respective boxes was hard, but agreeing that some
memories from the present should be buried with
them was also hard.

“I’m going to be sick,” she announced.

James was beside her with the rubbish bin in a

second while Sirius jumped from where he was
perched up and walked away, gagging to himself
before Anne could even begin throwing up.

Severus watched Regulus hesitate to touch her

back as she vomited on the bin, unsure of her
reaction to his touch. He hated how he knew that
Regulus needed to be careful at the moment and
how it was probably his curiosity and insistence
that made her like that, all because he was
confused to the existence of the memory with the
white door.

Anne leaned away from the bin, eyes closed tight,

undaring to look at the mess she made. Lily helped
her up to sit down comfortably on the sofa, not on
the ground.

“Do you have questions?” Anne said, voice

wavering.

“His questions can wait, sweetheart, come on, sit

down,” James said, putting the bin away. “Sirius,
mate, stop!”

“I’m going to be sick,” Sirius cried.

“The bin’s over there,” James pointed.

Sirius gagged loudly again, but did not go to the

bin.

Severus rolled his eyes, going back to looking at

the pale girl sitting beside Lily in the sofa. He
cursed himself for not seeing the similarities
between them from the bat, but he hated himself
for how much he could only see James in her face
now that their connection was obvious. He could
see more Lily in Harry than in her, even if she
looked so much like her mother.

“Do you have questions?” she asked again, voice

firmer this time.

Regulus moved away from her, sitting beside

Severus.

“Our talk… Did I do something after that?” he

asked. "To stop it all."

“I do think so, but I cannot be sure,” she admitted.

“How could I leave you there after I knew what was

going on? The things he did to you, to your brother
and your aunt. Anne, those were –”

“I’m quite aware of what those things were, I was

there,” she cut him off, glaring at his emotional
response. “You couldn’t take me away, you know
that. Harry needed the protection of the blood-
wards.”

“But you –”

“I wouldn’t leave Harry behind just to protect

myself, no matter how much I wanted,” she
admitted.

Still, there was a voice in the back of her head that

said that he left her for a whole school year when
she was ten, having fun with his friends while she
developed a lack of vitamin D for lack of sunlight.
And Severus seemed to know what she was
thinking, even if she didn’t feel his presence in her
mind.

“We got along quite well,” he said. “Surprisingly.”

“I was an annoying child, I get that,” she said,

allowing a weak smile to get to her lips. “You were
very kind… no, perhaps kind is not the word, the
word might be ‘understanding’. You were very
understanding of my situation. My friends were…
good and they didn’t really deserve an insight of
the life I lived; I didn’t want to burden anyone that
didn’t already know. I went to grown-ups for help,
but they didn’t help me and you couldn’t do
anything as you were a reformed Death Eater, if
you didn’t have Dumbledore on your side, you’d be
thrown into Azkaban.”

“Make company to me, apparently,” Sirius

whimpered from his place in the corner of the
room, cheeks finally starting to get rosy again.
Remus sighed and walked to him, dragging him to
sit down once more. “Maybe we would’ve been
cellmates, what do you think?”

“I’d rather kiss a Dementor,” Severus blankly said

at the boy before turning to Anne once more. “The
memories of that night, how do you even have
them? You were just a baby with not a year of age
–”

“Not mine, as you could see,” she said. “They

were… marks in time. When something as
traumatic as that happens in a house, one can
recuperate the memories and impressions of that
time with a good spell. You taught me that. You
taught me a lot of things that nobody seemed to
want to.”

“That talk –”

“Was the closest thing to care a man besides my

brother and the Weasleys showed to me without
wanting something in return. I mean, I barely saw
Remus since he was always moving around and
Sirius was stuck at Grimmauld Place” she said.
“Thank you for caring for me.”

“For what? For not being a rapist? For not being a…

I don’t even have words, Anne. I was your
professor, what else could I do? What did you
expect me to do?”

“Not care, but you did.”

“I –”

He couldn’t say he didn’t care; he could feel and

watch the very moment the older Severus’ heart
had broken in a million pieces before he tried fixing
himself up again as fast as he could to not let
anything of his mess to get to her. He didn’t want
to burden her and she didn’t want to burden him;
and yet they found solace in each other’s silent
company. It wasn’t a common dynamic and not
once that Severus Snape from the future had
actually hoped or planned for, but one he didn’t
have the interest of destroying unless necessary.

And behind the white bathroom door, Anne threw

the last painful memory, fixing herself up in the
very same way Severus did to not burden her, this
time because she did not need to burden anyone.

Behind that door, she was convinced there was

nothing of important existence, so it was forgotten.

Chapter 83: Chapter Eighty-Two

Summary:
The new group Anne gathered
finally see each other in a public
social gathering

Notes:
Finally more Mary! I'm excited to
have her around more.

I'll be back sooner since today is

my last test

PANDORA’S PARTY FOR MARY

Mary MacDonald had few hopes about her birthday.

Maybe she would slip into the kitchen, drink some
butterbeer her friends would sneak into the castle
and go to sleep an hour or two after the usual time
she went to bed, but she did not expect a full-
blown party happening in the Ravenclaw Tower’s
Common Room with Pandora smiling bigly at her,
muttering the words ‘surprise’ as if it was nothing
big.

It was a Friday night and there was nothing that

could end up going wrong. Professor Flitwick knew
about the party and was pretending not to and
Pandora invited only a few of her friends besides
Mary’s friends.

Still, there was a part of Mary that didn’t believe

her eyes as she saw Regulus Black, Severus Black
and Barty Crouch Junior standing in the corner of
the room, talking to each other in low voices in the
very same room as James Potter, Sirius Black,
Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew were on,
especially with Lily Evans and Marlene McKinnon. In
the middle of them, however, it was not surprising
to see Anne Sage.

Mary was sure that if she liked women, she

would’ve liked Anne somewhat. Sure, she was
pretty and all, but there was little one could do to
not like Anne. Mary liked to believe that she was a
great observer, but Anne didn’t allow much to leave
her mind – she knew that Anne loved James very
much, that her bond with Lily was growing rapidly,
Anne hated black licorice and still ate it every now
and again, Anne didn’t care for school; that last one
was odd, she had nice grades and Mary actually
found herself liking having her in class with her so
she had an actual competition outside of
Ravenclaw, but there was very little attention
coming from her in classes. Another thing that Mary
had observed was that Anne was always walking in
the thin line between fraternization between houses
and clearly being in the wrong house, especially
when talking to Slytherin and Gryffindor.

So, to be a good host and not show any preference,

Mary made her way to Anne first.

“Anne! Oh, you came, too!” Mary said. “Pandora

said you weren’t sure if you’d make it or not.”

“Yeah, I was feeling under the weather this

morning, but I got better and I couldn’t miss it!”
said Anne. “Happy birthday! Happy eighteenth!”

“Thanks! I don’t feel any different,” she admitted.

Anne laughed.

“Nobody does,” she dismissed. “Pandora seemed

very excited about this party, rambled about it to
Regulus for almost thirty minutes. She was so
excited that even managed to get Severus to
come.”

Mary hesitated.

“Yes,” was all she managed to say.

Mary was a muggleborn and she had every reason

to fear Severus Snape after his confrontation that
everybody saw with Lily Evans, but especially after
rumours of his loyalty of the coming war got out.
She had every reason to be terrified and even more
reasons to not want him there. But Mary was raised
by a teacher; she was polite and educated, she
would never, ever tell someone to leave her party,
even if she wanted and even more, she would
never forgive herself for being rude to someone,
even if that person was a horrible one.

“I hope you don’t blame Pandora, Severus did say

he wanted to meet you,” Anne added after seeing
Mary’s hesitance. “He was quite taken aback by the
length of your last Spell’s essay. He barely
managed enough for the parchment and there you
were with three.”

“I’m good at it,” she said, shrugging it off.

“Don’t worry, he’s not interested in your

romantically or anything, he just… I suppose he
wants to open his circle of friends a little bit,” Anne
said. “If you’re not comfortable after everything
that happened between him and Lily, I’ll totally
understand and he will too, don’t worry about it. I
will tell him that you’re uncomfortable and he’ll
leave.”

“No! No. I could never do that!” she said. “He

hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t even said anything,
he’s just standing beside his friends.”

“He’s not very social,” Anne said with an awkward

smile. “He’s trying, though. He’s even being civil
with the Marauders and all that; the Marauders are
being civil to him as well, which is quite nice.”

“Nice, indeed, after all, you’re in the middle of it

all,” Mary laughed.

“Well, I do like the idea of not being afraid of

getting hit by a spell that wasn’t meant for me,”
she admitted.

“It must be scary,” Mary said, trying to sound as

understanding as she could, but Anne could see she
just couldn’t understand why she would put herself
in that situation at all. “Pandora really likes Regulus
Black’s company and he’s not all that bad, but
Severus Snape never liked us, not even while he
was friends with Lily. And the child –”

“The child deserves nothing but the best of the best

after all he’s been through,” Anne said, cutting her
off. “There’s a lot you don’t know about them,
Mary, and I do not blame you or resent you for
those things without knowing the context of
everything, but I do warn you to be careful.”

Mary raised a single eyebrow.

“It does feel odd when you say it like that,” she
said.

“It’s not a threat, don’t see it as one, it’s just a

warning… a comment, if you allow me to rephrase
that,” Anne said, sipping her cup gently. She smiled
without showing her teeth. “Barty is sweet, he just
has a lot of bitterness around him.”

The way Anne’s eyes moved directly to Barty as if

to check if he was still there and still around to find
some relief with the sight of him sitting with a
smiled beside Regulus as the older boy rambled
about something made Mary shift in place, moving
her weight from her left leg to her right. She knew
that look of protection anywhere; her older brother
gave her that look whenever she was home from
school and seeing the people that once had bullied
her in her primary school again, trying to act as if
they had never hurt her so deeply that she never
allowed herself to open up enough to make a true
friend – and she missed her brother dearly for a
second, after all a muggle could never visit
Hogwarts as the other parents could in case of
emergencies.

“What happened to him?” Mary asked. “My mother

works in a school and is in constant contact with
NSPCC.”

Anne scoffed.

“They do little, but talk a lot,” Anne dismissed.

National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

Children, what a joke. Those people came to her
house once looking at the room Harry and her
shared with great concern when she was fourteen,
a single year before things really got bad for her.
Those people dressed in green with sickly sweet
smiles coaxing her to talk about the horrible things
she endured and thought to be normal until not
that long ago, asking her and Harry to throw their
problems to them so they could solve them. The
helplessness that followed was hard to describe,
because Anne knew that there was no way
Dumbledore would let them leave the house and
there was no way that she would survive if she
spoke and Vernon found out, so she chose to be
absolutely quiet as Harry explained away his
bruises as fights in the boarding school he and
Anne went to after all the trouble they caused in
the public schools of the area. Anne was almost
sure Petunia blamed her own bruises on calming
Harry down from a mental breakdown the week
before.

The NSPCC walked away as they did to many other

children before, unable to help. Aunt Petunia
stopped watching anything with the NSPCC
propaganda in it; films with the commercial in the
middle of it, tv shows that made a news report with
it.

“My mother works with the NSPCC, she might be

able to just research a bit more on what to do if the
child is a wizard,” Mary said.

“With someone as powerful as Mister Crouch, your

mother has little power,” said another voice.
Regulus Black now stood behind Anne, hand going
to the small of her back in a small and discreet
touch before he pulled it back and kept it behind his
own back. “That’s why I took him in as my ward.
There’s a lot you don’t understand, MacDonald.”

“Because I’m a muggleborn?” she asked, trying to

get a reaction.

“Yes,” Regulus said without as much as a heartbeat

of space between his answer and the question.
“There are unspoken rules, unspoken traditions that
are seen as rude as said out loud. A father and a
mother have the right to do with their child
whatever they want until their children are
seventeen or have a job.”

“This isn’t right,” Mary said.

“But it’s the way things are in this world that it’s
now your word as well,” Regulus said, shrugging.
“If you want to change it, then you’ll have a lot of
work to do.”

“I can do research or maybe take him away from

his father,” Mary said.

“And embarrass a powerful man? You’d never get a

job in this world,” Regulus said.

“Then I’ll go to the muggle world!”

“Mary, dear,” Anne said, blinking a few times as the

understanding dawned on her. “He’s trying to say
that you wouldn’t get a job in the world of the
living. Mister Crouch would have you killed without
hesitation.”

Mary paled for a second.

“And we just leave him there?”

“For the time being that’s all I can do, to take him
in and make sure Mister Crouch is proud,” Regulus
said. “As I said, you want to change things here
and make our world a better place, you’ll have a lot
of work to do.”

It dawned on Mary after she was already away from

the two talking with Severus and Barty that the
way Regulus said ‘ours’ didn’t mean the wizarding
kind, but the world of people like Barty and Severus
and Anne and him, if she was right to assume that
the things their parents did to Sirius are being done
to him as well. Regulus had just urged her to
become the protector Barty needed.

Mary, who had no idea what she wished to do once

she was out of school, decided to go to the Ministry
and create a new department: the Magical Child’s
Protective Service Department– MCPS.
Severus watched silently as he tried his best not to
smile at the way his friend held Anne’s hand and
slipped away from the dance floor towards the
stairs towards the windows where most couples
went.

As soon as Barty started moving to follow them,

however, his stillness had to be dropped as he
almost ran to hold his shoulder and stir him away
from the stairs.

“They are –” started the confused boy.

“They are going to get some alone time,” Severus

explained.

Barty blushed deeply. He still thought that couples

hiding themselves in tight spaces, rubbing against
one another in an embrace, lips devouring each
other was disgusting. He couldn’t understand how
the wet tongue against tongue could ever be
pleasurable or engaging in any sort of manner, but
he wouldn’t dare to say so out loud because the
boys in his year were starting to experiment more
and more things with any girl that was willing and it
made him feel like he was being left behind
somehow, so he listened with attention, pretending
to enjoy and understand it so they wouldn’t mock
him or tease him for being childish.

Severus, however, liked the idea, but knew not in

flesh the feeling. All he had to go by were the
retellings of Lucius Malfoy in extreme (and a bit
overdetailed) stories and Regulus tame (and too
sweet) stories. He had to settles with the lies told
by the other boys in the dormitory to fulfil his
fantasies in the middle of the night since he had no
courage or wish to go around, looking for someone
to canoodle with; his youth allowed him to desire,
but his heavy-mind did not allow him to
experiment. He didn’t see himself of deserving the
liberation and freeing feeling of relaxing, not after
the things he had to do.

He thought Regulus lucky to see Anne as someone

he deserved. Both did terrible things to survive and
both of them knew what the other did to some
point because neither was ashamed to break down
about it. He watched from the corner as he held
himself together, hating how much he wanted to
find someone as broken as he was to share his
experiences – he hated how unhealthy it was and
how much he yearned for someone to suffer as
much as he did so they could understand him
completely; in a way, he didn’t want someone as
innocent as a child to go through his pain, but he
also didn’t want to suffer alone and the confusion
made him freeze in place sometimes, hating
himself for being a terrible person.

Since Anne had told him the truth, he couldn’t help

but hate himself even more. He knew that he
wasn’t the same person as the adult version Anne
had met, but there were glimpses of the person he
was at the moment in him and he didn’t like his
older version – that man had jumped over the dead
body of James Potter, ignored the suffering and
confused children wailing to hug the body of the
woman he loved; that man had looked away as he
saw how skinny Harry Potter came back from home
every year; that man had done nothing when he
saw Anne crying in the corner of the room, but
allow her to cry, no comfort was given; that man
had seen sexual assault in someone other than his
mother and, although he had promised that he
would never enable it to happen again like he did
as a child, he did and stayed quiet. He didn’t fight,
he didn’t scream, he didn’t drag those children
away from the horrible people they were forced to
live with – he had become just like the people he
hated, the people that failed him as a child.

He had failed with Anne Potter and he didn’t want

to come to care to anyone else just to fail to them
as well.

But he was failing at that as well, because there

was Barty Crouch Junior looking at him.

“Do you want a beer?” Severus asked, not knowing

what else to ask.

“I’m fourteen,” was his argument back.

“And?” Severus raised his eyebrows.

Barty glanced at the stairs again before smiling.

“Yes, I want one, please,” he said.

Severus led him by the shoulder to the table of

drinks and opened two butterbeers with alcohol and
shoved one into Barty’s hand, turning him around
by the shoulders.

“I’m going to the restroom,” he warned. “Do you

see Sirius Black over there? You go and annoy him
until I’m back.”

Barty nodded, taking a big sip of his beer and

grimacing before walking towards Sirius. With that,
Severus walked away from the corners of the dance
room where he had been walking around and to the
bathroom.

He almost walked right out when he saw who was

inside.

James Potter was fixing his hair in the mirror,

grimacing at the result before sighing, messing it
up and trying to fix it again. He took a moment to
notice Severus almost frozen at the door, looked at
him or a second as if wondering what he was doing
and went back to the impossible task of fixing his
messy hair.

Slowly, Severus walked further inside.

Standing with his profile to James, he took care of

his needs in the urinal in silence before walking to
the sink to wash his hands.

“You know,” Potter started out of nowhere, “Anne

really likes you a lot.”

Sirius looked at James through the mirror to see

the boy tense.

“You don’t need to start a conversation,” he

grumbled, throwing some soap in his hands.

“I do think I need,” disagreed Potter. “Either we

like it or not, Anne is not going away from your life
any time soon and I’m not going away from her life
any time soon. We should make peace with one
another.”

“We have peace, what we don’t have is friendship,”

Severus said. “You don’t see me attacking you in
the corridors and I felt not one Sting Hex in a few
months at this point. Peace, see?”

James sighed.

“You’re hard to get through,” he complained.

“Perhaps I don’t want you to get through,” he said,

stepping away from the sink, drying his hands on
his robes.

James locked his jaw, cracking his neck to the side

in uncomfortableness. He looked like he was trying
so hard that Severus almost pitied him for a second
because he looked like a father trying to be cool
rather than a teenage boy talking to his school-
rival.

“You’re trying for her… and for Black,” Potter said.

“I can see it. Your robes, your hair, your
confidence. I can see you’re trying to make yourself
equal to them, but I will say what I told Moony
before: your hair, your face and your clothes don’t
make people your equal.”

“I don’t need your little pep-talk,” Severus said,

adding a grimace.

“Not a pep-talk, an advice,” corrected Potter. “See,

Moony doesn’t come from a very wealthy family
and he didn’t like walking with us in our first year –
right, we were loud and a lot more obnoxious than
what we are now, but all the three of us came
from, I guess, wealthy households and he didn’t. It
took him a time for him to understand that his
robes didn’t make him and that his scars meant
nothing to us. If there’s one thing that I see myself
in Anne is that she looks at you the same way I
look at my boys and I don’t think that will change.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked,

narrowing his eyes. He saw the glimpse of adult
Severus in the mirror, that same suspicious looks
to everybody. He relaxed his face in the same
second.

“I mean that your robes or whatever it is, they

don’t mean anything to Anne,” James said. “And
nor do they to Regulus. They like it because they
mean something to you.” And with that James
Potter looked back at the mirror and was satisfied
with himself, mumbling an ‘excuse me’ and walking
away. He stopped at the door. “Did you see Anne,
by the way?”

Severus hesitated between the truth and a lie.

“Yeah, snogging Regulus upstairs,” he admitted.

James shuddered.

“Alright, good. Not going upstairs, then,” he opened

the door, letting the music in. “Last time was
enough and it was a lot better than what I’ll
probably find this time,” he said to himself, but
Severus heard.

He didn’t ask questions as he was left alone in the

bathroom, still completely out of the fact that he
had been civil to the boy he had hated with all his
heart and soul before, and James bloody Potter had
been friendly towards him, even more than civil.

Severus took a deep breath.

He had failed Anne back at her time, but he

promised to himself in the awful lighting of the
male bathroom in the Ravenclaw Tower, alone and
tipsy from Merlin-knows-how many light alcoholic
butterbeers, that he wouldn’t dare fail her once
more, even if that meant that he was going to be
friendly to James Potter.

Chapter 84: Chapter Eighty-

Three
Summary:
Severus makes a mistake.

Notes:
I passed my tests. Fucking hell,
i'm so relieved!

SEVERUS’ PROTECTION

Evan Rosier never knew how to deal with anger and

his mother never blamed him for it, after all he was
just like his father.

The first time Evan Rosier remembered being angry

was when he was five and his younger brother
accidently broke one of his toys. He wasn’t sure
how it happened, but he remembered his brother
against the wall, crying, blood dripping from his
forehead from where the broken toy had hit him in
the face. His mother said it had been accidental
magic, but by the way his father looked at him with
hesitance made sure to let him know that the small
flash of a memory where he got the toy from the
ground and threw it with all his strength.

After that moment on, he wasn’t allowed to stay

alone with the children of his family and his cousins
Narcisa and Andromeda seemed to run away from
him, but his oldest cousin, Bellatrix, laughed it off
and said that she would’ve done a lot worse if her
sisters had gone through her things and broken
something she liked. He saw himself being
embraced and understood by Bella and he did
everything in his power to make her look at him
and like him – sure, once she was married, things
were a bit different and she didn’t stay with him as
she usually did, but one thing joined them again:
the Dark Lord. The rising to power of that
wonderful, smart man changed everything again.
His hatred and his anger were useful and Bellatrix
smiled at him more than his mother ever did to him
as she was always too busy keeping sweet Connor
Rosier, his younger brother, alive, well-fed and
well-dressed as if he was a baby.

Now, at seventeen, his anger was bigger, meaner

and greater. It made him fear himself sometimes
as he stared at his target, unable to make him grin
from getting to his thin, dry lips.

“Anne Sage is a bitch,” he commented.

Elizabeth hesitated and stopped talking about their

potions’ assignment.

“Evan, we really need to get this done,” she said,

scared of the reaction that came whenever anyone
went against him.

“Look at her!” he said, ignoring her. “Sitting there,

reading her stupid little book under the shade as if
she was some type of princess, always having
someone nearby to attend to her. Honestly, those
boys that surround her must fuck her every night;
there’s no way any of them are friends with her.”

“James Potter is her cousin,” Elizabeth said,

blinking and looking around.

“Must part her legs either way,” he scoffed, still

watching.

The red hair was pulled up in a bun, a dark wand

holding it in place a few metres away from her, the
back turned to the two. She had been sitting there
before the two had gotten there, reading a book
distracted, distant from everything around her. Too
distant. Too distracted. And it made Evan hopeful.

“Evan, I really think –”

“She’s alone at the moment,” he said, grin

stretching.

“What?” Elizabeth asked.

She looked at the red-headed girl, looking around

for someone from her group to come over and sit
beside her as they usually did as she read under
the shade to warm up a bit, but there was no one
at all. The courtyard had a few students walking by,
but no one seemed interested in staying for long.
Summer was coming through and not all British
people could deal with the heat it usually brought,
mostly running away from it.

And before she could think of anything else to do,

Evan had his wand in his right hand.

The high-pitched scream made Elizabeth wince as

she looked at Anne.

Her whole body froze.

The girl lying on the ground, ears bleeding as she

screamed and wailed in pain wasn’t Anne Sage,
that was Lily Evans, face red and neck filled with
vein as the blood-pressure peaked with the spell.

“Shit,” Rosier said.

“Oh, Merlin, Evan what did you do?” Elizabeth

exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

“SHIT!” Rosier said.

Usually, he wouldn’t care much about attacking

someone with as much filth in the blood as Lily
Evans, but he knew something that made a great
difference between Lily and Anne. If Lily was hurt,
she would protect herself and call a teacher to deal
with him, maybe throw detention his way and take
some house points away; Lily Evans would get him
in trouble, which would go to his father, which
would get him in even more trouble since he was
told to stay under the radar. Anne Sage wasn’t one
to go to teachers to complain, she was one to turn
and attack back straight away, making him pay
under her own hands; everything that happened
between them would stay in between them.

“You silly boy!” Elizabeth screamed, running to Lily.

She gasped at the amount of blood now coming
from her nose as well. “Call someone! Go! Call
them!”

“What? Have you gone mad?!” he squeaked. “It’ll

get me in trouble!”

“YOU ALREADY ARE!” screamed someone.

This time it was truly Anne Sage.

Anne was stomping towards him, James Potter and

Sirius Black right behind her as Remus Lupin ran
past them to go call a teacher, Peter Pettigrew
running the other way to get another teacher as he
noticed there was a duel about to start.

As Rosier turned, he was stupefied right on the

chest, making him fly back and hit his back against
the tree so strongly that he coughed, gasping for
air as he fell to the ground.

“You little insolent boy, how dare you?!” Anne said,

raising her wand again. A Stinging Hex hit the
fallen body as she controlled her best not to use
something stronger, though she really wanted to.
“If you as much ever dare to look at Lily again, I’ll
kill you! I’ll kill you!”

“Anne!” James screamed, kneeling down beside

Lily. “Do you know the counter-curse?”

But Anne didn’t hear him, blinded by her anger as

she kicked Evan Rosier in the stomach as he tried
to get up, crawling towards her. He fell face-first to
the grass once more, making Elizabeth squeak.

“Anne! ANNE!” screamed Sirius.

His yell woke her from her trance, making her turn
her back to Evan Rosier and run towards the small
group of people trying to calm the shrieking Lily
Evans down – she was confused, in pain and seeing
a lot of blood that she wasn’t sure where was
coming from, but more than anything she couldn’t
see or hear anything, not even her own screams.

Anne threw a spell at Lily, making her eyes roll

back and close at once, her body relaxing against
James’.

“Anne, what did you do? Have you gone out of

mind?!” Sirius exclaimed.

“What did you use? What did you use?” James was
asking.

He moved quickly, throwing Lily slightly to the right

to get up and carry her in his arms. She wasn’t
heavy enough for him to be worried about dropping
her, but the amount of blood made his hands a bit
slippery.

“Take her to the Hospital Wi—” started Anne, her

hands were shaking in anger and worry for her
mother.

“YOU WILL NOT!” roared Severus Snape.

He boys turned, ready to scream a him for getting

in the way of getting Lily Evans to medical
attention, but they soon realised that he had barely
paid attention to that, all he was looking for was
Evan Rosier with his wand arm up, mouth open as
he tried to say anything, but Severus soon took him
out of the ground with a wordless spell and turned
him upside down, making the boy drop the wand to
the grass underneath him.

Anne was quick to get the wand from the ground,

holding it tight and ignoring the dark magic coming
from it.

“What’s happening?” Anne asked.

“You will not create more trouble than what you’re

already doing, Rosier, or else I’ll have to share a
message that I do not want with your sponsor,”
warned Severus. “Take Evans to the Hospital
Wing,” he told the boys. “Sage? You alright?”

“Bastard tried to attack me from behind!” she said,

quite offended.

James ran with Lily, Sirius opening the way as more

and more people came to watch the fight. Amongst
the heads, Anne saw a familiar bun low in the back
of an adult woman’s head and she held her breath.

She knew what came next as she saw Remus Lupin

palely ignoring the fight and making his way
through the crowd to keep running to the Hospital
Wing. He knew she would be fine at the moment,
so he ran as fast as he could once the corridor was
less crowded.

“WHAT IS HAPPENING OVER HERE?” shrieked

Minerva McGonagall.

Although Anne didn’t hate Minerva, she did have to

complain that she was loud in her anger, making all
her sensible persona disappear and give way to an
elderly woman who had her order wrong in a
restaurant.

“The son of a bitch attacked me from behind!” Anne

announced.

“Language, Miss Sage!” said Minerva.

“He did try to attack her when her back was turned,
but I silenced him before,” Severus said. He looked
like the Prefect people said he could be when he
was in a good mood. “He, however, did attack Miss
Evans in the back.”

“Something is wrong. I’ve never seen the spell,

there was blood everywhere! Her eyes, her ears,
her nose! It was horrible!” Anne complained.

But Minerva wasn’t hearing her.

“MISTER SNAPE PUT MISTER ROSIER ON THE

GROUD STRAIGHT AWAY!” she shrieked again.
“That’s not the way a Prefect should deal with a
fellow student, even if their actions were as
despicable as these ones.”

And without hesitation, the spell was cut off and

Evan fell head first on the grass without anything to
cushion his fall. Minerva glared at Snape as he
made his best blank face to stare back a her – for a
moment, he thought that adult Severus certainly
felt slightly intimidated by Minerva as well, because
she was a powerful witch and, once she was no
longer his professor, but his equal, then things
were a lot scarier. He could glare at her now, but
her glare made him look away after a while.

“She attacked me, too!” Evan said, voice hoarse,

glaring at Severus and Anne.

“Miss Evans?” Minerva asked.

“Sage!” corrected Evan as he forced himself to

stand up, petting his clothes down to get rid of
grass and dirt. “She went all muggle on me and
even fucking kicked me in the guts when I was
down.”

“You deserved it and I would do it again,” Anne

spat in his direction, the saliva landing a centimetre
from his shoes.

“Miss Sage!” scolded Minerva.

“I would!” she insisted.

“ENOUGH! Detention tonight with Professor

Slughorn!” Minerva said.

“What?! I defended myself!” Anne said.

“A defence is a shield, not another attack, Anne,

not in a school,” she said. It was almost as if she
said that in a war, then things were different, but
wanted to remind her that she was just a child once
more. Everybody loved to remind her that she’s
just a child in their eyes. “Therefore, you get
detention as well. Prefect Severus Snape crossed
the line of punishments allowed on students by
other students. And Mister Rosier will have the rest
of the week and a half until graduation to repent for
his actions by a detention during the evening every
day, including weekends.”

One thing that was good about Professor Slughorn

was that he was terrible in being an adult, even
though he was a surprisingly good teacher in his
time. Still, he left the three fighting teenagers alone
once Pomona Sprout came to talk to him, ask for a
few favours of him in her green house, not thinking
that perhaps they could fight again and the
detention would mean nothing to any of them…
even though if already didn’t mean anything to any
of them, but they pretended well enough.

“You know, if anyone any less smart than me saw

the scene of today from the start, they’d call you
traitor, Severus,” said Evan as soon as the door
locked behind Slughorn.

“He locked us in here?” Anne asked, ignoring Evan

completely and stopping her rigorous rubbing of the
stained caldron to walk to the door and rattle the
doorhandle. “What if any of us have to go to the
bathroom? How inconsiderate of him, I swear!”

“I don’t think he plans on taking long,” Severus

said, also ignoring Evan and stopping his work to
turn to look at Anne, getting her intention by
moving away from Evan. “He wouldn’t lock two
Slytherins with a Gryffindor, especially his favourite
one.”

“Oh, you’re too nice!” laughed Anne. “Me?

Slughorn’s favourite? I’m a half-blood. I can’ be his
token muggle-born this way, even if my grades are
high enough to get his attention. That’s why he has
Lily for, Severus, you are aware of that.”

Evan sighed, hating the feeling of being ignored. He

stopped working and crossed his arms, turning to
pay attention to Anne as well as she leaned against
the door as if the Potions classroom was all too
familiar to her.

It was odd to watch the serious and taciturn

Severus Snape interacting with Anne. Though his
demeanour wasn’t what Evan would call friendly, it
was certainly a lot more open than it usually was
with anyone else besides Regulus Black and
Narcissa Malfoy (not even Lucius Malfoy could get
anything other than a smirk from him without the
help of his wife or cousin-in-law). And there was
Snape’s lips twitching as Anne walked across the
room to sit on top of the professor’s desk and cross
her arms, watching his reaction to her little joke.

“Is Evans alright?” Evan asked.

Anne’s eyes turned colder before she even looked

at him.

“Temporarily deaf, but fine, no thanks to you,” she

said, voice firm. “You’re a coward, you know that,
right?”

“I thought it was you,” he said.

“But we both know you’d still do the same thing if

you knew there would be no consequences to you,
and by the same thing I don’t mean hexing a
muggleborn, I mean attacking someone from
behind,” she said. She shrugged, her head tilting to
the side. “You know, I don’t blame you too much. If
I was as weak as you and as dumb, I would also
attack the terrifying Lily Evans by the back so she
wouldn’t get to me with all her strength,” she
smiled just a bit, just enough to get him angrier
than he already was. “I suppose I could take your
attack as a compliment. It truly means that you
weren’t sure you were going to get out walking
from our little meeting if you didn’t attack me first
and without my defence, of course.”

“You think too highly of yourself,” he warned.

“No, you think too highly of me and you’re making

me cocky,” she said. “That’s why I’m confident. Let
me tell you something about me, the more people
are scared of me, the more powerful I get. That’s
how I work, and that’s how a lot of people work.”

Severus looked down at the caldron. She was

talking of Voldemort, but not only him. He knew
very well her opinions about people in the Ministry
and how they got their seats and jobs without
really deserving them.

“That’s how smart people work, by respect,” Evan

said.

“Respect is different from fear, believe me I saw

the difference before,” she said. “I’ve been under
the control of both of them and I know the
difference. You think someone under fear will no
attack back, fearful of the consequences, but you’re
wrong, they do attack and the people on top never
expect it… that’s what makes it so fun. I had a
teacher once, a horrible one, insisted on saying that
she was respected, but when in truth she was
feared and hated, and when I bit her, I didn’t let go
until she begged – and I’m being literal,” she
smiled a bit more, teeth showing. “I have very
sharp teeth.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t cut your very sharp tongue

well,” Severus said in warning.

She rolled her eyes.

“It’s Evan Rosier, what power does he have,” she

scoffed. “I fear my shadow a lot more than I would
ever fear him.”

She glared at him to find him glaring back.

Neither of them had their wands, but Anne was

standing closer to where they were locked away in
Slughorn’s desk. Neither of them seemed to want
to start another duel, but his eyes were certainly
burning a lot more than they were before.

Anne didn’t fear him, that much was clear. She

didn’t meet him in her own time, he was dead
already, killed by a just integrated auror in his first
mission. He wasn’t something for her to fear; he
was a coward and dumb, he was a little boy in a
body of a man filled with hatred of something he
did not understand. Fearing him was the same
thing as fearing Vernon Dursley, something she
promised to herself she wouldn’t do ever again in
her life.

“You don’t know me. You don’t know my family!”

Evan said in warning.

“Believe me, I know enough things about your

family to make your pubs uncurl, you little
bastard,” she said back with a sneer and disgust
that made Severus proud.

“Enough of that, Anne!” said Severus, starting to

get worried. Did she forget things could change?
Didn’t she change so much already? “Enough of
your tongue and enough of your jokes. Your cheek
might kill you one day.”

Severus needed her to be silent. If she knew

nothing of the Rosiers, then she was getting herself
in more danger than she would expect. She was
already not liked by the Black women, she
shouldn’t dare to go to Rosiers and not be liked as
well, but it was already too late; Anne had teased
too much in her anger, much like the Gryffindor she
pretended to be.

He needed to protect her, like he had failed to do

before.

Carefully, Severus walked to where she was on the

table and gently took her arm and led her back to
sit beside him, while he sat between her and Evan.

“You better control your friend, Severus,” Evan

said.

“She’s not my friend,” he said. Anne turned to look

at him in clear shock. “My romantic relationships
make no difference in our business with the Dark
Lord; therefore, you’re not entitled to know, nor is
anyone that I don’t want to, but I warn you out of
respect for your family and position, Rosier, you
dare to as much as look at her wrongly once more,
I will kill you without hesitation and shall be the
consequences without fear. I’m sure the Dark Lord
would understand my protective streak with my
own woman.”

The shock was clear in both other people in the

room.

Anne concealed her emotions quickly, hiding them

away and looking at Severus with an exaggerated
admiration that she usually held back to look only
at Regulus with. Though Severus was clearly
uncomfortable under her curious, but attentive
gaze, he pretended to look at her with something
other than indifference for once.

Evan, however, wasn’t half as good as Anne at

pretending and certainly didn’t think she could do
anything about it as well, so all he did was allow his
jaw to slack as he watched the interaction with
great surprise. Severus stared back at him without
fear of his retaliation since the boy seemed to be
barely able to speak at all.

In any other situation, Anne would’ve showed her

distaste for being called, indirectly, Snape’s
property, or anyone’s property at all. But with the
odd company she was in at the moment and the
way Severus seemed slightly more tensed up than
he usually was, she saw no option but to accept the
lies and go with them to make sure both and
Severus would get out of the situation with some
resemblance of win, even if it would lead to an
awkward talk between them and their friends,
where her real boyfriend was very included.

“Liar,” Evan said.

“Why would I lie about it?” Severus asked.

“Why would you date… her?” Evan asked, lip curling

in distaste. Anne smiled in anger to him. “Snape,
really –”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Severus asked. His own mind

completed with ‘because she’s annoying when she
wants to be’, but he kept his mouth closed. “She’s
a half-blood like me, she’s a powerful witch with
great pedigree, if ignoring her father’s mistake of a
woman, much like ignoring my mother’s even worst
taste for a man.”

It was hard to say that Potter had a terrible tase in

women like he was doing when he knew very well
that her mother, the temporarily deaf woman in the
Hospital Wing, was Lily Evans, the girl he had been
in love with when a child.

“She’s –”

“Careful with your words,” Anne warned. “Severus

can be scary with his words, but I do complete my
promises fully and, usually, without warnings first.”

Evan glared at her as she raised her eyebrows.

“Anne, please,” Severus said, turning to look at

her.

She went quiet, looking away as if she didn’t want

to be involved in the conversation anymore.

“Severus, this is a bad decision,” Evan said. “I

heard the rumours, of course, but I thought you –”

“Rumours?” Severus asked.

Anne turned to look at him as well.

“Everybody talked about you two at some point,

but I never believed them, of course. I mean, she
walks with Potter and his people, I thought you had
a bit more of pride and – oh! She walks with them.
This is revenge!” Evan said, sounding as if he had
just found the most interesting thing about the
world. “You dog!”

“Don’t call me that,” Severus said, lip curling in

disgust.

“You’re a lot smarter than I thought. Fucking his

cousin –”

“Hey!” Anne said, uncomfortable.

“—what a way to get –”

“Enough,” Severus warned.

“—revenge, amazing, really!”

“ENOUGH!” Severus screamed. “Everything with

you is about sex. I can’t deal with it anymore.”

“Is this not about sex? Does not the world revolve
around sex and greed? Why would it be any
different for you?” Evan asked. “You were the one
to taught me to see through people’s reasons, and
yet there you are refusing to say anything about
this very out of character moment.”

The thing was that it wasn’t that out of character.

He was always one to protect Anne and Harry
Potter, and not for one moment she thought that
he would do anything other than that for her.

“I… like… Anne Sage and she’s under my protection

from now on,” Severus said.

And there was no other moment for discussion for

the door unlocked and Slughorn walked in as if
nothing had ever happened to make him leave
three teenagers alone in the very dangerous
potion’s room.

Chapter 85: Chapter Eighty-Five

Summary:
Severus' decisions have
consequences.

Notes:
Please comment what you
think!!!!
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

UNCOMFORTABLY LIKE THEM

“No matter how much I think that this is the best of

the jokes you ever made, Anne, I still think it’s time
to break character,” said Sirius eyes wide and an
odd smile, he seemed half-frozen in that
expression. He really was hoping that the story was
naught but a joke. “Really. Stop. Say that you’re
jesting.”

“I’m not, though,” she said.

“Anne, for Merlin’s sake – no, please, for my own

sake, please, say that you’re joking!” Sirius said.

Severus shifted in his place uncomfortably.

“Unfortunately, Black, we are not joking,” he

grumbled.

Before Sirius could have any other reaction besides

staring at both of the people standing in the middle
of the Room of Requirement, Regulus laughed so
loudly with eyes closed off tight as he held on his
own belly after holding his laugh from so long.

“I heard he rumour, mate, but I wasn’t expecting

–” laughed Regulus, stopping himself to gasp a
breath.

“Rumour?” Anne asked. “Regulus, stop laughing,

this isn’t funny! Stop! Severus is about to pass
out.”

“Don’t pass out, please,” James said, looking at

Severus by the corner of his eyes.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Severus grumbled back.

Anne rolled her eyes at the interaction and looked

at her mother, who was watching both boys with
lips thinning out in dissatisfaction. Severus looked
away, clearly a bit upset and embarrassed for his
cheek while James just looked at Lily and raised his
eyebrows as if he was having a silent conversation
with her, which made her look away from them and
to Anne, almost saying ‘see?’.

Regulus dried his laughter tears, looking at his

confused and still shocked brother only to go back
to laughing when he saw Remus Lupin biting his
own lip to hide his laughter.

“Nice,” Anne grumbled, annoyed at his reaction.

“Everybody is now talking about how I’m sleeping
with your best friend and that is your reaction?”

James winced silently and Lily rolled her eyes at his

reaction.

“Everybody was already talking about you sleeping

with my best friend, Anne,” Regulus said once he
recovered a bit. “Ever since my birthday.”

“I must be seen as a whore, then,” Anne

complained.

“You’re always glued to me or Severus whenever

you’re in social gatherings with Slytherins,” Regulus
said, pushing his hair back from his face. Anne
thought he looked great when he did that. “It’s
common for Slytherins to take care of friend’s
girlfriends, especially if they’re not from the House.
It’s a tradition. Why do you think that I don’t mind
at all that you spend so much time with Severus? I
trust you and I trust him. I don’t mind you two
spending time without me there.”

“That’s not normal,” Sirius complained.

“That’s because you’re a dog and you like to piss on

things that ‘belong’ to you,” Regulus answered
straight away. Sirius turned to complain, but
Remus’ smirk made him swallow down his words.
“Now, it’s quite good that this rumour is becoming
true for them. Mother will get off my back now,
even more than when the rumour started
circulating.”

James turned to Regulus.

“What happened in your birthday to make the

rumour start?” he asked.

“Well, I –” he hesitated, looking at Anne and

Severus.

Anne bit the inside of her cheek, not sure of how to

explain everything that had happened that day.
Regulus was so drunk that he barely remembered
any of it, but it had been so traumatic to Severus
that she could see his tone disappearing from his
face quite quickly as he remembered everything.

“It was the day I was marked,” Severus explained

shortly.

James turned to him once more.

“Marked?”

“The Dark Mark,” Anne jumped in.

If it was anyone other than Severus, she would’ve

put her hand on his back, pet it a few times for
comfort, but all she did for him was figuratively
stand in front of him to protect his moment
weakness from the person he wanted to appear
stronger to. His shameful stumble was protected as
she explained superficially how the Dark Mark
looked.

None of the Marauders dared to ask to see it, but

Regulus could feel Sirius’ eyes over his covered left
arm.

Lily however seemed to be avoiding to look

anywhere near Severus’ arm; she had seen the
Mark before, but only now she understood
completely that he had been held down and cried
himself to the point of humiliation in pain and begs.
He had gone to Anne after that, Lily realised, finally
seeing how much Severus trusted her, maybe more
than he had ever trusted her to do anything about
something as heavy and dark as that – Lily had
been his friend from when he was a child, the one
that he had seen as innocent and good, the wish of
who he wanted to be as well, always hiding his
abuse, always downplaying his wounds in all ways
to make sure she could continue being a child.
Anne was the one that he had run to for her to fix
things, he had gone to her for help and comfort,
not distraction. Lily had been a childhood memory
and a fantasy, that was why it was so painful for
him to let her go; it wasn’t the romantic love he
had thought it to be, it was his inner child begging
for something he knew to be safe.

She understood, finally, that people, too, can be

addictive for those who look for addictions.

“Bad things happen in initiations. I had mine not

too long after,” Regulus said. “Severus got sick
because of the reaction of the mark, Anne took care
of him in the bathroom, but Lucius saw it and, of
course, couldn’t stop talking about everything. At
first, I was upset, so I drank more, so I don’t
remember much after that, I just know that after
that day people started talking and when she kept
on talking to him in public, things were a lot surer
and… well, now he protected her in public and also
admitted to being in love with her.”

“I never said that!” Severus said.

“And you never said you weren’t,” Regulus said.

“I’m not!” he insisted. “Can you stop the jealousy

now?”

“No jealousy here, just amusement,” Regulus

dismissed. “But you know how it is with Slytherin.
We read between the lines, you didn’t say you love
her, but you did protect her and you face off a very
important Rosier to make sure she was alright; you
didn’t need to say anything. We understand.”

“Actions over words, indeed,” Anne agreed,

nodding. She turned to Severus with a smirk. “Do
you love me?”

“Don’t push your luck, girl,” Severus hissed towards

her, turning with his best glare that usually made
people wince or outright flinch.

She didn’t look taken aback by his rudeness like

Lily usually did when he snapped at her, even if it
had been done playfully, she just chuckled and
rolled her eyes away from him in the way she had
been doing all that time as they teased and poked
fun at one another.

“I’ll take that as a yes since you didn’t right out say
no,” she teased, turning to wink at her father, who
would usually approve of her teasing of Severus,
but he looked just plain disappointed.

“You’re trying to get hexed, aren’t you?” James

asked to his daughter, who just smiled back.
“Snape, how do you take that, I would have hexed
her already…”

“Dad!” Anne said, taken aback by his open teasing.

“You know I do love you, but you can be annoying

when you’re trying, even if you’re not trying that
hard,” James admitted.

The way Severus’ eyebrows twitched made sure to

let her know that there was a part of him that
agreed, though he wouldn’t dare to say it out loud,
it was neither to give James the satisfaction of
being right nor because Anne was scary when she
wanted to be, but because it was a lot funnier to
just leave things slightly implied with conversations
with Gryffindors. But he forgot Anne grew up
looking a him, being reminded of that in the
moment the elbow hit his ribs and made him huff.

Regulus could feel Lily retracting away from the

conversation and into her own mind as she watched
Anne putting the boy she loved and she boy she
loves somewhat together in a civil way that she
never managed to achieve, always making herself
chose sides when she could’ve stood the middle
ground in a fight that wasn’t yours.

Severus had manipulated her to see him as a

victim, made sure to never attack the Marauders
unprovoked in front of her, only to do twice as bad
as them once they were distracted. At first, James
had thought Severus liked the prank and that was
why he was retributing and he did all in good faith,
only finding out that it wasn’t like that when
Severus actually managed to break his arm in third
year by making him fall down the steps. James
took the pranks and teasing to another level after
that escalation, making them cruel and humiliating
because of the pain he had felt.

Neither was right. Both were human.

Regulus, for a long time, had chosen Severus’ side

even though he knew the whole story (contrary to
Lily, who knew nothing even to that point); he
would do anything to be against his brother and his
friends. Now, he could see he grey Anne liked to
tread on, smiling and waving for him to step on the
addicting indifference of seeing the unbiased story.

Anne looked right at him, as if she knew that he

was thinking of her, and smiled.

Regulus offered her his hand, reaching out. She got

up, walking away from Severus and holding
Regulus’ hand to sit down beside him on the sofa,
kissing his lips in a quick peck while her father was
busy talking to her mother, ignoring the way Sirius
looked to Remus as if he was readying himself to
complain, but was stopped.

“This is going to be fun,” she said.

“No, this is going to be amazing, Anne, and I’m so

excited to watch it,” Regulus said.

Apparently, a relationship with Severus Snape,

even a very fake one, had rules – not unspoken
ones, but spoken (and written) ones. No touching,
no flirting, not as much as a public wink; they were
to act as if there was nothing different between
them, which made Regulus quite happy, even if he
wouldn’t dare to admit so out loud.

Still, things were different. People were looking now

as she sat down beside him in class or when they
walked past each other with nothing but a quickly
smile (on Anne’s part) or a twitch of he lips (by
Severus’, of course). Regulus would walk beside his
friend, winking at Anne, knowing that she had
agreed not to look back for Severus’ heart’s sake.

After a single day of fake dating someone that

barely spoke to her, Marlene McKinnon marched up
to Anne as soon as she walked into the Common
Room dragging her feet behind her and throwing
her bag to the side.

“Anne!” she said.

“Not now,” Anne grumbled.

“Yes, now!” Marlene insisted.

Lily cringed.

“I tried to stop her, but I didn’t know what to say to

her,” Lily admitted, looking at Anne over Marlene’s
shoulder.

Anne sighed. She had to expect that Marlene would

be uncomfortable with the fake relationship, not
because she knew of the true one, but because
there was no way Marlene would ever like Severus
Snape in any shape or form.

“Marlene, you already know everything,” dismissed

Anne. “Severus said what he had to say.”

“Oh, he said you give the most amazing blowjobs

because he had to,” Marlene mocked.

“Oh!” James moaned loudly, turning slightly green

as he turned to the wall, lips curling in disgust and
eyebrows almost touching each other into his
frown. “You heard that from him? He said that?”

“I don’t know,” Marlene said, throwing the answer

over her shoulder to him. “The thing is that
somebody said it or said that he said it and now the
whole school heard about it. You know who told me
that? Jenna Rosvall, from fucking Hufflepuff, the
third year I tutor! What the hell? Anne, why aren’t
you worried? Your reputation is going down the
drain!”

“I care little for my reputation,” she dismissed. “It’ll

pass.”

“I heard that one before,” James said.

“And you shall hear it more if you ask it again,” she

answered to him. She turned to Marlene once
more. “Marls, don’t worry. It’s nothing big, I
promise. It’ll die down after a while, I promise.”

Marlene sighed in annoyance, but as she opened

her mouth to say something else a handful of fifth
years walked into the Common Room, the boys
turning to look twice at Anne. Uncomfortably, she
shifted her weight between legs, recognizing desire
and curiosity in their eyes.

When she thought the attention that she didn’t

want to get by interacting with Regulus was
disappearing, another thing came by to make
matters worse, this time because of Severus. That
was the proof that no matter what Slytherins did,
they were always being watched and talked about.

“What are you looking at, mate?” James asked,

glaring at one of the boys.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You better be!” Sirius said.

“Fifteen points from Gryffindor,” Remus said, voice

a lot calmer than his friends, but intentions just as
clear.

Anne crossed her arms.

“Stop that, I can take care of myself. They just

looked, I can deal with that,” she dismissed.

“But you don’t need to,” James said.

The boys passed through them and made their way

up the stairs to their dorm.

Before Marlene could go back to speaking what she

wanted, berating Anne for her dismissals, the
portrait opened again. Peter Pettigrew walked in
with face pale.

“You’re dating Snivellus?” he asked.

Anne turned to him, arms still crossed and with the

best glare she could manage, making the young
boy cringe into himself, clearly regretting how he
had formulated the question, but didn’t say
anything to back down.

“Yes,” she said.

“Have you gone absolutely mad? Do you know what

he’s capable of?” he asked. “Anne, he could hurt
you.”

“Severus would never willingly hurt me, never,” she

said, rolling her eyes. “And I’m quite aware of what
he’s capable of. The thing, Peter, is that he’s also
very aware of what I’m capable of, and that makes
us scaringly equal.”

Peter shivered. He knew enough about the rumours

to know that Severus Snape openly messed with
Dark Magic, and to have Anne say that she was
equal to him only meant that she, too, was more
powerful than he imagined. He still had the image
of her crying and screaming in James’ arms when
he saw her having a flashback and would forever be
considered ‘fragile’ in his mind, no matter how
powerful her magic was, he couldn’t imagine her
degrading people like Severus did… Like Sirius did…
Like James had once done, as well.

“He’s –” he stopped himself.

“He’s what?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“He’s not very handsome,” he said, though it wasn’t

what he meant to say.

“That much we can all agree,” Sirius said loudly

from his place. “Anne, you can’t ask the whole
world to believe that you’re dating him when you
look like that and… he looks like that.”

“What ‘that’ is supposed to mean in both ways?”

she asked, turning to Sirius, annoyed.

“Anne, you’re a pretty girl,” Lupin admitted.

“Severus isn’t.”

“Well, thank goodness he isn’t a pretty girl,

Remus,” Lily said, glaring at the werewolf.

“You understood what I was trying to say,” Remus

dismissed, a bit annoyed as he blushed a little bit.

“Severus isn’t ugly,” Lily said. “He can a lot of

thing, but he’s a lot better physically than he was
before.”

James turned to her in shock. “Am I to be

concerned?” he asked, voice snappy.

“If you keep that tone with me, yes,” she

answered, just as snappy.

Anne sighed, clearly more uncomfortable than

before her parents started arguing in front of her
and their friends.

“My love life is no one’s business,” she said.

“If you do believe so, you’re a lot more stupid than

I imagined,” Marlene said.

She turned to Marlene with pure shock. She was

brutally honest, but she was never cruel with her
words. The way the words ran from her mouth and
cut straight through Anne’s armour without warning
made Anne stumble back a few steps as she tried
to understand if her friend really meant it. The way
Marlene raised a single eyebrow as if urging her for
a reaction besides silence made sure to let Anne
know that she meant it and that she would not
back down from it.

“Then I’m a lot stupider than you thought,

Marlene,” Anne said, making her best blank face to
pretend she didn’t care. “It’ll die down and people
will stop looking and talking about me. You don’t
want to be in the spotlight? Walk away from me.
See if I care!”

“You clearly care,” Marlene said. “Don’t let people

talk –”

“Well, it isn’t a lie. I give out great blowjobs!” Anne

snapped.

Peter whimpered somewhere behind her, quickly

making his way away from the two arguing girls
and standing beside Remus who glanced at him
before looking back at the two. Marlene was
standing three steps away from Anne, leaning
forward as if that made her words sharper, but
Anne stood straight, face blank, arms crossed as if
the words didn’t have a single effect on her.

“Well, I wouldn’t know, and I don’t care,” Marlene

said. “What I care is that the people from school
can be mean and gossips, Anne. I’ve been here a
lot longer than you. You don’t understand how
school can be.”

“You don’t know shit, Marlene, enough of this,”

Anne said.

Lily took a step forward.

“I think it’s for the best if you two went your own
way for now, take a breather before continuing
this,” Lily said.

Anne rolled her eyes.

“There’s nothing to continue,” she said. “Marlene

can’t tell me anything that I don’t already know.”

“How mature!” Marlene said. “That talk that

‘nobody can teach me shit’ is bollocks! You’re so
inflexible, Anne, that’s becoming unbearable to
stand beside you. It’s tiring, it’s draining! Listen up,
you’re not impenetrable, you’re not a tank or
bulletproof. You’re human.”

“I’m quite aware of my species, McKinnon, thanks,”

Anne scoffed.

“Girls, please –” started Lily.

“You’re just a little girl, so defenceless that you

have to run to James every time that you get hurt.
You’re a little girl that has nightmares every single
night and is ashamed of asking for help, but I’ve
seen you shaking as if you’re about to pass out
while pacing around the room. You’re weak. No
matter what you’ve been through, that reaction is
pathetic – I was patient! I tried to be
understanding, but you have such a thick head that
is hard to get through you,” Marlene added to the
attack.

It hurt. It truly hurt. It was becoming harder and

harder to breathe, but Anne wouldn’t dare show it
to anyone at the moment. She needed to be calm.
She needed to be still.

Aunt Petunia taught her that. When one is mad,

you cannot move, you cannot breathe, you cannot
give another reason to make matters worse.
Through her witty responses, she was urging
Marlene to finish whatever she had to say as fast as
possible.

“It must be the hair,” Anne said, head cocking to

the side with a sneer.

“It must be the bloody superiority complex you

have!”

“Well, if that’s what you believe in to help you sleep

at night, go on ahead.”

“You’re pathetic, blabbering to James and Lily,

running to Sirius and Remus. And after everything
I’ve done for you, you don’t trust me!”

“And you’re giving me reason not to!” she made an

ironic smile come to her lips. More. She needed
more.

Marlene gave a laugh that almost sounded like a

scream of disbelief.

“You know what, fuck you!”

And there it was. The peak. She had nothing else to

say. Nothing else to hurt Anne with, so they were
done.

“Fuck you, too!”

Anne started walking, intending to go past Marlene

and take a shower to calm down her muscles and
the disgusting crawl of fear that people intimidating
her gave her skin. She walked past her, following
towards the dorms.

Once she was calm, she would talk to Marlene once

more and make things better. If there was one
thing Anne wasn’t and was proud of that was
forgiving, but she could make an exception to
Marlene; she had been kind to her when she
arrived and she was the reason Lily and her talked
at all.

“And fuck that ‘Harry’ you call out at night as well!”

Marlene screamed, turning to follow her with her
eyes.

Lily gasped loudly.

That was when the world stopped.

Forgiveness disappeared from Anne’s mind like

smoke in the rain. Anger boiled her blood over
quicker a lot faster than fear or memories ever
could. Even magic seemed to slip her mind as she
turned around and all her memories slipped away.

She remembered screams and people grabbing her,

but once she was herself again, she was pinned
down to the ground.

James was on top of her, holding her arms above

her head, Remus holding her legs as he spoke in a
soothing tone trying to get her to calm down and
come back to them. Sirius, Peter and Lily were
holding Marlene back, who was still struggling on
the ground, trying to go back to attacking Anne,
who was just lying there, looking at the ceiling.

She had lied down in the Common Room floor

several times before, especially in front of the
fireplace, but she had never noticed how
uncomfortable it was to lie down there without
something under her head, especially with someone
that used to be her friend screaming obscenities.

“Get off of me, please,” she said, voice wavering.

James hesitated. “I’m alright, I just don’t want
anyone on top of me at the moment, please. Get
off, please.”

James threw his left leg to the side and sat down
beside her, helping her sit up, but not letting go of
her wrists.

“Anne, you attacked!” he said. She wanted to say

that she knew, but she didn’t remember her at all.
“If it was so much worse than the time you tried
getting to Moody.”

“Because this time was real,” she admitted. James

watched her. “This time I didn’t pretend I was
attacking; I really was attacking, and I don’t even…
How did I – I don’ remember attacking her. Where
is my wand?”

“With me,” Remus said.

“Keep it away from me until I talk to Dumbledore,

please,” she said, not even looking at James or
Remus. “I need to find Dumbledore, now.”

“Anne –”

“Now!” she said.

That anger that she had felt wasn’t natural, the

way her memories were scrambled wasn’t natural,
the way her hands were shaking though she didn’t
feel unwell at all wasn’t natural. Something was
wrong, she knew. Too many good things had been
happening to her and now she was paying the price
of her happiness.

James and Remus got her up, both of them holding

her upper arm and wrist as they led her away from
the room, leaving Marlene to the rest to deal with
without an explanation to where they were going.

As they made their way towards the Headmaster’s

office, she shook. Had she forgotten her true
objective through her happiness and love and now
destiny was trying to put her back in line by taking
one of her friends away from her? Maybe she
deserved it, but Marlene shouldn’t have been on
the life of fire. Something was off.

Anne didn’t feel like herself as they climbed up the

steps and knocked on the door.

“Come on in,” said Dumbledore. James opened the

door. “Mister Potter, what can I – Miss Potter, what
happened to you?”

“A fight,” Remus answered for her when she didn’t

say anything. He sat her down. “Marlene McKinnon
said some things that she shouldn’t and Anne, well,
jumped her.”

“I crossed the line,” Anne said. “I lost control.”

Dumbledore looked at her.

“Usually it’s the other turn around, right? You say

things you shouldn’t say and you get the
consequences, but this time you got taken by
surprise, much like what happened to Moody in
your house,” he said, looking into her eyes.

He was looking for a break in her shield this time

when she was vulnerable, but there was nothing
but a small crack that she quickly patched up once
she felt the terribly cold feeling of someone
snooping around. She didn’t even try scolding him
this time, she just sat there and stared at him. That
was how Dumbledore noticed something was really
wrong.

“I’m not quick to anger, sir,” she said. “I’m not one
to usually allow myself to attack someone else
without a big provocation and, even if I have it, I
don’t usually jump on them without my wand.”

“It was a magicless fight?” he asked, surprised.

“Hair pulling, screaming, biting and scratching, sir,”

James said. “Good, old-fashioned muggle fighting.”

“Anyone caught in the crossfire?” Dumbledore

asked.

“Lily got punched, but I’m not so sure which one

did it,” Remus said, scratching the back of his neck.
“I got bit by Anne, but I’ve been bitten worse
before in my life,” his attempt of a joke was left
silently floating around the room.

Silence for a second.

“Is Voldemort possessing me?” she finally asked.

All eyes turned to her.

“Why would you think that? Did something

happen?” James asked, quickly sitting on the chair
beside her and taking her hand to hold it. “Have
you been feeling something and not telling me?”

“That’s how Harry would react to everything,” she

explained. “Professor, am I possessed?”

She had lost the autonomy of her body before, she

didn’t want that to happen again, even if it’s wasn’t
completely physical this time.

“There’s not a drop of dark magic in you at the

moment, Miss Potter, everything you did, it was
yourself,” Dumbledore said.

She thought that would somewhat comfort her, but

it didn’t. It just showed her that she, too, was
capable of physical violence not made by magic.
She was no better than Vernon. She was no better
than Dudley.

She looked down and, silently, cried.

Notes:
I'm so sorry for this chapter.

The fight was out of my control. If

I'm honest, the characters sort of
took control of themselves for this
chapter and I was taken by
surprised since it had never
happened before, but I sorted
liked the result, so I didn't change
it. I suppose Marlene knew what
she was doing.

Chapter 86: Chapter Eighty-Five

Summary:
To understand Anne better.

Notes:
Comment what you all think and
where I can get better - the story
from now on is only outlined,
nothing is for certain anymore.

...THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN!

(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

PROMISES

Anne thought that June 10th would bring better

things once she ignored Marlene’s cold eyes over
her as she walked past her to go to the bathroom in
the morning, Lily standing almost in between them
as if they were going to jump each other at any
moment, but breakfast made the end of her final
year even worse. With Marlene sitting with Dorcas
in the Hufflepuff table and Mary making her way to
sit with them as well, Anne felt nervous that
Marlene would end up spilling the secrets (the few
she knew, at least) to the two.

The mail was brought the same time as always, but

there was a letter to Anne.

“Mum wrote to you?” James asked over his eggs,

raising his eyebrows. “She didn’t write to me this
week.”

“You received her letter yesterday, you dramatic

man,” Lily groaned, rolling her eyes.

In silence, not recognizing the handwriting that

addressed that heavy letter to her, she put the
letter on the table, wand waving as she checked –
no explosions, no poison in the ink, no poison on
the paper. She opened it.

Dear Anne,

In this letter, my family and I officially congratulate

you in your newest relationship with Severus
Snape. May your relationship last and blossom into
a long-lived marriage in the future after school that
is to come. I, particularly, was happy to hear of
your new arrangement, making you secure in a
world so dangerous as the British Wizarding World.
Your equalitarian match is an inspiration to us all.

It's good to see a half-blood not as ambitious as to

be completely delusional about her own position in
this world, a realist woman is what all women
should be and I admire you for showing it off to the
world to see. I’m sure Severus is very proud of you
and I’m sure Regulus is proud of finally putting you
two together, he has been trying to do so for a few
months now behind the scenes (at least I asked
him to be as discreet as possible).

My husband and I will throw a party for Regulus’

graduation in the 18th. We were expecting you and
your sweetheart to make an appearance, after all
Regulus seem fond on you – quite lucky, you two
are, aren’t you? Your presence might mean the
difference between a job and starving in the future
and Severus’ presence is absolutely mandatory (do
talk to him for me, yes?)

I hope to see you once more.

Lady Walburga Black, the Mistress of the House of

Black,

PS: Make sure to remember your place.

As if the ‘PS’ was necessary after she left that very

sentence implied several times. Anne supposed,
Walburga wasn’t one for subtly now that her mental
condition was slipping away so quickly. For that
very same reason, it was surprising that she was
inviting Anne at all or trying to be polite at all to
her.

“Not Mia,” she answered. “Walburga.”

“What?!” Sirius said, leaning over the table to get a

glimpse at the letter. “What does that bitch want?”

“To invite me to a party, with a very clear ‘ps’ to

make me remember my place now that I belong to
Severus, apparently,” she said, holding back her
annoyed laughter. “I suppose can’t be all too
surprised with her rudeness, but I am surprised she
was even polite enough to not call me a slur by
letter. I think I’m climbing up her ranking.”

“Ranking?” James asked, taking the letter from her

and reading it. “What kind of ranking?”

“Of her esteem, of course,” Anne answered.

“I don’t think she has esteem for herself, Anne,

sweetheart,” Lily said, shifting uncomfortably as
she read the letter as well.

Anne shrugged.

“In her mind, I’m with Severus and, therefore, I’m

not in the slight possibility of me going to Regulus’
bed, which the boys can attest was Orion’s biggest
worry after the dinner I had with them,” she
explained in a low voice to not let anyone that
wasn’t meant to hear. “They are terrified Regulus is
going to get stuck with me because of a child or
something. Since the moment they met me, they
made sure I knew that I would never be part of the
family. I’d always be Regulus’ side girl, the other
woman, if you wish.”

“They are absolute bonkers, Anne,” Remus

dismissed. “The boy is whipped. He’s in absolute
love for you and you’ll never his second option.”

But as Peter finally came to sit down with them,

talking quickly about some gossip he had heard
from the Ravenclaw first year son of a famous
muggle singer, Anne pulled away.

It wasn’t completely true. If there was something

she feared because of how terrifyingly real it was, it
was the probability that one day Regulus would
choose his family over her, no matter how much
they hurt him. They had their shackles way too
tight around him and Anne thought it would hurt
more to get them off then to leave them on – her
hope was the fact that Orion Black was dying and,
after that, Regulus would be Head of the House and
would have the control and, maybe (if he was
strong enough) he would take control from his
mother, finally being the man that she had raised
him to pretend to be, but be Him for real.

She glanced at the Slytherin table. Regulus was

bored, listening to Elizabeth ranting and clearly
scolding him. If she was able to hear, she would
know she was asking why Severus hadn’t told
anyone about his relationship and scolding Regulus
for not telling her. If Anne was a better person, she
would like Elizabeth, but she was starting to lose
her patience with the way she was always hanging
around Regulus – it wasn’t jealousy, but she didn’t
know the girl enough to have an opinion about her
to the point of feeling Regulus was safe beside her.
She didn’t know anything about the girl, not from
the 70s and not from her time.

“What do you all know about Elizabeth Fawley?”

she asked, suddenly.

James looked at her before glancing at the

Slytherin table, lips trembling as he held back a
smirk.

“Why do ask?” he still implied.

“I’m not jealous,” she said quickly.

“And that answer doesn’t help you there, darling,”

Sirius said, sipping his tea and leaning against
Remus.

“She’s proper nice,” Peter said. “She helped me in

Potions a couple of years ago before Slughorn went
around the room grading the potions. I would have
gotten a ‘T’ without her, but she got me a ‘P’. She’s
very rich as well.”

“Well, you’re better in Potions and you’re prettier,”

Lily said, blushing a bit. “If I do dare to say so
myself.”

They were too alike for any compliment she gave

her to not be taken by herself. James laughed at it.

“That’s not it, I just want to know more about her…

About her family,” she insisted.

“Fawleys are pureblood, not much more than that,”

Sirius said. “They are comfortable, but not all that
wealthy, so they hang around other pureblood
families to stay afloat. They are what my Dear
Mother liked to call a ‘wall balance weight’,” Remus
turned to look at him, raising his eyebrows and
laughing a bit. “It rather makes sense. They are in
both sides of the wall and in neither at the same
time, sometimes on top, still trying to decide which
side to support. They support the winners; no
more, no less,” he took a deep breath. “Still, we
learned we cannot judge people by their family’s
dynamic, right?”

She barely looked at Sirius.

“Right,” she dismissed. “But she’s still with them

and writes home all the time. She likes them. She
supports them. I need to keep an eye on her, if I
can.”

“Anne, she’s not a fighter,” Lily said, shaking her

head. “She got an ‘P’ on DADA.”

Anne couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed.

“You need to stop looking around for people to join

your little army, you’re starting to sound just like
Dumbledore,” James complained. “She’s a person
as well. Manipulating her into joining something
that might kill her might not be the smartest of
your choices.”

“I don’t manipulate people into joining,” she

dismissed.

“Yes, you do. And that’s not all entirely that bad,
but you do,” Lily said.

Anne supposed that, if she didn’t know that was

sort of true, she would’ve been hurt, but she
admitted she did embellish the life in the Order if
that meant another wand on their side, even if she
wasn’t completely loyal to the Order herself.
However, more than joining the Order, she
convinced people to join her. It had worked with
Narcisa, with Regulus and Severus, maybe even
Barty in a year or so; all by offering something that
Dumbledore offered, but with the full intention of
fulfilling that promise: protection.

She shook her head lightly, dismissing her

thoughts.

“Anyways, Peter, how are you feeling?” she asked,

turning to the chubby boy, who, confused, looked
around. “You said you saw something bad in the
crystal ball last night, James told me.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” he dismissed, blushing

straight away. “Divination is not always right, you
know?”

“It can be,” she said. “Sometimes a true Seer can

see things before a single hint is given. Those with
the Sight, with the talent that it takes to deal with
the things I see you doing for fun, can be very
successful.”

A hint. A reminder that she remembered the last

private conversation they had. Something hanging
over his head; not above a threat, but not one that
needed to be implied by anything other than her
face completely focused on him when they both
knew she cared very little for Divination.

“I saw you,” he admitted. “I saw you running

through a forest, there were people running with
you. You were being chased. I don’t understand,
because I was trying a new type of magic: I was
trying the Past.”

“A word of advice, Peter, if you ever use that magic

again, never focus on me,” she said. And that was
a threat, a lot clearer than the last one.

“Yes, of course,” he said, looking down.

Still, those words were not enough to calm down

her racing heart. It was like she had just ran a
whole kilometre being chased by the Snatchers for
the Death Eaters all over again; Hermione just a
few steps in front of her, Harry a few steps behind,
Ron still stumbling since the last tripping he had
done. And as she got up from the table and walked
away from the Great Hall, she tried to not let her
memories go to the dungeons of the Malfoy Manor
or to the Drawing Room as she screamed and
screamed, and nobody stopped Bellatrix.

She screamed in her own head, silently.

But this time, somebody came.

Three minutes wandering around the corridors was

enough to make Regulus meet her and he stared at
her.

“I saw you walking away, you looked upset,” he

explained as she raised her eyebrows at him,
clearly wondering why he was following her. “I
waited for you to come my way; I didn’t want to
startle you by coming from behind.”

She hated how right he was to do that, but watched

him leaning against the wall, going to lean against
the wall in front of him, a whole three fee of
distance between them as they talked. Regulus
didn’t look hurt or complain about the lack of
proximity, even after so long being nothing but the
wholesome type of couple in front of Severus and
her friends and family.

“Peter brushed on Past Magic,” she explained.

“That’s rare,” he said, quite impressed.

“It would be much more impressive if he hadn’t

tried seeing my past,” she said. “He’s curious. He’s
always been a curious boy and he has to know that
the others know more about me than he does. He
has to know I don’t like him that much.”

“I think the whole world knows you’re nothing but

civil to him, Princess,” he said. “Still, he had no
right to go digging like that.”

She smiled a bit to him.

“Not everyone is as understanding as you about my

wish to keep things and memories away from
myself,” she said. “Some think I have some type of
responsibility… of necessity of talking about
everything if I’m asked about it.”

“I don’t ask question that I know you don’t want to

answer. It’s not that hard,” he said.

She pulled her hair back and quickly tied I up as

she sat against the windowsill behind her. He
seemed a bit worried over the fact the window was
big enough for her to go through and that it was
open.

“I wish everybody could do that,” she said.

“I wish everybody could do that for me as well,” he

said. He took a deep breath. “If I tell you
something, will you be angry at me.”

“I doubt it. I’m hardly ever annoyed at you,” she

admitted.

“Elizabeth saw my scar yesterday and was quite

upset when I didn’t answer her questions. I
snapped at her and she’s angry at me and has been
scolding me about everything everybody does,
even when I have nothing to do with it. It’s starting
to annoy me,” he said.

“Which one?” she asked. He looked at her. “Which

scar?”

He was surprised that she had noticed any scars on

him at all. She never had asked or commented
anything about them, but it was hard for her not to
– she was the one lying naked beside his naked
form. She had access to his whole whenever she
wanted; body and soul.

“The one on my lower back. My shirt rode up when

I reached for a book on the top shelf for her,” he
answered. She pursed her lips, clearly
remembering which one. It was one of the deepest
ones that he had; it had created a hypertrophic
scar tissue. It was red. It was ugly. And yet, Anne
had never looked at twice. “I was attacked by my
mother when I was fifteen, a bit before you came,
and I ended up falling down the stairs and cut
myself on the wood – Kreacher did what he could
against my mother’s wishes to take care of that for
me, but there’s a scar.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“No!” he said. “You’re the only one that know. I

think you have the right to know,” he joked.

Anne didn’t seem to like the joke.

“I don’t. I don’t have the right of anything, Little

Prince,” she said.

“My body is yours,” he explained. “You do. I want

you to have it, if you’d take me.”

There was something behind his sentence, a weight

that Anne couldn’t understand completely, so she
just stared at him for a moment, trying to gather
the information she had on him and his odd
sentences, even going as far as trying to remember
her few ‘pureblood’ classes with Mia and Sirius
before she went to his house for the first time.

“I think I missed a meaning here,” she admitted

after almost a whole minute in silence.

His smirk revealed that she had, indeed, missed

something.

“Let’s go to the Room?” he said.

She followed him without questions, traveling the

corridors in silence.

There was a difference in his posture. He was

walking slightly out of pace from what he usually
did, he had his hands behind his back as if he was
strolling through the garden in peace and with
company. He was… overly comfortable.

Regulus was holding something back from her. He

was hiding something.

“We have classes, so we might need to be fast,”

she said.

“I asked Severus to talk to your dad, make an

excuse for you,” he said. “Maybe your ‘angry-walk-
away’ might add to his story, so I wouldn’t worry
about it.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“You asked Severus to talk to my dad without a

gun against his – forget it, you don’t know what a
gun is… without a knife on his throat and he
accepted? What’s going on?” she asked.

He looked at her over his shoulder and smiled.

“I have something for you,” was all his explanation

of his future actions. “And, no, actually, I wrote a
letter to James, Severus is just passing the
message and saying a sentence I wrote down for
him. Barty is talking to your mother, though.”

Anne giggled to herself. That was an interaction she

would’ve liked to see.

But she didn’t have much time to think about it,

because they were pacing side by side in front of
the slowly appearing door and the walked in to the
Black Household Music Room.

Everything after that moved fast.

Regulus put her sitting on the most comfortable

chair right beside the piano and sat down in front of
it, barely glancing at her as he put a very scribbled
on sheet music that, clearly, had been composed
by him. Anne could barely hold her excitement to
the fact that Regulus was showing her another one
of his pieces.

“You wrote it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, already starting to blush a bit. “I

wrote this in the day I understood that I had a
crush on you. The day you and I, oh, and Severus,
of course, went to the Library for a talk, you know?
After that we went for some butterbeer.”

“Of course I remember! That was when you noticed

you liked me?”

“Yeah, so I got home and I wrote the lyrics. I

finished the piano not too long ago,” he admitted.
“It might not be as good as you imagine it, so don’t
have high expectations.”

“I’m sure whatever you wrote is amazing, Regulus,”

she dismissed his nervousness. “Play it for me,
please.”

And he did.

His finger moved slowly at first against the piano,

playing a sweet melody with the companion melody
under it. It was a melody Anne could see herself
humming as she did anything, no matter how bad
of a singer she was.

“I had a thought, dear, however scary about that

night, the bug and the dirt. Why were you digging?
What did you bury before those hands pulled me
from the earth?” he stared singing.

Once more, she was taken aback by how good his

singing voice was. She often would forget people
really knew how to sing in real life when all she had
around her was James screaming lyrics and Sirius
being only salvageable by his piano playing. Remus
wasn’t one to sing and Lily certainly hummed a lot,
but never really belted songs.

Regulus’ mind wasn’t on the room, though, she

could see that. Regulus was focusing on the
memory of her sitting beside him, explaining how
terrible his life was going to be if he supported
Voldemort and then Pandora’s party. She had
saved him that day, dragged him away from his
darkness before he even knew what was
happening; she dug him out of a grave he had dug
himself.

“I will not ask you where you came from. I will not
ask you, and neither should you. Honey, just put
your sweet lips on my lips. We should just kiss like
real people do,” he sang. Privacy. Respect. Such
big things since so early in the relationship. “I knew
that look, dear, eyes always seeking, was there in
someone that dug long ago, so I will not ask you
why you were creeping, in some sad way, I already
know. I will not ask you where you came from, I
will not ask you and neither should you. Honey just
put your sweet lips on my lips; we should just kiss
like real people do.”

He had seen the sights he had seen in the mirror

and in his best friend. Anne, like him, had gone
through a lot more than a normal person had. So
he didn’t ask until she was ready to tell him and,
when she did, he waited and sat there, wanting to
do nothing but hug her and comfort her.

After another interlude of the singing, just the

piano notes echoing around the room, he gathered
courage enough to look at Anne, admired with her
beauty as she admired him in every way possible
from where she was sitting. If she didn’t respect his
music so much, she would’ve been in his arms, and
he knew.

So he smiled, voice going softer, almost breathy.

“I could not ask you where you came from, I could

not ask you and neither could you. Honey just put
your sweet lips on my lips, we could just kiss like
real people do.”

That was the end of the song, he pulled his hands

away from the piano and Anne was straddling him
in the very next second, lips touching his and
kissing – the sweetest and most innocent, but
intimate kiss they had ever shared before.

Through a gasping breath, he got up by holding

Anne’s bottom tightly to not let her fall and let her
to the sofa a few steps behind the piano and lied
her down, lying over her by holding the sofa’s back
rest to not squeeze or crush her. The kiss was slow
and sensual, it was surprisingly sweet even through
the desire that started to burn both of them.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said.

He pulled back from the kiss, now kissing the skin

right under her ear and slowly going to the neck.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he quickly

dismissed.

He didn’t want her apologies; he didn’t want to do

anything but be with her and love her in every way
that she would allow him.

“I have been neglecting you,” she insisted.

He pulled back with a sigh.

“Anne, I’m not a child. I need you to care for me,

but not take care of me. You can’t be neglecting of
someone or something that isn’t your
responsibility,” he said. “Now, can I, please, go
back to what we were doing?”

She ended up giggling as she nodded.

At that point, she made sure he was lying on the

carpet of the room, leaving the sofa to the side as
she straddled him. The appearance of the room
added to the subconscious feeling of Regulus that
he was making Anne belong – if they were allowed
to do the things they were doing in the Black
House, then he would’ve been the proudest man
alive.

She kissed him with great care, not a single part of

his mouth had not felt the softness of her lips. Not
a single part of his face had not felt the warmth of
her caressing hand on his cheeks, her fingers
carefully slipping across his face as if she was
trying to admire him in a new way, as if she was
trying to memorize just how his skin felt. He smiled
at her once she pulled back to just look at him for a
second, smiling softly at him as she started to open
her shirt.

He had his back against the sofa, resting against it

in a very comfortable position, allowing Anne to
open her shirt without trouble and helping her get
rid of it and of her tie. He touched the lace of her
bra – black lace had an effect of him, he thought
before noticing that it wasn’t the lace. Anne had an
effect on him no matter what she wore, he
understood as she held onto his shoulder, hips
shifting to get her more comfortable on his lap.

As they started kissing once more, her fingers

started unbuttoning his shirt and she got rid of I
with his help without pulling away from him,
however, she tugged and pulled at his tie and it
didn’t come of – groaning in frustration she pulled
back.

“What type of knot is this? You fucking glued it!”

she complained.

He laughed, easily untying the tie and throwing it to

the side.

“It’s an Eldredge,” he laughed.

“Just tie a fucking half-windsor like a normal

person,” she said, glaring at him. “It’s too hard to
take off!”

“Oh, so you want me to be easy to undress,” he

teased.

She glared even more at him.

“Oh, then Elizabeth—” she stopped herself. She

realised it at once. “Oh, God, I am jealous,” she
sighed. He didn’t understand the second part, but it
was easy to assume what she was feeling by the
venom she threw as she said the girl’s name.

He blinked in confusion.

“Elizabeth?” he asked. “Fawley? What about her?”

“It’s nothing,” she dismissed, trying to go back to

kissing him, but he pulled away from her, leaning
back to see her face. “It’s silly. Forget about it.”

“We need to talk about it,” he insisted.

“Now?” she asked, looking around. “I want to do a

lot of things right now, but talking isn’t one of
them.”
“Now is as good time as any,” he said. “But if you
don’t want to talk –”

“I don’t.”

“I can just say one thing that will make that pretty
little head of yours stop worrying about me and
Elizabeth,” he said. Anne seemed slightly upset that
he was insisting on not kissing her just yet.
“Elizabeth got engaged to Rabastan Lestrange, and
she’s quite happy about it. He’s older and already
has a job, which means that being engaged to me
isn’t as great because I don’t have my own money
put aside. And…”

“And?” she urged him, crossing her arms, leaning

back slightly towards his knees.

He smiled.

“And I want to marry you,” he explained. The room

fell silent in a single second as Anne tried her best
not to think of how her stomach tugged and her
heart rapidly made her dizzy in nervousness. She
needed a way to say no without losing him to his
embarrassed pride or hurt ego. “This isn’t a
proposal, Anne, don’t worry too much. We’re
young. We have time.”

But Anne was scared because they might not have

time.

Purebloods knew a lot about time. Once they

proposed, marriage was to happen as quickly as
possible. They were only engaged while the
preparations were made – weeks, maybe a month
or so in especial families that wanted big and
powerful weddings or in case one of the people
involved was still in school.

“I know,” she said, dismissing her own fears.

“This is a Promising,” he explained. By the way she

blinked, he knew she had no idea of what that was.
“This is me saying that I have the intention of
taking his further than courting or fun. This is a
promise that, while you will have me, my intentions
will not change and my faith in on you. A Promising
usually comes a few years into the courting, but… I
think all we’ve been through might as well count as
more than a single year, correct?” she stared at
him. “A Promising can be one-sided. You don’t need
to answer me or promise anything back to me.”

“I want to,” she said.

“What?” he said, surprised.

“I’ll have you as long as you will have me and I

want to marry you, too… but…” she took a deep
breath. “Are you sure? The war will make things so
much more complicated than before, Regulus. You
might change your mind and not want me then, I’m
rotten work.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, kissing her lips very

gently. “You’re no work at all. You’re the reward.”

Anne smiled proudly at he emerald hanging on

between her collarbones, showing off her newest
jewellery to Lily, who squealed. If looked from very
closely, it was possible to see the Black House
emblem inside the stone.

“That’s so romantic!” Lily said.

“I know, right!” Anne squealed back. “And he was

so sweet. He had a song and everything.”

“Oh, and then what?” Lily asked, holding Anne’s

hand.

That was when Anne blushed and looked away.

“And then I don’t talk about the ‘then’ with my

mother,” she explained quickly.

“Got the message,” Lily laughed. She giggled as

she watched Anne standing near the foot of her bed
as if she was about to burst into song at any
second or just dance around the room like a fool.
She looked like a teenager in love. “Oh,
sweetheart, you look so happy that it pains me to
tell you that your NEWTs are with me.”

“I don’t care about the NEWTs,” Anne said, looking

once more at the stone. “I feel like I’m floating,
Lils. Floating! I never felt so light in my life. He
must have charmed this, because I have never
been so calm without being under Imperius.”

Ignoring that Anne said ‘under Imperius’ as if it was

something common, Lily sighed and took the closed
off letter, sealed with wax and shook it in front of
her.

“Everybody got theirs.”

“How many did you get?” Anne asked, slowly going

to sit on her bed beside her mother and took the
letter, but didn’t open it at once.

“All passable grades in all eight subjects I had,” Lily

said, shrugging. “Six ‘O’s and two ‘E’s.”

“Great job!” Anne said, fiddling with her letter.

“I messed up with some essays in Charms and I

literally gave up on going to Divination by the end
of the year,” Lily admitted. “It’s so silly. I went to
keep Peter company, but it’s just plain dumb at this
point.”

Anne laughed.

“You would’ve liked Hermione,” she said.

“I’m sure I would. I would have liked to push the

crystal ball out of the table as well,” Lily said. “She
knew what she was doing.”

“She always did,” Anne nodded.

“Alright, enough of that now. Open your letter,

Anne, I want to see your grades as well,” Lily said,
trying to urge her.

Anne smiled at Lily as she ripped the seal and

opened the letter, reading it quickly as her
eyebrows raised in clear surprise. With everything
happening around her, she didn’t pay half-as-much
attention as she would’ve liked her in grades, but
the results staring back at her were surprising
nonetheless and she went as far as wondering if
Dumbledore had anything to do with her grading.

“SIX ‘O’S!” Lily screamed. “OH MY GOD, ANNE! 9

NEWTS IN GENERAL! 9 PASSABLE GRADES! 9!”

Her mother was certainly a lot happier than she

was, because she was just plain confused. She
hadn’t tried. How come she had gone so well in all
the tests, some that she guessed anything at all?
But most of all, how did she get an O in History of
Magic?!

“Transfiguration, Potions, DADA, Ancient Runes and

History of Magic!” Lily continued saying. “Do you
know how hard it is to get an O in History of
Magic?! This is amazing! Let’s go show the boys.”

Lily dragged her down the stairs, through confused

first years in the Common Room and up the male
stairs, opening the door at once and making poor
Sirius jump from his bed and get his wand in
surprise.

“Lily, what the fuck?!” Remus said.

“Language!” James screamed from the bathroom.

“What’s up?” Sirius asked in his best American

accent.

“Anne’s grades! Anne’s grades are what’s up!” Lily

announced. “Show them, sweetheart. Show them!”

Sirius took the letter from Anne’s hand as the girl

started to laugh a bit of how he jumped in Remus’
arms to show the grades to him, Peter quickly
making his way over to see them as well, all three
of them quick to congratulate them in happiness.

The flush of a toilet made James’ entrance

perceptible as she ran while drying his hands over
to his friends to see the grades.

“Oh!” Peter said first.

“Oh, Merlin, James!” Sirius said before gagging.

The smell came soon after.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me see this,” he added

taking the letter from Remus’ hand as the werewolf
covered his mouth and nose.

Lily took several steps back and Anne laughed

loudly as her eyes began to water by the smell.

“Disgusting!” Lily screamed.

“I’m sorry!” James dismissed. He looke at Anne.

“Great job, sweetheart!”

“Thanks,” Anne continued laughing.

Notes:
TikTok: @aide.campos - I've been
making some From Eden tiktoks
and got a hashtag for the fanfic.
We should totally try to make
tiktoks about it!

Tell me your opinions, ya'll.

Chapter 87: Chapter Eighty-Six

Summary:
Fluff in Graduation

Notes:
Fluffy, long and unedited while I'm
almost asleep in the hospital bed
lol

GRADUATION

There was a hand on her arm, Anne realised as she

woke up, surprisingly, without a startle. One
moment she was asleep and in the other, her eyes
were slowly opening, looking around the familiar
bedroom of the Gryffindor Seventh Year Girl
Dormitories.

Lily was sitting at the edge of her bed, a small

smile on her lips and caressing her hair away from
her face. The way that she was leaning away from
Anne made the girl think that she might have
kissed Anne’s forehead as she slept, but she didn’t
mind at all, she smiled back still fighting the wish to
go back to sleep.

“I thought you wouldn’t want to miss our last

breakfast as students,” Lily said.

June 17th, the last day ever in Hogwarts. The

younger children would go to the train right after
breakfast and the older kids would stay behind for
the school ceremony of graduation. They would
have the whole afternoon free to do whatever they
wanted and, at night, the ceremony would start.
Lily was right to assume that Anne wouldn’t want to
miss that last experience.

Anne had never seen a graduation ceremony; she

had just found out of how the ceremony worked
that very year since she never thought that ahead
of time. All she had ever planned before the 70s
was surviving and now she had a chance for, one
more day, to live as a normal teenager. As she sat
down and cracked her neck, she promised to
herself that no war, no fights and no trouble would
ever ruin that for her.

Not even the way Marlene refused to look at her as

she walked out of the bedroom.

“She’s still angry,” Anne commented. “I’m the one

that should be angry.”

“Anne, you crossed the line. You both did. You’re

both wrong and you both need to apologize to each
other,” Lily said, getting up from the bed and fixing
her skirt. “Marlene is very hurt that you still keep
secrets from her and don’t explain anything of what
you’re doing to her when she clearly can see that
the boys and I know. And I understand that she
shouldn’t have talked about your situation or about
Harry, it hurt me as well, but I can understand that
she was just very upset and wanted to hurt you.
You wanted to hurt her as well.”

“But I didn’t,” she said, getting up and reaching for

her feet as a stretch.

“Not as much as Marlene hurt you, but you did try,”

Lily said. “Now, let’s leave it for another day. That
can’t get in the way today of all days.”

Lily nodded to her own words as she pushed Anne

towards the door of the bathroom and gave her
time to fix herself up before walking out already in
her uniform and tying her tie smoothly as she
looked around the bedroom, trying to memorize it
one more time.

“I’m going to miss this,” she admitted.

“We all are,” Lily agreed, also looking around the

bedroom. “Anyone with half-a-mind would miss the
place they slept through seven years,” she turned
to look at Anne once more. “You slept the whole
night last night.”

“What?” Anne asked, confused.

“You didn’t put your silent charms last night and

you slept the whole night, barely moved at all,” Lily
said. “I pulled an all-nighter drawing a bit, I didn’t
want to forget anything from last night. We played
chess and sang, I liked that. I didn’t want to forget.
I think we won’t have a lot of chances to do the
same after tonight.”

And Lily was correct once more, she had that

annoying habit. With the war coming, fun would
barely be in their minds and survival would take
over – Anne was used to it, to grabbing onto light
moments to fight off the darkness, but those people
around her weren’t; these people barely even knew
darkness, and one to fight the darkness off needs
to be comfortable with being surrounded and
blinded by it, otherwise fear would choke them out.

“You did good. You’ll have time to sleep later

tonight in the train back,” Anne said.

“I can’t believe my parents are going to be allowed

to come into Hogwarts!” Lily added. “I’ve been
trying to get permission from the Ministry for years.
I had this on mind ever since I was in fifth year. I
can’t believe I actually managed to do so and
Petunia, too! She always wanted to come. I
suppose this will have to do be enough.”

She couldn’t imagine how having Petunia over

would help her at all, but Anne wouldn’t dare say
that to Lily, who looked so excited to show
everything off to Petunia and to her parents as she
led Anne away from the bedroom and talked about
how she needed Anne to be beside her as she
walked through the ground during the afternoon to
show off the places to her family since some of the
parents would get there earlier (Mia and Monty
included).

Anne sat down at the table first, Lily siting beside

her and, surprisingly, beside Marlene, who didn’t
move away, just kept on talking to Peter. Mother
and daughter exchanged looks, but said nothing
about anything beside the conversation they were
already having.

James passes by them, kissing Anne’s head and

Lily’s lips before sitting on Marlene’s side.

“Good morning!” he said with a smile.

“No kiss for me, James?” Marlene teased.

James was still angry at Marlene and showed it a

lot more than Lily or even Anne herself. He looked
at him and gave an awkward smile before turning
to say good morning to a fifth-year girl that was
staring at him and giggled when she saw he looked
at her and went as far as talking to her. He
received a glare from Lily, but smile completely
nonchalant.

“Anne?”

Anne looked up from her filled up plate, surprised

by hearing Marlene saying her name for the first
time after a week.

“Yeah,” she said, as if she was already bored of the

conversation.

Lily glared at her once more, ready to pinch her for

the unpolite conversation starter.

“I’m sorry,” Marlene said. “I shouldn’t have talked

about Harry, I forgot he was your brother and I
forgot he’s still back at where you came from. I was
too angry to think before I spoke and I made a
mistake.”

Peter was the first to look back at Anne, waiting for

her answer, eager to learn how the situation in
front of him would unfold.

“Harry is dead, that’s why I lost it,” Anne said.

“But it’s not all your fault, Marls,” Lily added.

Lily nodded at Anne, urging her to do the right

thing. Anne’s pride made her hesitate, but she
pushed it aside for the well-being of her mother
and for the friendship she had already damaged
enough by listening to her mind and not her heart.

“I’m sorry, too, Marlene, I also crossed the line,”

Anne said. “I do trust you, please, don’t understand
something else by any of my actions. I just think
that, sometimes, people are better off without
knowing because they can be happy like that. I
want you to be happy, that’s all.”

She didn’t want Marlene to know that she was

killed, she didn’t want her to know Dorcas was
killed. She didn’t want Marlene to live with the fact
that she, too, left Remus and Mary alone in the
world, both outcasts of a prejudiced wizarding
society, both forced to somehow get out and live in
the midst of people they did not belong with.

“I didn’t know he was dead,” Marlene admitted. “I

assumed he was back in Canada.”

“He was killed not too long before I came here,”

was Anne’s answer, ignoring completely the
‘Canada’ thing. “I don’t talk much about it, but I
saw him get killed and it was too much for me to
hear him spoken about like that. I’m sorry. I
should’ve kept some self-control, after all I was the
one mocking you.”

“I shouldn’t have talked about your family,”

Marlene insisted.

“And I shouldn’t have said anything about your

loyalty,” Anne answered. “If there’s one thing that I
do know about you is that you’re loyal to the end,
and that you’re proud of that. I should’ve been
proud of you as well, Marls. I’m sorry.”

Lily smiled a bit as she leaned back to make sure

Anne and Marlene were talking and looking at each
other’s eyes as they spoke. Looking behind
Marlene’s back to James, she smiled more at the
boy. She was quite proud of the breakthrough she
had managed to get through Anne’s pride, finally
making her see that she, too, was wrong in that
stupid fight that they shouldn’t have had. James
smiled, proud of her and of Anne as well, secretly
thinking of how much Anne was like her mother.

Though she had forgiven Marlene and Marlene had

forgiven her, it was easily seen that both of them
wouldn’t forget it. Both words had been hard to
hear, but necessary – mean, but certainly true
enough for them to keep them close to their chest.

Once upon a time, Anne had spoken to Remus

about how his father was cocky and her mother
was proud. She had managed to be cocky and
proud as well, just hid well enough for some people
not to notice too much. She was a Potter, that
much was clear. Through her appearance to her
flaws – James was proud of her. Lily was
immensely in love with the person she seemed to
be turning into, a good example for future Harry.

“That my goddaughter,” muttered Remus into

Sirius’ ear as Marlene jumped up from her seat for
a hug. “Look how aware she is,” he boasted
playfully in the private joke Sirius and him had
going on.

“You will see once and for all once my godson is

here,” Sirius groaned back. “He’ll be a perfect
gentleman!”

“And you will teach him that?” mocked Remus.

“Hell no, that will be James. I’ll teach him how to

make sure his flaws are better hidden than Anne’s,”
he teased back.

Remus ended up chuckling as he sipped his juice.

He hated to think like that, but there was no way

he would ever love someone as much as she loved
Anne. The way his whole being knew she was part
of the pack before his mind had realised and named
it, the way his whole soul wanted nothing but to
protect her – it was real and genuine to the point of
being scary. He wondered if he would be able to
love Harry just as much and he hoped so, he
wanted to prove to himself that he still had space in
his heart for more.

Anne giggled as Marlene screamed in frustration

once more because her plait had escaped her
fingers and had to be redone for the third time. Lily
quickly made her way to help her friend and Anne
twisted the last piece of hair and stuck it on the
right place of her hairstyle.

She moved across the room to take her robes off

and put her ceremonial Hogwarts robes, finally
ditching the uniform. It made her look a bit round
around the hips, but other than that, it looked
pretty nice, especially the cloak – it always
reminded her of that one college in Portugal that
she had seen on the telly when Aunt Petunia was
looking for places where Dudley could potentially
(illusionary, one might read) go. To fix it, all she
had to do roll the skirt up, discreetly making it
shorter.

“Look at you!” Marlene laughed from the bathroom.

“Who would’ve thought you, of all people, would be
shortening your skirt. Just use a spell.”

“Hand-rolled makes it more natural,” Anne said.

“She’s right,” Lily agreed. “With the spell, you

cannot always have the control. I prefer hand-rolled
as well.”

Marlene rolled her eyes and threw a spell in her

own skirt, making it a bit too short to be discreet,
but she usually did that, so it would be no surprise
for any academics, besides what would they do?
The year was over, they can’t give out detentions
or suspensions. All that would happen would be a
look from McGonagall, but no more than that.
Marlene seemed to be ready with red lipstick, hair
pulled back in an elegant plait and the dress-robes.

“So?” she asked, twirling.

“That’s the most formal I have ever seen you look,”

Lily said.

“Good, so it must be the most formal my parents

have ever seen me look,” she said, looking at the
mirror. “At least my dad, I mean. He’s the only one
coming. My brother is sick, so my mother is with
him in St. Mungus. Dad’s a muggleborn, so he’ll be
fine, but I wish my mother was here, you know?”

“I’m sure she would be here, if she could,” Anne

said from her place in her bed, make-up still be
done by Lily.

“I don’t doubt that, but it still hurts a bit,” she

admitted.

Lily smiled at Marlene and hugged her by the side

before letting go and going to do Anne’s makeup.

It’s not that Anne didn’t like make-up. She did like
it, but when it was on other people. She never
really got used to wearing them even though Ginny
sometimes insisted on putting some gloss on her
lips. What good did it do to someone not even
allowed to shower every day outside of school?
Now, it was becoming and more and more useful
and constant thing in her life and it still made her
uncomfortable – when painted, she attracted more
looks and it made her look older, so older men
would pay attention as well. But what harm could it
do in school? Therefore, she allowed Lily to have
fun painting her eyelids in brownish tones and
leaving her lips to its natural pinkish colour, just
with a bit of shiny gloss.

After that, she watched Lily do her own makeup

with a brown, almost red eyeshadow that made
Anne grateful she hadn’t been the user because it
looked amazing on her, but not everybody could
pull it off, especially not someone with so little
confidence in makeup as her. But Lily could, and
Lily was.

“Let’s go down,” Anne said once everybody was

ready.

Marlene tripped as she finished putting her shoes

on, but quickly ran after Anne and Lily down the
stairs, only having the time to get her photographic
camera and throwing it around her neck.

With all the children already gone, all that there

was in the Common Room were the boys, who were
laughing as they listened to music. They seemed
relaxed as they lounged around the Common
Room, all waiting for their parents – well, by
parents they mean Mia, Monty and Misses
Pettigrew, if she came at all, after all she had been
a bit sick again. Still, they all smiled at the girls as
they came further into the room.

“You three look beautiful!” James was the first to

say.

“Thanks, James,” said Lily, leaning over Remus,

who leaned away from her quickly, to kiss his lips
quickly.

“Yeah, thanks, James,” Anne grumbled, a bit

uncomfortable when James pulled Lily back for
another kiss, almost making her fall over Remus’
lap as the werewolf tensed up, trying to leave the
sofa to give the couple space.

Marlene grumbled something, going to sit on the

arm of the chair Peter was sitting in. Peter smiled
at her and she gave him a quick side-hug.

The blonde woman watched Anne go through Sirius’

vinyl and pull a distasteful face when she saw a
particular one.

“Why do you have classical music?” she asked,

looking over her shoulder to Sirius, who was
standing with a butterbeer near the fireplace.

“Because I like it. Why else?” he said, though he

blushed a bit.

“No, you don’t. You stole this from Regulus!” she

said once she saw the scribbled name in the very
corner of the album. She laughed. “I’m so telling
him!”

“You most certainly will not, Anne, stop that!” Sirius

said, turning back to look straight at her. “Put it
back. It’s mine now. It was in my room when I left,
so it’s mine.”

“Thief,” Anne grumbled.

“I’m not going to call you the name I wish to call

because James would hit me, you little shite,”
Sirius said. Remus snorted as he got a butterbeer
for himself and went to stand beside his boyfriend.
“Anne, really put it back.”

Anne did so, but didn’t stop snooping around his

things to find something better than the ballad that
was playing. She was bored enough without such a
slow song making that emotional day even more
emotional.

“When is Mama coming?” Sirius asked James.

“She said she would be here around two,” James

answered. “Why?”

“Because I miss her,” Sirius said, though it sounded

almost like a question. He had been hesitant to
admit that, not because it wasn’t true, but because
he had never done so before in his life.

“I do, too,” Anne said, jumping into the

conversation as she admired an album that, again,
certainly wasn’t Sirius’, but Remus’. David Bowie’s
painted face stared back at her. “I miss Mia and
Monty.”

“Mate, you don’t need to be embarrassed about it.

Remember my first year? I cried almost every night
because I missed my mother,” James said,
blushing.

“Not even waterboarding could take that

information away from me in your place, James,”
Marlene teased. “What the hell? Are you serious?
You were the devil in a child’s body in first year and
you’re telling me you cried yourself to sleep every
night because you missed your mama.”

“Yes,” James said, blushing even more, but

shrugging. “I was very close to her. My mother
didn’t think she would have children, so when she
had me and I survived, my parents spoiled me
rotten.”

“Rotten, indeed,” Lily said from where she was

sitting beside him, almost in his lap.

Anne put David Bowie’s disco to play, ignoring

Sirius’ glare when she took Can I Seat Next To You
Girl and put it away. She glared back as she started
Rebel, Rebel without hesitance. He ended up
smiling, after all he did like that song enough to
ignore the fact that his niece had gone through his
things to get it.

Lily ended up laughing at the song, always thinking

it was a bit ridiculous, especially when Remus’
shoulders started moving in a terrible little dance
that made Peter squeal. Anne smiled at her
godfather, running towards him and getting his
hands, making him move more than just his
shoulders as she lip-sync the song with
exaggerated motions.

Snap. Snap.

A flash of light that didn’t stop Anne from having

fun with Remus, shaking her shoulders and trying
to make her hair stay in place. Not that it worked
for long, because Lily jumped in, dancing as well
and holding one of Anne’s hands and one of Remus,
spinning the little circle they made as fast as she
could.

Snap. Snap.

Marlene clicked away pictures of the afternoon.

Lily and Anne dancing.

Lily and James kissing.

Remus and Sirius kissing after Remus won another

match in chess.

Peter took a picture of Marlene sitting beside Anne

as she drank a bit of wine.

Marlene clicked a picture as Peter took a taste of

Anne’s wine and winced with the taste, making her
laugh lively.

But their teenage fun ended as the parents started

to come in, Misses and Mister Potter guiding Misses
and Mister Evans into the Common Room, Petunia
following them closely by, eyes running around as if
she was trying to memorize every corner of the
place.

“Mum! Daddy!” Lily squealed, running into their

arms. “’Tuney!”

“Lils!” Petunia said, though not as excited, clearly

emotional to see her sister and the life she could
have had.

Anne smiled to herself. It was nice to see that

image of the two sisters.

“Mama!” Sirius said, jumping into Mia’s arms.

“Dad!” he said, pulling Monty into the hug.

“Mum! Dad!” James said, running to hug them

beside Sirius, sort of hugging his friend as well.

Remus took a moment shifting uncomfortably, still

unsure of what to do, but as he saw Anne walking
to hug them as well, he followed them, though he
did let go quicker than everybody else.

The next one to let go was Anne, taking a few steps

backs from the smothering physical contact that
group hugs seemed to make her experience, so she
just watched from the back.

“I thought you’d come later,” Anne said to her

grandparents.

“Since we have so many children enrolled into the

school, we were given special treatment,” Mia said.
“I mean, one, two, three, four! Four!” she said,
counting the heads. “And a half,” she added,
winking at Lily. James and Lily blushed.

Petunia slowly walked further into the Common

Room.

“Well, hello there,” Marlene said raising her

eyebrows. “What are you doing here, ‘Tuney’?”

“Marls,” said Anne in warning. “Lily and Petunia

made up, please, act accordingly. Hello, Petunia.
How have you been?”

“A lot better than what I was expecting,” Petunia

answered. “Yourself?”

“Can’t complain,” Anne said.

“Your uniform looks different,” Petunia commented,

turning to Lily.

“These are the formal school dressing-robes,” Lily

answered, letting go of her parents and drying her
face, making sure her makeup wasn’t messed up
with a quick spell. “We only wear them when we
have important guests or when we graduate.
They’re expensive.”

“And a bit short… don’t you think so, Anne?” James

said, looking at her with narrowed eyes. “Roll the
skirt down.”

“It makes me look fat, though, James, really. I look

terrible with it past my knees,” Anne dismissed, not
even looking at her father. “Go on, Lily, how much
is it normally?”

“Like a good 30 galleons, easy,” Lily said, hesitating

as she looked between Anne and James. “Anne,
sweetheart, roll it down before James has a heart
attack, please. We need him alive for the
graduation.”

Anne glared at her father before rolling her skirt

down a single roll, though James seemed ready to
say something else, Peter shook his head at him as
if to not let him do something stupid and he closed
his mouth soon after. Anne smiled at the round
boy, who gave her a small wink back.

An exciting conversation about how hard it was for

Misses and Mister Evans to get through the security
provided by the Ministry without Monty’s assistance
started as Monty retold the whole tale with great
amusement as he talked about their reaction to the
floo with the help of magical equipment turned to
muggle usage. Petunia seemed slightly green as
she remembered the turning and turning of the trip
that brought her to the Headmaster’s office.

“He has an odd bird,” Petunia mentioned.

“Yes, it’s a phoenix, dear,” explained Mia, turning

to her. “A very magical bird, who seems to have
liked you a lot.”

“A great honour, indeed,” Monty said, nodding as

he sat between James and Sirius in the sofa.

“One I was lucky enough to have, the bloody bird

hates me,” Anne told the pale girl sitting beside
Lily. “When a bird this magical, his powerful and
that picky likes you, it means you have a lot of
courage, magical or not. It’s very important.”

“Really?” Petunia sounded almost painfully hopeful.

“Really!” Marlene said. “The bird squawks like a

hawk whenever I’m in there. I hate getting in
trouble because the fucking thing gives me
headaches, unbearable.”

“Language!” James said.

“You’re not my dad, fuck off!” Marlene dismissed.

James glared at her as she showed her biggest

finger at him, making Mia giggle. The noise made
Marlene smile quite proudly at her own sense of
humour.

Before she could start throwing any joke at all to

keep Mia’s attention on herself, Marlene was
stopped by the loud and obnoxious cleaning of the
throat of the Fat Lady.

“Miss Anne?” the Fat Lady said. “There are two

gentlemen to talk to you out here.”

“Who?” she asked.

“A Mister Regulus Black and a Mister Snape,” she

said, uncomfortably shifting with her empty glass in
hand.

“If you could do the great favour of letting them in,

Romilda, that would be amazing of you,” Anne said.
James turned to Anne in shock. “Alright, listen up,
boys, anyone calls Severus ‘Snivellus’, and I’ll cut
tongues off today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they said in a defeated voice.

Regulus was the first to walk in, hands in his

pockets and clearly excited to be in the Gryffindor
Common Room for the first time looking around in
great admiration.

“It’s just like in the Room!” he mused. “Wonderful.

Though quite warmer, I admit.”

“It is summer,” Sirius said, trying to be confident.

Regulus looked at him and smiled, not answering at

once, but watching as Severus uncomfortably
marched into the Common Room.

“Severus didn’t want to come, but I did say he

needed to come to see his girlfriend,” he said in
an awfully loud tone. “I mean, why wouldn’t he?
What type of horrible man doesn’t come see his
girlfriend in graduation day? Everybody’s shagging
back in Slytherin. Oh!” he giggled. “Hello there,
Lord Potter, Lady Potter, James.”

James just stared at him as if trying to decide if he

could be killed without getting himself landed in
jail. Mia held his shoulder comfortably, noticing
something at the very same time as Anne did.

“You’re drunk,” Anne mused, starting to laugh.

“Hello, Regulus. Hello, Severus.”

“Anne, please, take him away from my hands,”

Severus said in a pleading tone. “He had already
cried and hugged to the point I couldn’t brew a
Sober-Up Potion. And he needs it before Lord and
Lady Black get here.”

“Lord? She's dating a Lord now?” Mister Evans

whispered to Misses Evans.

Lily blushed as Petunia stared right at her.

“A have a few ready,” Remus said.

“I’ll go get it before this poor boy embarrasses

himself any further,” Peter said, jumping from
where he was sitting and running up the stairs.

Regulus watched him go.

“Where is he going?” he asked.

“To get you up right again,” answered Anne. She

led him to the sofa beside Petunia and Lily. “Your
mother would kill you if she saw you right now, you
know?”

“She can try,” he dismissed. He leaned over to her.

“She did already, but you know that, you saw the
scars,” he giggled. “You saw everything.”

James gagged somewhere in the back.

“PETER, HURRY UP!” Sirius yelled up, getting up

from the sofa, already pale from the sound of
gagging. Mia laughed, getting up and following
Sirius to try and make him sit down once more.
“PETER! WORMTAIL! YOU’RE KILLING ME!”

“ON MY WAY!” Peter screamed.

Severus quickly marched to where Anne was

standing and forced Regulus to sit down upright
and put his back against the sofa’s rest, pulling his
face up as Peter walked into the Common Room
again. Peter ran to them and threw the bitter
purple down the young boy’s throat careful not to
spill anything.

Regulus gagged and Sirius shot up again, ready to

run. Mia and Monty pulled him down at the sofa at
once and James laughed, quite happy to see
Regulus suffering a bit after the ‘you saw
everything’ joke he did.

Once he had swallowed down everything, Anne

watched the boy blush, finally processing all he did
while drunk, since his memories were still there,
just a bit fuzzy.

“Oh, Merlin,” he groaned.

“Merlin, indeed. Be glad Severus brought you here

before you did something stupid in public that could
get back to your family,” she said, pushing his hair
away from his face with a bit too much care by the
confused look Peter gave her. She took a step back
as she was reminded that he didn’t know about her
true relationship. “Welcome back, Mister Regulus
Black.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Severus smirked.

“I won’t tell anyone about our talk in corridor, don’t

worry,” Severus said.

“Oh, please!” Regulus said, almost pleading for him

to keep his promise.

Anne turned to Severus.

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you later,” he said to her in a

stage-whisper.

“SEVERUS!” Regulus complained.

Names were being called in alphabetic order of

people’s family and, yet, Sirius smiled at Anne and
James as he stood in between them after not
explaining his very out place placement.

Regulus. Lily. Remus. Mary. Dorcas. Marlene – they

had already been called, received their diploma and
their congratulations from Dumbledore and from
the Ministry of Magic standing stiffly beside the
older man.

“Potter-Sage, Anne,” announced Professor Minerva

McGonagall.

Anne was surprised she was called Potter-Sage

now. They had done a small exception because,
even so, she would need to be after James and
Sirius with that new surname. Still, they wanted
her the first Potter of the generation to graduate.

Claps, so many claps. And she was pretty sure

Monty whooped as well.

As she walked to the smiling Minerva, she realised

just how many people she had on her side. Her
family and friends, all clapping and cheering for her
with smiles or discreet claps a bit stronger than
from those around them. She realised just how
right everything seemed to be going, even far away
from Dumbledore’s plan. With a quick look around,
she saw James and Sirius standing and clapping,
though they shouldn’t be by the way McGonagall
was glaring at them. She smiled at them.

Anne felt truly important.

She took the diploma and shook the professor’s

hand.

“You’re doing great, Anne,” McGonagall said.

“You’re going to be great.”

“I will do everything right, Professor,” she said in a

tone of promise.

“Do your best and it shall be enough for me,” she

answered in the same tone. A fighting tone, at that.
And Anne knew that she had McGonagall to call
upon if fight was needed.

She took a few more steps, walking to Dumbledore,

who smiled sickly sweetly at her as he offered his
hands.

“My congratulations Miss Anne Potter-Sage,” he

said, almost teasing her.

“Thank you,” she said. “Not just for the diploma,

but for the name thing,” she added.

“The least I could do for you now that everybody

knows you’ve been officially adopted by the
Potters,” he said. Bare minimum, but yet Anne
smiled. “Go to your family, Anne, they are waiting
for you.”

She shook the hand of the Minister with little

attention before almost running to her family, who
hugged her tight.

“Mister Potter, James,” McGonagall said.

“Your dad,” whispered Mia in the hug.

They pulled apart to watch and clap and whoop for

James as well, who insisted on kissing McGonagall’s
cheeks instead of shaking her head and she
laughed, this time not daring to scold him. He came
down quickly as well, but before they could
congratulate him, McGonagall spoke.

“Potter, Sirius,” there was a wobbly quality to her

now emotional voice.

Though Lady Black scoffed somewhere in the back,

Sirius stood proudly as his new name was called.
There was no hesitation and no surprise. He knew
he was going to be called as a Potter; he had asked
to be done so.

Mia’s eyes were tearful and her bottom lip shook in

place as she held back a surprise and emotional
sob, but clapped just as loud as she had done to
her own son, Remus screaming his boyfriend’s
name from beside her. Monty smiled, crossing his
arms as he held back tears with the proudest face
that he had ever felt him having as he looked at the
sickly pale Orion Black, who didn’t even dare clap –
he almost seemed to say; ‘see, that’s how you treat
a kid’, going as far as smiling at the man ‘that’s my
child now’. The Black Heir was now another Potter
Heir.

“Go Sirius!” James screamed. “Come on, Brother!”

Sirius smiled brightly as he winked at Marlene.

“Get a photograph of it, Marls!” he screamed.

“Hell yeah, Potter!” she answered.

Chapter 88: Chapter Eighty-

Seven
Summary:
Regulus' Graduation Party.

Notes:
I've been listening a lot to Roméo
et Juliette (2001 version) and I'm
obsessed. Does anyone like it as
well? I hope so, because I'm
drawing up a new fanfic with it in
the back of my mind; will take a
long while because I have another
one already half-written to post
once From Eden is over.

I hope you all can comment. I'm

bored and I want to answer
comments.

SEND QUESTIONS AND

RECOMENDATION OF WHAT YOU
WANT TO HAPPEN IN THE STORY,
I MIGHT USE SOME SOME.
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

THE USE OF MEMORIES

Anne held memories dearly close to her heart.

And she was sure the image of her mother and

Severus sitting beside each other in the boat on
their way back to the train was one of them; Lily
had agreed to come with Anne in the boat with
Severus and Regulus to give James the chance to
go back in the same boat he had gotten to
Hogwarts – him, Sirius, Remus and Peter. She had
gotten to Hogwarts in a boat with Severus and two
other boys who ended up in Hufflepuff, but she sat
beside him to allow herself some closure.

“I’m truly sorry,” was all he said.

And for the first time, Lily felt like he was truly
honest and turned to him.

“I know,” she said.

It wasn’t complete forgiveness and it wasn’t a

promise towards forgetfulness or another chance,
but it was the recognition that Severus had
changed from the angry boy he had been the year
before, and it was better than the nothing he had
been receiving from someone who had been his
best friend for all his childhood.

Another memory that Anne would hold dear was

Peter putting his head out of the train when he got
a pepper flavoured little bean from the box, face
turning bright red as he opened his mouth and
screamed.

Maybe the memory of Severus smiling a bit as he

agreed to keep guard as Anne and Regulus wanted
to have a private moment, walking away from the
compartment’s window and standing at the corner
of the corridor, though he complained.

Graduation was never something big in her mind,

she had never thought deeply of it and she had
certainly not wished for it more than any other
mediocre child in Hogwarts, but now she just
couldn’t see herself doing anything other than
remembering the beautiful ceremony and the
bittersweet sadness and pain she felt as she
stepped into the boat to finally say her goodbye to
the castle that had raised her.

Memories were always important to her. You need

memories to be a human.

Good ones. Bad ones. That’s what makes sure to

tell you that you lived.

The goods ones are more than just comfort for hard
times or reasons to make one laugh as they lie in
bed, trying to sleep. They are useful, as well, many
of the most powerful magics that exist use good
memories and the feelings it usually brought up –
Patronus, Control of Magical Core and several
closed and family tied magics. Still, the bad ones
are useful as well, they remind one of the reality
and what it can do to a person, even the fear,
anger, hatred and sadness can be useful in magic –
all the Unforgivables need negative emotions to
work completely.

But the memory Anne was sure she would forever

use to make herself laugh would be the one she
was forming at that very moment.

Severus Snape was sitting in the Potter Manor

parlour stiffly, James sitting in front of him sipping
firewhiskey in his best ‘dad pose’, as Sirius liked to
call when he leaned forward while sitting. Sirius
was sitting on the arm of the sofa, lounging lazily,
Remus near the drink table, mixing wine and vodka
as he laughed of something Sirius (who had just
dared him to drink that awful mix) said.

She stood in the

doorway.

“I hope you’re not frightening my friend,” she said.

James was the first to get up, looking at her and

smiling.

“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” he approved.

She couldn’t deny that she felt beautiful. Though an

odd colour, grey seemed to go great against her
skin and hair, besides it was just a few tones
darker than the Black’s eyes. It seemed appropriate
for the occasion. Once again, she had aimed for the
slit on the leg and very full long sleeves.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling a bit, brushing the long

skirt.

“I’m sure Regulus will like it,” Severus said.

“Just Regulus? Don’t I look pretty?” she asked,

teasing him.

“You’re pushing your luck,” he warned.

She smiled at him.

Turning to the rest of her family, she took the small

bag Sirius had been holding onto for her.

“Mia will be back by midnight from her friend’s

granddaughter’s birth, so please don’t make too
much of a mess,” she warned. “And when Monty
gets back, don’t forget to remind him where I am.
I’m not sure when I’m coming back.”

James shifted uncomfortably.

“Anne, if you’re going to spend the night, I don’t

mind too much, but do warn us,” he said. He didn’t
want to think too much about it, if he did it, then
he would end up feeling sick. “We’ll wait you up.”

“Don’t,” she said. “And I don’t plan on spending the

night. I have some sense of self-preservation.”
Severus ended up chuckling dryly with that, but
after a glare from her, he stopped. “The thing is, I
have a lot to do, I can’t die just yet and Misses
Black would be sure to kill me if I spend the night
at all.”

“And not shirtless dancing, either,” Sirius warned.

“Oh, yes, please,” Remus said, turning around to

glare at her.

Severus looked confused for a second before his

eyebrows shot up.

“When I told you to enjoy yourself in that bloody

party, I didn’t mean go ‘all out’ with it, Anne, God,”
he said, clearly distasteful of her behaviour. “You
took your shirt off and danced? How… Gryffindor of
you.”

“Well, professor, I was on the top of the table as

well,” she teased in clear annoyance. “And, either
you like it or not, I am in Gryffindor this time
around. Might as well act like one, you know? Fit
in.”

Severus clearly couldn’t understand the appeal on

fitting in with people such as those he was
surrounded with at the moment, but he had the
surprising decency of not saying anything out loud.

“Well, come on, then, you already made me late,”

Severus grumbled.

James rolled his eyes at how rude Severus could be

even when uncalled for, but Anne smiled, much to
his surprise. He knew Anne had no trouble with
answering to the same level as Severus did, but
she never seemed hurt by the things he said, often
laughing them off or teasing him – it took him a
moment to understand that those odd exchanges of
sharp looks, sharp words and carefully worded
sentences were their way of playing around like any
other friend. It was an odd type of relationship and
an even weirder type of humour, but he admitted
that Severus seemed to make Anne happy.

“Go on, then, you two,” James said, walking to the

fireplace and getting the floo powder. “I’ll be awake
when you get here, Annie.”

“Ok, love you,” she said.

“Love you, too,” he said.

Severus shifted behind her, taking a handful and

going away first. Anne smiled to herself as she
kissed the boys’ cheeks and followed.

It was a lot harder to control her emotions and

facial expressions there than it had been in the
Malfoy wedding, since there was no Horcrux to look
for and nothing to keep her mind occupied. Now, all
she could see was Regulus Black dancing and
laughing with a young, beautiful woman.

Jealousy, Anne found out to be called the name of

the feeling eating her up from the inside, is loud
and clear, unable to be hidden by an Invisibility
Cloak, especially when one has nothing to
concentrate the mind in.

“Glaring at them won’t make them stop dancing,”

Severus said from behind the cup of wine he had
been nursing for some time after he saw Anne go
through three in rapid procession after Regulus was
forced to talk to Bailey Ellaish by his mother, and
now seemed to be having quite some fun. Severus
shoved his anger down his throat, knowing his
friend would never cross the line, but still quite
aware of how insecure Anne surprisingly was. “He’s
being social. He’s doing his duty as the Host.”

“He’s not the Host, his parents. He didn’t even want

a party,” she groaned, sipping her own wine and
finally looking away. “She’s pretty.”

Severus was silent as he glanced at the girl. She

was pretty, but he felt like agreeing with her wasn’t
what she wanted at the moment.

“She’s very… Italian,” was all he managed to say.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked,

raising her eyebrows.

That, Severus wasn’t sure, so he just shrugged.

The action brought a small smile to Anne’s lips,
though it wasn’t his intention.

“You’re a better friend than you think,” she said.

He was silent once more.

“I understand how jealousy can feel, I felt my fair

share of it before,” he admitted. She turned to look
at him and he frowned. “If you start talking about
your feelings, I’ll walk away and leave you alone.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she dismissed. She took a

deep breath and looked away for a moment either
way. “I don’t want to feel it, though, it’s quite
pathetic of me, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” he admitted.

“I mean, the boy practically asked me to marry him

and here I am, trembling because he’s dancing with
someone under his mother’s supervision. It’s
pathetic,” she complained, leaning against the wall
beside the windowsill Severus was sitting
comfortably on. “And I’m in the corner, watching
them.”

Severus frowned even more.

“If that’s your way of asking me to take you for a

dance, I warn you now that I’m terrible at it and
won’t leave my window unless absolutely
necessary,” he warned. “I don’t dance.”

She ended up laughing at that.

“Not my plan either, I assure you,” she said. “Rest

easily about your drinks as well, Severus. I don’t
plan on getting drunk.”

“No ditching your shirt and dancing on top of the

table, then, good to know,” he grumbled.

“I could try to convince you to go to the back

gardens with me, though,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” he grumbled once more, looking

over to where Regulus was standing now, no longer
dancing. “I actually need to talk to Regulus, so I’ll
be over there if you need me. Run to me if anyone
tries anything. Excuse me.”

She rolled her eyes to him as he moved across the

room through the corners of walls, not getting in
anyone’s ways.

Anne stood there for a second, feeling out of place

and as if every effort she had put on her
appearance had been in vain. Call her insecure, but
she had expected Regulus to at least look at her for
a little bit more before walking away and wishing
her and Severus a good party. Still, she
understood he was in unfamiliar territory as well.

The Black Townhouse certainly was a lot far from

the Black Household. It was bigger, for starters,
since there were more people living there at the
start – with Andromeda married, Bellatrix married
off and Narcissa married off as well, now there was
no one else beside Cygnus and Druella living there.
The house gained some loneliness in its walls, Anne
could feel it, though the Dark Magic weight on her
chest was a lot easier to deal with than in the
Malfoy Manor.

She moved slowly across the corridor where several

people had gone out for smokes. Opening the white
door, she walked to the right, seeing a free seat on
a stone-made bench. It was cold even through her
dress, but her feet were hurting after so long
standing beside Severus as he sulked.

If she liked cigarettes, she would have one of her

lips that very moment.

She sighed, exhausted, and leaned forward; her

face was hidden in her hands as she dissuaded
herself from screaming her throat raw.

“Tired already, Miss Sage?” said a voice.

She looked up in surprise. She hadn’t heard anyone

coming.

She found why quickly. Orion Black had probably

been sitting on the bench across from hers,
obscured by a wide and tall brush of roses, before
she had even walked out of the party for some
alone time.

“Hello, Lord Black,” she greeted, getting up from

the bench in false-respect.

“Please, please, dear girl, stop with that pretence,

we both know your anger towards me is as big as
my wife’s,” he said in a good-natured tone. She
just stared at him. “Couldn’t deal with all the faking
inside as well?”

“I don’t understand, sir,” she said.

“Come sit beside me,” he asked. “I’d walk to you

instead if I were in better condition, I’m sure you
already know.”

“Yes, Regulus did confide in me,” she agreed.

Anne wanted to make sure he thought she hadn’t

shared anything to anyone.

“Yes, yes, Regulus,” he mumbled to himself. Anne

walked across the garden, carefully siting beside
him, putting some space between them. She was
hyper-aware that she was sitting alone in the dark
garden with a man; though sick, she couldn’t be
sure just how powerful Orion still was. She could be
in danger. “The little boy will be lost without me.”

“You underestimate him, sir,” she quickly

disagreed.

“He’s growing well for his age, but that doesn’t

make him any less of a child,” Orion said.
“Walburga needed to understand that, but she
didn’t in time – she forced him under the mark
without my knowledge, though she made sure to
tell him I was the one to ask such silliness from
him. Absurd. Why would I make my son follow a
violent man? Why would I dare to put my Heir’s life
in line in a war I wasn’t sure I was going to win?
Now I won’t even be here to see the conclusion of
this senseless shambles of what’s left of my
beliefs.”

She just stared at him, trying to understand why he

was telling that to her at all. They weren’t close and
he made sure to tell her that he didn’t like her or
the probable plans she had for Regulus.

“You must be confused,” he said.

“I cannot say I’m not,” she admitted. “You want a

favour; I can see that. But why me?”

“Because I know where that necklace came from.”

Anne felt her whole body freezing and she

wondered how fast she could run to Severus to ask
to go home in those shoes, but things were already
done. Any reaction from her would only agree to
Orion’s story, so all she did was turn to stare at
him.

“I like emeralds,” as her blankest and most neutral

answer.

“That was my mother’s emerald,” was his answer,

which broke any composure she had kept. “Well,
now that you allowed me to show you that I know
the truth, there’s another truth that I know, Miss
Potter. Well, half a truth.”

“I believe is for the best for this conversation to

end here, sir,” she said, starting to get up.

“Sirius isn’t here to protect you, your… whatever it

is that Euphemia Fraser-Potter is to you, she isn’t
here either,” he warned. She stood in front of him,
unable to move away from him in fear. “Listen,
Anne Potter, you know things you cannot know,
your eyes are a lot easier to read once I’ve seen
you looking at my son.”

“I –”

“Quiet. I’m not done,” he warned. He took his hand

to her arm and Anne knew he was relying mostly
on her fear on him, his hand had no warmth and no
strength in it. “When you first came over to my
home, you were polite and perfect, with a small
mistake of not being well-bred. I could overlook
that for you to be his Mistress, I could actually
support him on it, but then I saw you again in
Regulus’ birthday where you frightened my wife.
Believe me when I say, Miss Potter, that my wife is
not easily frightened and you managed to get her in
her dreams, give her nightmares.”

“I did nothing to her,” she defended herself.

“You protected your mind and I applaud you for

that, and in that you made my wife feel like
nothing,” he explained. “Not the worthless type of
nothing, but the empty of becoming nothing. You
locked her in before pushing her out and locking
her there, and inside your mind is terrifying by
what she told me. Tall walls, dark walls, covered in
the worst of feelings that made her mind dissolve
into nothingness before becoming everything at
once – traumatic. Taught her a lesson.”

“I didn’t plan on hurting Lady Black,” she insisted.

“You should have, she’s a terrible person,” he

dismissed. “I have no energy to waste to try and
defend her at this point. There was a time in my life
I loved her, but there’s nothing but bitterness
between us. I’m sure there was a time she loved
me as well, but I made too many mistakes and I
paid for each and every single one of them. When
you’re married to a Black, you pay for your sins and
are kissed about them just as easily.”

“Regulus isn’t like that. He isn’t like you,” she said.

“He makes sure of it. Of not being like the people
that made him what he is.”

He nodded to himself, looking around the garden as

if deep in thought, but it didn’t take too much
before his lips started moving and words fell off.

“I suppose I made mistakes with Regulus as well,”

he admitted. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I
wasn’t supposed to go so fast, I was supposed to
have time to teach him everything and ease him
into the politics – Walburga ruined it all and she
forced herself to grieve what could have been with
Sirius, though she doesn’t admit. She has lost her
mind. People say she will lose her mind, but not a
single one of them noticed that she’s too far gone
already.”

“Lady Black will… push through,” she said.

He looked at her once more.

“And there you go, the certainty in your voice is

there again,” he said, amused as if she had told a
joke. “How can you know?”

“How could I not? The worst of vases is the last to

break,” she mocked, getting her arm away from his
hand.

“Those are not the words of angry certainty, those

are the words of certainty of memory,” he said.
“But you’re not a Seer, you don’t have a single drop
of Seer blood in you. So, you can either tell me the
truth, or I can go and tell Walburga the truth about
this emerald. Tell me, was is a proposal?”

If he said a single thing about it to Walburga, if a

single word was breathed away, Regulus would be
a dead man walking.

“No, sir,” she mumbled. “It was not. I can tell you
everything.”

James would scream and shout, he would make a

whole scene until the man looked away. Sirius
would have screamed and fought back until that
man was black and blue. Remus would talk his way
out of it, he would vomit words and facts until the
man was sure he was absolutely out of his mind.
Peter would have turned around and ran as fast as
he could to the safety of his brothers in arms.

But Anne couldn’t do anything. She was

condemned. If she stayed, she would have to talk.
If she went, Severus and Regulus would be in
danger and she couldn’t deal with them walking
into harm blindsided because of her stubbornness.

Anne Potter wouldn’t survive another person

getting hurt for her.

So, she told Orion Black everything.

Orion have heard the most impossible stories from

people trying to get out of trouble. He had been a
Prefect in Hogwarts and Head Boy when time came,
after that he worked in the wizarding-law area and
had been in jury more than once. Not a single lying
person that walked out of court had ever looked so
honest as Anne Potter had been as she told him the
outcome of the war.

Without a hitch, he believed everything.

“I believe I made another mistake I must atone

before I go, Anne Potter,” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“I was a terrible judge of character. I don’t think a

single person could make my son a better person
other than you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“A thing you will learn as you grow closer and

closer to death, my dear, is that death makes men
honest and women angry. In life, I was taught it’s
the other way around,” he laughed at some private
little joke he had in his mind as he looked at the
roses above their head. He pressed his lips and
took a long, deep breath. “I don’t have a lot of
time. I don’t think I will last the summer, but I’m
trying to hold on to see my boy turn seventeen,
make sure nobody tries to take anything from him
before he can take it under his name, but it’s hard.”

“Don’t think I forgot, sir, that you started this

conversation searching for a favour,” she said.
“What do you need from me in exchange for your
silence?”

He looked at Anne.

“I don’t care what side you have to do go to, but

make sure my son survives this, Anne, and there
will be something for you,” he said.

“With all due respect, sir, but you will be dead

before the worst of the war even starts,” she said.
“You can’t promise me things and not be willing to
fulfil them, I’m not a child to just believe it all you
say.”

“Never thought that of you. I’m sure that even

when you were a kid, you weren’t one,” he laughed
once more, but ended up wheezing in the end,
coughing once to fix himself and taking a deep
breath. “Give me your hand,” he asked. She
hesitated. “I won’t hurt you, Miss Potter.”

She did so.

“As a warning, I can scream very loudly,” she said,

sounding like a child.

“I imagine so,” he dismissed. As he took her hands

into his, she felt his magic going through her body.
She winced with the feeling, trying to get her hand
away from his, but he used his little strength to
hold her in place – fearing hurting him, she froze.
“Do you know what this was?”

“What did you do to me?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” he explained. “For a

marriage to be recognized by our House, one needs
the blessing of one of the parents, but permission
of both, though the permission part can be easily
skipped in a magical blessing is done. That was
what it was. I, Orion Black, allow you, Anne Potter,
to marry my Heir and son, Regulus Black, in the
moment both of you want to do so and my magic
shall outlive me and my memory.”

Anne tried her best not to act odd as she sipped

more wine, but the feeling of Orion’s magic inside
of her was something that she had never felt before
– it wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t painful. It was
the reminder that there was more to the world than
her, it was the physical reminder that there was a
lot about the wizarding world that she didn’t know,
especially unspoken rules of courting and marriage,
something she had never had contact before
Regulus.

“You look dreadfully pale, I thought the garden

might have done you some good, but you look even
more jumpy,” Severus said from beside her, giving
her some whiskey to see if it would bring colour to
her cheeks.

“I suppose I’m tired,” she said.

“Anne, you stayed in the gardens for almost an

hour,” he said, concerned. “Did something happen?
Did someone do something to you?”

Her head snapped up at that. If only Severus knew

what had happened. How could she tell him that
someone had done something, indeed?

“It was dark and I ended up almost falling asleep. I

was rather comfortable outside, away from all this
heat,” she said. She took a deep breath. Regulus
was now talking to another girl, standing beside
Narcissa, this time he looked a bit taken aback by
how flirtatious she was being, looking like he was
about to hide behind his cousin. “Do you think it
would be awfully rude of me to go home?”

“It’s midnight,” he commented, glancing at the

clock on the wall. “I do believe I could make up
something about a curfew.”

“That would be very kind of –”

“Severus! Come here!” called out.

Lucius Malfoy was standing not too far from where

Regulus and Narcissa were, discreetly waving for
Severus to come over, though he did smile to her
as well. A clear double invitation that neither was in
position to refuse to abide.

She sighed.

“There goes our chance,” she said.

“You know, you’re a lot more annoying when you’re

not enjoying yourself, jealous girl,” he complained.

She glared at him sideways, but put her hands on

his forearm as he led her through the people
towards Lucius. He did put his hand around her
shoulders when a man did come too close as he
walked by, too distracted by his wife’s brassiere
slipping from under her dress to view to care who
he was walking through.

“Hello, young lovers,” he said. “Midnight already,

can you believe? I’m having so much fun!”

“Lucius,” Severus greeted simply.

“Indeed, quite the party,” she answered, taking

over from the clearly annoyed Severus. She must
have been quite annoying to have him that way
already. “Nothing to be surprised. Purebloods do
know how to party by what I have noticed in my
time here.”

She smiled her best charming smile to the man

standing beside Lucius in a clear way to get the
blonde to present her to him. The man standing
beside him was a bit older than him and quite
clearly more sober than the smiling Malfoy and he
had been looking at Anne for hours at that point.

“You are a lucky man, Severus,” the stranger said.

“Miss, nice to meet you, I am Loic Yaxley.”

Loic Yaxley, he died in 1979. He didn’t much time.

He was a terrible person. Anne couldn’t bring
herself to care. All she knew was that he seemed to
have hurt someone inside the Inner Circle and was
killed, body sent to the Ministry in the same day as
a warning about media or something like that. He
was never really important, but he could be
someone that could end up saying something
before dying.

“The pleasure is mine, sir,” she said. “I’m Anne

Sage.”

“Miss Sage lived in Canada for most of her life,”

Lucius blabbered out. “Mister Yaxley lived there for
a year, but spends most of his time in France. He
was quite disappointed when he found you that you
can’t speak French.”

“Language is not one of my talents, monsieur,” she

teased.

Yaxley laughed a bit too hard of her small joke.

Severus looked at her by the corner of his eyes,

suddenly feeling like standing beside her was wrong
just by the way he could feel Regulus’ eyes
travelling around the group in an odd shine of
interest.

“How old are you, Miss?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” she answered.

“An adult!” he seemed to celebrate.

She smiled once more.

Severus recognized her flirting smile and wondered

if she had seen something more than the overly
friendly man standing in front of him or if she was
as immature as she seemed to be, flirting with
another man because she was jealous of Regulus.
Uncomfortable, he shoved his hands into his
pockets.

“Careful there, my friend, Severus here is her

boyfriend and I’m sure he’s as jealous as any man
with a girl as beautiful as this,” Lucius said in a
polite warning.

Yaxley didn’t seem to care.

“Severus has a good taste in women, indeed, and

in jewels,” he pointed at her neck. “An Emerald. It
makes your hair even redder.”

“Careful, sir, or I might take it as an offense,” she

said.

“Anne hates having red hair,” Severus blurted out.

He glanced at Anne, unsure of what to say next.
“But she does look great in green. A pity she’s not
in Slytherin.”

“Indeed, a pity!” Lucius said. “That would be the

House I and most of your friends were at, Loic,
however Miss Sage over here has the brain, but
also the heart – a miracle, really. Ended up in
Gryffindor, the red, courageous House.”

“I must admit courage is something I lack,” she

lied.

“She’s being humble,” said another voice.

Regulus was standing to the side of Anne in a

second, hands behind his body and posture slightly
stiff, but it could easily be confused with exhaustion
after so many turns in the dance floor.

“Oh, hello, Regulus,” she said in a tone slightly off

from her normal. Severus and Regulus recognized
it as off, Lucius and Loic stood blissfully unaware of
her shift.

“I did greet you when you came in,” he said,

looking at her finally. “I did, however, forget to
congratulate Severus once more. You’re a vision in
this dress, as I’m sure you know by the way every
man in this room seems to be looking at you.
Severus needs to be careful, Anne-Girl, somebody
might try to steal you away from him.”

“I’m quite faithful and loyal. He doesn’t have

anything to worry about, your friend is quite safe in
my hands, Regulus.” she answered.

He turned to the older men watching the exchange.

“Another trait of Gryffindor, not all that

surprisingly. Anne is a Gryffindor a lot of time, but
when she wants to be a Slytherin, she can fit right
in,” he said with a bit of a forced smile. “The venom
in her tongue.”

A feminine laugh made Anne relax as Narcissa took

a step between Anne and Regulus.

“Come on Anne, let’s leave the boys to have their

talk. I have someone to introduce you to someone,”
she said, embracing her shoulders by the side.
“Excuse us, boys, as we go to have fun as well.”

“Of course, wife,” said Lucius, smiling just in love

with Narcissa as always, though quite more open
about it in his alcoholic help.

Narcisa led her away with tranquillity only found in

the wind as she passed through the guests a lot
more smoothly than Severus.

“Mister Yaxley’s sister wished to meet you since

Regulus mentioned you,” she explained. “He didn’t
mention any other woman, not even family and not
she wants to meet you. He was careless.”

“He seemed focused on others quite well enough

this night.”

“Now, now. Don’t be petty, it’s uncouth, Anne,

dear,” she elegantly scolded her. Anne tried not to
sulk. “Deep breath. This girl is quite…”

“What?” Anne asked.

Too late.

“Anne Sage, this is Alexandria Yaxley, she’s

fourteen. Alexia, this is Anne,” introduced Narcissa.
“I was just about to tell Anne about Lucius’ plans.
I’m sure your brother will make part of it, my dear,
why don’t you help me.”

“That would be wonderful!” Alexandria said.

“Regulus talked about you. And he was right,
you’re dressed beautifully from up-close.”

Anne blinked. Back-handed compliments;

wonderful, she felt like she was back in fifth-year
suddenly, looking right back at Pansy Parkinson at
that odd month where there were rumours of Draco
having a crush on Anne, it wasn’t true of course,
but Pansy had been unbearable to be nearby for
the whole month.

“Thank you, it’s an Ali Aayad,” she said. “Unique.”

“And expensive!” Narcissa said, looking at Anne as

if to say ‘see?’. “Anne is a Sage, but is with the
Potters, her family here in England. She’s originally
from Canada.”

“Canada, heard a lot about your home. I hope you

had a better life over there than my brother did,”
she said.

If Anne was truly from Canada, that might have

stung a bit, but all she did was chuckle a bit as if
she had said a small intern joke between them.

“I’m sure I did,” she said firmly once the chuckle

was over.

Narcissa took a discreet deep breath and turned a

bit away from Yaxley, smiling only to Anne.

“Well, Lucius has plans to get in the Ministry, can

you believe it, Anne? Finally. He has been trying for
months, but now has an inside,” Narcissa said.

Anne suddenly understood that Narcissa didn’t want

silly conversations or company to try and survive
the train-wreck Alexandria seemed to want to
create with her wish for chaos. No, she wanted to
pass information in a discreet way. To a stranger
nearby was the best way. Alexandria had no way to
know who the Potters were or what they were
famous for in England, she would just go along,
probably throwing more information to make her
brother and herself look better.

Narcissa had always been smart, but sometimes

she did overdo herself.

“You don’t say!” Anne said.

“My brother is helping him as well, of course, but I

must admit that Fawley is a nice man. His daughter
is as well, though very quiet,” Alexandria said.

“Since Elizabeth was engaged to Roddy’s brother,

Mister Fawley has been a lot closer. Almost family.
A blessing, really, he’s a wonderful man,” Narcissa
added. “They have been getting a lot of support to
get Lucius inside of the Educational Department,
maybe even having a Seat in the future since his
father seems to want to keep his Seat for as long
as he can stand.”

“To have a Seat is a great honour. We cannot

blame Lord Malfoy,” Alexandria said.

What would she know of British honour? Anne

wondered, but did hold back her tongue.

“Regulus did comment on the engagement, I

thought it was an amazing idea,” lied Anne.
“Elizabeth is such a sweet girl. Let’s hope she can
put Mister Lestrange in good reins, am I right?”

“Indeed!” Narcissa laughed, a bit forcefully. “But

did Regulus mention Mister Crouch’s present of
graduation?”

“We ended up not really talking much tonight,”

Anne dismissed, trying to muffle down her anger.
“What happened?”

“Regulus has a knife collection, did you know?”

Alexandria said as if she knew him better.

She turned to look at the girl.

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” she lied. “Wonderful daggers,

knives and swords. All types!”

It was silly, she knew. But her jealousy from all the
girls (not the fourteen-year-old annoying her,
though) was still getting to the back of her throat.

Alexandria closed her lips and seemed to look for

something to say, but found nothing to throw back
at her.

“Mister Crouch gave him a dagger he had been

searching for quite some time, though Bellatrix has
been trying to get him to sell it to her. Regulus
seemed against it. Selfish boy, he is about his
pointy things,” Narcissa laughed. “I wouldn’t dare
to call it ‘pointy things’ in front of him, of course. I
have some self-preservation left in me. Now, Mister
Crouch seems to be getting into the family as well!
What a ward can do!”

Mister Crouch, Yaxley and Fawley were now about

to be marked as Death Eaters as well, Narcissa
meant to say.

“Absolutely wonderful!” Anne said, trying her best

to sound excited. She was exhausted and that
conversation was tiring her out even more. “Things
will get better for Lucius from now on, then, right?
The whole Ministry thing will put your lives in
comfort for the rest of several generations, I’m
sure.”

“Money is not a problem for them,” Alexandria said.

Anne was about to snap at her when a hand on her

shoulder made her look away from the little girl.

“Anne, my dear, forgive me, I forgot about your

curfew,” Severus said. “Come on, then. Potter is
still waiting awake for you. Say your goodbyes.”

She nodded at him.

“It was wonderful to see you once more, Narcissa,

thank you for the wonderful talk. I wish nothing but
the best for you and your family,” she said, kissing
her cheek. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Yaxley,”
she added. Regulus walked closer to the group. “Do
thank your family for the invitation, Regulus. We’ll
see each other soon?”

“Write to me, please,” he said.

“As soon as I can,” she dismissed. “Have a

goodnight.”

“Goodnight!” they answered together.

Anne didn’t look back as she walked away.

Notes:
As you can see the chapter wasn'
edited, so do bear with me, sweet
readers.

Been doing tiktoks on From Eden

and is so much fun!
Use the hashtag: #fromedenfanfic
in your tiktok or tag me so I can
see them. I'm tired of doing them
alone :(

Chapter 89: Chapter Eighty-

Eight
Summary:
Dealing with Anne's jealous is
dealing with her insecurity.

Notes:
I'm listening to Family Lines
several times a day and that says
a lot about me.

Chapter Eighty-Eight –

INSECURE CONFRONTATION

Anne wished she was a better person. A better

person would end up sitting down and talking about
why it was so hard talking about what she was
feeling and why her throat seemed to close up.

She had never been one to jealousy. As she grew

up, she learned that her brother wasn’t only hers
when he had good friends that were as good as
siblings to him as well, she didn’t mind her flings
talking to other people (even though she didn’t
really love them) and when her father had girls
over (that were not her mother) she had been
angry, but not enough to make her choke down
tears by just remembering the scene. No. Regulus
had a power over her that left her a pathetic mess.
Just the memory of a girl’s hand over his shoulder
as he twirled her around with his best charming
smile made her stomach churn and her eyes tear
up as if she was a child.

She couldn’t eat and she barely slept that night. It

was pathetic. He had unofficially proposed to her,
promised his faithfulness and she believed him
completely – why was she so hurt as she poked the
grapes on her plate still couldn’t be answered. She
trusted Regulus, but she was still hurt. She knew
his mother hated her and she knew that she
wanted to find someone to continue the family line
soon enough; she felt like her time was running
out.

War was coming.

Regulus was expected to walk away from her.

“You’re acting weird ever since you came home,”

James said, sighing in breakfast. “What happened?”

His question called attention from everybody in the

table. Sirius and Remus were watching the
exchange in silence, also having noticed the change
in behaviour and the sudden quietness in her ways.
Monty looked slightly confused, he had assumed
the girl was just with a hangover, but she was
acting weird every since she had gotten back, then
something was wrong. Mia, however, looked
concerned as well, she had noticed the sad glint in
her eyes and the way she refused to talk about the
party at all.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “I’m just tired.”

“You slept for almost ten hours, Annie. Just tired

doesn’t cut it with us. Something happened,” Sirius
insisted.

Remus sipped his tea before putting the cup down

on the table.

“You are aware that you’re considered pack to me,

correct, Anne?” Remus asked. She looked up,
confused by the sudden question, but nodded. “You
are aware that I can feel when you’re hurt, and not
just physically.”

She blushed.

Strong emotions were felt by the alpha, she knew,

of course, she had enough research about it, but it
didn’t make any less embarrassing that her
godfather had known she was crying herself to
sleep once she got to her bedroom. It was close to
the end of the month, which meant the next full
moon was approaching (June’s Moon having been
in the first day of the month).

“Did Snivellus do something?” Sirius asked,

gripping his fork tighter. “He left you here and went
away so fast. I knew something was wrong.”

“Don’t call him that and he did nothing wrong,” she

said, putting her own fork down with a bit too much
force, the noise echoing around the silent room.
“Severus did what he could to keep me entertained.
I ended up hurting myself, nobody did anything –
my expectations did it by themselves.”

James’ eyebrows shot up.

“Something in your plan went wrong?” Monty

asked.

She hated how quickly her mind whispered that she

would rather have something in her plan go wrong,
as long as Regulus would be by her side, and her
side alone.

“No,” she said.

“I think this is a more… teenager problem than a

war problem, my dear,” Mia said to her husband.
“Anne, did Regulus did something? Something you
weren’t ready for or wanted to do?”

She scoffed.

“No, of course not, Regulus is a good man. He

would never do something like that. He’s a good
person,” she insisted.

“And yet, here you are,” Remus said, looking at her

up and down.

“As I said, I hurt myself,” she dismissed. “I created

expectations in my head that cannot be fulfilled and
now I’m hurt because I lied to myself over and over
again, now I’m just… being hit with the truth that
Regulus is a pureblood Heir and expected to fulfil
some duties that don’t align with my fantasies.”

James frowned.

“I don’t follow,” her father said.

But Sirius did.

“Walburga put him out there to get him a wife,” he

guessed.

Hearing that from someone else other than her own

mean mind made it a lot more real and her eyes
filled with tears once more. Just the simple thought
of Regulus dressed up waiting for another girl
dressed in white made her nauseated.

“Oh, Annie,” cooed Remus, getting up from his seat

and running to hug her. She sniffled, not wanting to
end up a sobbing mess at the breakfast table. “We
both know that he would never go through with
anything, we both know he would never go to
anyone else but you for anything.”

“But his mother expects him to,” she said. “And I

knew that from the start. I don’t even know why
I’m crying about it!”

“Because you’re a teenager in love, darling,” Mia

said from her place. “You will cry about a lot of
things that in a few years won’t make a single
ounce of sense, but that doesn’t make it hurt any
less right now.”

It was a comfort for Anne for someone to say her

feelings were normal, but that didn’t make them go
away.

The distraction of the ‘pop’ of Coco popping into the

breakfast room smoothing down her pillowcase and
clearly unsure if it was the right moment to pass
the message she had for them.

“Mistress, there is a young man outside for Miss

Anne,” Coco announced. “He brought gifts.”

“So he does know he messed up,” Monty said,

eating his last piece of melon.

“Do you have a name, Coco?” Mia asked.

“Regulus, Mistress,” she answered.

“Tell him to come in and lead him to the parlour,

please,” Mia said. Coco popped off, quickly
following the orders. “You don’t need to talk to him
if you don’t want to, Anne, just so you know. You
can ask for more time.”

She knew that and she knew that Regulus would

understand to some extent, but he didn’t seem to
know what he had done and came to her house to
talk to her.

“I’ll talk to him,” she said.

Mia nodded as she watched Anne getting up and

fixing her robes around her pyjamas and walking
out of the room towards the parlour.

The parlour was surprisingly shadowy since it

usually got good light in the mornings, but the
rainy day outside made it hard for any sun to
venture for more than a few minutes. In there,
Regulus was standing near the window with two
boxes in hand and bouquet of beautiful flowers. He
turned around towards the door when Anne walked
in, slippers making no sound, but the door creaking
a bit.

“Good morning,” he said. “How are you feeling

today? You seemed a little tipsy yesterday.”

“I’m fine,” she dismissed. “How may I help you?”

He blinked in surprise by her curtness before taking

a breath and giving the flowers to her.

“I got you this. Picked it up along the way, saw it

and was reminded of you,” he explained.

Doubtful, she thought. Still, her heart seemed to

skip a beat as she recognized the white jasmines
amongst the red carnations. She was pretty sure he
had looked for those flowers well enough to find
them fully bloomed, after all, she couldn’t find any
magic as she reached for them. Those were muggle
flowers. He had gone to Muggle England to get
them.

“Thanks,” she choked out.

“Look, I talked to Severus and he commented you

were a bit off yesterday. I wanted to come here
and apologize if I did anything or to listen to what
happened, so I can fix it,” he explained. “Was it
something I said?”

“You didn’t speak to me, so it’s not something you

said,” she said.

She knew it was mean and unnecessary, she knew

he had no guilt on this. And yet the pettiness made
it hurt a bit less.

“Wow,” he whispered, surprised by how her words

stung. “Alright, I feel like I’m missing something
here. You might need to get a bit specific so I can
follow here, Anne-Girl. I’m completely lost.”

“You’re either making yourself underhand, or you’re

just plain stupid,” she grumbled to herself and
Regulus didn’t react to her painful words at first, so
she looked back at him, wanting a reaction.
“Please, you’re very smart, Regulus, you know very
well what you did and you know it was wrong
because you came to my house with flowers and
presents.”

The boy in front of her.

“You’re being quite rude,” he warned. “The

presents are not for you, though. I came here
because I noticed and then Severus confirmed that
you were upset over something yesterday, so I
came to check on you and give these presents to
my brother.”

She blushed, humiliated for how conceited that

made her sound, but she pushed her pride forward.

“Now, you’re making me feel silly,” she complained.

“Because you’re acting silly. You’re complaining and

getting angry at me when I don’t even know what
I’ve done.”

She put the flowers over the table and sat down on
the sofa, crossing her arms, watching as Regulus
walked across the room to sit on the other sofa
right in front of her, not daring to sit beside her.

“I shouldn’t have thought this would work, I was

being silly,” she said, looking down at the flowers,
nose and eyes already burning as she did her best
to hold back her treacherous tears. “I should’ve
focused on my original plan.”

“Ow, ow, wait up. What?” he asked, putting the two

small boxes on the table beside the flowers. “What
are you on about, Anne? What’s happening? What
did I do?”

She looked up at him, startling him with the tears.

“Your mother is trying to marry you off already,

Regulus. I’m not stupid, I noticed that in the
moment I walked in and she dragged you away to
make you dance with those girls, all of them falling
at your feet, and you were enjoying yourself,” she
said. She hated how bitter she sounded.

He seemed shocked.

“Anne, I know those girls ever since I was small.

Most of them came from other countries to
congratulate me, most with their brothers and
parents, none of them were important to me. They
were important to the cause,” he said. “You can’t
be mad at me for doing my job.”

“Job? Sure!” she scoffed.

“My mother wants me to find a wife, yes, I won’t

deny and lie about it to you. You’re not stupid, you
know how things work in my family and in other
families like mine,” he said, eyes becoming colder
and firmer. “But I didn’t dance with them because I
happen to enjoy dancing. I actually dread dancing –
but the Dark Lord asked me to make a wider social
network because I mostly walk around with
Severus and you in school. I need that for my
future with him.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault?!” she said too loudly,

jumping up from where she was sitting, slapping
her hands on the sides of her thighs in annoyance.

“Well, yes!” he said, getting up as well and

frowning, clearly upset. “And do not scream at me.”

She looked at him once more. Regulus hated when

people screamed, but she could barely control
herself at that point.

“How is this my fault?” she asked.

“Because I’m doing this for you! Why else?” he

answered. “Anne, you told me to hold, climb up the
ranks as fast as I can and hold on for as long as I
can and I’m doing exactly what you told me to.
Don’t you dare pull that on me as if I’m a horrible
person for that. Chose a bloody side!”

She looked away from him, tears finally escaping

her eyes as she forced her hands to go up and dry
them as fast as she could before he could think she
was using those tears against him.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked.

“The real problem!”

“I’M JEALOUS!” she screamed. “I’m jealous that

they get to dance with you. I’m jealous that they
get to have your mother looking away as if they
were not going to attack you at some point. I’m
jealous that they get to be seen as girls and not
objects. I’m jealous that they get to walk around
and talk and not get horrible looks as if they were
nothing but dirt under their shoes!” she took a deep
breath. “And I’m jealous that you paid more
attention to them then you did to me,” the last
sentence jumping from her lips in nothing but a
whisper.

Her honesty seemed to take him aback. He had

expected lies once more – he was too used to Anne
lying to him and then backing down and throwing
all the truth at him at once and him having to deal
with it.

“Anne, I cannot help you with those feelings,” he

said. “All I can say is that you have my stone in
your neck and, one day, you’ll have my ring on
your finger. But I cannot do anything more about it
now.”

“I know,” she whimpered. He walked around the

coffee table to get closer to her. “But you looked so
happy.”

“I’m good actor, Anne-Girl, I need to be a good

actor to survive,” he said, standing near, but not
daring to touch her. “Remember whenever you feel
angry at me, however, that you don’t have the
right to aim it towards me because you made sure I
was in there, you told me how to get in and you
helped me through the worst part of it up until
now.”

“I’m a horrible person,” she whimpered, walking

forward. She walked right into his arms as he
embraced her and she cried. “They were so much
prettier than me and they knew how to use those
horribly small cups.”

He chuckled against her hair.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t know how to use those cups

either,” he admitted. “And you were the prettiest
girl in that room by far.”

Once she was calmer, he pulled away much against

her will. He still had things to say, she knew by the
way he was looking at her as he sat her beside him
on the sofa she had been originally on. “Anne,” he
licked his lips and took a deep breath, trying to find
the words. “This isn’t a scolding…” he started.

“Alright?” she said, hesitant.

“But you can’t be immature as this or insecure like

this… I know it sounds harsh but a lot of things are
coming and I need to make sure I can count on you
and you won’t be mad at me for doing something
you told me to do,” he said. Her lips wobbled again
and he took a deep breath. “Please, don’t cry. I
don’t mean to sound rude.”

“I know,” she said, trying to swallow down her

tears.

“All I mean to say is that you told me to be a Death

Eater. To be the perfect Death Eater, I need to be
the perfect son and for that I need to keep my
mother relatively happy. I need to dance and go to
parties and try my best to not throw up on
someone’s shoes when I dance too much,” he
explained. “You can’t keep of hurting yourself like
this – it’s not healthy. It’s not good for you and it’s
not good for me, because when you’re hurt, I hurt
as well.”

“I’m sorry.”

“When I’m with them, be sure I think of nothing but

you,” he promised. He took her hand and held it on
her lap before using his other hand to push some of
her messy hair away from her face and kiss her
cheek. “Your skin,” he mumbled, near her ear
before kissing her lips. “Your lips,” he put his
forehead against hers. “Your mind, your words,
your smile…” he smirked as he pulled back just
enough. “Your sounds.” He kissed her lips once
more. “You are the only thing keeping me sane at
the moment, please, don’t turn away from me for
something I didn’t do.”

Before the guilt settled in her stomach or she could

as much as apologize once more, his lips were
swallowing her whole – she couldn’t think, she
couldn’t speak, she could only feel. Every inch of
his body was against hers as she straddled him on
the sofa, holding him by the hair and pulling him
closer to herself.

His hands were resting on her waist, caressing her

under the robes, but over the thin dark grey shirt
she had on. His hands touched her breasts over the
bra, cupping them gently midst the chaotic kiss
they shared.

“How dare you say they were prettier, when you

look like this on top of me?” he grumbled as he
helped her shrug the robes off. “If only you could
see yourself through my eyes, Anne, you’d love
yourself so much you wouldn’t look away from the
mirror. I’m enchanted by you,” he passed his kisses
from her lips to her neck. “I can’t look away from
you even when I want to, I have to consciously
remind myself to not look all the time. I was caught
staring more than once yesterday. You looked
divine in that dress.”

“I love you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t notice before,” he said back.

“I’m sorry,” she said once more.

“You’re the most alluring woman I have ever seen,”

he pushed the spaghetti strap down her shoulder to
kiss her shoulders, the freckles there making him
smile. “More divine that the statues I’ve seen in
temples. Your words and mind are charming and
fascinate me, I can hear you talk for a whole night
and will be even more in love with you. You’re
magnificent, Anne. Don’t let anyone tell you
otherwise, not even yourself,” he insisted.

Through happy tears, she tried to find something

witty to say.

“You’ve been brushing up on your reading,” she

teased.

“You’re pulchritudinous” he insisted.

“Did you eat the dictionary before coming over?”

she teased.

“No, but I did reread Anne of Avonlea last night

before the party,” he teased.

She smiled at him as he reached up and cleaned

her tears. She sniffed, trying to make herself look a
little less like a mess, but he didn’t seem to mind
much.

“Are we ok?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I think we’ve talked this through.”

“I’m sorry for being immature and jealous,” she

said.

“I was jealous as well,” he admitted. “Severus had

the honour of standing next to you and whenever
he walked away from you, somebody congratulated
him since you were so exquisite, and all I could do
was smile. And then Yaxley –”

“Creepy man,” she said.

“You smiled at him your best smile and I was

terrified you thought him to be charming,” he
admitted. “I almost broke character, had to tell him
to back off and then pretended to be tipsy. I was
lucky enough Severus was just as fierce in
protecting you as I was, otherwise I would’ve been
seen as ridiculous.”

She hated how it made her feel better that he, too,
had been slightly hurt and fearful in that party. She
hated how more confident it made her feel that he
had been jealous of her, though he did handle it a
lot healthier than she had, not choking it down and
just blindly trusting her. Regulus often did that, she
noticed at once, he often blindly trusted her after
that day in Pandora’s party and even more after
she told him the truth – she though it might have
been the passion, the love they felt, but no… it was
more, it was friendship and loyalty to a fault.

At least she knew he and his brother shared

something.

Loyal to a fault. Deep, passionate feelings that

could lead them to their heaven or destruction with
the same easiness.

She leaned down and kissed him as passionately as

she could, thanking him for sharing his feelings.

“Hey, Reg, are you – Oh, Merlin’s Beard!”

Anne jumped from Regulus’ lap and landed on his

side.

Sirius stood in the doorway with a cringing Remus

behind him that clearly had gone after him to stop
him from opening the door.

“What?” Anne asked, sounding between confused

and rude.

“I was just going to ask if Reg was going to stay for

lunch, but I guess he’s already eating,” Sirius said,
lips curling in disgust, but not missing the joke. “Be
grateful it was me and not James.”

“James caught us in worse situations,” Regulus

said. “Ask him about the Astronomy Tower.”

“Do not ask him about the Astronomy Tower. What

the fuck?” Anne said, blushing. She turned to her
boyfriend. “Are you staying?”

“If it wouldn’t be a bother, I did tell Mother I was

going to Severus’ and I usually spend the whole
afternoon there,” he said. “If I went home too
early, she would find it odd.”

“What would you have done if we hadn’t offered?”

Sirius asked, curious.

Regulus smirked.

“Get Anne to help me sneak back in,” he admitted.

Once lunch was on the table, Regulus sat a bit

stiffly in front of James and beside the head of the
table where Monty was.

“Anne, still in your pyjamas?” James asked,

frowning. She shrugged, finally eating after the
night and the morning sulking on an empty
stomach. Seeing that, James didn’t dare to say
anything else about it. “So, what are you doing
here, Regulus? And why did Anne cry the whole
night?”

“James!” Mia scolded, looking up in shock by her

son’s behaviour.

“Just a question!” he said, raising his hands in

surrender.

“I’m sorry, but my problem with Anne was already

solved and certainly not something I’d disclose
without her permission, especially in the middle of
lunch. I’m not that insensitive,” Regulus said. “And
I was here to solve the problem.”

“You solved that alright,” Sirius grumbled from his

place into his cup of juice.

Anne glared at him, but James had caught the

meaning and was now glaring at his own plate.

“And, though my brother is an idiot, I had a few

things for him, that now I’m regretting going after
for him,” Regulus added, also glaring at his brother,
though not all that effective as he blushed.

Monty had to take a deep breath before looking at

a silently-laughing Mia to calm himself from doing
something against the boy sitting beside him.

“What did you get for me?” Sirius asked, putting his
cluttery away, suddenly uninterested in the meal.

Regulus had to get up just a bit to get the small

boxes from his back pocket.

“Here,” he said, pushing it across the table.

A box was red and the other was white.

“Are those --?”

“Father’s?” Regulus offered after a moment of

silence. “Yes.”

“You’re so getting in trouble for this,” Sirius said.

“Once upon a time, I would’ve heard that as a

threat, now I hear it as concern and dismiss it.
Father allowed me to. He agreed with me in this.
Those two belong to you – neither has a curse and
both are aimed at the oldest son, not the Heir… the
son,” Regulus said. “The one in the red box is given
after graduation. The one in the white box is given
when the oldest son in a relationship for a
Promising.”

Sirius looked up.

“Promising? So old-school,” he teased. “Who does

that?”

“I do,” Regulus said.

His glance at Anne neck made Sirius follow his eyes

and raise his eyebrows.

“You --! James, he –”

“I knew it, already,” James said before his friend

could make a big deal out of it. “Don’t worry,
Annie, he didn’t ask for permission.”

“Good,” she grumbled, feeling a bit exposed as she

blushed a bit. “Otherwise, the stone was going to
go back to him.”

“He sent Severus Snape to get me a letter and

warn me with the following sentence: ‘He told me
to tell you that he’s only after your blessing and
he’ll follow through even without it’. So, he’s fine,
mate, don’t freak out.”

“Does Lily know?” Remus asked. “She’s going to be

so mad when she finds out.”

“She knows, I sent Barty to talk to her,” Regulus

said.

“And I told her everything later before I got my

NEWTs,” she added, blushing a bit still. She
remembered the parts she had to cut from the very
detailed explanation she had to tell her mother,
quite happy that she didn’t know Legimency as she
skipped all the parts that made her squirm in bed
alone.

As Regulus talked to her family, laughing and

joking around as if he was comfortable with them
for years, she felt her insecurity slipping away from
her mind as she reminded herself that there was no
way anyone would ever have Regulus the way she
did because there was no way anyone would ever
have her in the way he had her. Equally. Balanced.
Genuinely. Nothing would one day get to her heart
as his smile did, not even his momentary anger as
his sharp words had been before.

Anne smiled, but said nothing, just watching the

whole interaction as her heart swelled with pride.

She was so focused on her boys that she didn’t

notice Mia watching her.

Chapter 90: Chapter Eighty-

Nine
Summary:
Mia Potter knows her children very
well.

CHILDREN

TRIGGER WARNING: MISCARRIAGE

CONVERSATION AND PREGNANCY
CONVERSATION, ALSO CONVERSATION
ABOUT DEATH AND KIDNAPPING. IMPLIED
TORTURE…. I MEAN, MIA’S BACKSTORY.

Anne hadn’t cooked breakfast in a long, long while.

Still, she realised as she cooked that it was the first
time that she actually enjoyed doing it; she didn’t
seem to be scared of messing something up and
burning something slightly too much, she was still
trying to do her best, of course, but she knew that
Sirius and James would still eat whatever she
cooked with a smile on their faces, even if it taste
horrible.

Pancakes with butter. Waffles with honey. Toast

with beans. Everything she had managed to learn
to cook growing up was being put on the table and
receiving a charm to keep as warm as possible
while the family was still getting ready for the day,
having no idea it was Anne in the kitchen with Mia
just as supervision in the doorway of the kitchen.

“They’re going to love it,” Mia promised. “You’ll

see.”

“I’m not that good of a cook, Harry was always

better at it than me,” Anne admitted. “Maybe you
can tell me where I can get better so I don’t make
any more mistakes.”

“You didn’t make a single mistake that I could have

noticed, Annie, stop cutting yourself short,” Mia
dismissed. The older woman walked to the stairs
and peeked up at it, but there was nobody coming
down yet. “With Coco sick, it’s sort of hard waking
those boys up. They always go back to sleep.”

“We’ll see what type of Aurors they’ll be,” joked

Anne.

“Wonderful ones if I have anything to do with it,”

she answered. “SIRIUS, JAMES, FLEAMONT. GET UP
NOW! BREAKFAST!” she took a deep breath after
almost tearing her voice apart and turned to Anne,
smiling a bit. “Now… let’s set the table, shall we?”

Anne almost ran to put all the plates, cups and food
on the table in the most organized and prettiest
way possible to make it pleasant to look up and to
eat from as well. There was certain happiness with
the result, but the nervousness from their reaction
was certainly winning from that.

“I can’t believe they’ll start their training today

already,” Anne commented as she put the jug of
orange juice and the jug of pumpkin juice on the
table. “They got accepted so quickly. Frank
Longbottom said it took him a month and half to
get an answer back from them.”

“Well, they are my sons,” Mia said as if that was

explanation enough. “Though it sounds terrible and
very wrong, the people in there had their eyes out
for their grades since they were in sixth year and
said they wanted to be Aurors.”

“How very Slytherin of your contacts,” Anne teased.

“I was a Slytherin, after all, a social network is just

as important as talent and skill,” Mia answered.
“Before I retired, I did put good word out about
young James and his friends, always saying they
were growing too fast and getting too good at
magic for their age. I never lied for them. I never
asked anyone for a favour. I just threw information
on the table and allowed those hungry people to do
whatever they wanted with it.”

Anne sat down on the table near Mia as she waited

for the boys to get down.

“Why did you retire anyways?” Anne asked. “You’re

just two years older than Monty.”

“Well, I…” she hesitated. “It’s a bit of a difficult

story.”

“You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to,”

Anne said.

There was certain desperation in her voice, never

wanting to hurt her grandmother in any way. Anne
had trusted Mia with a lot of things because she
didn’t pry, she didn’t even look like she wanted to.
Mia was just always there, always willing to listen
and understand, but never thirsty for revenge, only
for protection.

“No, it’s alright. I just need a moment to put it in

words,” she answered as her eyes became slightly
foggy. She wasn’t even there in that table, her
memories were somewhere else, stuck in her worst
nightmares. “I started as an Auror at nineteen after
getting bored of planting potion ingredients. I
thought I was going to be a mediocre one, get by
just fine, you know, but never sticking out. As a
Slytherin, I was good in going with the flow.”

“I can’t imagine you as submissive to the people

around you,” Anne admitted.

“Never submissive, just easily swayed,” she

answered. “Something about taking a stand
sounded wrong for me, so I just went unnoticed for
the most part – well, I had Monty by my side, yes,
but never he was a dirty supervisor and gave me
any special treatment, if completely honest, he
expected even more from me.”

“You were already together at that point?”

“Yes,” Mia said, smiling at her granddaughter. “And

he was so mean! Such a perfectionist. It was
unbearable to be under him in the pyramid, but still
he was so good and kind that I couldn’t help but
see the man I had fallen in love with whenever he
talked to victims and witnesses.”

“I suppose that kindness rubbed off on you,” she

said.

“I suppose. He taught me that nobody gets left

behind,” she explained.

Anne was reminded of one of her first interactions

with James as her father – he had promised nobody
would be left behind, especially not his daughter,
and she had cried like a child inside. He had been
raised right, she knew that, but only now she
understood how and why he had been raised to be
like that.

“And?”

“And I was obsessed with the career. I wanted my

parents to be proud of me and I wanted to make
sure they would never look down on me again for
changing my mind from what I wanted to do when
I was seventeen, I mean, who know what they
want to do for certain when they are a child?” she
asked. Anne nodded. “So I did my best in
everything I did. I climbed up the ranks, I crawled
my way out from gossips once our relationship was
exposed and I proved myself time and time again,
as any woman at that time needed to do to survive
in any job. Until I got pregnant.”

“You had James late, I know that much,” Anne said.

“I was forty-six when I got pregnant,” she

explained.

Anne’s body grew cold. Mia had been more than

fifty when James had been born. Whatever
pregnancy she had been talking about was not
James’.

“I see,” was all she managed to utter out.

“I didn’t know at first, I thought I had been sick

and I didn’t want to be seen as weak, so I went out
on the field and didn’t tell anyone I was feeling so
weak I could barely move too fast without getting
dizzy,” she explained, voice lowering and eyes
getting further away. “I took a hit that time when I
wasn’t fast enough to move out of the way or
defend myself. It wasn’t anything serious, I believe
it was just a Stupefy, but I didn’t realise I was
already miscarriage before I was hit. I thought I
was going to die. I didn’t know what I was hit with
at first, so there was the confusion and the pain
and then the blood… so much blood everywhere.”

“But you were alright.”

“After a week, yes,” she answered. “At least

physically. I never forgave myself for not knowing
my body well enough. If I had gone to Healers and
paid more attention. If I had taken care of myself
enough, I would’ve noticed my period had stopped
and that my cramps weren’t followed my relief after
the medication – I had been in labour two months
and a half into the pregnancy.”

She was young and couldn’t even grasp the idea of

She was young and couldn’t even grasp the idea of
mourning something you didn’t even know you had,
but Anne had lost the life she could have had with
Remus once before. She thought the pain might
have been the same – mourning something that
could have been good, but there was no more.

“I told Monty, but not anyone else,” Mia admitted.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want the pity that came with the

miscarriage,” she answered. “Losing a baby is
horrible, Anne, but losing it and everybody knowing
it it’s just twice as terrible. Every look, every
question… they always bring you back to the
moment and to the thought that people are worried
because they don’t expect you to be alright. They’ll
forever see you as broken or as mourning.” Anne
nodded. “So I did my best to live on… and I need
for another five years. That was when I almost
died.”

Anne leaned forward. Just thinking about Mia hurt

made her heart sink to her stomach and the smell
of food in front of her become nauseating.

“Were you hit by a spell?” Anne asked.

“I was kidnapped,” Mia corrected. “Somebody

threw a Crucio on my back and I fell in the middle
of the battle. I didn’t have time to scream before I
was taken. I was kept under their hold for two
weeks and they unspeakable things to me, and I
thought I was going to die there without seeing my
husband once more. But he came, stormed in the
gang’s headquarters and carried me out like a novel
hero. I never seen him so angry before.”

“Monty is capable of getting angry?” Anne asked,

surprised.

“That day he was,” Mia said. “The criminals were

supposed to be found alive to follow trial, but at
least half of them were killed by a bombarda he
threw to get inside. But I had never seen him being
as kind to anyone before – he took guard as I went
to the bathroom because I was afraid of doing just
that alone. He was… I fell in love with him all over
again, every single day I fell in love with him.”

Anne ended up smiling, though it was a horrible

story.

“I’m sure Monty felt the same,” Anne mumbled

before she could stop herself.

“He did. He didn’t leave me alone for a single

second and wrote to me three times a day while I
stayed at home for the next three months,
recovering, and he had to go to work,” she
explained. Anne chuckled as Mia giggled. “While I
was recovering, I got pregnant again and this time
I couldn’t bring myself to go back to work – not
after losing one, not after everything I went
through… It took so long for me to even allow
myself to be touched by my own husband, how
could I trust other man once more? So I asked for a
special retirement.”

“I’m sure Monty was happy about it, having you

safe at home,” Anne said.

“On the contraire, my dear, he thought he had lost

his partner, because there was no one he trusted
as much,” Mia answered. “It took three weeks to
make him stop being cold with me, just when I told
him I was pregnant.”

“Dad,” Anne guessed.

“Yes, your dad!” Mia said. “I thought he was a girl,

did know you that?” Anne shook her head. “He was
so calm in my belly, and reacted so strongly to
Monty’s voice once I could feel him moving that I
was sure it would be a girl, but then… there came
James, bringing surprise to all of us and not for the
first time.”

“Did you want a girl?”

“I wanted a healthy child,” Mia said. “I wanted

James to survive the night, and then the next night
I would pray for him to survive just a bit more. The
doctors didn’t think he would; I was already old
enough for him to be considered in risk, but he
pulled through… and now I have three boys and a
little girl.”

“Not all by blood,” Anne teased.

“Doesn’t make me stop asking the gods every night

for them to survive one more night,” Mia said. Anne
didn’t think she had ever seen someone love as
passionately and as freely as Mia did. She wanted
to, one day, understand how her heart and mind
worked completely so she could be the same –
there was an admiration that could never be put in
words about how Mia knew her feelings and
understood others’ feelings without as much as a
hitch. “Destiny took a child from me to give me
back in more than a single child,” Mia said. “And
the best granddaughter I could ask for."

"I’m your only granddaughter,” Anne teased, trying

not to feel too emotional.

“Doesn’t stop you from being my favourite,” Mia

dismissed.

Remus couldn’t stop fidgeting.

He was sitting in the music room while reading

while Mia tried her best to teach Anne the piano,
though the younger girl certainly had no musical
talent at all. In another moment, the noises would
certainly annoy him, but he couldn’t bear the
thought of being alone at the moment, so he tried
his best to read the fantasy book in his hand, but
he couldn’t concentrate and he couldn’t find himself
in a light enough mood to joke around with Mia and
Anne as he would usually do.

He felt useless and worried.

Worried, he knew instantly to why. The Auror

training was known to be ruthless and it always had
at least half of the recruits giving up on the first
three months, but she also knew the determination
in Sirius and James, and neither would give up,
even if they needed to do so. Even in their life
depended on it, they wouldn’t give up on getting to
the end of the training, especially if that meant
making Monty very proud.

Useless, however, it took half of the afternoon to

understand. He felt like he was being useless and a
burden for Mia, who was housing and providing to
him without hesitation or complaint, and there he
was, lying there, unsure of what do and not even
working odd-jobs to take up his time.

There was a part of his mind that told him that

Anne was doing the same and that he shouldn’t be
that upset about being a normal teenager after
finishing school; he was just eighteen after all and
there wasn’t much to be expected of him, especially
when he was a werewolf, everybody knew people
like him couldn’t hold a job for too long. But
another voice whispered that it was different, Anne
was Mia’s real granddaughter by blood and not just
a friend of her son’s and the boyfriend of the first
adoptee and that meant that she would have
preference.

So, once more Remus was uncomfortably shifting in

his place on the chair.

“Mia, I’m terrible at this!” Anne complained. “Take

one look at Remus and you’ll know it. Look at how
he hates the noises, he looks like he’s about to
jump and run away and it’s not doing that out of
politeness.”

“He’s not. Are you, Remus, dear?” Mia asked.

Remus looked up at them

“I’m sorry?” he asked, confused.

“I made him deaf,” Anne pretended to cry.

“See,” Mia said. “He doesn’t mind.”

“Are you bothered by my very clear lack of talent?”

Anne asked, ignoring her grandmother’s smile.

“You’re doing a great job,” he lied, still confused to

why he was suddenly involved in the conversation.

Anne turned to her grandmother.

“See,” Anne said. “He hates it.”

Remus closed the book and put it aside without too

much thought.

“I’ve been thinking of finding a job in a muggle

place,” Remus blurted out suddenly. “Less
questions once things start getting too obvious and
less chance of people hating me for being a
werewolf. Sure, I had the very odd ‘queer’ problem,
but… I think I can deal with it; you know,
something like that.”

Mia looked away from Anne and took her hands

away from the piano, turning to look at him with
careful eyes.

“Remus, dear, you don’t need to do that,” Mia said.

“Take your time. Just because Sirius and James
already had a career in plan, it doesn’t mean you
need one.”

“Not a career, just a job for now, to keep me busy

and get some money,” he explained, dismissing her
worries. “That’s what Marlene is doing. She’s
working in the front desk of a jiu-jitsu academy.”

“The academy she studied on for years,” Anne

explained. “It’s not easy for people like us to get
jobs on the Muggle world, Remus. Are you certain
you are ready for not using magic around them?”

“I don’t use magic all the time,” he said.

“But you have a holster for your wand on your hip

even when you’re walking around the house,” Mia
said. “You’ll probably have to hide it or leave it here
while you work, you are of that, correct? Notice-
Me-Not Charms don’t work on wands themselves,
so it might not work too well on hiding you carrying
a stick around.”

“Just a few jobs here and there, a gig, even,” he

said.

“If that’s what you want, I won’t say anything

against it, Remus, but you don’t need to get a job
and I want you to know that. You’re allowed to rest
before you go blindly looking for something,” Mia
explained. “This is your house.”

He wanted to say that it wasn’t. That was her

house. The Potter Manor, and he wasn’t a Potter.

“I just don’t do well with staying without doing

anything. I cleaned our bedroom like three times
since the seventeenth and I can’t think of any other
way of arranging the library, I mean, Monty
seemed very confused, but he didn’t say anything
about it,” he said, flustered as he got up from the
chair he had been sitting and shoving his hands
down his pockets. “Maybe a work in a factory or on
a general store. Nobody takes attendance too
seriously. Just something for a few months.”

Anne couldn’t understand his eagerness to work.

Sure, it did serve as a distraction, but she couldn’t
imagine herself focusing completely in something
like a temporary job – she would need all the time
in the word to make up plans.

All the scheme she had on her bedroom wall in the

dormitory was now near her desk on her own
bedroom; all the names were separated on chess
pieces once more and she had began cocooning
plans for getting the last three Horcruxes. She had
written the information Narcissa had passed to her
to Dumbledore as well and he had promised he
would talk about in the next Order meeting (which
would be that very night).

“I can help you then,” Mia said. “In the kitchen,

there are a few Muggle papers from this week and
last week. We can search for jobs in there
together.”

Remus smiled gratefully as he walked out of the

music room to get the papers.

“Did you know?” Anne asked. “You don’t usually get

Muggle paper.”

“He has being stuck inside without his friends, he

would have to get out and seek the world around
him at some point,” Mia answered. “I know my
children, Anne.”

It was the first time the Order was using the Potter
Manor as headquarters for a meeting.

With Sirius and James sleeping at the trainees’

dormitory (they would only use it once twice a
week, having a schedule with the other trainees for
stakeout operations training), the adults weren’t all
that worried with the children being present –
Remus was up in his and Sirius’ room reading the
papers and Anne was already part of the Order,
sitting on the chair between Monty and Mia.

“Thank you all for coming, I’m sure the last-minute

meeting has been a bit inconvenient,” Dumbledore
started. “But Anne has gathered information that
needed to be shared in absolute secret, so letters
were not a good way of passing it.”

Anne took the hint that she needed to find another

way to contact him, his mail no longer being safe,
apparently. She thought back on her letter, happy
that she never went into too many details or
mentioned who had been her source.

“I have a very good source inside the Inner Circle

who told me the Death Eaters have gotten very
good contact inside the Ministry,” Anne said.

“We all know that,” Moody said, rolling his eyes.

“We just need to know who now, girl.”

“If you give me time, I’ll tell you names, Moody,”

Anne said, glaring at him. “Mister Crouch has been
doing several favours to get in contact with
Voldemort himself, has been humiliating himself
and offering anything, including his son, as a
payment for someone to get him in good terms
with him, but Voldemort still thinks he talks too
much – I asked my source to innocently ask
Voldemort to get Crouch closer to the cause; with
any luck, he’ll spread information without us
needing to go after it.”

“It’s a good opportunity, if it works,” Frank

Longbottom said. “I have a friend, Maddison
Holmas, she works with him and always complains
about him to me. She might end up telling me what
he says.”

Alice Longbottom rolled her eyes, clearly not

enjoying that Frank kept contact with that
Maddison girl. Anne understood why Regulus
needed a social network and why her silly jealousy
was getting in the way, Alice was way more mature
than her, showing her jealousy only when they
were alone and not getting in the way of his job.

“Good, do start showing more interest whenever

she speaks about him,” Dumbledore said. “Tell her
that you think those parts of the story are funny,
laugh too loudly.”

“Flirt back, he means,” Alice said, bitterly.

“Indeed, Madame,” Dumbledore said. “Flirt back,

Mister Longbottom. Miss Holmas is a very lonely
girl, she’ll talk to you about anything if you give her
opening enough.”

Frank nodded, getting the orders and putting them

away in his mind.

“There’s someone else though,” Anne said. “Mister

Yaxley. Horrible man, but a charming one.”

“He’s new,” Monty said. “I’ve seen him walking

around a bit lost and ended up helping him around
today. He did say he met you, complimented you
all the way – a bit uncomfortable, I must admit.”

Anne blushed, hating that now everybody on the

table knew that she, too, had been flirting around
to get her information. How pathetically hypocrite
of her, she thought as she nodded to herself.

“Well, Mister Yaxley is to be marked with the Dark

Mark soon enough, but he’s not in the Inner Circle
yet. He has few friends here in England and spends
most of his time in France with his little sister,
whom expressed a great interest in one of my male
sources, I asked him to humour her for now. She’s
young, just fourteen, might tell a lot without much
of a filter,” Anne said. “He’s not a danger, I feel.
Might get out of our way soon, but he’s of a good
financial support to their cause.”

“The man is their bloody wallet,” complained Emilia.

“Yes, but he doesn’t seem to notice that,” Anne

said.

“Let’s keep it that way. Maybe he’ll change sides

once he realises that he’s just being used by them
all,” Mia said. “If he does, somebody will need to
get him a way out. Somebody he knows, like
Anne.”

She shifted on her seat; she felt a bit

uncomfortable.

“I doubt he’ll change his mind at all,” Monty said.

“His first sentence to me was ‘a shame your
protegee is a half-blood’, so… even if he changes
his side, I don’t want him anywhere near my girl.”

“Alright, then, if it comes to it, somebody else will

contact him,” Dumbledore agreed. “You said there
was more.”

“Yes, they have another contact inside the

Ministry,” she said. “Mister Fawley. His daughter
just got engaged to the youngest Lestrange
brother.”

“He’s twenty-one,” Arthur said. “And she’s

seventeen.”

“Well, it’s not like she has a say in it, Arthur,”

Fabian said.

“And what department is Mister Fawley in?” Molly

asked.

“Surprisingly, Muggle Control,” Arthur said,

distasteful. “He sits three desks away from me and
is usually quiet. He’s a terrible person, always
glaring and rolling his eyes whenever someone puts
him to work; he just assumed that he wouldn’t
have to work much if he was dealing with Muggles.”

“That would work for him,” Anne grumbled.

“Fortunately, Elizabeth is a friend of my contact,”
she tried her best not to grimace. “He’s still in
contact with her after Hogwarts, so I might be
invited to the wedding.”

“Isn’t the other Horcrux in the Lestrange vault?”

Gideon asked, looking at Fabian.

“Yes,” Fabian asked.

“It might be a good opportunity to get it,”

Dumbledore said. “We can find a way in.”

“Finding a way in is easy, the problem is finding a

way out without anyone noticing,” Anne said.

The first time had involved a lot of breaking and a

lot of fire with the help of a half-blind dragon.
Doing the same, she supposed, would get too much
attention.

“About it, as well, there has been no movement in

the vault in weeks,” said Fabian. “That’s a lot for
them. They usually get into the vault every week or
so, then every two weeks, but this month, they
didn’t show up at all.”

“The guards?” Dumbledore asked.

“Well, they’re still going, but… they leave early here

and there, especially Friday and in the weekends,”
Fabian continued.

“They’re getting sloppy,” Moody said, nodding,

nosily drinking the water. Anne cringed at the
unpolite sound. “When they fuck up, we get it.”

“There are curses inside the room, though,” Anne

said. “We need a Curse-Breaker to go in before us,
look around and then get out. Once we have the
counter-curses, we can deal with it. But we also
need the key and a way through the goblins.”

“I can deal with the Goblins,” Fabian dismissed.

“They don’t care much about our problems,
wizarding problems, I mean. If I say it’s about a
war, some might look the other way. I’ve became
friends with one of them and he’s been trying to
get a better job inside Gringotts – about that…
Regulus Black will start the Curse-Breaking
Internship, so we might need to keep an eye on
him. He might know more than we do and might
have access.”

Anne looked away, trying not to react to the name.

“He might not, though,” Anne dismissed. “And,

even if he did, I doubt he would talk to you about
it. No, stay away from him as you normally would
before he gets too suspicious about you.”

“She’s right,” Gideon said, nodding to himself as he

looked away to Anne and towards his brother. “He’s
a suspicious boy, Sirius’ brother all the way. If you
ask too many questions or become too friendly, he
might talk about you. You don’t want people to
know you’re in the Order just yet, they might stop
putting information out if they know you might use
them.”

“Anne and your brother are correct, Mister

Prewett,” Dumbledore said. “Regulus Black is not to
be disturbed.”

Regulus was a lot more useful to Dumbledore if he

was ignored, but a lot more useful to Anne if he
was safe. For one time, a surprising time, both
wishes aligned in a single one that might embrace
both plans for his life.

“We have one last subject in our schedule,” Monty

said. “James and Sirius, my sons, said they want
in.”

“They’re very young, Potter,” Moody said, frowning.

“They’re willing.”

“They’re children!” Moody said.

“So is Anne, and here she is,” Mia said, pointing at

the young girl beside her. “And you seem well with
her being here.”

Moody scoffed.

“That girl is a lot of things, but not a child,” he said.

She understood that he wasn’t talking about the

two boys being children because of their age, but
because of their attitudes. She was slightly
uncomfortable about it, even if Moody was just
calling her mature – or imply that she was losing
her mind somehow, because that was what she was
feeling.

“Both boys are talented and determinate, I have to

admit, but I must agree that they’re very young
and might not be the best moment to recruit people
as young as them, fresh out of school,”
Dumbledore said, glancing at Anne. “Maybe once
they’re done with Auror training might be a better
time.”

Anne understood, surprised, that he was trying to

get some approval from her. He was trying to save
her friends from their destiny; if they were never in
the Order, they would be safe, and with that much
she had to agree. Still, she knew those boys well
enough to know that there was no way they would
stay the whole war away from the fight, Auror
training completed or not, and it was best that they
had the backup of the Order than fighting in the
front lines without the allies.

“I disagree,” Anne said.

Dumbledore looked at her.

“Alright?”

“They are going to fight, no matter what we do.

With or without the Order, they will jump in the
fight either way,” she said. “They might as well be
trained for it in the Auror training, but have he
support from the Order. They’re safer with us than
rogue.”

“Yes,” Mia said.

“Indeed. I know my sons,” Monty said.

Dumbledore watched Anne for a moment and Anne

nodded once.

“Next meeting, then, James Potter and Sirius Black-

Potter are invited to come…” Dumbledore looked up
at the ceiling of the house. “Mister Remus Lupin
might as well come,” his lips twitched. “He already
heard the whole conversation, anyways.”

Chapter 91: Chapter Ninety -

Summary:
Everybody's working, but Anne is
still at home.

Notes:
TW: Explicit Sexual Content

BOREDOM AND WORKING

Remus Lupin had a reason besides the boring turn

his life had taken and the anxiety the stillness
drove him to pile up. Remus needed ‘pocket-
money’, he needed an emergency fund in case
something like the way his father had practically
kicked him out happened again – he needed money
for him and, perhaps, for Sirius. Against Anne’s
words, Sirius had started looking for flats and
Remus had been helping him, always wishing to
say that he would help paying for it, even if Sirius
didn’t need monetary help; he had been quite
happy with waiting, dreaming of distant times, but
Sirius had found the perfect one and was happily
talking about it every night, willing Remus to
imagine living with him over there in the future.

That led Remus to stand in his stupid uniform

outside the Muggle Club in the middle of the night.
That also led to his head working frantically to find
a good excuse to explain what he was doing to
Sirius.

He had gotten the job almost as soon as he

stepped inside the Club once he saw the notice that
they were looking for someone. He was tall and
was stronger than he looked like, so the owner –
Ry, a Spanish man that actually was named Ricardo
– decided he was it and was even happier when he
saw that Remus was freshly eighteen. He wasn’t
paid per month, but per day worked (sketchy, but
worth it, he decided, after all he wouldn’t find a
better paying job in a single bus of distance from
Potter Manor).

Still thinking, he didn’t notice the young girl

standing in front of him until she cleaned her
throat. She was blonde, short and slightly
overweight, but he had never seen someone look
so old and young at the same time.

“Identification, please,” he said.

She looked at him.

“You’re Welsh?” she asked, straight up.

Remus blinked. He had spent so much time with

James, Sirius, Anne and Peter that it was slightly
surprising that anybody noticed any accent left. He
had never liked his accent, if he was honest – it
looked great in some people, but he wasn’t one of
them.

“Yes,” he said.

“Nice. I picked up the accent a bit, almost gone.

Must have been living in Surrey for some time” she
smiled at him. “What’s your name?”

His time, he heard giggles. There was a group of

young girls standing a few steps away from them,
watching the interaction between the him and the
girl with attentive eyes. He felt uncomfortable. He
had been through it before, a girl had talked to him
and it had been a prank.

“Remus,” he answered. “Remus Lupin.”

“Is that a Welsh name?” she asked.

“No,” he dismissed.

“I’m Maggie, Maggie Frazer,” she introduced

herself. “Do you live nearby?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I live by the Whinch Passage.”

There were two streets near the Whinch Passage,

and he didn’t say which one, which made him feel
quite safe, but what he didn’t expect was for her to
turn almost pale as she stared at him.

“Hordwood End?” she stuttered.

He was surprise that she knew exactly the street

and, suspiciously, his eyes squinted as he tried to
see if there was some Glamour or something, but
there was nothing. She didn’t smell familiar nor did
she smell like she had been using magic at all, not
even in potion form. She was Muggle, totally and
boringly Muggle.

“Yes, what about it?” he asked, frowning even

more.

“In one of the big houses?” she asked, for

clarification.

It dawned on him that the Muggles recognized the

very big houses with acres of orchids in the back
and some (including the Potter Manor) went as far
as going to the stream on the back. There were
three houses besides the one he lived in on that
street – two were empty, nobody had bought it yet
and the other was a vacation home, one that
nobody actually lived in and, the ones that did
certainly didn’t work during the summertime.
Remus had just shared his address without even
trying.

“My friend’s house, I live with him,” he explained

poorly, hoping she would leave the subject alone.

“That’s so cool! I can’t even imagine how it is to

live in such a beautiful house. I passed by once and
I felt unworthy of as much as walking by,” she said.
“Do you –”

“Remus?” called out a voice.

He felt his whole body go cold as he looked to the

small group walking towards him.

Sirius was the first one to appear to him, Anne and

James following him. Sirius seemed angry and hurt
by the way his face was slightly pale with just his
cheeks red, but James just seemed plainly hurt,
refusing to as much as looking up at him. Anne,
however, wasn’t refusing to look at him out of hurt,
but out of fear, looking around in clear worry as if
she was about to be attacked.

Remus understood that she hadn’t been against

him to work because he didn’t need to, but because
she was scared that something would happen to
him and he wouldn’t be able to protect himself
since he was surrounded by Muggles.

“Sirius,” Remus said, blushing as he got up from

the stool he had been sitting on.

Maggie took a step back as his small group walked

forward, all eyes widening.

“What are you doing here?” Sirius asked.

“I’m working, what are you doing here? This isn’t

your… scene, mate,” Remus answered, already
defensive.

“I’m looking for you, you arse,” Sirius answered.

“We didn’t know you started working, Moony, we

were worried when we got back home to surprise
you and you weren’t there,” James said. “Anne said
you were working in town, but you also didn’t tell
her where and we sort of went mental. Mum said
you would be here, though.”

“Of course she did,” he complained in a whisper.

“Don’t talk like that about Mia, she did it because

James started crying,” Sirius said. His eyes finally
becoming cold as he looked away from Remus and
to the group of girls standing near him. “Co-
workers?”

“No, just met,” Remus answered.

Anne took a step forward.

“I’m Anne,” she said, smiling a bit; enough to look

friendly, not enough to look real.

“M—Maggie,” the other said. “This is Connie and

Stephanie.”

Anne didn’t answer, looking around once more.

“A club bouncer, really?” she said. “If you wanted

to throw people out of places and separate fights,
you should’ve started training with Sirius and
James in the… academy.”

Muggles would usually assume she was talking

about the police.

“I cannot do that, can I? One good look at me and

they’ll send me on my way,” Remus said bitterly.

She turned to the girls.

“Are you all going into the club tonight?” she asked,
suddenly leaving Remus to his own bitterness and
self-pity.

“Actually, Maggie wanted a number to call him

later,” Stephanie said.

“Well, Maggie will not get it,” Sirius spat towards

the girls. “And if not going into the club, you might
as well walk away now.”

“Now, now, no need to be rude,” James said,

carefully putting his hand on Sirius’ shoulder. Anne
wondered if wanted to calm Sirius down or hold him
back before he did something he would regret.
“Girls, we might need a moment of privacy here,
though. It would be good if you could give us a
minute.”

“We’ll leave,” Maggie said.

“Good,” Sirius grumbled.

“Sirius, please,” Anne hissed at him.

Sirius looked at the other side, clearly still angry at

Remus, just throwing his anger towards the girls
that had nothing to do with it. James sighed
knowing well enough that things were going to be
tougher now that there were no Muggles to hold
back Sirius’ behaviour, now keep one from fighting
the other would be his task – especially because
Anne seemed too paranoid to even care about the
fighting.

“Remus, what the fuck? Why didn’t you tell us – no,

why didn’t you tell me?” Sirius said, a bit too loud.
“Do you need money? I can give you some. I don’t
understand why you’re so crazy for finding work
that you come and start working in this… place.”

“My job is just as worthy as yours,” Remus said,

frowning and upset.

“I never said otherwise,” he said, raising his arms

in surrender. “Remus, a bouncer? Really? Anne is
right, if you wanted a violent job – come on, we
can talk to Moody and Monty, they’ll let you in, I’m
sure.”

“The problem is not them! Is the rest of the world!”

Remus said. “Look at me. One look at me and
people can guess what the hell I am, I’m not going
to find a good job in the wizarding world, nobody
wants someone like me working for them,
especially now that Greyback is working him You-
Know-Who,” he took a deep breath. “I’m seen as a
Dark Creature. I’m seen as horribly cruel, eager to
kill children… Sirius, no matter how much Moody
and Monty scream that I’m not like that, the
Ministry would never allow someone like me to be
seen as the good guy. Law enforcement only works
with wizards like you and James, from good
surnames and with good patrons behind you to
support you. I don’t have that. In the Muggle world,
I’m just seen as weird and, maybe, as part of a
gang if I’m lucky enough because then people don’t
mess with me. I grew up in this world a lot more
than in yours, I know how this works.”

“Remus, this isn’t –” started James.

“Just because you don’t see a problem with what I

am, that doesn’t mean everybody thinks the same,”
Remus said firmly.

“I don’t see a problem with who you are, Remus,

not ‘what’,” insisted James. “You’re not the wolf.”

“No one but you all see it like that,” Remus said.

Sirius looked down, remembering all the times his

mother and his father would complain about
werewolves getting rights for medical attention for
free the day after the full moon. He remembered
Lucius making jokes about werewolves’ cubs (or
just babies, as Sirius had insisted on calling) being
killed in Czech Republic and how happy his family
had been when Poland had forced sterilization to
werewolves (male and female). James didn’t say
anything at first as he knew that Remus was right
because he did read the papers and he did listen to
some couples talking in Ministry Balls, always
twisting their noses away from Billie MacVoy, an
American werewolf, and the only werewolf that
worked in the Ministry.

Anne looked at Remus, finally looking away from

the bushes she had been squinting at.

“How much are they paying you?”

“20 a night, plus tips.”

“You’re joking! Surely!” Sirius said.

“That’s not a lot,” Anne agreed with Sirius.

“It makes for a living when I don’t have bills to pay,

so I can’t complain,” Remus said. “Guys, just leave
me. Really, I’m bored most of the time and I work
every other day only. I’m fine.”

“If he says he wants to stay, we can’t really drag

him home now, Sirius,” James said, crossing his
arms, still clearly upset.

“But –”

“Sirius. He says he wants to stay,” Anne said

firmly.

Sirius glared at Remus.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because you were going to stop me, I mean, look

at what you’re doing now. I need to work, Sirius, I
need to prove to the world that I’m not slacking off
just because the Potters took pity on me,” Remus
answered. “I can’t slack off. I can’t be left behind.
If I do, then all those people who say terrible things
about me will have been right and I don’t think I
can deal with them being right… I can’t deal with
my father being right.”

So that was what it was all about.

Lyall Lupin always mumbling in his ear how much

of a failure he was, wand in hand or not, always
making sure that Remus remembered how much he
hated the creature he was once a month during the
night. Lyall Lupin once more saying that it was the
stress and worry that he had put on Hope that
made her sick and deathly skinny.

Lyall Lupin would always have power over Remus

until he could prove him wrong.

Anne was thinking more and more that Remus had

the right idea. Working might help her stop being
so confused about herself and make the boredom
go away, because she was getting tired of trying
focus mostly on making plans and playing the
piano.

July 1st brought forth the internships.

Lily was somewhere half-hidden in Diagon Alley,

working her best in a small room with Madame
Buckley, sweating half of her weight off while
brewing easy potions with the ingredients she was
learning to grow. Beatrice was half-drowning in old
cases dealing with Muggles in her new department,
not doing anything but reading what already has
happened so she was completely blind to the lack
of justice there was inside the Ministry. Severus
was now living part-time in Sky, Scotland, where
he would get his Potions Mastery and in the other
half of time living in his small house. Regulus had
even written to her telling how hard it was the first
day of his internship and how much it was different
from what he had imagined when he was younger,
before he had decided music was the career he
wanted to follow.

And now, there he was on Sunday, standing in the

doorway of the Potter Manor, not even wanting to
rest on his own bed when he could just stay with
Anne.

“Hello, Remus,” he said, hands on his pockets.

Remus moved to the side, making space so that he

could walk into the house.

“Hello, Regulus, congratulations on the internship,”

he said. “Liking it?”

“Absolutely not,” he answered.

He knew how spoiled he sounded. He knew that he

was lucky that he had a job at all, but still it made
him want to cry whenever people asked him about
it and he had only worked one day.

Remus, however, didn’t roll his eyes or glare at him

for his lack of gratitude, he just chuckled as if he
had expected it.

“You’re not the Curse-Breaking type,” Remus said.

“I was surprised you had accepted. I had thought
you’d go for an Unspeakable or something like that,
you know, the secrecy and research. A lot more like
you than reading old Runes and finding already
existing spells for counter-effect.”

Regulus wouldn’t say out loud, but he was quite

happy to hear that. Somebody finally seemed to
understand all that he wanted to say when he
thought his job was boring; he had thought of
backing out, after all he didn’t need the money nor
a powerful position – he had a Seat waiting for him
in just a few months when his father died, but
there he was holding on and convincing himself to
do so for a little bit more. That was the reason he
had gone to Anne, hoping she would somehow find
a reason to make him stay in there.

“Anne is in her bedroom. I don’t think she knew

you were coming,” Remus said.

“Yes, about that… I’m sorry for showing up out of

nowhere, I just really need to talk to her,” he
answered.

“An emergency?”

“Not really,” he dismissed. “Just silly little me

missing my girlfriend,” he lied.

Remus could smell a lie from far away, he could see

the way the smirk on the boy’s lips was a bit too
slow.

“Your brother is out right now, he forgot his bloody

jacket on the Aurors Dorm and he went there to get
it because he can’t stay without it, even if he
doesn’t wear it,” Remus said, sounding a bit bitter.
Regulus cocked his head to the side, for it all
sounded a lot like something that Sirius would do
for real. “James is out as well in his girlfriend’s
house, lunch with her parents and all that. He’ll be
back after lunch though, so be careful with…
noises.”

Regulus blushed. He knew Remus knew more than

Sirius and James about his meetings here and there
with Anne, he had seen the aftermath of one of
them in the train and had been traumatized by the
image. As a werewolf, the wards sometimes did
become weaker and he would listen through the
weaker ones without even trying.

“Yes, thank you,” Regulus said.

“Go on up, then,” Remus said. “Careful with waking

her up, though.” He scratched his arm. “Oh, Mia
and Monty are going to be back soon as well, they
went to visit Mia’s friend’s granddaughter.”

Though a bit confused, he nodded and went his

merry way towards the stairs and walked up,
stopping at the white door with the name Anne
written on the top. It wasn’t her handwriting, he
noticed, it was Sirius’. He had to laugh a bit at that
as he knocked on the door and opened just a little
of bit of it, not looking inside, but enough to call for
her.

“Anne, Princess?” he called out. Silence. “Anne, are

you awake? May I come in?” once more, silence as
an answer. “Anne?”

“Reggie?” came a confused voice from inside. He

opened the door just a bit more to show his face.
“What are you doing here? What happened? Are
you alright?”

“Yes, just missed you,” he said. “May I come in?”

“Yeah!”

He walked into the room, closing the door behind

him and looking around the room. It was half dark,
just a small beam of sunlight coming into the room
through the smallest of cracks between the velvety
curtains on the big windows of the bedroom. The
bedroom had not changed a single thing from the
time he had seen it on the party or the time he saw
it in the Room. He tried his best not to step on the
dress thrown to the ground as he walked around it
to go towards the bed.

“Good morning,” he said, sitting at the edge on the

bed.

Anne sighed and moved her head to lie over his

thighs.

“Need it be morning already?” she asked. “My body

doesn’t feel so.”

“It is nine in the morning already, Anne-Girl,” he

teased, leaning down and kissing her head. “Still
tired? What did you do last night?”

“Read,” she answered. “And tried waiting on

Remus, but I was too tired.”

“He was working last night?” Regulus asked. “He

seemed alright when he opened the door for me.”

“He’s home already?” she asked, opening her eyes

and looking up at him.

“Yes,” he said.

She closed her eyes again.

“Take your coat and waistcoat off, lie with me for a

bit, please,” she said, eyes still closed. “Rest.”

“Though very tempting –”

“Please, take a nap with me,” she said. “We rarely

ever take naps or actually sleep together; someone
always have somewhere to be or someone is
always looking for one of us. Dad is out with Mum
and Sirius and Remus are probably trying to sleep a
bit more as well since Mia and Monty are coming
back after lunch.”

He sighed, defeated, though he didn’t fight back

very hard as he kicked his shoes off, threw his coat
to the side and unbuttoned his waistcoat, throwing
on the ground as well before watching as Anne
rolled around the bed, giving him space in the side
of the bed already warm by her body and her body
shivering as she lied on the untouched part of the
bed.

“You look dead when you sleep, you don’t move,”

he complained. “The other half of the bed was still
fixed.”

“I didn’t have much space to sleep in when I was

younger,” she answered. “Now, sleep for a bit,
please.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Surprisingly, Regulus woke up with an erection

bothering him and making him shiver. He heard a
giggle by his reaction as he felt sweet kissed on his
neck, making him open his eyes still a bit confused
as he remembered with his nap-mind where he
was.

Anne smiled at him.

“Lunch in in thirty minutes,” she answered, fresh

breath on his face. He frowned. “I took a that
bloody Mint thing you always have on your pockets
because I didn’t want to get up. I hope you don’t
mind.”

“If that means I get to kiss you, then I don’t mind,”

he said. “But I cannot say the same about my own
breath.”

She smiled once more and she threw one of the

small squares into his mouth.

“I dreamed of you, and when I woke with you

calling for me by the door, I thought I was still
dreaming for a second,” she admitted as she sat on
the bed and threw a leg over him, straddling him.
She leaned down for a quick kiss. “I had to sleep a
bit more, but once I woke up, I just couldn’t help
myself.”

“A good dream?”

“The best of dreams,” she smirked. “Your head

between my legs, your hands touching my lips,”
she took his hand and made the tips of his fingers
touch her bottom lip. “So sweet, so gentle. And I
asked you to let me be on top… and you allowed
me.”

“You can do whatever you want to me, Anne-Girl,

and I shall enjoy every single second of it,” he said.

Regulus fixed the pillow under his head, making I

easier to look at her on top of him and not making
it get painful after some time.

Her smile grew as she leaned down once more. He

tried kissing her, but all she did was brush her lips
on his, making him almost whimper.

“That was exactly what you told me,” she teased.

“Well, dream-me knew exactly what the hell I was

talking about, because this is heaven,” he said.

“Sacrilegious,” she accused.

“Not religious, so I do not care,” he answered.

“I do find interesting that you know the concept of

heaven and hell, and yet you have no idea of
Jesus,” she admitted. “Not that I blame you much.
I’m not very religious either.”

“I had enough after the first chapter of the book,”

he said. “Now, please, kiss me before I combust,
my love.” And she did, still chuckling, but allowing
her tongue to slip into his mouth and caress his
own tongue. “May I, please, taste you?”

“Not today,” she said. “I want you inside of me

right away.”

Regulus looked down at her body as she slipped her

nightgown from her shoulder and letting it pool on
her waist before pulling it up and throwing to the
side, her breasts already filled with goosebumps
and her white silk and completely common knickers
getting his attention.

“Silk?” he asked, reaching out to touch it.

“It’s comfortable to sleep in,” she expressed before

kneeling down, hovering above the place in his
stomach she had been sitting on to take it off and
then almost falling to the side as she tried to slip it
past her knee and down her leg. He held her in
place. “Don’t laugh at me, you little shit!” she
warned as he tried her best to follow her
instructions. He ended up laughing a bit resting his
head on the pillow, closing his eyes, but still feeling
her glare. “Regulus!”

“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, it’s just that

you told me not to laugh,” he explained.

“Oh, Merlin’s Bollocks, you’re a manchild,” she

complained.

“Not on purpose, my love, I promise,” he answered.

He pushed himself to sit down and put a hand on

the side of her face, caressing her cheek with care
enough to make her lean into the sensible and
completely innocent touch before gently pulling her
towards him. Another kiss as she pulled the
knickers of that one foot and allowed it to fall to the
side, still around her other thigh, but not caring
much as she was now exposed.

Without stopping the kiss, she unbuttoned his

trousers.

He pulled back to put both his hands on the

headboard to raise his hips so she could pull his
trouser and pants down, to his knees. She smiled
at him before hovering right above his erection and
taking control of it with her hand before leading it
up to her entrance, sinking into with a shiver and
with her lips separating in a breathy moan.

“Beautiful girl,” he whispered. “You look so pretty.”

She sighed with the fullness she felt and he had to

hold his breath and her heartbeat seemed to be
echoing across his own body through the walls
around him.

“Lie down, Little Prince,” she ordered. He followed

just to make her look down at him and have her
smiling at him. “Let me take care of you today.
Don’t move more than necessary. It’s my turn.”

She reached for her wand, pointing it at the door.

He heard a small click of the lock and he smiled to
himself.

He was more than willing to let her do whatever

she wanted to him at that moment as he moaned
with the simple feeling of moving his hips just a bit
to lie back down at again. In that position
everything seemed so much deeper and it was the
first time he had no control whatsoever on that
situation… well, at least not as much control as he
usually had with being on top. There was no
pressure this way. He didn’t need to make Anne
finish, because all she wanted was to have him lie
back and enjoy it.

Anne rolled her hips forward and he had to gasp for

air as she leaned forward to hold onto the
headboard of the bed, breasts falling forward as
well, moving over his face. He wanted to try and
reach them, kiss, lick and bite them, but he held
himself back after Anne gave him a warning look.
Once more, she moved, undulating her hips
forward time and time again, her whole figure
making an odd, but sensual type of ‘S’ in
movement.

Regulus moaned loudly at that, thanking the

silencing charms he knew she had on her walls,
especially after the bed made the first noise.

In the Room of Requirement, there was no reason

to be concerned with the noise, but at her home
things were different. Neither of them wanted to be
caught in such a position or force the people she
loved to hear such indications of a private moment.
Even with the wards, there was worry with the
noises such a bed dragging against the wall, so
Regulus quickly grabbed the pillow beside him and
threw it to the back of the headboard, the noise
now softer.

She threw her head back, still holding onto the

headboard for dear life as she put both of her feet
on the bed and started to go up and down, instead
of just front and back, wishing for something a bit
more stimulating.

It wasn’t only for her that it had an effect. Regulus

released one of the loudest moans he ever heard as
her hip bone made contact with the first time she
sat back down at once, already moving away from
him once more.

“Yes!” he hissed.

“Help me, please. Shit! Shit!” she moaned.

He put his hands on her hips before cupping her

buttocks and giving her impulse to go up and down
a few more times.

Once her legs were burning too much, she groaned

loudly in frustration before she leaned forward once
more, skin coated in sweat as she wanted more,
but her body seemed to be slightly out of shape.

“Want me to –”

“No,” she cut him off. “Fuck!”

Her hips moved once more, forcefully moving her

clit against his skin. That seemed to do it for her
because her mouth opened big as she gasped. A
second later, a scream came as she hit her climax,
shivering on top of him and her walls compressed
around his dick, making him come right after her,
grabbing her hips and moaned, feet buried on the
bed as his hips finally moved, burying himself as far
as he could inside of her.

Anne gasped for air, still feeling the aftershocks

before leaning to the side and falling to the bed
beside him.

“Fuck,” she answered.

“Your filthy mouth makes an appearance once

more,” he teased.

“Shut up. I know you love it,” she teased back. She
turned in bed to look at him. “You’ll stay for dinner,
won’t you?”

“If this is what I received before lunch, I cannot

imagine myself walking away before dinner,” he
answered.

Chapter 92: Chapter Ninety-One

-
Summary:
Regulus learns how truly hard it
might be to be a spy.

THE TRUTH OF A SPY

James walked into the house, shrugging off his coat

and putting on the hanger, walking further into the
house with hesitation as the piano sound echoed
around. It was an unfamiliar song with an
unfamiliar style – that wasn’t Sirius or his mother
playing and, certainly, it wasn’t Anne.

“Mum?” he called out.

The piano didn’t stop, but Mia poked his head

outside of the music room, smiling at him as she
saw him.

“Hello, dear. Welcome back,” she said. “We’re all

here listening.”

“Who is it?”

“Regulus, of course,” she answered as if James

should have guessed as much. “He’s playing one of
his pieces; a wonderful pianist, he is.”

That much he couldn’t disagree. The notes were

perfectly timed and the song seemed to guide
James into the music room, invitation or no
invitation. It was hypnotizing and it made him want
to listen to more and more pieces coming from the
young boy that was siting with his back to the door.

Anne was sitting right beside the piano, a book on

her lap, closed with her pointer finger in her middle
of the pages to mark her page. Sirius and Monty
were sitting on a sofa, listening with a lot of
attention, heads moving in tandem as they tried to
decide a grade to give Regulus once he was done.
Mia went back to sit beside Monty and smiled at
James, pointing at the seat beside Remus, who had
his eyes closed and seemed almost asleep.

The piano stopped. The family clapped, waking

Remus up with a small jump.

Regulus’ fingers hovered about the white and black

keys before he pulled his hands back to his lap.

“That was wonderful, Regulus!” Mia said.

Anne smiled at Regulus, barely even noticing James

was in the room now.

“What is the name of this one?” Anne asked.

Regulus hesitated.

“The Bedroom Scene. It’s… ah… I watched Romeo

and Juliet and I made this piece with the bedroom
scene on mind,” he answered.

“Before he leaves?” Remus asked. “After he was

banished.”

“Yes,” Regulus answered.

“You should change the name, though. It sounds

dirty,” James said, crossing his arms.

“If you had read Romeo and Juliet, you might have
known that there’s a reason for it to sound dirty.
What they did in that room was dirty,” mocked
Sirius. “And I’m a bit surprised that it was the
scene that resonated with my little brother, but I
learned two things in these last few days: don’t ask
too many questions and don’t open the door
without knocking and waiting for an answer.”

James turned to his friend.

“What is that supposed to mean?” James asked.

“It means that you should stop asking questions

that you don’t want to know the answer,” Mia said.
“And it also means that dinner is ready. Let’s move
to the dining room now, alright? Coco is very
excited for you all to try the ice-cream she learned
to make last week, she has been waiting and
working on that for a long time now.”

Regulus was the first, still blushing, to get up from

where he was sitting in front of the piano, waiting
for Anne, who walked by him, taking a hold of his
hand on the way towards the door. James followed
closely, now suddenly very scare of leaving the two
teenagers alone, Mia glaring at him right from
behind and with Monty following, laughing a bit at
how silly his son was being. Sirius pointed at his
friend with his thumb, making Remus laugh as they
followed the group out of the music room.

The food was quickly passed around as everybody

filled their plates and started eating without too
much thought.

Food time in the Potter Household was usually

chaos, but the simple presence of Regulus Black
with his impeccable posture and carefully eating
manners did make the silence a bit awkward as
Sirius suddenly didn’t feel at ease enough to belt
the most uncomfortable and completely disgusting
comments in the middle of dinner.

“So…” started James, awkwardly looking between

his daughter and Regulus, “I saw Lucius Malfoy
today.”

Regulus froze mid spoonful of mashed potatoes,

looking up at James and quickly putting the spoon
back in the plate.

“Whatever was the context of the meeting?” he

asked.

“Passing by as natural as the day in a Muggle

neighbourhood,” James said, filled with sarcasm.

“Now, that is certainly natural,” Mia said, sipping

her wine.

“Did he talk to you?” Regulus asked.

“No. I don’t think he even thinks we saw him; Lily

and I, I mean,” James answered. “He was walking
behind a building when we went to take a walk near
the park. We were walking towards Spinner’s End
and –”

“He might have been at Severus’,” Anne said,

turning to look at Regulus.

“Perhaps,” Regulus admitted. “I’ll keep an eye on

him anyways and write to Severus tonight, but I
fear he wasn’t at home today, for all I know he’s
still in Scotland. I also think that Lucius wouldn’t
just take a walk in a muggle neighbourhood,
because Severus connected his fireplace to the floo
now that his father is out of the way.”

“His father?” Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows.

Regulus glared at him.

“If you’re looking for more ammunition to mock my
friend, Sirius, you won’t find any with me,” Regulus
said.

“It was a genuine question this time,” Remus said.

Regulus looked Sirius up and down, trying to

understand him a bit better before deciding what to
answer.

“His life was hardly any different from ours, Sirius,”

was his initial question. “Well, from what it was for
you. What it is for me, though,” he added. “He… did
what he had to do without breaking the law to get
his father out of the bloody way. And he managed
it… amazingly well.”

Anne couldn’t help but smirk to herself with the

image of Tobias Snape crying, confused and lost in
a housing paid for the Estate. That was less than
what he deserved, but losing the sense of self is the
purest and most natural type of torture, it happens
to a lot of people and most don’t deserve it – but
Tobias did, peeing on his pants and having people
change him because he can barely stand on his
own. Cruel. Severus took a lot of time finding the
perfect spell for the perfect moment.

“That he did,” she answered, reaching for her

goblet of wine and gulping the end of it. “Severus
deserves some peace in Scotland. Don’t tell him
why you asked, just ask if he was home because he
wanted to give him a present or something and it
needed to be face-to-face. I don’t think letters are
safe anymore. From now on, we need to be very
careful with getting word to one another.”

“We might as well create another type of

communication altogether,” Remus complained.

“That might be it,” Regulus said. “I came here for

another reason besides spending time with you,
Anne. I have something for you.” He half stood in
the seat, hand shoving into his pocket and pulling
out a small piece of parchment. It seemed old,
yellowish and burned to the sides. “This used to
belong to the Crouch Family. Barty stole this for me
as a Graduation present, I thought it odd when he
refused the other piece of it, but thoughtful when
he told me to give it to you. I think he guessed,
because neither I nor Severus told him about our
relationship, but the little smartarse knew about it
very well.”

“You’re not as discreet as you think you are with all

the longing looks,” Sirius said.

Regulus half-glared at him before giving him half a

piece of the parchment surprisingly straight-cut.

“Whatever you write there, will appear to me here,”

he said, showing the paper in his own hand to her.
“We can talk through it, it’ll disappear after three
hours after written, so if I never answer, wait for a
full day until you write again. If I don’t answer
again… well, then we both know what it means.”

“It means I’m going after you and drag you here by
your ear, you little shit,” she said, bitterly. “You
better answer me.”

“I will try, Princess,” he dismissed, shoving the

other piece into his pocket once more. He cleaned
his throat once he saw Sirius raising his eyebrows
at the sweet pet-name he had used in public. “Now,
we might need a code to make sure it’s us speaking
to one another, not someone impersonating us.”

“Whatever can we say?” she asked.

“What about the year you were in before you

came?” James asked.

Regulus nodded to himself.

“James is right, that’s a good idea,” Regulus said.

“Only the people we trust know about it.”

“I write 1998, then and you shall write…”

“1961, the year I was born,” he said.

“That one might be too easy,” Monty said. “If

someone sees a sequence of numbers, especially in
four, they will assume it’s a year, the first thing
they might use is the year you were born, boy.”

“He’s correct, that would be my first attempt,” Mia

agreed.

Regulus looked between the two adults.

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

“In there a specific year you might find…

meaningful?” Mia asked.

It was immediate.

“1975,” Regulus answered.

Sirius flinched.

It was the year he had ran away. It was the year

that Regulus had received direct, physical
punishment. It was the year that Regulus almost
died for the first time in his life by the hands of his
mother when he admitted that he had gone to his
knees, begging his brother to stay, but it wasn’t the
last time he had felt the painful aftershock spasms
of the Cruciatus Curse in his own skin.

“1998 and 1975,” Mia said. “Those are good

numbers. Keep them in mind, they are your new
code.”

“We might need a second code, one that one of the

people in this table might need to use if they need
to talk to you, but I cannot do it,” Anne said,
turning to look at Regulus once. “1976, the year I
got here. What do you all think?”

“Not a good one,” Remus said. “A word might be

better. Like a safe-word or something like that.”

“Which one? One that might hold meaning for all of

us here,” said James.

The people looked around the room, trying to find

something that could be used.

“Stars,” Sirius said. They all looked at him. “We’re

all named after stars in that bloody family. A
parchment scribbled ‘stars’ will not be seen as
much, nobody will ask questions. We just need to
wait for an answer before writing anything other
than the word.”

“That shall be same for us,” Regulus said turning to

Anne. “Do not write anything besides the numbers
until I answer.”

“Alright,” she said, nodding once.

“Alright,” he answered, sounding a bit relieved now

that everything was fixed.

Anne smiled just a bit to him as an idea formed in

her head as she watched his mind work.

Anne pulled back from the kiss against her

bedroom door, gasping for air.

“We need to talk,” she insisted. Regulus groaned as

he kissed her neck, urging her to continue talking.
“I have an idea about how to get another Horcux
and the plan is important, Little Prince, can you,
please, pay attention to it?”

“I always pay attention to what you have to say,”

he grumbled against her neck. “But if you want me
to stop kissing you, say the word.”

“I’d like very much for you to continue kissing me

and to have a second round of our lunch-time
rendezvous, but I really need your full attention to
what I’m about to say, because it involves you
directly, and I might need to put you in danger for
this plan to work,” she said.

That caught his attention completely. His hands

didn’t leave her waist, but he did pull back from her
to look at her a bit better and allowed her to lead
him to sit down at the lounging chair at the end of
her bed. She was holding his hands on her lap,
caressing them carefully, as if she needed to butter
him up for his plan.

“Anne, do you want me to go into harm’s way or do

you want me to put my position on the ranks in
danger?” he asked. “There’s a very big difference
between the two.”

“This one might put both at risk,” she admitted.

“But I don’t think I can trust this to anyone else.
We still have three more Horcruxes before we can
finally kill the Dark Lord himself. That’s a lot of
power that he can still wield.”

“I am aware,” he said. “What is your plan and what

is my part on it?”

“It’ll only go through if you agree to it. If you don’t,

I’ll have to find another way, but… I think I can do
it,” she said. “I just made the plan and it needs
polishing and it’ll only work while time is on our
side.”

There was no confidence in her lie and they both

knew it was completely on purpose. She was saying
that she could find another way, but they both
needed to know that there was no other way to get
anything from that Lestrange vault without his part
on the plan she had made midst dinner.

“That means that I have limited time to fulfil this

plan of yours, and I might be running out of it soon
enough that you’re ignoring the step of talking to
Dumbledore before sending me out of there with
your plan. Alright, I suppose,” he guessed,
organizing her words in his mind. “Go on, then, tell
me what do you want me to do.”

“I want you to lie to Bellatrix Lestrange and pretend

to be very interested in your job,” she said.

Regulus looked down. Another sacrifice he needed

to make, pretending to like something that was
killing him inside – call him a sensitive soul, but
having a job he didn’t like was literally killing him
from the inside out.

“I can do that,” he said.

“I thought of you being super interested in it, eager

to learn more and more. Butter her and her
husband, maybe even his brother up as much as
you can as you go on and on with compliments –
enough to keep their attention, not enough to make
you seem in love with them or something like that,
be careful not to step over the line,” she said.

“I’m quite aware of where that line is,” he

grumbled.

“Good, you’re going to need that,” she said. “You

will need to talk about their wards, check if
Bellatrix’s blood was integrated into the blood
wards and all that, like it was done with Narcissa.
With the wards, find the counter-ward for them, or
at least most of them, especially the family wards.”

“It might have not, since the vault is not

somewhere she is often seen at,” he said. “Usually,
it’s only the brothers that go. Won’t it be weird for
me to ask about it? They might see my overly
curious mind as a threat.”

“Nothing but an empty one if you do it for the sake

of learning,” she answered. “You’re young, in an
internship for your first job. They won’t find it too
weird, but might find it a bit overly eager. But you
did express that you wanted to be a Curse-Breaker
in your childhood, they might just assume that you
went back to a childish state of mind in your
excitement and happiness of getting a possibility
for your dream job and a Seat, they’ll do nothing of
the intimidation sort.”

Regulus took a deep breath. She had a great

chance of being right; the Lestrange brothers were
stupid enough to follow such simple thoughts, but
Bellatrix might be a bit harder to persuade into
talking of the protection of where an important item
of the Dark Lord was hidden. Sure, Regulus wasn’t
supposed to know of it, but she would assume a lot
more than any other in his or her family.

“For most of those wards, I’d need to go inside the

Vault,” he said, frowning.

Anne nodded. She knew that and she had expecting

him to say that.

“That’s where Elizabeth Fawley comes in,” she said.

He jumped up.

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“Regulus –” she started.

“If anything goes wrong with your plan, if anything

goes slightly out of the line in your mind and
somebody finds out there has been a break-in into
the Lestrange vault, she’ll be the first suspect!” he
said.

“I know –” she started.

“You’re using her! She’s just a pawn to you, but

she’s my friend. You say you hate how Dumbledore
use everybody, but there you are, doing the same.”

Anne jumped up from the seat she had taken as

well, glaring at him as she frowned as well.

“Of course not! Regulus, this isn’t what I’m trying

to do,” she said. “She’s innocent. She’ll be able to
prove it. I checked when we were at school, I asked
around about her and did check her Occlumency
shields, they’re mediocre. The Dark Lord can break
through them easily, and he’ll see, then, that she
had nothing to do with it.”

“And see that I did it, then,” he said, bitterly.

“He’ll see that, beside her, you and the other very
loyal Death Eater, Rabastan, the only one to get
into the vault will be her dad,” she said. “Don’t try
to make me look bad. I thought about this –”

“For all two hours, yes, I’m aware,” he mocked,

rolling his eyes and putting his hands on his hips.
“Anne, they’ll kill him.”

“And he’ll have it coming,” she answered. He

looked at her in surprise. “Moody has been keeping
an eye on him under my request. Did you know
that his female co-worker suddenly asked for a
leave? Apparently, she was pregnant and fell down
the stairs. She threw herself down and gossip says
the baby was his… unwilling to her part, of course.”

“You’re condemning a man to certain death based

on rumours?” he asked, shocked and quite
disgusted.

“I’m condemning a man based on the rumours that

started from someone that heard the victim talking
about it to a trusted friend after she refused to go a
Healer or to an Auror,” Anne said. “I’ve been
keeping Moody from arresting him so we can use
him as the pawn. Your friend Elizabeth will be safe.
Don’t get me wrong, Regulus, I don’t hate her, she
has shown nothing but kindness to me and I shall
give her same.”

“By allowing her mind to be broken into. She could

lose it completely,” he still argued.

“Or she could survive to have the life she always

dreamed under both rich-family names as a widow
and orphan,” she said. “She’ll be fine. I’ll take care
of it when the time comes, if it becomes
necessary… But we need her… and we need you, as
well.”

He sighed, standing in the middle of the room.

Regulus weighted the cons and the pros. For one

side, another Horcrux could mean a great deal for
the fight he was fighting, putting his life at risk
every single day to betray the man he called ‘My
Lord’, but still he would be putting a lot at risk to
get it without being caught – and the worst part
was that, to not be caught and take his own arse
out of the way, he would need to push a friend into
it. Sure, Elizabeth and him weren’t close, but she
still was kind and genuinely good.

She was the exact type of target that wars love to

devour; innocence always tasted great to those
who ate rotten people all the time.

But with Anne by her side as she was promising to

be, Elizabeth would be safe. Or at least as safe as
someone like anyone else in a war.

"I can try. We can converse the details deeper as

time goes by, but I’ll start talking the brothers into
it,” he accepted. “But if anything happens to
Elizabeth, I’ll be tremendously upset, Anne.”

“I’ll try my very best to get her safe and sound out
of that place before she’s in real danger, and that’s
the best I can do,” Anne said. “Her life is worth just
as much as mine and just as much as yours to me,
I can promise this much to you.”

He took a deep breath, looking at his shoes.

“If something is to happen, send her to Turkey. She

has family there that will help her out,” he said.

“Get me two pictures of her,” Anne said. “I’ll have

fake papers ready for her.”

It wasn’t much, but it came from Anne. To him, her

promise of trying was as good as any other that
Dumbledore himself could make, so he nodded.

He left without telling her one last time that he

loved her, too lost in his own thoughts to think of
anything else but himself and the way his neck was
exposed for anyone to cut as soon as they
suspected anything. But if there was something he
was to learn was that the fear, suspicion and
nervousness of a spy will never pass… not even
when the war is done for the real war would forever
be in his mind, forever thinking of the bets he
placed on people’s lives and on his own decisions.

Chapter 93: Chapter Ninety-

Two -
Summary:
Godfather and Goddaughter fluff
moment before the war really
starts.

Notes:
Please leave your comments here.

A DOLL IN A WAR TABLE

The communication between Regulus and Anne was

cold.

Anne was trying everything she could to get his

forgiveness without having to actually apologize,
because she felt like she didn’t do anything wrong –
she was trying to deal with a very important issue
and, though cruel, sometimes some plans needed
to be dangerous. She would try to keep everyone
alive, that much she had promised herself as soon
as she had gotten to that time period, but that
didn’t mean she would sit and wait, taking people
out of harm’s way only. Call Elizabeth bait, if one
wants to, but she was important to the plan.
Regulus, however, did not agree with her, he
thought that Elizabeth deserved to be completely
out of danger since she had never chosen a side
and never agreed to fight for.

She checked once more the parchment where she

had written ‘1998’, but no answer had come yet.

His last sentence to her the night before had

disappeared from the parchment already, but it was
burnt into her mind.

‘It’s not right to win a game without people who

aren’t playing.’. Even his handwriting seemed
angry. But what made her angry was that he didn’t
care at all for other people, he only was morally
wounded when it was about his friends; she hated
his hypocrisy, but she also hated that he was angry
at her own hypocrisy, anger filled by his hypocrisy
which he refused to acknowledge.

“You alright?” asked Remus.

She looked up from the parchment as she lied in

bed. Remus was standing at the doorway, hands
holding a cup of tea and an empty plate with
crumbs of biscuits.

“Yeah,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely,” she lied. “Just waiting for Regulus to

answer me. He has been taking a long time today
and I’m a bit worried. That’s all.”

Remus nodded, believing her.

“I’m sure he’s alright,” he said.

“If he wasn’t, I would know it already,” she

answered.

Or at least she hoped that she would come to know

whatever might happen to Regulus by Voldemort’s
action through Narcissa’s horrible handwriting or
Severus’ elegant cursive. Though, at the moment
she doubted Regulus would allow her to know
anything else but the necessary.

Before the awkward conversation could go on,

there was a small noise on her window. A small owl
struggled to fly in place, pecking on the glass
before landing at the windowsill and waiting for
someone to open it for her.

“Well, hello there, you’re new,” Anne said, opening

the window.

The owl was young, dark-brown and smaller than

the usual owls in Hogwarts, but seemed to be
completely trained already. She had a small piece
of parchment attached to her small leg and seemed
quite excited, barely stopping for time enough for
Anne to get the parchment from there, though the
witch chuckled a bit as she did it.

“Whose very small owl is that?” Remus asked,

looking at the owl a bit amused at the size of it.
The owl didn’t seem to like it, making a loud noise,
loud enough to startle him.

“Fabian’s,” she answered. “’Movement’, he wrote,

and then added, ‘Ps: enjoy the sight of my newest
friend, Snowy.”

“Movement? What is that supposed to mean?”

Remus asked, frowning.

“It means somebody is at the Lestrange vault,” she

answered. “It might be why Regulus is taking so
long to answer,” she added in a whisper to herself.

Remus raised his eyebrows, watching Anne pace as

she read and reread the very short letter that left
no room for a wild imagination. It was short and
direct. Anne knew what was happening, but not in
detail and, therefore, was very uncomfortable with
the unknown; nothing surprising to the daughter of
James Potter, but he had never seen Anne so
agitated for something as small.

“Did you have a row with him?” he asked.

“No,” she said, not even looking at him, eyes glued

to the letter.

“Annie,” he insisted.

“I didn’t,” she insisted, looking up at him and

folding the parchment once more. He just stared at
her. “Look, it wasn’t a row.”

“So you did,” he sighed. “What happened?”

“I might have asked him to do me a favour that he

didn’t want to do, which also involved someone
else. I wanted them to search for something for
me, but it might put this other person in danger
and… I suppose I can understand that he was
hesitant, I mean it’s his friend, but I thought he
knew and understood what he was signing up for
when he agreed to be a spy,” she said. “I admit
that it did sound completely mad and that it
certainly would get this friend of his in trouble
before they could understand that it wasn’t her and
all that, but still it was something that I need and
that the world needs.”

“Are you jealous of him with this girl?” he asked.

“Not anymore,” she admitted.

“He probably thought that you’re still jealous of her

and might be putting her in danger on purpose. Did
you think of that possibility?” he asked, walking
into the room and sitting on her bed as she stopped
in front of him. He put his plate and cup on the
bedside table.

“I’m not purposefully cruel,” she said.

“But you can be, if you wanted to be,” he

answered. “Don’t get me wrong, Anne. I’m the first
one in this friend group to understand and agree
that the world isn’t black and white and that
sometimes cruelty is needed to win. But Regulus is
a lot more like Sirius than he cares to believe – he
can lean towards the grey area of that moral the
purebloods have, but he will slip back to his old
ways here and there, especially if he thinks the
people he likes are in danger.” Remus crossed his
arms. “Did you have a way to promise her safety?”

“No,” she said.

“There you go, then,” he answered.

Anne didn’t say to defend herself that she had

already fake papers for the girl that Theodore Nott
made her (with some discount, surprisingly) under
a false name and with an Irish citizenship. If she
managed to get away, which Regulus insisted on
making his responsibility, she would safely get
away with the help of the best Dark Market
smugglers and treated like a queen by the family
waiting for her by the quick and discreet message
Anne managed to send across borders without
being opened (help of Moody, once more
surprisingly).

“The thing is that he was the one to say that we

shouldn’t let petty discussion such as these get in
the way of communication, especially during a war
such as this,” she dismissed, not wanting to get
into too many details. “He might be in the vault
with them as he said he would,” Anne guessed,
“but still it makes me anxious when he doesn’t
answer me like this.”

“If he said he would be there, then you can be sure

he’s there. Regulus isn’t one to break words,”
Remus said.

“You barely know him.”

“But I know you, and I know that anyone in love

with you wouldn’t dare to betray their word to you,”
he explained. “You’re being paranoid, Anne. And
being stuck in this house isn’t helping you at all.
You really need to find a hobby.”

“I’m trying with the piano.”

“A hobby you actually enjoy,” added Remus. “You

hate the piano and you’re just trying to get Mia to
help you, but I’m sure that whatever you wanted to
learn, she would be beside you. You don’t need to
enjoy something she does just to get her attention,
this isn’t how Mia works.”

Anne almost laughed. Remus had the most

wonderful things to say and the heartiest advices,
but when it was time for him to deal with his own
life, then he became a scared little boy unsure of
his feelings and other people’s. She wouldn’t be
cruel enough to point it out, after all he was trying
to help her and it wasn’t all that annoying to have
someone to listen to her.

“And what should I do?”

“What did you do in your free time?” he asked.

Anne blinked. She barely had any.

“Read,” she answered. “Played with my doll.”

“The last time you had free time, you still played
with dolls?” he asked, surprised.

“I played with my doll until I was fourteen,” she

admitted. He looked a bit taken aback. “Her name
was Dolores. Harry took a rag and tied it and it
really looked like a baby sleeping under all the
fabric, so I called it Dolores and it became my toy.
It was my only toy. While Harry cooked, I would
play with her and then I would help him clean. My
free time was when Harry was working… and in
school, well, I couldn’t take her, could I? So, I
would nap or study. Sometimes, I would even go to
school parties with my brother and cousin when we
needed.”

How absolutely disastrous her life might have been,

she thought as she watched Remus’ pale face try
its best not to show pity.

Annoyed, she bit her lip and turned away from him,
back to the bed as she put the letter on her desk.
She didn’t need him to look at her like that; it
wasn’t that bad, at least she had a toy even when
Harry had none at all.

“And after that?” he asked.

“Well, after fourteen my uncle sort of took my free

time to himself,” she explained poorly.

He winced in the bed.

“Well, you can –” he cut himself off. “What is that?”

She turned to look at him before following his eyes

to the wall near the desk where all the chess pieces
were divided with the names under each drawing
she had done. It looked like a mess with pins
putting the papers against the wall, but Remus had
good eyes to look through the Notice-Me-Not-
Charm.

“War stuff,” she dismissed.

“Anne –”

“It’s nothing. I’m just putting my thoughts down,”

she explained. “You can look at it, if you want to.”
And he did, because he got up and quickly made
his way through the room towards the desk and
watched the names until he found his and his
friends’. Anne could almost see the thoughts being
put in its places inside of his head. “I did it when
Peter taught me chess. It was a good way to train
my head, train how to make plans.”

Remus’ eyes closed tight as he shook his head to

the side as he saw the woman’s name besides his.

“Nymphadora.”

“Your wife… well, ex-wife, I suppose,” she said,

blushing a bit. “She’s a kid right now, but I can
promise she must be a very nice one, if you’re
thinking about it,” she smiled at bit at him. “If you
ever think about having a child, you and Sirius
should totally talk to her, because I really miss
Teddy.”

“That would be my son,” he said, turning to her.

“Yes, he was wonderful,” she said. “He was very

smart and very sweet, quite polite for such a small
child. He also thought my hair was quite funny
because he would always laugh and copy it.”

“Yes, I forgot you told me he was capable of that,”

he laughed to himself. “Who would’ve thought. A
gay werewolf… with a son.”

She shrugged.

“A gay werewolf with a goddaughter being his son’s

godmother as well,” she added.

He laughed.

1975…

Anne,

Here follows the wards I managed to find and the

wards Rabastan told me about.

Family Blood Ward – it’s not mixed with Bellatrix’s

blood and, therefore, we cannot access the vault
with my blood. Elizabeth’s blood won’t be mixed
with it either, just the brothers’ blood. The only
manner that their wives’ blood will be accepted by
the ward is by the death of both of them. We need
to find a way through it somehow.

Feoh Ward – old one, rune related, as you can see

by the name. It’s the traditional protection to
wealth, so it’s easy to break through, not
something I’m worried about and neither should
you be. I already know the counter-spell for that.

There’s another ward that was created by them,

one I do not have a name to give since I was done
by a sigil. It’s a family one from the 1700’s. It’s
hard to come by and even harder to break through,
it’s dark and involves terrible curses to those who
try to go through without putting down the ward
first. In women usually involves bleeding enough to
make them enable to have children – did it happen
to you or your friend when you broke into the
vault?

Drowning Ward – this one you warned me about,

the one that multiples objects until the thief drowns
in them. It’s not all that hard to break through, but
the blood ward needs to be down when we break
through this one.

Thief Ward – this one is a hard one since it’s hard

to notice. It’s a Notification ward, not a protection
one, so we rarely see them in our Curse-Breaker
course. Apparently, it sends a loud warning siren to
the owners when an object is touched without their
permission. Of course, the Lestrange brothers
would have one of those in their vault.

I’m sorry for taking so long to answer.

Anne took a moment to read it all and sighed with

the number of wards and tried not to think too hard
on how Hermione was probably bleeding through
her clothes and said nothing to not worry anyone
further than necessary since she was still feeling
the after-effects of the torture she had been
through. Anne had not felt anything, but Hermione
was the first to go through the doors of the vault.

She wrote a small and quick answer to tell him that

she received the message, but didn’t say much
after that as she wrote down a bit about each one
of the wards down in a normal piece of parchment
and set down the two-way parchment down.

Her desk was messy.

The names and chess pieces were stuck to the wall,

beside them there was the list of Horcruxes, three
of them risked off of the list. Beside them, there
was a list of known Death Eaters – from Bellatrix to
Mister Fawley-useless-arse. Now, she also stuck to
the wall the list of wards.

Sighing, she put her elbows on the table and rested

her face on her hands, trying to think through the
worry.

Knocks on her door made her jump.

“Yes?” she called out.

Remus walked into the bedroom with his hands

behind his back.

“What are you doing now? I can’t believe you’re

already awake…” he asked.

“You’re back already? Didn’t you have to work?”

“Anne, it’s almost six in the morning,” he said,

frowning. “Did you sleep at all last night? This can’t
be good for you.”

Surprised, she looked to the side to see the sun

beginning to come up. She blushed for not having
noticed and refused to look at Remus for a moment
until her cheeks stopped burning. She was noticing
that she was sort of sleepy as she turned to look at
her godfather.

“Good morning,” she joked.

“Anne, you should be asleep,” he said.

“Well, you came to my bedroom, so you knew I

was awake,” she said.

“I didn’t. I came to make you a surprise. I was

expecting you to be asleep,” he explained.

Her eyes narrowed at him.

“A surprise?”

“One I hope you’d like,” he added. She raised her

eyebrows at him, hoping that would urge him
enough to show her the surprise and, by the
mischievous smile he had on his lips, it was been
enough. “Do you want it now?”

“Yes,” she said as if it was completely obvious.

“Please,” she added once she noticed how spoiled
she had sounded.

Remus laughed at how her cheeks gained a bit of

colour, but he did take the big box behind his back
and put it over her lap as she was sitting on the
chair in front of the desk. He smiled at her as she
looked at the box admired by it on itself.

The box was wrapped in a red and white paper and

tied with a big, red bow. Carefully, she untied it and
torn the corner of the paper. She opened the box
and put the lid to the side, on the floor. There was
something wrapped in thin, white paper, so she
opened it and gasped loudly.

A doll.

The most beautiful doll that Anne had ever seen.

The whitest skin she had ever seen in fine china,

the cheeks painted pink in a fake blush and a small
nose. Beautiful brown eyes staring right back at her
and the jet-black hair curled at the ends, pulled
back for a half-up, half-down and tied in the back
with a blue silk ribbon. She was wearing a white
dress with a blue ribbon tied around her waist and
the dress went over her tiny feet.

“Oh my God,” she mumbled too much in shock to

answer. “This is beautiful, Remus. She’s beautiful!”

“Did you like her? I met a guy and he had a toy-

store and I asked him if I could get a doll. I told
him it was for my goddaughter,” he told her,
kneeling down in front of her, taking the box from
her lap and putting on the ground beside the lid. He
put his hands on her knees. “I’m glad you liked it.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

She felt small, vulnerable and silly, but she didn’t

hate it completely for the first time in forever. She
felt like a child. She felt like she was having a
childhood for the first time in forever.

Her hands were shaking as she caressed the hair.

She feared her hands would somehow taint
something in that beautiful doll.

“Don’t you think I’m a bit old for dolls?” she asked,
tearful eyes looking at him.

He smiled at her.

“Are you?”

She shrugged.

“She’s… I’ve never… God, Remus, this is…” she

could find anything to say to him.

Anne wasn’t one to completely lose her words, but

there she was, unable to string a full sentence.

“Do you not like it?” he asked, grin growing as he

reached for the doll to take it away from her.

Surprised by the movement, she held the doll

closer to her and eyes widened enough for the tear
that she was holding back to finally fall. She
hugged the doll, so Remus couldn’t even try to take
it away from her.

“It’s really mine now?” she asked, voice wavering.

“If you want it to be,” he answered.

“I do.”

“Then it is,” he said.

He sat down in front of her as she let go of the doll

a bit and looked at her face once more.

“It must have been a fortune,” she said. “Oh,

Remus. This must have been so expensive. But I
can’t find in myself to refuse this.”

“I don’t have anything else to spend my money on

besides you and Sirius, Annie, darling,” he teased.
“I don’t want you to refuse it, either. Anne, you
deserve a doll… every girl deserves a doll.”

Anne agreed to it and Anne wanted to be every girl,

even if she felt like she wasn’t. It wasn’t every girl
that was working against a tyrant that was gaining
power; but she tried convincing herself that she
could be another girl entirely different from the one
she usually was if she had that doll in her arms,
there she could be just Anne Potter, not the fighter
people expected her to be.

“Do you have a name for her?” he asked, raising

his eyebrows at her.

She looked at the doll. So beautiful.

“Esme,” she answered. “Because she means a lot to

me.”

Anne, still enchanted by the beauty of her new

childhood, put the doll over the table, cleaning the
parchments and ink to the side so she wouldn’t be
dirty. She rested against the wall, head leaning
near the parchment of the wards Regulus had given
her.

“You can play with her,” Remus said.

“I am,” she said. “I’m playing of looking at her. I’m

playing of watching her beauty.”

Remus chuckled, kneeling up a bit, kissing her face

before getting up from his place on the ground and
cracking his back in the process.

“I’m sorry if I don’t stay with you a bit more, Annie,

but I’m very tired,” he said. “I really need to sleep
and I’m sure Sirius is hogging the bed. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. “Good night.”

“You should sleep at well, Annie, it’s morning

already, you must feel tired,” he said shoving his
hands down his pockets.

She didn’t answer him, still looking at Esme staring

back at her as if she, too, was happy for being with
Anne. He smiled to himself as she walked out of
bedroom, closing the door softly as he walked down
the corridor to his own bedroom.

Anne didn’t sleep.

Anne promised herself that she would heal the child

in her. She promised she would balance the woman
she was becoming and the child she was and the
one had wished to be in a single person.

Chapter 94: Chapter Ninety-

Three
Summary:
Vernon Dursley is dealt with.

Notes:
This chapter is one I demand
comments because it's mostly fan-
service lol, I admit to some self-
service that comes with the TW:
EXPLICIT VIOLENCE.

Some Lily-Sirius-Anne bonding

time over beating up abusers.
Nice! Let's go!
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

VERNON DURSLEY

The wards were hard to break. Though Regulus

hated to admit that much, the Lestrange family was
smart, cautious and very aware of the danger of
the world they were living in and, with their wealth
being one of the most important things in their lives
for them, the wards were carefully constructed to
last for decades without re-strengthening them.

“You should take a break and eat, Young Master

Regulus,” said Kreacher, standing in the middle of
this bedroom, watching worriedly as Regulus tried,
once more to break the small ward he had made
around a bird feather in his desk. “Master Regulus
has been here for four hours.”

“I’m working, Kreacher,” dismissed Regulus.

“But Miss Anne told Kreacher that Master Regulus

shouldn’t work for more than four hours straight.”

Regulus froze, putting his wand down and turning

to look at Kreacher in surprise.

“Anne talked to you? When?” he asked.

“This morning, Master,” said Kreacher, eyes

widening. “Kreacher shouldn’t have? Kreacher shall
punish himself right away. Kreacher thought he was
helping Master to be happy because Master is
happy with Miss Anne.”

Regulus ended up blushing quite a bit as he started

shaking his head.

“How did you talk to her?”

“Miss send her Coco to talk to Kreacher,” he

explained.

“And why didn’t you warn me?”

“Because yous was working,” Kreacher answered.

Regulus blinked a few times. He couldn’t believe

Anne had sent her domestic-elf to talk to Kreacher
instead of trying to talk to him directly through the
parchment or even a letter, if anything she had to
say wasn’t incriminating.

“Did Miss Anne say anything else?” he asked, still

half-lost in his thoughts.

Kreacher looked at Regulus and held onto his own

ears, nervous. That was enough answer to Regulus,
so he narrowed his eyes to the elf, who whimpered
miserably before nodding and tugging his left ear.

“Miss Anne told Coco to tell Kreacher that he wasn’t

allowed to tell Master Regulus, but Miss Anne is
working just as hard as Master Regulus and wanted
to know if there would be a day where Mistress
would be out of the house,” admitted Kreacher.
“She wants to see Master Regulus.”

“Well, Mother will be out tomorrow and –”

“Miss Anne won’t be here tomorrow,” Kreacher

said, cutting him off.

He raised his eyebrows.

“And you know that, because?”

“Kreacher asked,” he explained. “Coco said Miss

Anne had a date.”

Regulus’ stomach dropped. Sure, Kreacher might

have been wording it oddly, but there was this pit
on his stomach that made him turn back to his
table.

“I’m not working anymore, Kreacher, you can go

now,” Regulus dismissed.

Kreacher hesitated, taking a peek at Regulus as he

pulled some parchment and wrote something down.
Once he recognized it was nothing but a letter,
Kreacher took a step back before popping away
with a loud noise.

That letter was sent immediately, but it took almost

three hours for him to receive an answer and not
even a whole letter back, just a note.

“Dealing with a family situation. I’ll talk to you

when I can. If I’m back before six, I’ll come over,”
he read in a low voice.

It was recognizing the handwriting and hating the

lack of details. He knew that she needed to be very
careful with her words and what they could mean if
mail was intercepted, but still, it made his heart
beat harder, as if the automatic movement was
hard, as if his heart was not used to that.

He put the letter down on his bed, all his hunger

and his exhaustion disappearing. He was scared of
what those vague words sounded and what they
could actually mean. There was so much that Anne
overlooked (would call an important meeting with
the greatest wizards in the Light in the Order a ‘tea
party’, even if it was a joke) and thought there was
nothing important enough to tell him about, now,
however, that small amusing trait was becoming
worrisome to him.

Once Regulus had eaten something after Kreacher

insisted after the fourth hour of worrying and
whining. He lied in bed, taking fifteen more minutes
of a break before continuing his research. Lying
there, he stared at the ceiling and sighed, a
mixture of anxiety, boredom and exhaustion
catching up to him as he struggled to keep his eyes
open, but even then, he wasn’t feeling sleepy – the
conflict kept him awake, but tired.

Still, both made him jump to sit down on the bed

when there was movement on the first floor.

The noise of the floo made him dread the fact that
his mother was probably coming back home and
would stop by his bedroom, wondering if he was
fine and probably would strike a silly conversation
that would allow her to talk and him to listen for far
too long; at least, he thought, that would make him
feel sleepy, finally.

Nobody knocked on the door, it just opened.

He narrowed his eyes, expecting his mother, but it

wasn’t. It was Anne, standing at his doorway with
the smallest of smiles.

“You’ll never guess what I’ve done today,” she

started as, slowly, Regulus seemed to understand
that she was standing in his house.

She sported a black, closed eye with a smile on

her face.

It was right after lunch and Anne felt the heat of

July make her feel slightly light-headed as she
slowly sat down in front of Sirius in the Muggle ice-
cream shop, hoping that the chocolate ice-cream in
front of her would be a refresh-source.

“You look pale,” Sirius said, worried.

Lily came by, sitting beside Sirius, attacking as

soon as sat down her vanilla ice-cream.

“You do look pale,” confirmed Lily. She looked a bit

more nervous that worried. “You don’t need to be
here, Anne, we can deal with him without you.”

“I promised Petunia I would be here,” she

answered.

There was a ball on her throat, or at least it felt like

that. There was a mixture of dread and the purest
and deepest type of primal fear making her
nauseated, and the heat wasn’t helping her at all.

“If she knew the truth, she would understand, I’m

sure,” Lily insisted.

“Well, she doesn’t know the truth, does she?” Anne

snapped. Lily bit her lip, leaning away. “I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to snap.”

Though Lily seemed to want to scold her for not

having any fault at her situation, not knowing
completely what Vernon did to her, Sirius was
faster by shaking his head and slowly reaching for
her hand, touching her only after Anne saw the
hand coming to touch her skin, and he forced a
smile.

“We understand, Annie,” he dismissed. “I’ve been

there before. I wouldn’t like to see Walburga
again.”

Lily looked down. There it was, another thing that

she would never be able to completely understand.
She had a good life, in general, parents that loved
her, a mediocre financial situation and good friends
that came and went like any other person her age;
when Sirius and Anne would say or do things that
she couldn’t understand and thought to be rude or
weird, she always had the horrible feeling that they
were protecting themselves from the environment,
or worse, from her.

“Sirius, please, don’t let him touch me,” Anne

mumbled. “If I feel his hands on me, I don’t think I
will manage. If I have a flashback in public, I swear
that I’ll drop dead in embarrassment.”

“He won’t get any closer than necessary,” Sirius

answered in a promise.

“We can’t use magic,” Lily reminded them.

“I don’t plan on resolving this situation with magic,”

Sirius said. He looked down at his hands. “It’s been
a while since I last punched a Slytherin, but I think
I can still throw a punch or two at the whale.”

Anne’s lips twitched in an almost smile. If Sirius

knew how much fatter that man was in her time, he
might have an actual heart-attack.

Her smile dropped as soon as she glanced to the

side, seeing Petunia walking into the shop clutching
her purse in front of her dress in silence as Vernon
followed her, already loudly ordering two
strawberry ice-creams. Petunia was looking around
the shop and Anne raised her hand discreetly, the
older girl seemed somewhat relieved before Anne
turned away from her, quietly taking a spoonful of
chocolate ice-cream to her mouth.

“If James was here, he would be more than happy

to jump him now,” Sirius said through his teeth.
“Fucking prat.”

He hated how easy it was to hate that man and he

hated how he felt like he needed to take revenge
for Anne. She could do that herself, and yet it was
easy to forget that. Sirius still fought with the
thoughts his mother had forced into his head that
women were gentle and delicate, but he knew Anne
well enough to know that she could do more
damage to that man than he ever could.

They all watched under the Notice-Me-Not charm

Anne quickly used under the table as Petunia and
Vernon sat down not too far from them. Far enough
that it wasn’t suspicious, but near enough that they
could hear Vernon loudly boasting about his job
promotion, clearly wanting other people to hear
about it.

And then Petunia made a squeaky noise.

Vernon’s hand was resting on her thigh, pushing

her dress slightly up.

“Oh, God,” Lily moaned in disgust.

Anne saw the fear. Anne saw the dread. Anne saw
the shame. Anne saw the preparation. Anne saw
how Petunia just accepted what was about to
happen.

Anne saw herself looking up at the ceiling of that

small bathroom, praying for anyone to save her,
but nobody ever came – she wouldn’t allow the
same to happen to somebody else.

Petunia glanced towards them and Anne shot up.

She wouldn’t make Petunia feel anymore helpless

than she needed to.

Anne was ready to save little Anne away from that

man, even if that little Anne took the form of a
young Petunia.

“Oi!” she called out.

Vernon turned to look and his eyes widened.

“You are –” he started.

“Anne Potter, you wanker,” she said.

Sirius was standing right behind her, ready to

intervene if needed. Anne’s anger was not
something he wanted to be in the way of, but he
had promised James he wouldn’t let Anne do
anything she would regret.

Anne had promised herself she wouldn’t allow

herself to feel like the victim anymore, but the
Anne standing in front of the couple was not it, she
was a vigilante, ready to take everything from the
man through someone else’s revenge.

“You’re one of… them. A freak!” Vernon accused,

this time voice lower, not wanting to cause a scene
and get too much attention.

Anne glared at him as she felt Lily standing beside

her.

“Don’t you dare call her that. And take your hands
off of my sister,” Lily ordered.

“She is my fiancée!” Vernon said. “I can do

whatever I want to her. Soon enough, she will be
my wife, nor your sister and –"

“Vernon, I don’t want to marry you,” Petunia

blurted out.

The group went quiet as Vernon turned to look at

the woman beside him in shock, as if the idea that
the woman not wanting him was something he had
never thought of. Surprising, seeing that he was
everything most women hated – cocky, loud,
arrogant, rude, obnoxious, abusive and, more than
anything else, ugly.

“What did you just say to me?” he asked, voice low

and dangerous like a snake preparing for the
attack.

“I don’t want to be your wife, nor your fiancée, nor

your girlfriend… or friend. I don’t want to see you
ever again,” Petunia said, slowly taking the ring off
of her finger. She looked like she would change her
mind at any second; one word from Vernon and she
was done. “I – I’m sorry.”

Sirius, sensing the anger rising, quickly casted

another Notice-Me-Not charm and a silencing
charm around them. The owner of the shop looked
away from the group, whom he had been watching,
and looked for another customer to stare.

Vernon didn’t even look at her anymore, turning to

Anne with blinded rage, bloodshot red eyes turning
to glare at her in anger.

“What did you do to her? What curse did you use

on her with your bloody candles and –” he started.

“We don’t use candles,” Anne blurted out.

She almost laughed to herself. That much she knew

that Harry would have said if he had been there. He
had always been one to go against his uncle, never
caring much for the consequences that would bring
him, though he would jump into apologies and
careful make-up acts to make sure nothing too bad
would happen. It felt good to do the same, it felt
like a nice way to honour his memory though
nobody but her would have understood.

She watched by the corner of her eyes the hands of

Sirius Black disappearing into his back pockets; one
of them held his wand and the other cupped the
small pouch of heavy, golden coins that he always
carried. Both attacks ready, if needed.

“Do you think I fucking care what you use in your

disgusting practices?” he asked, getting up from his
chair, this time loud enough to make Petunia flinch.
Sirius moved to her side quickly, grabbing her arm
and pulling her up from he chair, dragging her to
get behind Lily, only then he let her go, when Lily
held Petunia’s hand. “Do you think I care about
what you do in your free time? No! I care about
what you did to my bride.”

“I’ve done nothing but show her the truth,” Anne

said. “I showed her the future… the future you
would give her, and she didn’t like it. That’s your
fault, not mine. You’re just not enough, Vernon
Dursley.”

He hit the table with a slap.

Anne jumped at that. Her Vernon would do that at

the breakfast table as well, especially during the
time Harry was away and his breakfast wasn’t
perfectly toasted to his taste, whenever Anne would
make a single mistake.

Sirius moved closer to her.

“Who are you to say that to me?” he asked.

“Someone who knows very well the type of man

you are,” she spat towards him. “I know what’s
happening inside your mind.”

“Oh, so now your kind can read minds, too,” he

mocked.

“We don’t need to,” Lily answered. “You’re simple

enough for anyone to figure out, you dunderhead.”

“Who are you daring to call a dunderhead?” Vernon

screamed, face starting to get red.

“YOU!” Lily yelled as loud as she could.

Petunia whimpered, tears getting to her eyes.

“Petunia, come here,” Vernon said. She whimpered

again, physically forcing herself to stay behind Lily,
though her mind screamed at her to move to him;
it was always worse if she didn’t follow his
instructions. “Petunia, come here now! PETUNIA!”

“The lady clearly doesn’t want anything to do with

you, mate, leave it,” Sirius said in the best cordial
pureblood tone.

“Aren’t you that queer wimp that was using

makeup at Christmas?” Vernon asked, as if it had
been the best comeback he had ever thought of,
smirk growing on his lips.

His homophobia had been strong back in the 80s,

but there was a venom in his tongue that Anne
didn’t see back in her time. This was fresh, this was
meant to be painful, but not only to Sirius – it was
like he was reminding himself what others would
have to think about Sirius’ actions. All of that
because Vernon wanted to be just like Sirius.

“Yes, I am. And that tall, strong gang-looking man

holding my hand is my werewolf boyfriend, who
could make put you on your knees in a second,”
Sirius said.

“A bitch like you is threatening me, how manly,” he

mocked.

“I am very manly, thank you,” Sirius answered,

forcing the fakest of smiles on his lips.

Vernon, seeing that there was nothing he could get

from Sirius, turned to Anne once more. She was
good at getting his attention, and she hoped she
was good enough to keep it on her as Petunia cried,
holding onto her younger sister for dear life, as if
she was drowning in her own tears.

One thing about abuse: it’s hard not to go back in.

There’s this dark feeling on the pit of one’s stomach

that tells them again and again that there’s nothing
better than that out there, that everything one
went through was deserved and, therefore,
justifiable in a logical manner, even if it wasn’t.
Once the abuser calls, the victim answers and if
they don’t, they just expect to be punished, even if
the cycle was broken. It’s hard to not be angry at
the victim for always going back to them, but when
they feel there’s nobody that will ever love them
outside of the small world that had been left to her,
they chose terrible things over the nothingness that
loneliness usually brought forth. Petunia would
forever expect terrible things to happen after a
mistake, she would forever have to deal with the
mental scars he left on her, but with that Anne
could help.

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” he said.

“She just told you what she doesn’t want; that,

being you,” Anne said. “She said this is over,
therefore, this is over and if I ever find out you as
much as looked in her direction, I’m coming for
you,” she explained.

“Beautiful threat,” Vernon laughed. “But you can’t

take me.”

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” she

warned. “Don’t bite more than you can chew,
Dursley, because I’ll break your teeth.”

He moved fast, but not faster than Anne.

Once his hand was raised for a slap, her knuckles

were hitting the space between his lips and nose
with a swing that used most of her body weight,
just like Monty had taught her. She stumbled when
he grunted and fell back, stabilising herself by
holding onto the table.
Lily squealed in surprise, holding Petunia when she
moved to help him get up from the ground.

“Hell yeah!” Sirius celebrated.

Vernon hit his head as he fell to the floor, but

quickly got up, sending a good punch towards her
and hitting her on the eye, sending her falling over
the table and the two cups of ice-cream to the
floor, table breaking under her whole weight. The
inertia of the movement had her rolling on the
ground as her hands blindly went around, trying to
get herself up.

“Get her out! Get her out of her now!” she heard
Sirius screaming. “LILY NOW!”

Petunia was sobbing somewhere, but Anne couldn’t

open her eyes and her head was certainly hurting,
even though she hadn’t hit that on the ground. She
had hit her elbow though, because when she pulled
herself to sit down the electric shock of pain made
her grunt.

At this point, the Notice-Me-Not charm was

dropped purposefully and Sirius jumped forward
towards Vernon like a lioness pouncing on an
animal moving towards her cubs.

Vernon’s attention moved from Anne to Sirius and

he swinged once more, Sirius with all his training,
leaned down and moved up with his head as fast as
he could, the back of his head hitting the man on
the chin, as he also pushed his belly and made him
fall on his behind with a loud noise since he tried to
hold onto the chair and brought it down with him.

The owner of the shop started screaming in Italian.

Someone from the customer group on the other
side of the store screamed a very loud ‘oi’.

Anne was standing now, stumbling to the side as

Sirius fell to the ground, holding the back of his
head in pain, grunting as he struggled to the get to
his knees. She could feel blood running down the
side of her face, but she didn’t care about it, she
just jumped on top of Vernon, straddling his
stomach and throwing slaps and punches to his
face and neck.

Vernon had an angry-red bruise forming on his

chin, a cut from Anne’s ring on his philtrum and on
his top lip, his nose wasn’t bleeding, but it did look
slightly red. There was where she aimed her last
punch: on his nose.

She felt hands grabbing her as women screamed,

men yelled and the owner of the shop threatened
to call the police.

“Young people these days!” complained the owner.

“Girls are not even ladies anymore!”

“If you ever touch Petunia again, I’ll kill you,

motherfucker!” screamed Anne as a man she didn’t
know dragged her away from the man lying on the
ground, blood now dripping from his nose. “If you
ever fucking look at Petunia, I’ll find you and I’ll kill
you. Rapist! Abuser!” the man let go of her in
shock, finally understanding what the man on the
ground had done. “HE HITS WOMEN! HE RAPES
WOMEN!” Anne yelled.

The group of young men pushing some girls away

from the fight turned in shock at the man that had
been bragging about his promotion in disgust. The
man dragging Anne away put her beside his wife,
who was fussing over her, worried about the
amount of blood dripping from the cut on the side
of her eye.

Sirius almost crawled towards her.

“DAMN, his chin is hard!” he complained as he got

up. “Merlin, Anne, you look like shit.”

“Says you,” she laughed.

“Why are you laughing?” he asked, though an

amused smile came to his lips.

“I hit him!” she laughed.

Sirius ended up laughing as well.

“Hell yeah! You did!” he said back, a big smile on

his face.

The woman stopped fussing, confused and scared

by the reaction of the bleeding girl leaning against
the wall.

“I’ll call the police! The police!” insisted the owner.

Sirius looked around.

“This is when we disappear,” he said.

“Let’s go, then,” she said, holding his hand.

They stumbled out of the shop together, because

friends that beat rapists up together, stay together.

“However proud I am of you, Anne-Girl, it doesn’t

make whatever you’ve done any less reckless,”
Regulus said, frowning as he held the cotton,
carefully cleaning her wound as she winced.
“Where’s your Slytherin self and all your self –”

“It’s still in me, Regulus, but I thought I deserved a

few punches,” she said coolly, cutting him off.

Regulus couldn’t find in himself to say that she

shouldn’t have done that, he knew Anne well
enough to be angry at Vernon as well, of course,
but he still worried that the muggle, brute of a man
would somehow try to get his revenge on her. Anne
always had so much to deal with, another person
trying to get her head would just get in the way of
getting through this war alive and sane. Though, by
the way she had been acting, sane was a bonus,
not an expectation to her; that worried him, but he
had no right to insist for anything else but her to
keep her heart beating.

“Princess –”

“Oh, you’re calling me that again,” she said, faking

amusement.

He sighed.

“Anne,” he said. “Please.”

“If you start that thing of ‘we can’t let our fights be
in the way of the war’, I’m going to freak out,” she
said. “I came to tell you this because I thought
you’d be proud of me, I don’t need scolding,
though. And I want to understand why you hate
what I’ve done so much, because you were
supposed to know I’d need to use more than just
you and Snape at some point. You must have
known what you were signing up for.”

“I knew I was to be yours… I knew I was to be a

part of the machine, but I didn’t know I was signing
up everybody around me to be the same,” he
explained. “I know that I hurt you by comparing
you to Dumbledore, but I was angry and I said
things I shouldn’t have.”

“You left without telling me you loved me,” she

said. “I don’t care what you said in anger, Regulus,
I care of what you didn’t.”

He looked down, putting the bloody cotton to the

side. She was clean when he reached for his wand
and made a small spell to close the wound. The
bruise was still there.

The guilt hit him in the stomach. She had been to

this fight with the monster of her life, the man that
certainly could be her biggest fear and all she could
think about was how terrible she felt because he
didn’t say he loved her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“I don’t need your apology if you don’t actually feel

bad about it,” she said. “If you’re still angry at me
for doing my duty, you mustn’t lie to yourself and
say that you’re sorry.”

He knew that she was using his emotions, knew

that she was wording her phrase to remind him of
how she had been angry at him for doing his duty
as well in the party his parents had thrown him.
Still, he allowed her to make him feel hurt because
he had hurt him.

“I am truly sorry, Anne,” he insisted. “I didn’t think

that you had been hurt by that. I wouldn’t have
done it again, if I knew that would hurt you like
this. I just didn’t want to taint those words by
anger.”

“Even if I was angry at you, that doesn’t make me

stop loving you,” she said. “And it made me feel
like I had done something so monstrous that you
couldn’t even bring yourself to say those words to
me… and we had sex a bit before that, and it made
me feel so used and disgusting. I know that’s not
what you wanted or what you intended to you, that
I had been the one to initiate it all, I was logical
enough to think all of it, but still… Regulus, I’m
sorry that Elizabeth needs to be involved, but I
won’t turn back on this one plan that might actually
work.”

Knowing her unhealthy thoughts to sexual relations

before them, those words made him feel nauseous.

“I understand why you felt hurt and I understand

my unthought actions hurt you. I’m sorry,” he said.
“And I mean it. I truly do.” He sat beside her on his
bed, holding her hand on his lap. “Anne, I
understand that your plan is one of the only ones
that might work without much attention and I can,
also, understand that you need Elizabeth. But I like
her a lot, she was kind to me when nobody could
do the same for me before people stopped seeing
me as just Sirius’ young brother and was actually
the Heir of the House of Black. She’s such a kind
person, but so… weak. I fear for her. I worry for
her.”

“More than you do for me?”

“I trust your abilities a lot more than I trust hers, if

that’s what you’re asking,” he said, shaking his
head a bit. “I love you, but I do care for her in the
same way I care for Severus, if that’s the question
you’re trying to make.”

She blushed, looking down in embarrassment.

“I’m being childish again, aren’t I?” she wondered

out loud.

“No! No,” he insisted. “Anne, I’m sorry I gave you

some reason to be untrusting of my relationship
with her.”

“You didn’t. You really didn’t,” she said. “I just… I

fear you might leave me. I fear you’ll see me as
purposefully cruel or unfeeling. I love you and I
don’t think I can get through this without your
support. I mean, I can… but I don’t want to.”

“Anne –”

“I don’t need you, Regulus, but I want you. And I

fear that might not be enough to make you stay,”
she admitted, the one eye-open tearful. “I want
you. She needs you. She’s not a fighter, not a
dueller… she’ll die in this war if I don’t get her out
of here in time, and I’ve been trying to get all the
preparations to get her out of here as soon as
possible.”

“I know,” he said, smiling just a little bit. “I know

you’d never hurt her if it wasn’t necessary. I know
you two don’t know each other well, but I’ve seen
you smiling at her and it didn’t look fake. And you
know I care for her, so I know you wouldn’t hurt
her.”

The understanding was quiet comfort as they

understood both of their sides on their small row.

He put his hand on her thigh.

The comfort disappeared.

“Not today,” she quickly said. “Not after I touched

him.”

Regulus took his hand away from her.

“I’m just touching you, not trying to start

something. I’m not that stupid,” he laughed a bit,
uncomfortable.

She smiled a bit a him, glad that he seemed to

understand.

“I love you.”

“I love you more,” he answered.

Anne kissed him on the lips and pulled back almost

immediately.

“I need to go, I just came to tell you my little

adventure,” she said, smiling a bit. “Thank you for
the medicine and thank you for healing me. I’ll take
your paste,” she warned taking the pot. “Love you.
I’ll send you more of it back, I promise.” And she
left.

Notes:
Did ya'll like it? It was so good to
write this. It felt amazing!

As an SA survivor, I wish I had

the chance to deal with my Vernon
in the same way. It would've been
a lot more satisfying and a lot less
humiliating. But... I can't... that's
why we have a fantasy world, isn't
it? To make things that can't be,
suddenly exist and work.

Chapter 95: Chapter Ninety-

Four -
Summary:
Severus - that's it. That's the
chapter.

BEST-MAN AND GODFATHER

Severus Snape couldn’t stop writing, his left wrist

hurting so much that he wanted to take a break,
but he didn’t dare to as he waited for Regulus to
come down the stairs of the Black House, after all
they were already late for the meeting they had
agreed upon with Anne in the Potter Manor.

He didn’t want to go, if he was being honest. If he

could choose, he would have the meeting
somewhere else, especially now that he knew that
the whole Marauder group would be there, small
Peter included. But Anne insisted that they met
there since she wasn’t allowed to leave the house
that particular day, since James was going to give a
party for a few friends, but everybody knew that
the definition of ‘few’ was very different between
Anne and James. The reason for the party was
unknown even to Anne, after all it was July 23th
and there was nothing important that day, but she
did find out that Mia and Monty would be out late
for the birthday party of the Minister of Magic.

If it was up to him, they would even meet in the

Black House, though he did fear Walburga quite a
bit. Still, he would choose that horrible woman any
day if he had to, because even though James Potter
was civil, he still was quite uncomfortable anywhere
near him.

“Severus, what are you doing?” it was Orion.

Orion Black looked sicker than ever, standing at the

doorway of his own bedroom. He had a new
bedroom in the ground floor of the house near the
parlour of the house. He was pale, holding onto the
doorway and leaning against the wall; it was the
first time Severus wasn’t seeing him in formal
robes, all he was dressing was sleeping trousers
and a white shirt.

“Writing down some ideas I have for my internship,

sir,” he lied, putting the parchment to the side as it
started to dry.

“Yes, yes,” he dismissed. “What are you doing in

my house, though?”

“Oh!” Severus said, blushing. “Regulus and I are

going to Anne’s house to visit her and all that.”

“Oh, Regulus’ girlfriend,” he grumbled.

Severus felt his stomach drop.

“I’m sorry, sir? No. She’s my girlfriend,” he

insisted.

Orion looked at him, stumbling forward with his

hands still touching the walls around him to keep
him standing. He looked deep into Severus’ eyes,
who raised his Occlumency shield in retaliation,
though no attack came.

“I don’t need to look into your mind to know you

lie, Severus,” Orion said with a dry chuckle. He
gasped for air as he leaned heavily against the wall.
Severus got up, helping him to stand as he led him
to sit down. “I know my son enough to see his eyes
floating towards her. It always did that, from the
moment they met, I imagine.”

“Sir –”

“I do have some respect left for you, boy, don’t

make me lose it by lying to me,” Orion warned,
raising an eyebrow to the young man sitting across
from him. “I’m grateful that you lied for son and
that you kept the girl safe, I’ve seen you moving
around her, hounding her as if she was a sheep and
you’re trying to keep her in the group. You know
how dangerous it is for her, so you put her behind
you; I’ve watched her enough to know that she
cares for you deeply, maybe as much as she cares
for my son,” he took a deep breath. Even talking
was draining at the point. “I’ve asked her to keep
him alive.” Severus crossed his arms, waiting. “You
want to know what she asked in exchange?”

“Anne wouldn’t promise anything if she received

nothing in return,” Severus answered.

“That’s where you’re wrong. She said she had

already promised herself that much.”

Severus looked away. It did make sense for Anne

to have already made that promise to herself, but
there was no reason for her not to pretend and ask
something from a dying man. She was smart
enough to know that it was easier to deal with
Orion at that moment.

“Maybe you don’t know her enough,” teased Orion.

“My son’s girlfriends asked for nothing, and yet I
gave her something important in return. I allowed
her to know that I knew the truth from the star
and, more than that, I gave her my permission and
blessing to her relationship should it… grow.”

“Grow?” Severus asked. “Sir, why are you telling

me this?”

“Because Regulus can’t know I gave her my

blessing, especially a magical one. If he does find
out, he’ll think I’m trying to get something out of
Anne and I want my last few weeks on this Earth to
be somewhat pleasant between all of us. Regulus,
my wife and I.”

Severus looked away once more. The heavy idea of

Regulus becoming fatherless was hard, the idea of
him becoming Head of the House was much harder.
He would have no one to guide him through it all
without wanting something in return, and Severus
couldn’t help him at all with that, for he had no
knowledge of the matter of Seats or internal politics
inside the Ministry of Magic.

“Still, sir, why must you tell me this?” Severus

asked.

“Because Anne has no idea of what the blessing

might mean to her,” Orion answered. “And once I’m
dead and you think fit, you will need to tell her, and
then you will need to tell Regulus as well, so they
don’t go to the Ministry’s approval since Walburga
will not give her the approval.”

However, he did have enough knowledge of the

pureblood internal politics to know that the magical
blessing she had received could mean a lot more
than Anne probably thought.

Once a wedding happened, the couple would not be

considered married for a whole week still. There
would paperwork to sign, banks to deal with and,
most of all, Officiators to convince that the
marriage was real and not related to money.

If Anne was married to Regulus, however, things

would be quite different – she would have access to
all wards and vaults of the family without any
paperwork and without any wait, it would
immediate after the traditional marriage was
considered completed. It was something not many
families did for it was difficult and somewhat
dangerous to trust so blindly in someone just
getting inside the family business. That action of
Orion Black gave Anne access to one of the biggest
vaults supporting Voldemort, and Orion was quite
aware of how his actions might reflect upon the war
that he wouldn’t see the end, but could see coming.

“You’re asking me to guide them?” Severus asked.

“You are smart,” mused Orion. “I should’ve heard

Regulus a bit more and laughed a bit less when he
talked about you,” he smiled through a deep cough.

Though Severus was known to take a lot to the

personal-side, he didn’t at that moment. Coming
from Orion, that was a lot more than he would have
expected.

“Guide them into what?” Severus asked once more.

Orion looked deep into his eyes, the dark bags

under them made the look even deeper and
stunningly sad.

“Happiness,” he answered. “Forgive me for

assuming, but you are the best-man in the future
wedding, either I like it or not. Guide them into
happiness. Don’t allow Regulus to ruin his life in the
way I did.” A noise up the stairs made Severus
tense up. Regulus was ready and coming down
soon; their alone time together was almost over.
“Can you promise me to try, boy? Can I trust you?”

“Yes,” was his answer. “You can.”

And as Regulus came down, fussing over his black

robes and then fussing at the sight of his father out
of bed, Severus couldn’t help but wonder where
had the marriage between Walburga and Orion
gone wrong and how he wouldn’t allow the same to
happen to Regulus and Anne.

Severus kept his mouth shut tightly, taking in

everything Orion said as Regulus led his father back
to his bed, ordering Kreacher to keep an eye on
him and to call for him if anything went wrong
while he was away.

“I’m sorry about that,” Regulus said. “Father is

making less and less sense by the day. The Healer
said it’s because of the illness getting to the brain,
it makes him go mad, though he has his lucid
moments sometimes. I’m sorry if he said anything.”

“Nothing that made sense,” Severus dismissed,

shaking his head to the sides. “Let’s go, we are late
already and Anne won’t be any happy that we will
get there at this time.”

“We’re still ten minutes early,” Regulus complained

as he struggled to put on his shoes quickly.

“To Anne, that’s late,” Severus said. “Come on!”

“On my way! Merlin, Severus, you sound almost

more excited to see her than me.”

Anne’s bedroom in her house was a lot different

from what Severus Snape had imagined. He had
seen it from its version on the Room of
Requirement, but it was different when the door to
the corridor was open and he could hear James
Potter laughing very loudly in the kitchen after a
very loud noise and a squeal from Sirius Black, it
was different when he could smell the garden
flowers coming from the open window. It was an
odd sight to see Regulus leaning against the wall
and peering down the window to the garden,
smiling a bit at the white roses on the wall.

There was another thing different: the panel with

names and chess pieces stuck to the wall near the
bedroom. It hadn’t been there before.

“Thank you for coming,” Anne said, walking into the

bedroom and closing the door behind her.

The laughter was muffled.

“Why did you ask us here a whole hour before the

party?” Severus asked. “And I really don’t like
being in your bedroom with the door closed… And…
is that a doll?” he asked, frowning a bit.

Anne followed his eyes.

“Ah, yes,” she smiled as she said it. “Remus bought

it for me a couple of weeks ago. It’s my first real
doll. I called her Esme.”

Severus could remember the tied-up and beaten-up

piece of cloth tied around which she had called
Dolores in her memories, now seeing a real doll on
her bedroom made him smile just a little bit.

Regulus made his way across the room and fixed

the small hat Anne had made on Esme’s head.

“Pretty,” he said. “Dark hair and blue eyes. Could

be a Black, if it was a real person,” Regulus joked.

“Please, leave her alone. I asked you two here

earlier because I know that you two already have
the counter-spells for the wards in place on the
Lestrange Vault. I know you two enough to know
that you’re holding onto it for some reason,” she
accused.

Regulus crossed his arms, making Anne turn to

look at him.

“We aren’t. We do have it, but we finished it today,

love,” he said.

“And the others were ready already and you didn’t

send them to me,” she said. “I need time to train
with it all so I can teach the other members of the
Order so nothing goes back to you.” Severus
chuckled. There she was, already trying to protect
their identities before anyone was even trying to
find out who they were. Regulus gave her the list
Severus was writing in his parlour. “Now, about the
party –”

“We’re not sure we are going to stay,” Severus

said. “Lucius cancelled on us just thirty minutes
ago, but I think we are still going to the Club of
Gentlemen in the Alley.”

“But if you’re asking us to stay, we might, if we

know why,” Regulus added.

Severus nodded, backing his claim.

“Lucius cancelled because he’s going to be here

tonight, and then he’ll leave to go to the Ministry
Ball” she explained. “I called him and James has no
idea, but Narcissa send word through a house-elf,
Dobby, wonderful young little elf, that she needed
to talk to me through discreet manners. A party
where young people are, including his cousin-in-
law.”

“You need me to stay so it’s not as suspicious,”

Regulus guessed.

“And I need you two to go to the Ministry Ball after

he decides to leave together, so it doesn’t look any
suspicious at all, because it’ll look like he came to
pick you two up,” Anne added to his guess.

“Like we’re children,” complained Severus.

“Like you’re family he wants to show off,” Anne

corrected.

Regulus turned to Severus and uncrossed his arms.

“I do dislike Lucius quite a lot, but Anne is correct.

We’re two of the ones chosen for internships, I’m
his cousin, you’re his friend and we’re also just-
graduated Hogwarts students that are on his side in
the war,” Regulus said. Severus nodded, trying to
show that he understood. “The entrance of him
with us and his wife beside him might actually bring
more power to him, because he’ll be married into
the Black family, but having a half-blood friend
might protect him while he doesn’t have all the
Death Eaters into the Ministry. He’ll be in the
middle ground.”

“How smart,” Anne said.

“How boringly manipulative,” Severus corrected.

Anne put the list of counter-spells and their

explanations over the table beside Esme and took a
deep breath.

“Taking this from them will mean so much. I’m so

done with this Cup and vault,” said Anne. “Another
one crossed off that bloody list.”

Happiness and calmness that the talk and

expectations brought forth disappear once the party
was raging and Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Malfoy
walked into the house, greeting James Potter coldly
before quickly making their way towards Anne, who
waved excitedly at them, stepping away from
Marlene and Dorcas (who were discussing who
would have more chance to become a Muggle
model) to talk to them.

Lucius smiled.

“Good evening, Miss Potter,” he said gently. “I’m

quite glad that you invited us to your little… party.”

“I know, I know,” she dismissed. “A stupid teen

party, nothing of your sort, of course. Still, I
thought it would be polite to invite you two after
you invited me to so many gatherings.” She smiled
at them. “Now, please, enjoy yourselves for the
little time you will be here. Regulus and Severus
are out in the backyard, though, Lucius, and they
wanted to talk to you.”

They didn’t. But one of them would strike a good

conversation up once they noticed why Lucius was
looking for them out there and that would be
enough to distract the man from being stuck to his
wife’s side the rest of the night.

Narcissa turned to her once Lucius was away. She

smoothed her long black dress.

“How are you feeling? You looked awful at Regulus’

Graduation Party,” Narcissa said.

“I was feeling awful at that party, but I’m fine

now,” Anne answered. “A new feeling that I’m not
used to feeling, so I didn’t learn to deal with it. I do
now.”

“Jealousy can be hard,” Narcissa agreed. “With

someone like Lucius by my side, it’s even harder.
So popular and handsome. Women fall around him,
trying to get his attention, but I’m proud to say
that Lucius is very much loyal and faithful to me.”

Anne couldn’t help but doubt it.

“You said you had something to tell me,” Anne

urged.

“Bellatrix is pregnant again, this time I’m sure it

has nothing to do with her husband,” Narcissa said.
“When I sent you the house-elf, I still needed to
make sure, but a few hours later it was confirmed.
Do you See anything to do with the child? She
passed the first trimester, which means –”

“It’s likely she’ll carry to term,” Anne ended in a

whisper, nodding to herself. She had almost
forgotten Narcissa thought her to be a Seer. “I See
nothing with a child in it. I didn’t hear anything
about it as well, but I did hear Bellatrix had
disappeared from the public eye for a while.”

“She lost one before. Nobody wants her walking

around, getting some rest is the best for her right
now, it’s a risky pregnancy,” Narcissa said. She
looked sad. No, more than sad. Narcissa looked
devastated. “It makes me wonder… she managed
to get pregnant and lost the child and now she’s
pregnant again. And here I am, unable to do the
same.”

Anne tried not to feel too deeply sorry for Narcissa.

She was such a motherly person, or at least she
tried to be; that woman wanted nothing more than
to have a son, to get the security a son would bring
her and that a daughter couldn’t. She was a
pureblood woman after all, and she was raised to
see between the lines of the contract of a wife. If
she didn’t have an heir, Lucius would look
somewhere else, even if that made the child a
bastard because a low-birth heir is better than no
heir at all, either they liked it or not.

“I told you before, didn’t I?” Anne said. “Future can

change of course, but I do see a child in your
future, Narcissa. A boy. A blonde little boy with
future, Narcissa. A boy. A blonde little boy with
your eyes, but his father’s face, and I see his face
mimicking yours to make you laugh and to make
you love him, even if he doesn’t need to do
anything to get love from you, because I can see in
your eyes that you already love him without even
knowing him.”

Narcissa’s eyes filled with tears.

“A boy?”

“Yes, and you’ll name him after stars,” she

answered. “And he’ll aim higher than them.
Overachiever, that one is.”

“My son,” she mumbled.

“Take a deep breath, Narcissa, and listen to me:

you will be fine,” Anne said with a certainty of a
promise. “You will be fine.”

Narcissa couldn’t help but notice that there was

nothing saying that her husband would be fine, but
she nodded and forced a smile as her tears dried.
And as she walked away, Narcissa had the feeling
that she had just missed something very important
in that conversation by not knowing all the facts,
but there was something she understood:
everything was going to get worse from that
moment on.

Anne stood there as she waved Severus, Regulus,

Lucius and Narcissa goodbye.

Severus held Narcissa’s arm as she tripped on her

high-heels on the grass as Lucius talked to Regulus.
Anne smiled to herself; when Draco was born,
Severus would spoil the boy rotten as the best
Slytherin godfather there ever was.

Chapter 96: Chapter Ninety-

Five -
Summary:
The preparation for the Heist.

Notes:
Happy Birthday to me, I guess.

THE PREPARATION OF A CRIME

FOURTH SEASON

“YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!” Anne screamed in

frustration. “IT’S NOT THAT FUCKIN HARD,
EMMELINE!”

“DON’T YOU DARE SCREAM AT ME!” Emmeline

Vance screamed back, turning to glare at Anne.

Sirius jumped at the second scream. He had seen

Anne being frustrated more and more in the last
week, so screams coming from her were becoming
scaringly normal, but Emmeline never screamed.

“DON’T YOU DARE CONTINUING BEING A DUMB

BIMBO IN MY TRAINING ROOM, THEN!” Anne yelled
so loudly that there were veins popping up on her
neck.

“YOU DON’T NEED TO USE THE WORD ‘DUMB’ IF

YOU’RE USING THE WORD BIMBO, ARSEHOLE!”
Emmeline answered.

James cringed as he looked at his father, who

clearly was just as uncomfortable as him. Neither
Potter men were comfortable with screaming
women, after all they mostly interacted with Mia,
who was mostly calm, only screaming when they
were far away from her or refusing to wake up.
Anne’s screams and sudden anger were certainly all
Lily Evans’ contribution to the making of that girl.

“Okay, ladies, okay,” Moody grumbled.

“No! She’s doing it wrong!” Anne exclaimed.

“Then I will help her, dear,” Monty said, taking a

step forward and putting his hand on Anne’s
shoulder. “Why don’t you go and take some rest?
You didn’t sleep last night and you look terribly
tired.”

Anne shook her head.

“I’m fine,” she dismissed.

Everybody in that room could see that she wasn’t

‘fine’. Anne usually shiny red hair was pulled back
in the messiest bun and it looked half-dead, broken
and dim. The bags under her eyes were deep and
darker than ever, her skin was pale and her lips
chapped – she barely ate, slept or eaten. She
looked like a dead-woman walking.

“Annie, come on, let’s get to bed, alright?” Remus

asked.

“Don’t go, boy, you need to learn this,” Moody said,

voice firm.

Remus barely glanced over his shoulder to the man

that he held respect for, but no other endearing
feeling.

“I’m not going to that bloody mission, anyways, I

might as well not be here for this stressing
situation. I get enough wrinkles without your help,
Mister Moody,” Remus answered, putting a hand
around Anne’s shoulder. “Now, come on, let’s get
you to a good shower.”

Though Anne tried to fight back, there was very

little she could do against the strength of Remus
Lupin dragging her towards her bedroom.

Mia, who had been sitting in the corner of the

training room, resting just a bit got up soon after,
smoothing down her skirts and quickly making her
way to the door.

“I’m going to help Remus,” she announced. “Monty,

please, keep everyone in check. No one kills
anyone in my house, alright? Too much of a mess
for Coco to clean,” she said over her shoulder
before closing the door.

Emmeline chuckled dryly.

“The girl can’t take a shower alone?” she said,

angrily.

“If Remus walks in the bathroom with her any state

of an undress in the state she is right now, we
might have to deal with a dead body,” Monty said.
“Anne doesn’t take well to men getting too close to
her.”

Emmeline went quiet with the sober look on

Monty’s eyes. She had never seen the Head of
Aurors, and that was her boss, the man she seen
and talked to almost every single day ever since
she started training. She had just been made a real
Auror and was now helping her boss’ sons to get
ready for the training that was about to become
harder and harder to deal with. She also
understood at that moment that she had insulted
someone important to him, someone that clearly
was sick enough to not be trusted to be alone in
the bathroom for a quick shower.

“If your sons want out of this room as well, they

can go,” Alastor Moody said. “Mister James over
there looks like he’s about to jump out of the
window to go to the girl and Mister Sirius over
there is clearly so uncomfortable that he might
throw up at any second, and I’d rather not clean it
up.”

“I don’t throw up,” Sirius said, grimacing. “Ever.”

Alastor looked at him weirdly, clearly not having

expected him to cling to that part of the
conversation.

“We need to get the people that will go to that

mission ready right now,” Monty said. “You, clearly,
will be the leader on this mission, but we can’t send
you alone, even if you are one of the best Aurors
we have. We need a Curse-Breaker.”

“I can go,” Alice said, raising her hand. “I started

training to be a Curse-Breaker and was in my last
year when I moved to Law-Enforcement. And I’m
catching up quite quickly.”

“You were just sick, Alice,” Frank said, worried.

“Until the day she’ll be 100%, Longbottom,” Moody

dismissed quickly. “Do you agree, Misses
Longbottom?”

“Yes,” she quickly said.

“Moody, Longbottoms, what about me?” Emmeline

said. “Nobody will look twice at me walking into the
bank. Maybe I’ll even get attention enough for the
others to walk on by.”

“That wouldn’t be necessary, would it, Dad?” James

asked, turning to his father. “Especially if Moody
was hidden away.”

Monty scratched his head.

“No spell can pass unnoticed to the goblins or –” he

froze, seeing his son raising his eyebrows as he
urged his father to have the same thought as he
had. “James, this is amazing! Great idea! The
Cloak!”

“Our cloak?” Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows.

Monty nodded.

“That’s not just a cloak, Sirius. It’s the cloak!”

Monty said.

Though his enthusiasm was clearly raising the

spirits of the group, nobody but him and James had
complete idea of what he was talking about. James
had the biggest smile on his face as he shoved his
wand back into his pockets and crossed his arms in
front of him, leaning against the wall with a smug
face. Monty had a similar boyish-excited smile that
made him look a lot younger than he really was at
that point.

“Alright, come back, explain,” Moody said. He

sounded like he was ordering, but one look from
Monty (his superior) made him bite the inside of his
cheek. “We can’t follow without more information.”

“This Invisibility Cloak won’t be seen through, not

even by the goblins or the spells, it’s untraceable
for all that it’s worth and it’s a family heirloom,”
Monty explained. “It can fit two adult people,
though all that we need to hide is Alastor. He’s too
noticeable and people might recognize him from far
away. We don’t need an Auror pocking around.”

“If we do this correctly, then no Auror was seen

and, more importantly, no one will notice
something was stolen,” James said.

“I need to go, too,” Monty said, seriously.

“What? Why, Dad?” Sirius asked, turning to look at

him.

“Because we need access to the floor of the vaults.

We share the same floor, according to Anne’s
source,” Monty explained. “If I say the
Longbottoms and Emmeline are coming with me for
safety reasons to my vault, there’ll be nothing they
can worry about. A good Imperius on the way and
–”

“We won’t need to go that far,” Moody cut off.

“Though absolutely impressive that you’re willing to
go to such extends for your… niece, Mister Potter, I
believe it would be unwise to break the law in a
such a way when we already have a way in.
Prewett told me that he’ll have someone to guide
us; a pretence to the floor would be amazing,
indeed, but I don’t think you should come with us.”

Sirius frowned.

“All that because he’s willing to control someone?”

Sirius asked, loudly and upset. “That doesn’t mean
he’ll willing to hurt anyone.”

James quickly nodded, putting his hand on his

friend’s shoulder.

“He’s right. My father would never –”

“That’s not what he’s saying, boys,” Monty said.

“He said that he’ll use our vault, but that my
presence might not be necessary.”

Both of the boys turned to look at him, this time

Frank and Emmeline turning to the Head Auror as
well, frowning as they struggled to understand
what he was trying to say by Moody’s confusing
words.

“He means that we will need a letter and a list of

objects we are required to get from your vault, the
key and the signature,” Alice said, guessing it as
best as she could. “As Aurors, nobody will think
twice that we’re just doing your bidding in your own
vault.”

Sirius frowned. “This is ridiculous!” he exclaimed.

“Anyone with half-a-mind knows that you don’t let
anyone into your office, let alone in your family
vaults. Dad, this is absolutely insane. No one will
believe it.”

“They don’t need to believe it, it’ll be truth and we’ll

have documents proving it,” Alice said, messing her
very short hair even more. She was sweaty and the
hair was gluing to her forehead.

“Well, You-Know-Who doesn’t need proof, he’ll

come after all of us,” Sirius said.

“If you’re scared of that, boy, take a step back right

now,” Moody warned, glaring at him.

Sirius bit his tongue to keep himself quiet for the

rest of the training session before leaving to see
Anne. She was already asleep when he walked into
the room to see Remus sleeping beside her. He
closed the door to give them more privacy and
silence.

Dumbledore watched silently the people on the

Potter Manor’s dining table discussing the less
important details of what came next of the plan.

“Guard Kyle is not known for taking women back to

his apartment,” Emmeline said. “I tried to seduce
him, but it didn’t work. He turned me down and
didn’t even look at Madame R.”

“What are you trying to say?” Moody asked.

“She’s trying to say that he’s queer,” Remus threw

his guess on the table.

Emmeline nodded.

“Exactly,” she agreed. “I asked around, made it

seem like I was interested. They all said I got no
chance with him.”

Dumbledore frowned, eyes travelling across the

table and stopping, regretfully, on the handsome
and relaxed frame of Sirius Black holding his
boyfriend’s hand under the table discreetly. Sirius’
eyes stopped at Dumbledore’s once he felt watched
and his whole face grew pale.

“Absolutely not,” Sirius said.

Anne looked away from her hands on top of the

table to Sirius and followed his eyes to Dumbledore
as her mind made sense of what Sirius was refusing
without even hearing the offer.

“You got to be jesting! You mustn’t be serious with

something like this. Guard Kyle is thirty-three,” she
said, shocked. “Sending Sirius his way will make it
even more suspicious.”

Remus blinked, looking down at the hands

intertwined in his boyfriend’s lap. The simple idea
of his boyfriend having to sleep with someone else
made his stomach churn in disgust, but he knew
that there would have to be sacrifices made for the
war that they wanted to win.

“It wouldn’t,” Remus said.

“How?” James asked, frowning. “Everybody knows

Sirius is a Potter now.”

“Nobody knows he’s settled down, though,” Remus

said. “It would be a good idea.”

Sirius shook his head.

“I’m not cheating on you, even with your

permission,” Siris insisted.

Dumbledore sighed.

“There are sacrifices that are needed,” he said.

Sirius turned to him, eyes widening.

“Not to the cost of my dignity. I would sacrifice my

life for this organization without hesitation, but not
my honour or self-respect,” Sirius said.

“You’re not having my son raped, Albus,” Mia said,

turning to glare at Dumbledore. “We can find
another way.”

Anne’s head was working fast, trying to find

anything else, any other way out of that situation.
Sirius refused to go to bed with someone else and
she had somewhere else to be, so she couldn’t offer
herself to find a way to distract him without
involving sex, after all he wasn’t interested in
people that looked like her.

“I can go,” Remus said.

“What? No!” said Sirius.

“I can go,” he insisted. “Sirius, is just… sex. I can

do it. Besides, most people already know I’m gay, I
wasn’t very quiet about it and I did go around with
a few boys in Hogwarts publicly and kissed some of
them in public when I was fourteen. I didn’t get my
arse beaten at home for nothing, I wanted
everybody to know Lyall’s son was a queer.”

Sirius winced with the idea of his boyfriend having

another bruise on his face after his father had
warned him more than once to not make a mistake
and yet he made it.

“I don’t agree with that,” Sirius said in an effort to

make Remus change his mind. “I don’t agree with
you cheating on me.”

Anne had a realisation.

“Polyjuice,” she offered.

All eyes turned to her.

“Are you offering yourself?” Emmeline asked,

raising her eyebrows in surprise.

“No, I’m giving a way out. Here’s a lot of sex-

workers that would happily do this job under
Polyjuice for enough money and then keep quiet
about it," Anne explained. "I might be able to get
one in our pay-roll if we need her again. I have
someone that might tell us where a loyal one would
be.”

“Not safe enough,” Dumbledore shook his head.

“We need someone from this table to do the job.
But the idea of Polyjuice Potion might actually make
things a lot easier for us, Miss, good idea.”

Anne shrugged, as if she was used to always

having good ideas.

“I can do that, then,” Emmeline said. “And to keep

them distracted, I slip them a Sleeping Potion
after.”

Anne felt like she was about to throw up. Those

ideas weren’t too different from rape, and she
didn’t want to be part of any of it. Was it really a
crime that needed to be committed? Was it a crime
that they needed to make the war sway to their
side? Was there any other way to make things
walk? She admitted to anyone, even to herself, that
she was ready to do the most awful things to make
sure this war was won, but she wasn’t sure raping a
man would be one of them.

“There’s got to be another way,” Anne said. “I don’t

think I can live with myself with that. Even if we
send Emmeline willingly for her part, it would still
be rape to his part. I do not condone it. I do not
support it.”

“Do you think of another way?” Dumbledore asked

firmly.

“I can… I must,” she insisted.

Remus shook his head.

“I can do it,” he insisted. He glared at Sirius before

he could say anything. “I don’t need to have sex
with him, as long as I get him to his apartment and
then get him down with drinks, I’ll be fine and so
will he. If I make him believe him something
happen, I still can prove it didn’t if he persecutes
me for something.”

“He won’t,” Emmeline said. “Though not completely

secret about it, he would never go to Court over a
relationship with a man.”

“She’s correct,” Moody said.

“Follow Emmeline’s second plan as well. While

you’re there, slip him a Sleeping Potion,”
Dumbledore said. “Nothing will happen to you.”

If that was his way of promising that he would take

care of Remus, then the boy didn’t believe a single
word of his sentence as those blue-eyes twinkled at
him and his lips twitched in a small smile that
seemed to be kind, but Remus had heard enough
from Anne to see the interest behind all that.

Remus looked away.

Sirius let go of his hand.

Even after everybody was out of the house, neither

of them dared to speak of their feelings over that
conversation they had. Sirius convinced himself
that Remus was cheating and Remus convinced
himself that he wasn’t disgusted with the idea of
letting a man a whole decade older than him touch
him and kiss him, even if Dumbledore insisted
nothing further would happen to him.

Nobody could protect him once he was inside the

house of Guard Kyle Crabbe, a man who was
known to be ruthless in his job and the best in
picking out suspicious people in a crowd. Remus
could only hope at that point that he would be on
his way back home in the next morning with
nothing more than a bruise of his neck.

Remus Lupin was gone already and had sent a

Patronus saying that he would ‘not get getting back
home, mum, I have a few businesses to take care
of that might last longer than he expected’. Sirius
Black felt like throwing up all over the carpet of the
parlour where he watched Monty and Mia get ready
to go to the Opera they had been invited to watch;
still, part of his brain insisted that he would not
throw up and that he would rather die that
succumb to the weakness of his stomach.

“Sirius, you’re looking green,” James said.

“I’m not going to throw up,” Sirius grunted between

teeth.

James blinked, taken aback.

“I was trying to say that you look jealous, but now

that you answered me like that, I’m quite worried.
Are you alright?” James asked.

Sirius turned to him, glaring, but not daring to

scream at his friend. Jealousy was the least of his
problems. He was worried that Remus would be
found out by Kyle Crabbe, or worse, that both Kyle
and Remus would suffer some type of hate crime
outside. He feared for Remus’ life for than for their
relationship, which was falling apart by the silence
and coldness they were treating each other.

Mia looked at them over her shoulder from where

she was standing near the parlour mirror, fixing the
brooch in her yellow dress. Monty soon walked back
into the parlour, now holding the tickets.

“Alright, alright, boys,” he said, patting his pockets

to make sure everything was there. “Now,
remember, Anne is leaving in an hour to Regulus’
birthday party, wait up for her. Mia and I have a
room in the Three Broomsticks, so we’ll be back by
eight tomorrow morning after Remus meets us
there. Don’t worry, everything is going to be
alright.”

“You don’t know that,” Sirius shot back.

“Of course we do,” Mia said, turning to Sirius and

once more making sure her hair was in place. “I
trust Remus more than I trust myself at this point.
Why do you think he’s the one I leave responsible
when I’m out?”

Sirius didn’t look any better as his frown deepened.

“He’s never been one to flirt, it’s usually the other

way around. How is he going to get that guy in
bed, and still not sleep with him? I mean, if
needed, he would do it, but I don’t think he would
like it, I doubt he would ever forgive himself for
having to use his body in this way,” Sirius said.
“He’s almost being forced in this position. How is
that any different from rape?”

“Because he’s willing to do whatever it takes,”

James said.

“But that doesn’t change the feeling of violation he

might feel,” Sirius said. “This is more than right and
wrong; this is about Remus and… emotions. Neither
one of us is really good with them and I fear this
might make everything a lot harder to deal with
than it already is, you know? I mean, look at me
and look at Remus. Neither of us is very good at
talking about how we are feeling. It took three
years of pining on each other to admit that we did
like each other and it’s quite pathetic.”

“But, in the end, you two are still together. Time is

needed sometimes. Won’t this time be the same?”
Mia said.

She leaned down and kissed Sirius on the forehead

before kissing James’ head on the very top before
being urged by Monty to hurry up because they
couldn’t be late.

Sirius couldn’t understand how they were to calm.

Their friends and other members of the Orders
were in danger at that very moment, either
sleeping with a violent man or getting inside the
‘wrong’ vault in one of the most secure buildings of
Wizarding Britain. Neither option helped Sirius to be
any calmer

“Sirius,” James said once they were alone. “I

invited Lily over and –”

“I’ll be in my bedroom, pretending I’m not home,”

he cut him off, quickly, trying to not sound as
annoyed as he felt.

“No. I meant to say that I want to tell her about the

Order of the Phoenix and I want you to be with me
when I do so, because she’ll freak out and I do not
want to hear the screaming all by myself,” James
finished, adding a charming smile at the end.

He wasn’t sure if his friend was lying to how scared

he seemed to be of Lily Evans to make him feel like
he was needed and welcome in a ‘boyfriend-
girlfriend’ moment, but he was grateful
nonetheless. James was always trying to make him
feel better, even when he felt like nothing in the
world could make his sadness or bitterness go
away, usually caused by Walburga Black and her
terrible words. It had always been like that, since
their first year. He felt like it would always be like
that from that moment on, no matter what
happened.

“Thanks, Prongs,” Sirius said with a half-smirk. “I

do like the chance to aggravate Lily Evans more
than normal.”

“Careful, she’s an adult now. She can jinx your arse

in a blink of an eye,” James warned, poking him in
the ribs with his elbow. “She has a better reaction
time than I do, really. It’s something between
impressive and scaringly devastating.”

“You’re such a –” Sirius couldn’t find a good enough

word. “Let’s just say that if she needed somewhere
to clean her shoes, you would jump on the ground
in a second and say ‘thank you’ to her.”

“She does make me say ‘thank you’ a lot,” James

said in a mischievous voice and a smirk.

Sirius felt his whole face turn to James in surprise

before the rest of his body.

“I thought you said she wanted to wait until

marriage,” Sirius said.

“She does,” James said, shaking his head as his

cheeks gained colour. “We are, I mean. But that
doesn’t mean she can’t… help me here and there,
you know? And she’s very good at that.”

“Oh, mate, tell me –”

“DO NOT TELL HIM MORE, OH MY GOD!” said Anne,

standing in the doorway.

Both boys turned to her in surprise and James

burned deep red as he refused to look into her
eyes. Sirius started laughing out of nervousness,
but did look at Anne more directly than James did.

“Oh, please, I know you well enough to know that

you have worse things to tell someone,” Sirius
teased.

“I just don’t want to hear about my mum and dad.

Do you like the idea of seeing Walburga and
Orion?” Anne teased back.

Sirius cringed.

“Oh, come on!” he complained.

“Fun, isn’t it?” Anne laughed, walking into the

parlour and closing the double doors behind her.

“I am convinced that they had sex twice in their

life; once for Sirius to be born and once, in a mad
drinking-binge, for Regulus, because there’s no way
someone would willingly look at Walburga and
decide that she’s the woman you want in your bed,”
James said.

“I know right!” Sirius said.

Anne chuckled.

“You are aware that you were conceived before

their wedding, right?” Anne said.

Both now turned to looked at her in more than just

surprise, that was shock mixed with the oddest
disgust.

“How do you even know that?” Sirius asked.

“Regulus told me and Orion told him to ‘teach him a

lesson’ when he turned fifteen, and then again
when he saw him walking around with me,” Anne
said. “Nothing like a shocking and scarring sex-
education coming from your dad to make you
hesitant to have sex, am I right? Orion thinks so.”

“He didn’t tell me that,” Sirius said.

“Well, you were too far gone when you said your
father tried to give you the talk,” James said. “You
had lost your virginity months before that.”

“I didn’t need to know that,” Anne grumbled.

“Now, I need to know, who gave you the talk?”

Sirius asked, turning to Anne, eyes wide by the
distraction.

Anne’s lips twitched as she tried stopping herself

from smiling.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked. “Well,

Aunt Petunia tried when I was leaving for Hogwarts
after my first period, you know, the whole ‘don’t let
boys touch you, because you’ll get pregnant and
sick and die’, but the real conversation about the
whole mechanics… well, it was Severus Snape.”

“Oh, Merlin, please, tell me more,” Sirius said, a

huge grin appearing on his face.

“He was very kind to me. I went to him to ask if

there was any way I could be pregnant after my…
summer activities and he freaked out for a moment
and started scolding me, until I let him see the
truth and he took me to the Hospital Wing the next
day, gave me the right potions, explained the right
spells and the whole mechanics of how
reproduction really works on the inside part, the
outside part – you know, the this goes there and all
that, he left for Madame Pomfrey and I sort of let
him, because he looked about throw up or pass out,
or both,” she admitted.

“I can’t even–” James started.

“You better not try to imagine,” Sirius cut him off.

“I did and now it’s burnt to my mind.”

Anne rolled her eyes.

“I got to go,” she said. “I love you two, I’ll see you
later.”

Chapter 97: Chapter Ninety-Six

Summary:
THE HEIST

Notes:
Especial chapter because August
1st my classes come back, so I'll
be working and studying once
more. With agencies have been
wondering if I can do more jobs
on them as well, so I might drop
my half-period job soon to stay on
acting; let's see if I can get to
that.

I hope you all like it.

(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

THE HEIST

(Special Chapter)

Alastor Moody wasn’t afraid of much, but he quickly

found out that breaking the law as a law-
enforcement officer certainly made his guts twist in
weird ways that made him anxious. Being hidden
away from the view of people and goblins as he
walked behind Emmeline Vance under the Potter
Invisibility Cloak. He half-expected someone, at
some point, to turn around and point out that he
was there, hiding, which in itself was very much
against the law inside the Gringotts Bank.

If he was found, he couldn’t stop thinking, he would

lose his job, his respect, dignity and, most likely
than not, his wand as well. He knew very well how
it would be seen for him to break the law when he
was the favourite of Head of Aurors Potter to take
over in a couple of years when he would retire.
Nobody would trust him to do anything. Nobody
would trust Fleamont Potter either, ever again. If
he was caught, he would not only be ruining his
life, but ruining everybody else’s: the Order’s
mission to get the Horcrux in secret, because
Voldemort certainly would have a feeling to what
they were doing there in secrecy, he would ruin
Anne’s life because he would end exposing her spy
(clearly someone she held dearly) inside the Inner
Circle, and the Potter’s family reputation, not just
Fleatmont, but his sons’ prospects as well.

But the other people in the missions seemed a lot

less nervous than he was. Perhaps because they
were jokingly talking of Quidditch and Alice
Longbottom was sighing in annoyance with the
subject she clearly hated. Whatever it was, they
were doing a better job undercover than he was.

They passed by one of the Prewett twins who didn’t

even look at them as he walked across the corridor
to give some papers to a goblin. He was another
one that was doing a good job in keeping his job
and ‘hobbies’ well separated.

“There he is,” mumbled Longbottom. “That’s

Vrees.”

Moody followed where his head had turned slightly

to the goblin he was looking at.

Vrees was considered almost an outcasted because

of easily identifiable with humans he was. He had
more ambitions than money and work, he actually
had something that goblins thought to be silly: a
wife. The name of the female goblin he had found
was unknown to them, but they knew that he was
planning on having children only with her, a break
of the goblin pattern of behaviour of getting as
many children as possible to avoid extinction from
Earth. Therefore, without any cherishment from his
kind, he turned to humans, who praised him for his
‘betrayal’. No surprise he became quick friends with
Prewett and no surprise he allowed himself to
commit the biggest of goblin crimes to make sure
his friend’s friends could get what they so
desperately wanted to win a war that he was not be
even be involved in.

Frank Longbottom led the group, still holding his

wife’s hand.

“Mister Vrees, I assume,” he said, stopping in front

of the tall desk of the goblin. “We’re here in name
of Lord Fleatmont Antonio Barrett Nott-Potter.”

Vrees looked up, deep brown eyes studying the

group.

“Of course, I was warned you would come, though

the group was told to be bigger,” he explained. “I’ll
need the authorization letter, the signature and the
key to allow entrance to the Potter Vault, sir.”
Frank let go of Alice’s hand so she could dig in her
purse to get all of it without much trouble. She
gave it to Frank, who had to get on his tip-toes to
reach the goblin’s hand and give all of it. Vrees
pretended to look through it all, though the
documents he had in hand were legit. “You are to
get a ruby necklace, a golden-dragon bracelet and
pearl earrings from the Vault. Nothing less and
nothing more. I’ll come down with you all for
assistance. Do follow me.”

Vrees jumped down from his chair and quickly

made his way down from his table from the stairs
hidden behind it. He made his way to the front of
the table and started leading the group down the
corridor and towards the backdoor where only the
most loyal clients were allowed in, ignoring the line
of at least thirteen wizards and witches waiting for
a cart to take them to their vaults.

The familiar sicking and frightening cart travel

through the levels of vaults made Alice throw up
once the cart slowed down in front of the Potter
vault.

“715, the Potter vault,” announced Vrees. “The

wards are already down. You can go in and take
what it’s in the documents.”

He was clearly talking to Alice, who was still pale

and greenish as she stumbled out of the cart to go
into the vault, coming back with a box in the next
minute.

“The things were already in a box,” she explained

when Emmeline raised her perfect eyebrows at the
girl. “Mister Potter must have done this to make out
pit-stop faster.”

“The man is a saint,” Emmeline said.

Not a single person (or goblin) dared to disagree.

“Now… about the next vault,” Vrees said, a bit

hesitant. “You came in the right time, they want to
put another security measure that has just been
created for our… oldest families… it’s called Thief’s
Downfall. For now, it’s safe, but if you fail today,
there will be no other way for you to go in and
come out unannounced. Make sure this works.”

“We don’t need to hear that,” Moody grumbled.

Vrees jumped a bit, suddenly remembering there

was to have someone else in the cart besides the
people he could see. He had been warned about
Moody and his snappy responses, but he had to
glue his lips to one another to keep from being rude
back.

Alice got into the cart once more, tying the box
tightly to the ground of cart and holding onto
Emmeline and Frank like she had been doing
before.

“Hold on tightly,” Vrees said.

Alice’s hand suddenly held Frank’s so hard that he

whimpered.

And in the next second, the cart seemed to go off

the tracks and fall. Moody made a small noise at
the feeling of his organs moving inside of him and
grimaced when he heard the shrill scream coming
from Alice in complete despair. Frank Longbottom
held his noises surprisingly well, but he did look a
lot paler than usual. Emmeline Vance bit her lip so
deeply that blood dripped down her chin.

And just like it had started, it stopped.

The entrance of the vault had an odd shaped stone

serving as a platform and, this time, all the
occupants of the cart jumped out to enter. Moody,
however, did look around to see other carts moving
around if he looked up and noticed that there were
tracks connecting this vault to the others, they just
were invisible.

Once he was under the coverage of the double-

doors’ doorway, he took off the cloak and shoved it
on his leather bag on his hip.

Emmeline made a noise with the taste of blood and

spat out of the platform.

“Vance, control yourself and heal yourself. We don’t

need your blood going everywhere and leading this
to us,” Moody barked.

“Yes, sir,” she whined as she tried to spit out of the

platform once more before healing her lip. “If it was
him…” she started grumbling, but Moody didn’t pay
attention, looking around.

Alice didn’t throw up this time, but her knees did

seem to shake as she leaned against the wall of the
vault.

Frank was the one who was holding on the best,

smiling charmingly at his wife and winking at her as
he twirled his wand on his hand. He did drop it after
a moment, but he leaned down to get it without a
single moment of hesitation.

Vrees walked front and pushed the door open and

made a sign of silence.

Moody was the first to see the dragon of six metres

lying down, comfortably sleeping with his chains
wrapped around his wings and his neck. It didn’t
look like an adult, but it was certainly bigger than a
cub; Moody wasn’t a specialist in dragons, but he
had seen some in his life and would certainly guess
accurately enough to say the dragon had three or
four years of age.

The group tip-toes into the vault and closed the

door. The click made the dragon turn and growl.

It was more the protectiveness, Alice noticed

quickly, it was clear and absolute fury. The dragon
was not only trying to care for the things that he
saw as his, but he was ready to fight for his life and
freedom as if those people walking into the vault
had been the ones to take that from him.

Brees was quick to lean down at the wooden box

and take a clanker, shaking it to make the noise
and giving the other two to Frank and Moody. They
shook their clankers with as much strength as they
had in their arms, making it sound even louder. It
was a horrible echoing sound that certainly hurt
their head, but the dragon seemed to writhe and
wail in despair and pain.

To Alice’s defence, she did move as fast as she

could as she put runes and made wand
movements.

The Drowning Spells (that the next generation

would call Geminio Curse) was down and the Rune
Ward was down next, though she did stutter with
the Old-English. The Feoh Ward came crashing
down, making her shiver with the constant use of
powerful magic; soon she would be exhausted. She
threw the small glass of blood she had of Rabastan
Lestrange against the door of the second vault,
making it shatter and the blood go everywhere at
the door. The blood was sucked by the walls and
door, unlocking it.

“Let’s go!” Frank screamed over the noise.

“NO! Not yet!” Alice said. “One more to go.”

“Hurry up, Longbottom!” Moody screamed.

Though Frank turned to scream at his boss not to

scream at his wife, who was certainly giving her all
over there after throwing up just a few minutes
ago, he didn’t. He could see how Moody’s eyes
were wide and stuck on the dragon. He stayed
quiet as he wondered if the man was scared of
dragons.

The next second, he understood why he should be

scare of them as well.

The dragon, lost in his anger, fear and pain,

moved, his tail whipping behind him and throwing
the wooden box where the clankers would stay
around the room. It shattered against the pillar and
the wood pieces flew.

Frank screamed, throwing himself in front of Alice,

who did hesitate, wanting to see if he was alright
but kept speaking the last ward’s break in a
mixture of Old French, Old English and moving her
wand in complicated movements.

Moody fell to the ground and Emmeline managed to

drag Vrees with her to behind the pillar; and yet
she screamed.

Alice didn’t stop working, but Frank turned to look

and gasped.

Moody was lying on the ground, hand hiding half of

his face, but Frank didn’t need to see the state of it
in details to know that the really big piece of wood
sticking out and the blood dripping to the ground
meant that he had been stabbed in eye with it. The
scream came soon after. Moody was one to take all
the pain and suffering in silence, but there he was,
screaming like a child in utter agony.

Frank ran to his side.

“Emmeline, the noise, now!” Frank screamed. He

tried to keep shaking the clanker, but soon gave it
to Vrees as he kneeled down beside his superior.
“Moody? Moody, come on, can you hear me?!” he
asked, scared.

“It hurts! It hurts!” Moody announced.

“We need to retreat. He needs medical attention!”

Emmeline said.

“NO! No!” Moody screamed. “We can’t leave. You

heard the bloody creature. They’ll put more security
measures!”

“We can deal with it!” Emmeline promised.

“Moody, what do we do?” Frank asked.

Alice took a deep breath.

“DONE!” she yelled over all the noise.

The wards were down, but Moody was bleeding out.

Keeping him alive and finishing the mission both
seemed and felt important, but both didn’t seem
like a realistic option. Frank feared losing both
things.

“The mission. Finishing the fucking mission or

you’re fired!” Moody said.

Though Frank was quite aware that Moody couldn’t

fire him for something that happened outside of
their working-hours, he did humour the man,
helping his wife open the door of the vault with loud
grunts since it was so heavy and ran inside.

He had seen the drawing that Moody cared with

him (done by Lily Evans, it said in the bottom) to
recognize the Hufflepuff Cup sitting on the very top
of the biggest pile of gold and jewel of the whole
vault. Frank ran forward, making a mess as he tried
to climb up as fast as he could to get Moody back
to the Potter Manor where the group was supposed
to meet after the whole mission was over. He
almost fell once he got half-way up because the
piece of gold that he was stepping on slipped away.
Though he screamed, he kept going. He reached
his fingers up, grabbing the cup and falling soon
after.

He closed his eyes, ready for the pain that would

come with hitting the ground. It never came.

Alice had her wand pointed at him, wordlessly

stopping him from hitting the ground by an inch. He
sighed.

“Thanks,” he said, though he wasn’t sure she

listened through the noise.

“7:45!” Emmeline screamed. “WE HAVE TEN

MINUTES TO GET OUT OF HERE! HURRY UP,
FRANK, FOR FUCK’S SAKE. HE’S BLEEDING OUT,
HOLY SHIT!”

Frank stumbled forward, running as fast as he

could out and throwing his whole weight against
the door to close it at once, his back on it. Alice put
both of her hands on it and pushed, feet burying
themselves on the ground to get more momentum.

“We’re done. Come on,” said Frank, raising the cup

and showing it off.

Vrees was shaking as he used both clankers in his

hand.

Frank was fast to pass the cup to Alice and running

to grab Moody from the ground. He was still
conscious, which is a good sign, but there was no
way there was much time left for them by the
colour of his skin. He had to drag the man, since
Moody could barely move his legs.

There was a clear path of blood.

Frank shivered when he saw the blood sucking the

blood in. He didn’t want to know if there was more
blood that had been spilt there, but he couldn’t see
it.

Once they were out and the double doors were

closed, he put Moody on the cart, shaking as he
covered the man with the Invisibility Cloak and sat
beside him this time. He turned to watch Alice
shove the cup into the box with the Potter’s
belongings and dragging the shaking Emmeline into
the cart. Vrees jumped in soon after.

“Frank you’re covered in blood,” Alice warned as

the cart started the steady and surprisingly slow
ascend.

“I know,” he groaned.

He took off his coat and put it outside-out. He

hoped that would be enough.

Every single soul in that cart hoped Alastor Moody

would survive the trip, especially when Frank felt
his body go limp against his.

Notes:
It was a bit short, wasn't it? Sorry
about that. I hope I made up for
that with the explanation to
Moody's eye situation.

Comment your thoughts, please. I

have the next chapter almost
ready, so if you guys can drop
hints of what you think is going to
happen is going to be fun.

ANYTHING YOU WANT TO

HAPPEN? COMMENT YOUR
REQUEST lol

Chapter 98: Chapter Ninety-

Seven
Summary:
Regulus recieves a birthday
present that he didn't want

Notes:
Sorry for the wait!
Bear with me, ok? I've been
taking a lot of time to study.
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

REGULUS BLACK’S DAY

Anne felt perfectly adorable as she waved to

Narcissa as they were old friends, walking across
the Black Family House, Grimmauld Place, number
12, without hesitation, her lilac-coloured dress
reaching her ankles as she strutted with her white
high-heels.

“Anne, my dear!” Narcissa celebrated. “I was trying

to wonder who was the beautiful girl in the lilac
dress, of course it would be you.”

“You flatter me too much, Narcissa,” dismissed

Anne quickly. “How have you been? How have you
truly been?”

“Wonderful, if I may be sincere with you. Really

wonderful,” she said, her cheeks blushing a bit.
“Lucius and I have decided to try for a child now,
not only randomly satisfaction from one another,
but actually trying for an heir.”

Anne tried not to smirk. There would be no way

someone wouldn’t be happy with having their
husband constantly looking for attention like Lucius
clearly was doing with Narcissa, especially when
one would get a child out of it, a dream that
Narcissa clearly had for a long time in her life.

Her eyes wandered away from Narcissa and her

silver long dress, going across the room to where a
smirking Severus stood beside Regulus who was
talking to a young girl, around twelve or so, clearly
denying her something since her bottom lip went
out in a pout as she turned around and walked
away.

“Uncle and Aunt are across the room, they won’t

see you going to him until you’re already there,”
Narcissa said. “Bellatrix is a bit busy being
pampered by everybody in the family, her attention
won’t be on you at all tonight.” Anne blushed. “I
know you and Regulus well enough, Anne, now go
on, before my father stops talking to Aunt
Walburga. Go, go. Move along now, please.”

She made her way with a smile towards Regulus,

who had been watching the girl walk away and tried
not to laugh with Severus. Severus noticed her
before and gave an acknowledging nod, but said
nothing as she stopped in front of Regulus, putting
the small box she was holding onto behind her back
and putting on her best charming smile – the one
he had complained she had used with Yaxley.

Regulus soon noticed her presence, turning to look

at whoever was staring at him with a cold glare
that disappeared immediately once he saw Anne
raising her eyebrows in her smile.

“Anne, you came!” he said, sounding more excited

than he probably had wished to, because he
cleaned his throat and glanced around, seeing
Severus trying not to laugh. “Of course you came, I
mean.”

“Of course,” she said in a mocking tone. “Why

wouldn’t I be here?”

They both knew that she had to be there to get the

alibi.

Though Anne had not shared all the details to

Regulus or Severus, hoping that the less they knew
the easier it would be to hide it under Occlumency,
they all knew that while they were there, almost at
midnight, the Order of the Phoenix was making
their last adjustments for the mission that they
would start at five in the morning, when the bank
would normally open to the public. Perhaps it was
luck that the Blacks would start their parties so late
at night, but Anne was certainly thankful for that.

“I’m glad you came either way,” he said, a lot more

restrained now. “You look stunning in lilac,” he
glanced to the side at his friend. “Doesn’t she,
Severus?”

“Of course,” Severus grumbled. “The personification

of Aphrodite, I’m sure,” he dismissed soon after,
looking away from the two as soon as it was polite
to do without looking bored.

Anne almost started laughing at the most awkward,

but surprisingly poetic compliment she had ever
received from anyone.

“Aphrodite, indeed,” Regulus said. “Perhaps

Branwen, my little Welsh.”

“I’m not Welsh,” she laughed.

“Your grandfather is. Your mother is,” Severus said.

“She might not have the accent, but she’s Welsh
through and through. Mention Arthurian literature
and mythology to her and she’ll go on the biggest
rant I have ever heard.” Anne ended up laughing.
“She also went to school at Tradition Day in Welsh
traditional clothing.”

“With the hat and everything?” Regulus asked,

raising his eyebrows.

“Hat, stocking… everything,” Severus said, though

he blushed a bit. “She made sure to let everybody
know. Sure, she was ten and had no idea what she
was saying, but… she made sure I knew.”

Anne ended up laughing even harder, trying to

imagine little Lily walking around in Welsh
traditional costume, talking about her traditional
underwear and stocking to the very confused, very
English Cokeworth boy that certainly wanted
nothing to do with whatever was under her dress
and petticoat. Regulus didn’t like her laugh too
much, he gave her a half-amused glare and told
her to stop laughing at her own mother under his
breath, but that only made Anne laugh even more,
though she did try to muffle it with her hand.

The use of only one of her hands called Regulus’

attention to the other holding something behind her
back.

“What do you have there?” Regulus asked.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering. “Yes, your

birthday gift.”

“Anne –” he started.

“If you say I didn’t need to, I’ll throw it out of the
window,” she warned. That made Severus smile
openly. “Here, it’s for you. I hope you like it.”

“I’d like anything you’d give me, Anne-Girl,” he

teased.

Holding the small box, he took the bow and pulled,

the silk untying easily. With no difficulty, he threw
it over his shoulder and allowed the yellow silk to
rest on his waistcoat’s shoulder as the brown gift-
paper was torn. He smiled at the box with golden
lettering; Happy Birthday, Little Prince in Anne’s
handwriting. He opened the box, the lid attached to
the rest of the box and almost gasped.

A pen.

An expensive, Muggle pen.

“The owner of Logan Dubliner is a half-blood, Logan

Doyle, that’s his name,” Anne started once she saw
the shock. “The pen has a spell that will never let
the ink run out and then you don’t need to buy ink
every time and all that,” her voice sounded slightly
hesitant. “Is it a bad gift?”

“Anne, this is a pen…” Regulus said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, blushing a bit.

“I never had a pen before,” he added quickly,

before she could get too uncomfortable with his
shock. “I’m not sure I know how to.”

“It’s not too different,” Severus chimed in.

Regulus side-glared at him, not wanting him to get

into the conversation. Severus was quickly quiet,
sipping his drink and nodding at someone who
passed nearby and waved at him with a lot
enthusiasm than he had given back.

“I’m sure you can test it,” she said. She leaned in
just a bit as if she was to tell him a secret. “Train it
by writing to me, yes?”

“Of course,” he answered without hesitation.

There was a mood around them and, if they had

been alone, she would fall into his arms and beg
him for comfort. She would kiss him and beg him to
make her forget the danger people she cared for
were in as she was there, laughing and soon to be
sipping expensive wine between the richest of
people. She wanted him to touch her, she wanted
to disappear into him.

Severus cleaned his throat.

Both looked at him as his eyes were not on them,

but at someone walking closer to them. Regulus
quickly forced up a polite smile, putting the pen
away swiftly and tucking it on the back of his
trousers, under his waistcoat, in the very moment
Mister Yaxley stopped beside them.

“I couldn’t help but notice Miss Sage walking

through and I had to come greet her,” he explained
at Severus raised his eyebrows at him. Anne bit the
inside of her cheek, glancing at Regulus as he
schooled his facial expression to show nothing more
than understanding. “It’s hard to ignore a woman
as beautiful as this walking by, isn’t it?” he tried to
joke. Regulus chuckled and Severus sipped his
drink once more. “Now, if your sweetheart doesn’t
mind, Miss Sage, do you allow me a dance with
you?”

Though she knew he was talking about Severus,

she did glance at Regulus as well.

“She can do whatever she wants,” Severus said

coldly. “If I was you, I’d be more careful with
pleasing her than pleasing me, Yaxley,” his smirk
made the words longer. He looked like he was
enjoying himself. “Her wand-work is a lot more
impressive than mine.”

Yaxley’s eyes travelled to her as well as she

laughed, faking her best modesty.

“Oh, Severus, you’re a charmer,” she said, though

it did sound like a warning to trained ears. “He’s
being kind.”

“He’s being truthful,” Regulus chimed in. “I have

seen people on the other side of her wand getting a
lot more than they deserved,” he smirked. She
knew his head was on Rosier and his wicked ways.

“Two charmers at your feet, Miss Sage. You have

done a good job,” Yaxley said, turning to her.

“I’ve done nothing,” she said, chuckling gently.

However pleasing it was to have the two men in

front of her singing her praises, she knew the
conversation had ended there when Yaxley offered
her his hand. Without any other option, she
accepted it and allowed him to guide her to the
dance floor, but all she could do was pray that she
wouldn’t fall to the ground.

“I must warn you that I might not be the greatest

of dancers,” she said. “I have only danced with my
family.”

“And Severus, surely,” he added.

“No,” she answered. “Severus is not one to dance.

He doesn’t enjoy it and, though I do, I mustn’t
force him to dance floors.”

His hand rested a bit lower than her waist, almost

allowing his pinkie to touch her hip. She wanted to
get his hand and drag it up, but she wouldn’t dare.
She just smiled as she put her hand on his
shoulder. Being quite tall, it was easy to look face
to face at him, especially in high-heels.

The swaying dance was easy, especially when he

was leading everything. A few steps to the right
and a few to the left. Nothing too difficult.
Apparently, Yaxley wasn’t all that great of a dancer,
though his attitude made it seem like her a
professional before they started, but by her bored
face he became less and less confident to the
second.

“You seem tense,” Yaxley said suddenly.

Anne looked into his eyes.

“And you look drunk, but I’m not commenting on

that, because I’m polite,” she answered quickly
with a small smile, trying to make it look just like a
joke. “Are you alright, Mister Yaxley?”

“I’m excited,” he answered. “That’s why I’m

drinking. We have a surprise for Regulus.”

“’We’?” she repeated. “Who would ‘we’ be?”

“Well,” his smirk grew. “You will find out, if you

don’t already know.”
It dawned on her. ‘We’ should be talking about
Death Eater. They had something for Regulus, and
he had no idea and, clearly, neither had Severus.

The song was over.

“One more?” he asked.

“It might be seen as inappropriate,” she answered

quickly.

“Of course, of course,” he said, looking away.

There was a moment when she thought he would

try to convince her to stay and dance with him
anywhere, but Lucius Malfoy had entered the room
and had waved at him. He quickly left, leaving her
in the middle of the dance floor alone. Quickly she
made her way out of the middle of people and
towards the table of drinks.

She took another cup of wine, sipping it and

already looking around the room for Severus as she
saw Regulus dancing with a child, letting the little
girl step on his shoes as he moved slightly, making
the seven-year-old giggle. She smiled to herself as
she looked away.

“I like your dress,” said a voice from behind her.

Anne almost jumped, cursing how she had been

distracted. She turned to look at Bellatrix Lestrange
standing a few steps behind her, back against the
wall. Bellatrix was dressed in bright blue with a
black fur coat over the dress that left her bump
noticeable under the fabric and had low shoes, not
daring to use heels.

“Thank you,” Anne said. “I like your dress, too.

Hello Madame Lestrange, you look great,” she
forced a smile. “I believe congratulations are in
order.”

“Indeed, yes,” Bellatrix said in a falsely dismissive

tone. She was feeling wonderful with all the
attention that belly was bringing her. “I am with
child; a child that shall change the course of wizard
history. This child shall be venerated and feared by
all kinds.”

And loved, Anne wanted to add. A child should be

loved above all else, even above heir duties. But
someone like Bellatrix or Tom Riddle wouldn’t
understand this at all. Neither had ever felt or
known love at all. It was easy to villainize them
after all they did to her and the people she loved,
but her anger blinded her to the pity she could feel
for them. Can one blame her? Though people
insisted that to move on people need to forgive,
she wondered if she could do so without forgiving.
Vernon Dursley. Tom Riddle. Bellatrix Lestrange –
three of the people that most traumatized her;
three of the people she couldn’t seem to forgive.

“A child can change a lot, indeed,” was Anne’s

answer.

“I wonder what you changed for your parents,”

Bellatrix immediately said.

Anne raised an eyebrow. It was clear that it was

supposed to be a jab at her, but Anne just smiled
at her once she understood that she was doing that
on purpose.

“I wouldn’t know,” Anne quickly said. “I didn’t grow

up with them. I’m sure I was loved and I’m sure I
was wanted. I hope that I was loved at least half as
much as I am now if I had the chance to stay with
them.”

Bellatrix had expected a glare and for the girl to

walk away hurt, but not a smile and an actual
answer with personal information.

“You grew up with someone else?” she asked.

“My aunt and her husband. My sister’s mum, I

mean,” she answered. “Horrible woman.”

“Your mum was a mudblood, of course her family

would be horrible,” Bellatrix said.

“Sure,” Anne said in a dismissive tone, forcing

herself not to grumble through her teeth. “But my
aunt was a muggle, an especially a horrible, jealous
one.”

“All muggles are,” Bellatrix said.

Anne was quiet as she looked at her cup once

more. Her silence was seen as an agreement. That
made Bellatrix smile, looking at the girl up and
down as if she was trying to grade her appearance
or if accessing her for a task.

Before Anne could ask what she was trying to see,

could do or say anything else, Narcissa came their
way, standing beside Anne with a smile on her face,
looking as if she was slightly tipsy, but Anne could
see that she was a lot more sober than what she
was trying to look. Whatever she was trying to do,
Anne decided not to meddle.

“Did you congratulate dear Bella yet, Anne?”

Narcissa asked.

“I was just doing so, Narcissa,” Anne answered.

“Wonderful news, really.”

Wonderful, indeed. That’s all Anne could think,

though she was sure the mother-to-be thought it
was for other reasons. With a baby, it would mean
that Voldemort’s more loyal servant would be out of
business for months, that he would be making his
weakest spot have a name and a surname. He
would make some of his strongest and most loyal
subject care for Bellatrix, protect her while she
carried the child, and then the ones doing the job
would be less experiences, younger and, thus
easier to manipulate, defeat and control. The Order
would have a field day with the implications of it all.

“A baby! It’s been so long since the last baby in the

family,” Narcissa said.

Bellatrix didn’t seem to like when people talked of

the baby. She rather enjoyed, however, when
Narcissa asked her to sit down and insisted that she
needed to slow down and rest. Anne offered herself
quickly to go and get some juice. Though she
wanted to, she resisted the urge to spit of the
pumpkin juice on her hand as she walked back to
the women. She gave the cup to Bellatrix and took
a deep breath.

“I must say, sex pregnant is amazing,” Bellatrix

said suddenly.

Anne was so startled that she was sure she grew

pale.

“Bellatrix, please!” said Narcissa, sounding quite

appalled by her sister’s lack of tact. “Anne is
young.”

“She’s of age,” Bellatrix answered. “And I’m sure

you’d like to listen to some things about Severus.
You’re always glued to one another.”

Narcissa blushed at the implications. Though she

did like Severus a lot, she knew that some people
thought it was odd how delicate he was with her,
always reaching out his arm (because he knew she
had a problem on her left foot from a ballet injury
and her heels made it hard to walk sometimes) and
always glancing around, eyes finding her (worry for
her incompetence of saying ‘no’ to someone).

He was a good man. He was a good brother, if she

dared to say so. But Severus would never be
anything more than that to her and it hurt her
heart to listen to Bellatrix destroying such a
beautiful relationship.

She supposed Anne could understand; he as very

careful with her as well ever since Regulus decided
his heart and eyes were set on her, and that was
why Anne looked away to cover up her annoyance
with Occlumency before turning to Bellatrix once
more.

There was a noise that broke the conversation.

It was something similar to a bell, or maybe a

clanking of metal against metal loud enough to
quieten the music.

Across the room, she saw Orion Black’s eyes

stopping on her, urgent and dark. A warning, she
realised at one as she sucked a breath and held it,
waiting for something bad to happen. He looked
around the room before looking back at her and
shaking his head lightly; ‘there’s no way out’, he
was trying to say.

She looked away, looking around as well, but not

looking for ways out, but looking for whatever was
making people stop dancing.

Beside Orion, Walburga Black smiled.

“What’s happening?” Narcissa dared to ask what

was in the mind of many people.

“My birthday present to Regulus,” Bellatrix

answered, a looped grin on her lips. Her hand
caressed her belly.

Anne needed to move quickly, she needed to

disappear. She might not be able to go away, but
she could hide in the corner of the room, praying
that the people and the shadows would hide her. As
she started, however, Bellatrix looked at her.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To Severus,” she answered, voice firm.

“I’ll come with you,” Narcissa said, reaching and

holding Anne’s hand.

“Neither of you will move,” Bellatrix said in almost

an order. Neither dared to do anything. Whatever
was happening, Bellatrix had the power. “The Dark
Lord will want to see you two easily.”

Anne’s stomach dropped and Narcissa grew pale,

cold and sweaty hand still holding Anne’s. The red-
head’s hand was the only thing that was keeping
her from shaking in fear and Narcissa was grateful
for her indirect help.

Anne was familiar with the horrible pain of

nervousness and the nauseating fear of being found
out doing something wrong, so it was easy to grab
both emotions and shove them back into her doors
and walls of Occlumency, closing every single
corner and crack quickly with harmless memories:
Regulus, Severus and her drinking champagne and
laughing not too long ago; Severus sitting beside
her in the library; Regulus helping her climb down
the stairs of Malfoy Manor during the wedding since
her dress and heels made it difficult; Narcissa
giggling and talking to her on Regulus’ Celebration
as if the conversation was harmless. All memories
of her ‘acceptable’ friends fixed to look as if she
was just another background character in their
lives.

The use of her magic was certainly felt by her body

as her muscles tightened.

The sea of people started parting with gasps and

mumbles and, by the corner of her eye, she saw
movement from the extremities of the room.

Severus was quickly making his way over from the

right, walking with a purpose as he stepped out of
the way of the people moving in front of him.
Regulus was running full speed from the left, not
caring for one second as his only thought was not
allowing the Dark Lord to get too close to Anne.

Anne felt grateful as she closed the last door of her

Occlumency, not allowing her emotions to see
anything else. It was painfully numb and empty to
be the vessel of thoughts without emotions, but she
needed to.

Regulus was standing a few steps beside Bellatrix

before Severus was half-way there.

“Excited?” Bellatrix asked.

Regulus forced a smile.

“I can’t believe you convinced him to come to such

a silly party, Bella,” Regulus answered.

“Anything for my little cousin,” she answered. “I

think my pregnancy is making me too soft, dear
Reggie.”

Regulus was so nervous that he didn’t have the

time to cringe at the nickname she had called him,
all he could do was try to Occlude anything
important as fast as he could, locking everything in
their drawers tightly. Then he put his hands behind
his back and waited to Tom Riddle to get to him.

Anne was almost taken by surprise when Voldemort

stood in front of Regulus.

She had forgotten for a moment that Voldemort

was still a man and nothing more at that point. The
dark, wavy hair looked as silky as any other, his
skin was pale with rosy undertones and his eyes
were dark and smart. Though he was very much
older (a whole half a decade of age, he was at that
point) than his appearance, that man didn’t look a
day after thirty-five. Handsome was a word that
made Anne hate herself for thinking, but that was
what he was.

“Regulus,” Tom greeted.

His tone was soft, smooth and almost as if the fact

that he knew that name was a great compliment.

“My Lord,” Regulus greeted. “I’m deeply honoured

of your presence in such a humble party.”

Anne had to look away when his head bowed in

obedience.

She tried to focus on how there was no way anyone

would ever call that party humble. There were
people (including her) in full ball-gowns and high-
heels, the men were dressed in their best
waistcoats and dressing trousers. Not as formal as
a wedding, but not as casual as to be compared to
the soiree that the Potters insisted on doing.

“As if I’d allow dear Bella to be amongst all those

people without real security,” he teased. He
sounded almost light-hearted. “Narcissa, I hope
you’ve been taking good care of your sister.”

Narcissa didn’t answer out loud and Anne forced

herself not to look at her or at Voldemort. What
saved her from making a mistake was the fact that
Severus Snape touched her back ever so lightly as
if to warn her that he was right behind her. She
dared to think of relaxing before an amused hum
made her tense up again.

“And that seems to be Severus’ esteemed lioness,”

said Tom Riddle.

“This is Anne, my Lord,” Severus said.

He didn’t deny. He didn’t confirm it. He skirted

around the assumption and accepted it. He
answered for her, something that usually would
bring Anne to become annoyed, but Voldemort
didn’t expect any answer coming from her, it
seemed, because he just hummed one more.

“Come now, Anne, take a step forward,” Tom said.

She dared to look up. Dark eyes stared right back
into hers. “No need to be nervous, girl, you can let
go Narcissa’s hand. You’re not a child.” If he knew
it was Narcissa holding onto her hand, he would
have said the same thing to Anne, she was sure. “I
was told you have a… interesting story of life.”

Was she to answer?

She looked at Severus.

“I was the one who told him,” Bellatrix said, a

sarcastic smile growing on her lips. “Severus kept
your secret, my dear.”

‘Dear’, she thought with a mental dry chuckle.

“Contrary to what you’re thinking, Bella, she isn’t

blaming Severus. She’s looking for instructions.
Remarkably well-behaved, congratulations,
Severus. I expected less of someone of your
status,” he said. Anne could taste blood, she had
bit into her cheek too deeply. “You are allowed to
talk to me.”

“I believe ‘interesting’ might not be the best

adjective, Lord,” she answered.

His eyes narrowed. There was no ‘my’ in her

sentence.

“Any other adjective you’d like to add, then?” he

asked.

“Boring, perhaps might be better suited. There’s

nothing remotely interesting about me,” she said.

She was being straight-forwarded and too directed,

but perhaps that would make him lose his interest
when everybody else around them seemed to be so
good with their words and logically form sentenced
that could even make Dumbledore confused midst
their joyful play of words.

“Do elaborate on that,” he insisted. “I’m sure I will

be disagreeing with you by the end of your story.”

Nobody was talking in normal volume, though

Voldemort certainly didn’t want all the attention
anymore and he was struggling to get the respect
and veneration of the young girl in front of him.
People were still watching, the music playing so
lowly that it became white-noise at some point.

“What do you want to know, Lord?” she asked.

His lips twitched as if her discreet jab was

becoming amusing.

“Where did you come from?”

She bit her tongue slightly, wanting nothing more

than to point that there was a question that
philosophers have been trying to find an answer to
for centuries and nobody seemed to have done
much since that moment to the moment that she
had come from.

“Canada, I suppose,” she lied. She could feel him

poking around her walls. If she didn’t let him see
something of her childhood, he would’ve been too
suspicious. “Though I did live in Surrey when I was
a child. Moved back to Canada later in life,” she
allowed a memory to go through her walls – Dudley
was chasing her and she was climbing a tree as fast
as she could, tears streaming down her face as she
felt the despair of not knowing where her brother
was, but knowing that Dudley would be waiting for
her to go back down. “It didn’t work well.”

“Go on.”

“My mother when I was born and my brother,” she

said, adding the ‘brother’ as an afterthought. “My
brother passed as well while we lived with my aunt
and uncle, my mother’s sister.”

“Half-bloods such as yourself?” he asked.

“No, Lord. Muggles,” she answered.

Someone gasped in shock as if the word itself was

a curse. She looked at the crowd, knowing that
whatever she spoke at that moment would become
public. Nothing would be private after so many
people staring at her with such curiosity.

“How disgusting.”

“They were,” she agreed.

They as if she was saying only them were

disgusting. She still thought, though she didn’t
want to, of the neighbourhood boy she had a crush
on when she was six or seven and he had shared
his school lunch with her to make sure she had
enough to eat when Dudley would drop the food
given by the school – he moved away when they
were nine. His name was forgotten, but his hazel
eyes would forever stay with her.

Voldemort didn’t seem to catch up to that.

“And what’s happened to them?” he asked.

“They no longer live, Lord,” she said.

Not the uncle and aunt she knew, at least. Not a

lie. Voldemort knew it wasn’t a lie.

“Your doing?” he asked.

“Indirectly, I suppose,” she said. “But I mostly

blame on age,” and she smiled a bit at him, though
it looked more like a smirk.

Severus understood what she was trying to say and

allowed a smirk to go to his lips. Regulus snorted
lightly, feeling the pride of the way she had twisted
the truth her way. Oh, the Slytherin in her was one
to admire as much as fear.

“What was your mother’s status and name?” he

asked.

“Lilian Granger,” she lied smoothly. That part of the

lie she had ready. “A muggleborn.”

“A mudblood,” he repeated, almost as if correcting

her.

“Indeed,” she answered, making her best

impression of Severus’ bored tone.

“Your father?”

“Fleatmont Potter,” she answered. Another part of

the lie she had ready.

“Anne Potter,” Voldemort said, almost as if tasting

her name in his mouth. Had it come from someone
with less shatters of their soul, she would think it
somewhat attractive, but she was too disgusted of
him to dwell to much on his distracting middle-aged
beauty. “A half-blood of clear distracting beauty
with my other half-blood of distracting talents,” he
seemed to ponder. “I hope that proves to not
become a disappointment. An heir coming from the
Prince family and the Potter family would be liked
well enough for their blood to be ignored.”

She felt somewhat nauseated at the idea of being

seen as a mare, but she searched through her
shelves on the walls of her mind to find a
comforting memory. Harry’s smell seemed to
embrace her from behind, his voice singing in a
half-voice a Christmas song while they were in the
Burrow.

“Perhaps one day,” Severus jumped into the

conversation.

“Perhaps sooner than later,” Voldemort said. It

sounded like an order. “Make an honest woman out
of her, Snape. You won’t get someone much better
than her… or as similar as your last focus. You do
have a type, don’t you?” There were chuckles
around the room. Bella’s shrill noise made Anne
annoyed and her facial expression dropped for a
second and her eyebrows twitched. “My, my. I
believe I struck a nerve.”

“I don’t like hearing of the mudblood,” she attacked

quickly. She looked deep into Tom’s eyes and willed
herself to think he was just a man. “Lord,” she
added.

“I was under the impression you two were friendly

to one another.”

And she was under the impression none of this was

any of his business.

“Well, one must sacrifice a lot to keep appearances,

Lord. To keep oneself alive, I mean,” she said. “I
live with her… beloved. I need a cordial relationship
with her to keep my image.”

“So your politics lean towards mine, I hope,” he

said.

“My politics lean towards survival with the least

amount of resistance, Lord, no more and no less
than that,” she answered.

“And your loyalty?”

She felt her stomach drop.

“To myself, of course. And to those I care about,”

she made a show of shily glancing to Severus
before batting her eyes back at Tom. He looked at
her up and down.

What he had no idea was that she meant those she

cared about on both sides of that bloody war.

“Good,” he said smoothly. “Your Severus has made

a good decision in bringing you into his life and I’m
glad Regulus was smart enough to know you would
make a good bride to his friend. He knows his
place. His parents did a good job with him.”

He knew, she realised. He knew that there was a

time that Regulus wanted her for himself, but
thought that he had changed his mind because of
his parents’ requests of not seeing her as a future
Mistress of the house.

She smiled.

“So am I,” she said.

Notes:
What did you all think?

The chapter was unedited, so I'm

sorry if you saw anything wrong.

Chapter 99: Chapter Ninety-

Eight
Summary:
Anne finds her way;

HEALING

Anne stumbled against the wall, taking a deep

breath as she tried to keep the little food she had
managed to eat through her nervousness and
through the constant watching of Tom Riddle
himself through the whole night, even after
Bellatrix ‘retired to bed’ and looked at him with
desire – he didn’t follow, he just watched. After
that, she made a show of looking like she had too
much to drink and become touchy with a very stiff
Severus.

“Are you that inebriated?” Severus asked, clearly

disgusted by her greenish colour.

“I’m quite sober,” she answered in a whisper. “Let’s

go to the parlour.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll appear like we are snogging. Put your

hand on my back,” she ordered. He tried not to
grimace as he followed her instructions. “Come on.
Come on,” she whispered. As she walked, she
glanced around furtively, as if trying to see if
anyone was watching them; there were Tom
Riddle’s eyes over her and over Severus’ hand
touching her. “You’re going to have to kiss me.”

“Absolute not,” he grumbled.

“Severus,” she sighed, almost pleadingly.

“I’m not – Anne!” he said as if trying to scold her.

“No kissing, got it,” she grumbled. “Touch me.”

“I am touching you,” he said, almost completing

the sentence with an ‘unfortunately’ after it.

“He’s watching. Touch me. Desire me,” she said.

“Pretend.”

Gently, he put her against the wall.

They were in the corridor and most people would

just see the couple as any other in the lonely
corridor of the house barely in the sight of the
living room and stairs where people were gathered.

Against the wall, she looked at him, eyes surprised.

“I can pretend a lot, but I cannot pretend love,” he

said.

“Good. I never asked you to love me, I asked you

to pretend to desire me,” she said.

“Do you know how disgusting it is?”

“Me?” she said, between confused and offended.

“Desire,” he explained, shaking his head just

slightly. Though his face was close to hers, he
certainly was making no effort of touching her more
than necessary. “I hate the feeling when it
happens. It feels dirty and… out of place.”

“So you Occlude it away,” she guessed.

“Don’t you?”

“No,” she said. “Not many people do, Severus. Most

people like the feeling of desire and sexual
attraction.”

“I don’t. Desire, I mean. Because I don’t think I

was ever…” he leaned closer, hiding his face on her
shoulder. She put her forehead on his shoulder,
trying to hide his face as much as possible. “I don’t
think anything to do with a relationship has
anything to do with me. I’m quite alright with not
having any of this you and Regulus have.”

Blindly, she touched the wall around her until her

hand felt the doorhandle. Quickly, she pulled on it
and the door clicked, she made a little noise, urging
him to go in as she made an exaggerated arch of
her back as he pulled away from her. Holding her
wrist, he pulled her into the parlour and closed the
door behind them.

He casted a Muffliato before the door was

completely closed.

“Severus…”

“We don’t need to talk about it,” he said.

“But we’re friends,” she answered. “That means we

can.”

“It’s too weird.”

“Hardly,” she disagreed. “You do know asexuality,

don’t you?”

“Asexual people don’t feel disgusted by the feeling

of it, they just don’t have it at all. I do feel the
desire, I just don’t feel the attraction. I feel waves
when I see something I like on someone, but never
more than a few seconds and then it’s gone,
especially when I see their faces or I know them,”
he quickly explained. “I know you’re thinking of Lily
– which makes of things ever worse and even
weirder, and the reason I feel so disgusted on
touching you. Anne, you look too much alike for me
to feel desire for.”

“You liked her,” she said confused.

“There’s a difference between romantic feelings

and… sexual ones,” he said, daring not to blush. It
would make the conversation even more pathetic.
“I heard the boys in dorm and Lucius. I allowed
myself to feel the desire and dwell on it and it made
me no favours.”

“Severus, might it because of… what happened to

your mother? What you were forced to watch?”
Anne asked, carefully.

“How do you know that?” he asked, eyes surprised.

“I’ve seen it in your mind when you were teaching

me. You went for the most painful memories I had,
I got angry and pushed back. I ended up in your
mind. I saw it, too,” she explained.

“Perhaps, then, it might be,” he admitted. “I just

can’t see any of that experience being… pleasurable
to someone. Either party.”

“When done right,” she said. “I would know a bit

about it, I suppose.”

Severus looked like a drunk man lost in thoughts

and feelings becoming sober at once.

“I’m sorry,” he jumped on saying. “I’m sorry, I

didn’t mean to bring all of this up again.”

“You didn’t, Severus. I did,” she said, shaking her

head. “Listen, I’m being serious. It was traumatic
for you as well, you were forced to watch that – in
normal situation, it would be terrible; a rape is
even worse. To watch your own mother go through
that… I can understand why you… hesitate to find
someone and experiment anything of this, but I can
assure that if done right it can be pleasurable and
that it can be something other than pain and shame
and… fear.”

To know that she knew the feeling, the

helplessness that he had felt himself made it
slightly better. Anne seemed happy and he was
aware that Regulus and her were active, but it
didn’t make it any less scary.

“I refused to kiss you,” he commented.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t want my first kiss to be with you,” he said.

She chuckled, nodding in understanding. “And
neither did I want it under false pretences.”

“It’s comprehensible,” she said. “I’m sorry I

somewhat pressured you into this situation,
Severus. I’ll be more careful from now on. And I’m
sure my dad will be glad that will be less gossip on
us fully snogging around parties.”

“I really don’t want to talk about your dad right

now,” he grumbled, rolling his eyes.

Anne chuckled.

“Fair enough,” she said.

He glanced at the clock on the wall near the

fireplace.

“We can go back out, say we’re going home; it’s

almost six in the morning anyways,” he said.
“Nobody will think twice. I’ll Disapparate you near
your home and I’ll walk you there; I’m sure your
people have heard of rumours of us dating, I’ll stop
outside the wards.”

She smiled at him.

“We need to say to goodbye, though,” she said.

Severus looked at the door with dread. He didn’t

want to go back out there.

“We can wait a few minutes more,” he reckoned.

“I suppose,” she said.

Sitting on the sofa, Anne pulled her legs to rest on

it as well. She pulled the hem of dress up to her
knees, leaving her legs free as she rested a bit, not
really caring if her hair would be messed up, after
all she was to appear she had been snogging her
beloved or something even worse.

“Did you see Regulus dancing with the little kid?”

Anne asked, looking at Severus as he also sat on a
sofa, this one across from her. “It was so cute.”

“You think it’s cute because he’s yours,” he said. “It

was rather pathetic. His mother was very angry. He
refused dancing with every single woman just to go
to the dance floor with a child; of course, we
understand that he was just having a bit of fun, but
his mother sees it as a clear rebel attitude and
thinks Regulus is refusing to find a wife.”

“Because he is,” Anne said.

“Because of you,” Severus agreed. “But his mother

can’t know that, can she?” Anne blushed. “If he
ever has children, he’ll be a good father.” Anne
blushed even more. “And I suppose you’ll be a good
mother.”

“Where did you get the idea of children?” she

asked. “I mean, between Regulus and I. Did he say
anything?”

“About you? No. About having children? Yes. Before

you were here, of course, but he did say he wanted
a child, a single one, I suppose he wanted to be an
only child himself and couldn’t, so he’ll give it to his
child,” Severus said. “It’s easy for him to say it.”

Anne reminded herself to go to Mia as soon as

possible and ask for more doses of the Anti-
Pregnancy Potion as fast as possible, the simple
talk of children making her legs start shaking in
fear.

She knew she wouldn’t be a good mother. She was

selfish and she never knew what a good, healthy
childhood was supposed to look like; how would
she dare to bring a child into the world without
being completely and absolutely sure she would be
able to support them in more ways than just
financial? She wasn’t that brave, or at least she
wasn’t that stupid. Deep down, something inside of
her said that if her child was happy there would be
a small, bitter part of her that would envy it and cry
for not having the same.

She shook her head lightly, taking the ideas away.

“It’s almost six in the morning,” she commented

what he had already said to move on from the
subject. “The meeting’s only at eight in the
morning. So far away from now!”

“You can take a nap once you’re at home,” he

offered an activity to do while she waited.

“As if I’d be able to nap at all. Mum and Dad are

home, and Sirius is probably pacing around the
house in barely contained panic,” she said.
“Grandma and Grandpa are probably coming home
a bit early if everything went alright with Remus’
part, which I won’t disclose, don’t look at me like
that – and certainly we have to wait for the other
team to bring the item back to the Manor. It’s a
lot.”

“It is a lot,” he agreed. “Are you certain you want

that… thing in your house. You can always destroy
it somewhere else.”

“We have a special room on the basement, the

training room. It’s neutral,” she explained. He
raised his eyebrows in confusion, obviously having
never heard of such a thing before. “You’ll probably
learn of it soon enough in your internship. A Neutral
Room was something that started for the aurors to
train in, it’s a room warded for all the magic to be
there, but never be fatal, it’ll close off as soon as a
heart is to the point of stopping. There are potions
that are thrown in the walls and floors to make falls
hurt less and all that, so you’ll probably do that.”

“Why not all houses do that?” he asked, enchanted.

“Because not all houses had the Head of Aurors at

the Lord of the House,” she explained. “Monty is
quite proud of having that room and even prouder
of it being the only room outside the Ministry one in
Britain. I had to hear quite the lengthy monologue
about it before Sirius got me out.”

Severus couldn’t help but grin at the thought of

Anne trying to be polite and appear to be interested
when all she wanted to was run away from that
place. She hated long explanations; she liked
having the basic information and then researching
it all by herself, it was a lot more fun that way, she
had said, though Severus couldn’t agree completely
with her, rather liking hearing and learning at once.

The clock made a noise.

Six in the morning.

“Now, we should go,” said Severus. “I need a good

night of sleep,” he complained. He got up, shoving
his hands on his pockets. “You will keep me
informed of what happens in the Manor and if…
everything went alright.”

“You’ll be in Spinner’s End for how long more?”

“A couple of days,” he said.

“I’ll send you word,” she promised.

He nodded.

Severus walked to doors of the parlour and took a

deep breath.

“Let’s go say goodbye,” he said.

James Potter watched Lily Evans sleeping on the

sofa of the parlour of the Potter Manor. She was on
her side, leaning against the sitting, stiff form of
Sirius Black-Potter, completely out of the world of
the awake, but Sirius didn’t seem to find the scene
as funny as James, watching the flames of the
fireplace, willing them to turn green.

“Anne was supposed to be back already,” Sirius

said. “I mean, it’s thirty past six in the morning.
Regulus’ parties don’t usually last that long. He’s
not one to party, he always goes to bed at three in
the morning or so.”

“Maybe this time it’s different,” James dismissed.

“Anne is fine. I’m sure she can take care of herself,
even if she’s against your family.”

Sirius wanted to say that he, too, was powerful and

had almost lost more than his life to his family, but
he didn’t. Anne would do a lot more than him if it
was necessary to survive, especially if it meant
Snivellus and that stupid baby-brother of his would
survive as well.

He bit the inside of his cheek. His worry was

becoming anger. All the feelings he didn’t dare to
use or feel completely seemed to become anger
and he hated how easy it was for him to recognize
that deep crimson river bleeding through his veins
and making him want to push everybody away from
him. James had always said that he needed to stop
that and that one day people would tire of bouncing
back only to get hurt again, but he couldn’t help
himself. What else could he feel safely?

Before he could answer, a small swooshing noise

made him look at the fireplace once more.

Severus Snape walked out of the fireplace right

beside Anne, holding her elbow tightly and leading
her into the room. She stumbled forward, hand
reaching to the back of his neck and almost falling,
almost dragging Severus down with her.

“Careful! Easy, easy!” Severus grumbled.

Lily Evans opened her eyes at the voice, looking

around and eyes widening at Anne’s situation.

“Whatever happened to her?” she asked, jumping

up and throwing the blankets to the side. “Anne,
baby, what happened?”

Anne tried to speak, but Severus hushed her and

made her sit down, glaring at her.

“Quiet! You foolish, foolish girl!” he said. “Whatever

were you thinking?! When a man tells you to drink
something, you don’t! You must know that you
don’t drink things that people demand you to!”

James walked forward.

“What did she drink?” he asked.

“Wine, Dad, just… wine,” she said. “And

Firewhiskey.”

“And bloody bourbon by the smell of it,” Sirius

added, taking a finger to under his nose. His
stomach was empty and it made him nauseated.
“Why did you let her drink that, Snape?”

“Because I’m not her bloody keeper!” he said. “We

were talking and decided to say goodbye, I turned
to look for Lady Black and when I came back, she
could barely stand. This bloody girl… I refuse to
believe she’s a Slytherin, no sense of self-
preservation! Stupid! Stupid!” Snape spat towards
her, making Anne chuckle. “Look at the state of
you!” he turned away from her, disgusted. “Potter,
do you have a potions kit I may use?”

James blinked, surprised that he was speaking

directly at him, but nodded.

“It’s in the kitchen,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show

you.”

Snape followed James out of the parlour and went

to the kitchen.

“Anne, what happened?” Lily asked.

“Voldemort was there,” she explained.

“And Snape allowed you to go? My brother allowed

you to go?!” Sirius said.

“They clearly didn’t know,” Lily defended.

Sirius rolled his eyes. He didn’t believe Lily.

“It was Bellatrix’s surprise for Regulus’ birthday,”

she explained. “He offered me drink as I said my
farewells; I couldn’t deny it, it would be odd.
Please, don’t scold me, Severus did it enough on
the way here.”

“He’s mad at you,” Sirius agreed.

“No, he’s mad at himself,” Anne said. “He’s angry

that he wasn’t there to protect me when I needed.”

“You’re an adult, you can drink whatever you want.

He doesn’t need to protect you from alcohol,” Lily
said.

“But it could be more than alcohol,” she said. “The

Dark Lord could’ve done a lot more than just
offered me a drink and watch me drink it with a
smile on his face. He could’ve put something in my
drink, he could’ve taken me away and he wouldn’t
have noticed. That’s why he’s angry,” she sighed.
“I’m not that drunk. My feet are just hurting
because of the shoes.”

It was quick. The next blink of her eye, Sirius was

on his knees, unbuckling her shoes and taking
them off before putting them under the chair she
was sitting in. He carefully got back up, not getting
her dress stuck on his clothes and seeing
something he shouldn’t.

“He’s angry because he couldn’t refuse for you,”

Lily guessed.

“He’s the only one that could refuse it,” she

answered.

Because he was a man. Because he was ‘her’ man

to those people. Because he was a Death Eater.

“Lily, love?” called out James from the kitchen.

Lily looked over her shoulder before going to the

kitchen.

“Is… Reggie alright?” Sirius asked in a whisper. “He

mustn’t have liked… his presence in his birthday
party, especially if you were there.”

“He didn’t, I could see it and, unfortunately, so

could everybody else,” Anne said. “He managed to
convince his mother that it was because now
people would take longer to go away and he
wanted to party to end faster.”

“Fair enough, it’s something he would actually

think,” Sirius teased lightly. His heart was beating
on his chest a bit too strongly. “Did he take care of
you?”

“No,” she said. “He couldn’t. I understand it now.”

“He should have,” Sirius insisted.

“It would only bring trouble to him. He did the right

thing by keeping himself away. He trusts Severus
enough to be there if needed, but he also trusts me
enough to take care of myself, in the same way I
trust him to take care of himself and trust Severus
to take care of himself. They take care of each
other, too,” said Anne. “That’s how you feel about
Dad and Remus, right?”

Sirius blinked, surprised. Was she comparing

herself to him? He had expected her to compare
herself to her dad, but never to him.

“That’s who they are to you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Sirius nodded. It was time for him to stop getting

angry at Snivellus and at her little brother. They
were her own pack, he supposed, or that was the
closest thing that she seemed to be able to
compare it to.

Anne cleaned her throat.

“You best leave the room,” she choked out.

As soon as he saw the greenish colour she was

taking, Sirius jumped to his feet and ran out of the
room, hands covering his ear as he announced –
loudly – that Anne was throwing up. He only saw
Lily running back into the room and James was
cringing as he took over the chopping she had been
doing beside Severus. Severus barely seemed to
have a single reaction other than a glance over his
shoulder as he stirred the caldron.

The Sober-Up Potion was ready and shoved down

Anne throat in thirteen more minutes.

Severus was gone and Anne and Lily were napping

together on the sofa when the fire made such a
loud roar that Anne was awakened and holding her
wand in a second, eyes widened and wild.

Frank Longbottom was the first to appear, pale and

dragging with all his power the unconscious body of
Alastor Moody. Alice appeared the next moment
and then Emmeline Vance, both tired, pale and
battered from the situation they had probably gone
through in the bank.

That was when Anne saw the blood.

Red. Bright. Dripping on the carpet. Tainting the

wood piece penetrating his eye. Tainting his image
forever.

Mad-Eye Moody would finally get his Mad-Eye.

“Fuck!” Lily squealed.

She knew some healing spells, though it wasn’t her

best spell-work. Anne, however, jumped to the
side, knowing that it was time ticking away from
her.

“Lily, clean cloths, now! Go!” Anne screamed. “Lay

him down on the sofa, come on. James help Frank.”

James was quick to follow her orders, lying the man

on the sofa and watching at his daughter peeked at
the very disgusting wound of an accidental
stabbing.

“Alastor? Alastor, are you awake?” Anne called out.

“He passed out on our way out,” Frank said,

crumbling down on a chair, he was shaking. “The
dragon destroyed a wooden box, it hit him straight
in the eye.”

“At least there’s no poison,” Anne mumbled to

herself, looking into the wound as much as she
could without pulling. “It doesn’t seem to have hurt
the brain. Was he walking? Was he talking?”

“Cursing at us, threatening to take our jobs and all

that,” Emmeline said. “He had some trouble
walking, but he has trouble on his leg, so we can’t
know to what extent the damage is.”

“I put some Blood-Clotters on the wound to slow

down the bleeding,” Frank added.

“You did good,” Anne said.

Lily was back, clean and white cloths on her hands.

Anne looked at James and at Sirius.

“Hold him down,” she ordered. “Sirius, get his legs.

James, hold his shoulders. Lily, hold his head in
place. This is going to hurt and he might wake up.”

And as soon as Anne’s hand touched the wood on

his eye socket, Alastor’s other eye opened and he
tried to sit down, a gut-wrenching scream making
Alice’s eyes water as she hid her face in Frank’s
neck, holding Emmeline’s hand as the other girl
whimpered, trying not to cry.

“Three,” Lily said. “Two. One!”

Anne pulled.

Alastor passed out once more.

“Sirius. Potion’s kit, Mia’s bedroom,” Anne said,

shoving some cloth on the wound, taking out all the
Blood-Clotter from the wound to clean it. “Run!”

And Sirius did.

For a second, Anne felt back in the Burrow. Bill’s

face had been torn to pieces by the werewolf’s
claws. The young man was crying in agony under
her hands as she tried to keep him alive for time
enough for the Healers to get to them; the
concentration on something other than herself and
her pain was there, her deep feeling of final
importance in her heart was there.

Anne decided as she mumbled spell after spell to

heal Moody and shoved Blood-Replenishing potions
down his throat how she wanted her life to be after
the war, maybe even during.

Anne wanted to be a Healer.

Maybe, by healing others, she could finally end up

healing herself.

Chapter 100: Chapter Ninety-

Nine -
Summary:
The Order of the Phoenix destroys
another Horcrux. One more down,
two more to go.

THE CUP

Dumbledore nodded in approval at the big, white

dressing around Moody’s head, covering the hole he
now had on his eye. He could smell the healing
paste with lavender-oil added later that Anne put to
keep him sleeping and to calm him down.

“You did a good job,” he commented.

Madame Pomfrey glared at Dumbledore, wanting

him to get out of her light as she worked on lifting
the dressing and peeking under it, but she had to
admit that Anne had, indeed, done a good job.

“This paste?” Madame asked.

“I made it. Used it on myself before, so I knew it

was safe,” Anne said. “They said he was able to
speak and was quite conscious before passing out,
he was aware of his surroundings, I mean. Is there
any way to see if there’s brain damage before he
wakes up? I did my best to be gentle while taking it
out and everybody helped to keep him still, but I
fear he might have moved his head a bit.”

“No, my dear,” Pomfrey said. “We need him awake

to make tests.”

“I see,” Anne said, nodding.

“But you did a great job,” she insisted back when

Anne seemed to look a bit disappointed. “I don’t
think I would’ve done it any better, especially at
your age. Now, all he needs is to wake up and then
we can continue healing him.”

Anne blinked.

“We?”

“We,” Madame Pomfrey said, nodding.

Dumbledore looked at the quite younger woman on

her knees beside him, taking care of a man she
hated with great worry. Usually, he would’ve
insisted that she needed to ask for permission
before offering something almost as food as
internship (though informal), but there was no one
in his mind that would deal with the pressure and
the wounds that a war would bring other than
Anne. He even wondered if she had any training
from before – that dressing was quite good; and
then he remembered the way she flinched away
from him when he tried taking care of her wound
on his office in the day she got there. Of course,
she had training… she trained on herself.

Lily Evans offered to stay on the parlour with

Moody while the meeting was happening on the
dining room. She wasn’t officially part of the Order,
much to James’ dismay, so she needed to be away
from some information, though everybody knew
she would find it out at one point or the other.

James brought the shirt he had on his hands to

Frank, who was quick to get rid of the bloody shirt
by throwing it on her fire and, shirtless and
shaking, sniffling from crying before putting on the
white t-shirt.

“Now, we’re just waiting on the Potters and Remus

Lupin,” Dumbledore said. “They are slightly late.”

“By three minutes,” Anne grumbled, looking away

from Moody and up at Dumbledore, finally glaring
at him. Dumbledore almost felt relieved that this
part of the girl was still there. “They’ll be here,
Sirius, stop pacing around the room.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I’ll help you by tying you down on a chair, boy,”

grumbled a hoarse voice. “My head hurts and your
footsteps echo.”

Everybody looked down once more.

Alastor Moody had his one left eye open only by a

slit, almost as if trying to glare at Anne, who was
standing right above his vision-area, but it didn’t
have the effect he had expected. He knew the girl
didn’t like him, so he didn’t expect a relieved sigh
and the brightest smile he had seen her wearing.
His head was pounding in pain and he felt like he
would pass out once more if he as much as tried to
move a finger from the comfortable sofa he was
lying in – expensive, he thought for a moment, and
he was ruining it by tainting it with blood.

“Alastor Moody! What happened to you, you fool!”

Madame Pomfrey said, all her professionalism
disappearing from her body. They had argued a lot
when in school, but that didn’t mean she wanted
him dead. “To lose an eye – to be stabbed on the
eye! I know your job is difficult and dangerous, but
you must be more careful before you lose a limb.”

Anne almost laughed at the image of Moody with

his wooden leg in the back of her mind.

“Quiet, woman, before my head explodes,” he

complained.

Without hesitation, Madame Pomfrey reached into

the pocket of her apron and took a small vial of
baby-blue liquid. Anti-Split-Cranium, a popular
headache medicine. She made sure he drank the
whole vial before sighing and getting up.

“Anything hurts besides your head? Can you move

anything?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to try,” Moody

admitted.

Anne went near his feet and, with some care, she
tickled the bottom of his feet. In reaction, his whole
leg moved and he grunted in pain, not daring to
raise his head to see what had happened, though
he did grumble for the person to stop touching him.

“Spine seems alright,” Anne said. “His fall was hard

enough for us to be worried, according to Frank.”

“The problem is not spinal. It might be

neurological,” Madame Pomfrey said. “His wound
needs to be better before we do more than see if
he’s logical, which, clearly, he is. The motor-skills
will be tested later,” she turned to Dumbledore. “If
I could, I’d like to take Moody with me to Hogwarts
once the meeting is over.”

Dumbledore nodded. Moody wouldn’t be allowed to

go to Saint Mungus that way; they would ask too
many questions and Madame Pomfrey just didn’t
care enough about ‘why’ and more about ‘how’ and
only when necessary. She was the safest option
and one of the best Healers in the UK.

“You can tell me the potions he will have to drink. I

can start a batch right away,” said Lily, excited to
have something to do while the meeting occurred.

“Sure and –”

Everything stopped when the flames went green

and Mia and Monty Potter walked into their own
home, completely ignorant to the awful night those
people in there had. Remus Lupin walked in after
them.

While Mia seemed as composed as ever and Monty

looked nothing but a bit sleep-deprived, Remus
looked seconds away from dying somehow – the
worst hangover he had in years, his face insisted to
say, though he tried to look as normal as he could
without folding himself in two and just sleeping on
the carpet of the parlour.

“I’ll get more Sober-Up Potion,” James announced,

eager to leave the room.

Sirius stumbled forward and threw himself in

Remus’ arms.

The silence was heavy on the dining room.

While the older Potters evening had been perfectly

common, everybody’s nights had been shitty. With
Anne meeting and talking to Voldemort for time
enough to make everybody uncomfortable, even
though they weren’t even in the room with her
when it all happened; Sirius and James makes
rounds around the house and the outskirts of the
wards and deciding that there was no one around,
just their minds playing tricks; Moody losing an
eye, Alice being traumatised, Emmeline still crying
and Frank still shaking hours after the incident;
finally, there was Remus’ horrid tale.

Apparently, Guard wasn’t as much of a light-weight

as he had thought and he had to keep on filling the
man’s cup time and time again when he wasn’t
looking, but also had to shove down drinks he
hated down his own throat, gagging and gasping
while the Guard laughed and cheering him on. It
was pathetic at the start and everybody there
seemed to think it was nothing when someone had
just lost something as important as an eye – but
then it got worse. When he got to the Guard’s flat,
he had a werewolf’s head on the wall – ‘killed it,’ he
had said as Remus looked at it in shock, ‘a pup,
too, very rare’. All as if he had not realised that he
had killed a child.

From then on, the night had gone from bad to

worse.

Guard had insisted they drank more and Remus,

obedient, did so to the point where he was starting
to get so dizzy that he had to go to the bathroom
and force himself to throw up, trying to sober up
once more. When the man went to the bathroom
after it, announcing way too loudly that he needed
to take a piss, then Remus hesitated to put on
something on the cup – he felt wards around the
cup, so he put it on his own cup and then swapped
it before he came back.

To make the situation even more horrible, the man

had put something on his own drink: a potion for…
longer performance.

While the man slept, unconscious on the floor he

had fallen on and been left there for hours before
Remus could master the energy to get up and put
him on the bed, Remus had to deal with the worst
pain on his private parts he could’ve imagined. He
undressed the man and left him on his bed, leaving
a small ‘present’ behind (a neckerchief that didn’t
even belong to him and that he would never use in
normal situations, but just to imply something
more had happened between them).

In any other situation, it would’ve been funny, but

not that one. Remus had been left vulnerable in a
distracted state on a very horrid man’s flat; he was
terrified as he prayed for hours for the sun to come
up and for him to leave already.

Once it was time, he wrote a note for the man that

had not woken up yet and disappeared, running to
the comforting arms of Mia Potter and the
protecting shield of Fleatmont Potter’s body. And
there he was, retelling the traumatic tale (though
cutting a part or two out, not wanting his boyfriend
to know that he had to kiss the man several times
to slow him down on his passion).

“So this is the meeting,” Dumbledore said, deciding

that it had been enough. “You can leave the
Horcrux to me now and –”

“Absolutely not,” Anne cut him off.

Once more Dumbledore had to hold back an

annoyed sigh.

“And why ever not, dear girl?” he asked.

“Why don’t we destroy it here and now?” Anne

offered. “I think it would be very… educative for the
people in the Order to know how a Horcrux really is
and how it behaves, they must know how it fights
back, even when it looks ever so harmless.”

“It doesn’t feel harmless,” Frank whispered.

Heavy silence once more.

Anybody on that table could agree. The Horcrux

was still inside the box, even if the box was on the
table, but everybody seemed to feel the dark waves
of power coming out of it. It was as if the objects in
there were angry for being taken away from their
original spots, as if challenging them to do anything
other than tremble in fear of it.

But Anne swallowed down her fear, reminding

herself that people had done it before. Ron had
stabbed that bloody cup so hard that the metal
broke in half. She had killed more than a Horcrux
herself, she knew herself to be capable of it.

So someone that didn’t seem to believe in their

own potential needed to do that.

“Once upon a time, I met a little boy,” Anne said,

still sitting on the chair, eyes stuck on the closed
box. “He was amazingly kind and gentle, though a
bit naïve and innocent, hidden away in shyness, to
blind to see his own full potential even when great
professors thought he could be so much more than
what he was becoming. People were mean to him
since he couldn’t seem to fight back – so my
brother stepped in, deciding that I reminded him
enough of the boy for him to be worthy of
friendship. He was so brave in such a heart-
breaking way. He still had trouble standing up for
himself, but I saw him standing up for others,” she
looked up, noticing everybody on the table was
looking at her. “First, it was for his own frog. Then,
it was against his friends, for the school rules. Then
it was for a friend that even more bullied than him
for being odd, dear Luna fell hopelessly in love for
him so quickly that I couldn’t help but decide that it
was the most amazing love story I had ever seen.
Then, it was for those who couldn’t stand up for
themselves… And finally, only then, he stood up for
himself, because he understood that nobody would
do it for him – though he was kind, it took him a lot
of years to understand that not everybody who was
kind was brave as well.”

Neville. She missed his smiles and his careful

gentleness. He would sit with her on the Library
sometimes.

“Where are you going with this?” Sirius asked,

narrowing his eyes.

“The scariest day of my life when nothing happened

to me was when I saw him crying,” she admitted.
“He had been scared a professor we had and ended
up being fronted to deal with a Boggart that turned
into such professor. At first, it was funny, he
dressed the man in his grandmother’s clothes, but
then once he was alone with me, things… changed.
He had said that he stood there, helpless, even if
he knew it wasn’t real and asked me to go through
the spells with him again and again,” she took a
pause, blinking away tears. “When he saw a
Boggart scaring a first-year, he found out he had
the best Riddikulus of the class, but that didn’t
make him stop shaking.”

Anne took a deep breath, getting up from the chair

and going into the kitchen quickly. She grabbed the
goblin-made dagger Regulus had borrowed her and
walked back, feeling the smell of the Basilisk
Venom.

“Anne?” Mia started, confused in her own

hesitation.

“I believe that, even shaking, Frank Longbottom

should do us the honour of breaking something that
almost took his friend’s life. Stand up for your
friend, Frank. Fight back,” Anne said.

Frank looked at Dumbledore, almost as if

wondering if he was allowed to do so.

Dumbledore’s eyes weren’t even at the man, they

were over Anne, narrowing in suspicion of her
intentions. He didn’t seem to have liked the way he
had insisted Frank to destroy such an important
thing, much like he didn’t like when Anne would
destroy Horcruxes by herself as well.

Anne forced the dagger on Frank’s hand.

“This will do?” he asked.

“Yes. Goblin-made, sucks in the Basilik venom,”

she explained.

“We better destroy it outside,” Sirius said. “You said

Horcruxes fight back.”

“They do, and the Cup was one of the only ones
that actually fight back physically,” Anne said.
“That’s why Sirius is saying that we should go
outside.”

“We can go to the Stream,” James said.

In the back of the house, there was a small trail

that James had taken Anne in her very first day
there, he said they were going to the Stream; it
was the place where he liked the most of the Potter
Lands, it was where he learned of Sirius’ abuse and
the place where Remus admitted that, though he
had argued and scolded, het thought that it was
sweet that his friends had gone through so much to
go through his transformations with him, it was
where Peter admitted his sister had left him after
keeping it a secret for a year and taking care of his
mother alone. It was the place he had shared his
first spirits with his friends and where he threw up
after the first sip.

He hated the idea of tainting his place with it. But it

seemed fitting that something as important as
witnessing the destruction of one of the last
Horcruxes left in the world would be in the place
where he spent his childhood playing – that was the
very moment where his childhood was finally over,
he decided, that was the moment where he would
start fighting for real for a war that was about to
start and, then, he would fight for the child that
would come to the world soon and he would fight
for the daughter standing beside him, urging the
man that once tutored him in Astronomy to get the
dagger and stab the bloody thing at once.

“We can do that,” agreed Monty.

“Are you sure, dear?” Mia said. She knew how

intimate that place was to him.

“Yeah,” James said. “It’s safe.”

Or at least he felt like it was safe and so did Sirius

and, if he knew his friend well enough, so did
Remus. It would be a hard scene, not just for them,
but for Frank as well. The closest thing to
preparation and comfort he would dare to give that
man was to take him to his own favourite place.

In ten minutes time, James was leading the way

with Monty right beside him, Anne and Sirius beside
Frank. Remus had decided to stay behind, too tired
and too disgusted to do anything other than want
to take a shower. Mia stayed with him, running him
a good bath and then running to prepare a bath to
Emmeline who threw up on her sweater after he
heard Moody screaming in pain when Madame
Pomfrey changed his dressing. Alice was walking
right behind Frank, almost as if worried he would
run away. Dumbledore was the last on the life,
keeping up surprisingly well to someone his age.

In ten more minutes, they were at the edge of the

property.

Monty put the ground as he used a quick spell to

make the surroundings a bit more illuminated. It
was a few fairylights were around them and,
nearby, just behind a few trees, the stream
followed its course, unbothered by the Dark Energy
that came out as soon as the box was opened.

Anne leaned down and took the Cup.

“Don’t touch it with your skin!” Sirius said, scolding

her.

“It won’t hurt me,” she said putting it on the

ground. “I have no intention on destroying it. I
leave that for Frank.”

Frank shivered.

The group took a step back, leaving Frank almost

inside a messy circle they had made around him.

Alice held Anne’s hand, now almost as if she was

the one trying to keep herself from running away.

Frank took a deep breath.

“Just stab it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dumbledore said. “Something as powerful as

this is easily destroyed,” it was as if he was talking
to himself for a moment before he looked up at
Longbottom once more. “Prepare yourself mentally,
Mister Longbottom, ground yourself.”

Frank looked around, mentally reciting the name of

the people around him and repeating Alice’s several
times. He made sure he knew every single person
out there with him care for him and didn’t want him
dead. He made sure to repeat to himself a few
times that Emmeline and Alastor were inside the
house, warm and safe from harm, perhaps even
safer than he was at that moment.

And then he took the dagger with both hands as he

kneeled down on the ground. He took a deep
breath, intention clear.

The Cup made a move, shaking by itself on the

ground.

He looked back at Anne, who glared at the Cup,

willing it to fight already and to stop letting the
tension grow.

Frank felt it before he could see anything wrong. It

was a deep feeling of dread and he most painful,
primary feeling of hurt and grief soaking into his
blood and making his mind and body heavy. He felt
lethargic. The whole world around him was fighting
and he was moving ever so slow and…

Hands pulled his shoulder and a scream made him

awake.

The tree that had been falling towards him, ready

to squash him had been stopped mid-way by a
movement of Dumbledore’s wand as his wide eyes
made sure to tell everybody that he had not been
expecting for it at all. Sirius Black had pulled him
out of the way for reassurance and Alice had been
the one to scream. Frank only then noticed he had
dropped the dagger and it lied beside the Cup,
harmless, but Cup was agitated now – awake,
being the best word to describe it.

Another tree made a loud cracking sound, but as

Monty turned to make sure it wouldn’t fall, the
whole ground underneath their feet seemed to
shake.

Alice screamed once more, falling to her knees and

holding onto the grass. Anne stumbled forwards,
towards the dagger and the Cup, almost falling to
her face as she did so. Sirius held Frank back as
Dumbledore’s control of the tree disappeared and it
fell – James yelled, Anne grabbed the Cup and
rolled away from the way, grabbing the dagger, but
it slipped from her. Sirius had to jump out of the
way of the poisoned blade.

Anne yelped, the Cup trembling so much in her

hand with the shaking of the earth beneath that it
slipped from her grasp as well. She jumped
forward, trying to get it under control.

“Anne!” Monty screamed once he noticed the more

and more violent shaking of the Cup.

Too late. It hit Anne square on the safe and she

grunted, face jerking back in pain – a broken nose
by the way it started to bleed almost immediately.

“Anne! Annie!” James yelled.

He lunged forward as well, dagger in hand.

Anne, through her pain, held the Cup down and

prayed that her father didn’t stab her on accident.
One stab and she was dead, unless Fawkes got
there very fast and agreed to cry on her, which she
couldn’t be sure it would. The Cup turned to attack
her even more. The deep feeling inside of her chest
seemed to tear her asunder as she wailed in pain –
she let go of it, ready to jump away from it.

But James had already buried the dagger on the

big, red stone on the side of the Cup and it
squealed.

The noise was horrible. Monty almost fell to his

knees, covering his ears, but managed to keep
stumbling towards his children and Anne, making
sure they were alright. Dumbledore had fallen on
his arse, and Alice had crawled to him, seeking
protection, his arms were around the shaking
woman.

James Potter had just killed a part of Voldemort.

Anne sighed once the world stopped spinning and

shaking so violently, falling to her back and lying
there, seeing the top of the trees moving with the
breeze passing as if nothing important had been
happening.

She had heard that her parents had fought

Voldemort three times before they were killed –
James had just had his first encounter.

Chapter 101: Chapter One

Hundred -
Summary:
SPECIAL CHAPTER!

WATERMELON

TW: EXPLICIT SMUT AND VERY, VERY LONG

CHAPTER

Regulus Black crossed the wards of the Potter

Lands and smiled at himself as he saw the Potter
Manor and waited a few steps from the front door,
not even daring to knock. He hadn’t warned Anne
he was coming, but he was sure that she would like
the surprise, so he just shoved his hands on his
pockets and waited one of the people inside to
come out once they noticed he wards had been
crossed – he had been allowed access, which meant
he could go through, but it would still warn the
owners of the house of his presence.

It was no surprise that the person that opened the

door was Mia Potter, smiling brightly at him once
she saw him well.

“Hello, darling. Happy birthday!” she said.

“Hello, Lady – Hello Mia,” he corrected himself

quickly. Mia smiled at him and nodded, glad for his
sweet voice saying her name, not her title. “Thank
you so much, ma’am.”

“Did you have a good party?” she asked.

She took a step to the side, opening the door

further and allowing him inside the house. He
walked in, smiling a bit at her as he turned around
to watch her closing the door. He found it curious
that she locked it, but he didn’t ask any questions.

“It was a party, but that’s all I can say,” he said. “It
was hell.”

“Anne did say so,” Mia said, nodding. “Are you

hungry?”

“Just had lunch, ma’am, but thank you,” he said. “I

didn’t tell Anne that I was coming, but do you think
she would like to see me?”

Mia nodded.

“She’s in a good mood today, so surely she will be

happy to see her friend,” she said. She raised her
eyebrows. “Why don’t you go up to her room and I
will send you lunch up there once it’s ready and you
two can share since she doesn’t seem to have much
space left on her stomach. She spent the day
eating chocolate.”

Regulus understood a lot of things at once.

One) The Potters had visitors inside the house that

certainly didn’t know of his and Anne’s relationship
by the way Mia seemed to be coding most of her
sentences carefully to not be too obvious on the
nature of their ‘friendship’. Two) The Horcrux had
been destructed, which meant the mission that had
been happening during his birthday had been a
success and that was why Anne was in such a good
mood. Three) She had been present on the
Horcrux’s destruction, otherwise she wouldn’t be
indulging on chocolate during the whole day as Mia
had said she had been doing; it must have been a
difficult situation by the way Mia looked away soon
after his eyes filled with understanding and he
nodded, not daring to speak.

“I’ll do just that, ma’am,” he said.

Mia nodded.

As he started going up the stairs, Mia cleaned her

throat once more. He came down once she called
him to get closer, she had to look up since he was
taller than her, but did whisper to him.

“Anne’s batch of the potion will be ready only

tomorrow, so do use the charm,” she said.

Regulus’ face became so red that he was almost

sure that it was what caused him to be slightly
light-headed.

“Will do,” he said, giving an awkward smile.

He used the opportunity to run up the stairs, not

wanting to go further in that conversation,
especially with the grandmother of the girl he had
been seeing. Fortunately, the others on the floor
didn’t seem to be awake just yet, so he knocked on
the door without much problem.

“Yeah?” someone said from inside.

He frowned. A male voice.

He didn’t know what to do, so he didn’t say

anything, he just waited.

The door was opened and he was face-to-face with

James Potter.

“Oh,” Regulus said. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” James answered. “Happy

birthday, by the way.”

“Thank you,” he answered, quite surprised.

James stepped to the side, allowing him inside the

room and closing the door behind him to not let
anyone see or hear them.

“Anne is in the shower. Just woke up from a

nightmare, I heard the screaming – her silencing
wards broke in the middle of the night because of
her accidental magic, so I came to wake her up. I
redone some of the wards, but I’m not as good in
them as she is, so…” he explained. “She’ll be out
soon, I expect.” Before Regulus could answer,
James yawned and quickly put his hand over his
mouth to cover it. He sighed once he was done and
turned his teary eyes to Regulus with curiosity.
“What are you doing here, anyways? Anne didn’t
mention you’d come over.”

“We didn’t talk about it, your mother let me in,” he

explained. “I came to give her a small surprise.
Thank her and apologize to her for yesterday and,
most of all, see if everything went alright last night.
Apparently, it did.”

James shuddered and shivered at the memory.

“I destroyed it,” he said, looking down at his feet.

Regulus eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Oh?” he said.

“It was supposed to be Frank Longbottom and –”

“The last Keeper of the Gryffindor team?” Regulus

asked, surprised.

“You remember him! Yes, him!” James said, raising

his eyebrows as much. “But a lot of things
happened and it ended up being me. The dagger
had great grip, too, by the way, thank you about it
as well.”

“Sure, it’s fine,” Regulus dismissed. “Are you

feeling alright?”

James shrugged.

“I’ve been better, but I’ve been worse as well,” he

said. “At least everybody is alright.”

Regulus nodded.

“I must say already. Anne won’t be going down for

lunch,” he said. James narrowed his eyes,
assuming several things at once. “Mia said you
have visitors, so I won’t be going down. I suppose
she will send your house-elf up with food for Anne,
so think up of an excuse to give to them.”

“Yeah, Moody’s here, and the Longbottoms and Em

Vance slept over as well,” explained James, though
he wasn’t sure why; Regulus didn’t need to know,
but it was something about the way he looked at
him that made him tell everything.

“I see…”

Regulus shoved his hands in his pockets and looked

around the room, uncomfortable with the awkward
silence that came soon after.

“Regulus?” James called out. He looked at the man

once more. “Anne is a bit… jumpy. I don’t know
why because the Horcrux seemed to fight mostly
physically, so it might not be a good idea to… touch
her too much, so if that’s what you’re looking for –”

“I love her,” Regulus blurted out. “If that’s what

you’re fishing for. I love her. I care about her. I’m
empathetic to what she went through and to what
she will go through,” he added as James blushed in
embarrassment. “Sex isn’t what I’m constantly
looking for in her and, had it been, I had other
options that are a lot easier to deal with. And I’m
not saying Anne is hard to deal with, I’m saying
that her situation is complicated and it shows in her
surroundings.”

Surely talking explicitly and with the word ‘sex’ in

the sentence had made James uncomfortable, but
he had been a grown-up enough to just nod as he
thought of something decently kind to say in
return. He knew that, although Regulus was quite
less funny and youthful than Sirius, he was still a
good bloke and was clearly trying to create a
friendly situation between the two.

“I don’t like the idea of my daughter with anyone,

but if it had to be someone, I’m glad it’s you,”
James admitted.

Though it wasn’t the most oblivious blessing

Regulus had expected from him, it was a good
enough one to make him smile a bit.

“Believe me, it’s been a long time and I’m still

getting used to the idea that she’s your daughter,”
he said back to him.

James chuckled and Regulus’ smile grew a bit in

surprise as his thoughts made him happier than he
had been when he had gotten there. Anne and
James had a similar chuckle; it came from the
chest.

They had never been close, though they grew up

with a lot of contact between the two.

From the very first year, Sirius had been infatuated

with the friends he made at Hogwarts and Regulus
was constantly angry in his jealousy and envy,
refusing to as much as talk to them in a manner
that was not condescending and reminding of his
own parents and cousins for the first few years.
Though Remus insisted on being polite and Peter
refused to talk at all to him, James had always
been – by far – the kindest. A trait of personality
shared by him and his daughter, clearly. James had
been kind enough to understand that he didn’t want
to be seen talking to him once he had been sorted
into Slytherin (for his own survival’s sake) and
wrote a letter, giving himself the trouble of using a
school owl to send it to Regulus to ask if he needed
anything since Sirius was too mad to say anything
other than ‘of course, Slytherin’.

There were other situations. Remus pretended not

to see things so not to give him a deserving
detention. Peter would nod in acknowledgment to
him in the corridors as they walked across each
other. James would smile if their eyes met.

And then Anne came and everything that he had

been taking from granted hit him in the face. The
kindness of his brother’s friends, the willingness of
bettering himself of his own best friend, the very
own misguided notion of what was deserving of
love inside of him and that made him look in the
mirror and hate the person looking back.

It was the silent kindness of those people that kept

him alive until his actual life came to him to be
lived; and that life had a simple and strong name:
‘Anne’. She truly deserved the name. ‘Favoured’,
‘Graceful’; quite the meaning for quite the girl.

“I’m trying to take care of her as well as I can,”

Regulus admitted suddenly.

“And I cannot be more grateful for that. There are

things that she doesn’t let me see, things she
doesn’t let herself put to light,” James said. He
raised his eyebrows in suggestion. “Things that you
are more familiar than me.”

“Vernon deserved every punch she threw his way,”

Regulus said firmly.

“As you brought forth once in your fourth year, I do

love violence, so I cannot disagree,” James teased.

Regulus chuckled, crossing his arms in front of his

body.

Fourth-year Regulus would never believe where he

was and the sort of conversation that he was
having with the boy that had stolen his brother
from him.

The bathroom adjacent to the bedroom had its door

opened and Anne walked out in fresh clothes and
froze in the doorway before throwing her sweaty
pyjamas on the small box where all the dirty
clothes were put for Coco to come get at four in the
afternoon, as she usually did. She clearly had not
been expecting James to still be there, but most
clearly she had not intended for anyone other than
him to be in the bedroom by the way she blushed.

Her bedroom was a mess, but Regulus didn’t mind,

he just smiled at her.

“Hi,” she said. “Is everything alright? You two

seem… chummy.”

“Just talking,” James said. “Feeling better?”

“Yeah,” she said, blush slowly disappearing. “I’m

not trying to be rude, love, but what are you doing
here and how did you get in?”

Regulus smiled.

“Your grandmother let me in and I just wanted to

see you, see if everything was alright yesterday,
but James just told me it went… somewhat
smoothly. And by that, I mean that it went better
than the Diary situation,” Regulus said. At least,
apparently, she hadn’t gone out of their Earth to
flee to her own mind for several minutes, otherwise
James would have commented about it with him.

“Yeah, that hasn’t happened much ever since,” she

said. “It went a lot better, just almost got crushed
by a tree.”

“Oh, a Saturday night to you, then,” he teased.

“Clearly,” she said back, this time smiling a bit.

James shifted his weight of leg and cleaned his

throat uncomfortably awkward while standing near
the doorway of the bedroom door. He looked at the
door before looking between the two lovers, who
were clearly with space between them because he
was present.

“I’ll leave you two at it,” he said gently before

opening the door. “It was a good talk, Regulus, we
should do that more often.”

“Sure,” he said back. “We’ll go out for drinks once

all of this is over and dealt with.”

“At least then you’ll be of drinking age,” James

teased once more before closing the door.

Regulus laughed before turned to Anne once more

to see her with her eyebrows raised in clear
questioning.

“What?” he asked. She shook her head, amused as

she smiled. “Really, what?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she dismissed, but she was still

smiling a bit at him. “I do feel like I should be
jealous, but I can’t because it was an adorable
scene.”

“Oh, please, Anne, be reasonable. Your father’s

straight,” he started. She looked at him, offended
that he hadn’t spoken about her in first place.
“Besides, you’re beautiful and I love you and you’re
everything I ever wanted in my life… Better?” he
offered.

“A bit,” she teased.

“I do like your father, though, a lot better now that

he’s your father and not my brother’s best friend,”
he said.

Anne laughed and walked across the room to stand

right in front of him, got on her tip-toes and kissed
him on the mouth with a quick, chaste kiss. Slowly,
scared of spooking her away, he put his hands on
her waist. She didn’t pull away from him, she
actually deepened the kiss.

Under his hands, through the shirt, her body was

burning hot.

He pulled back first.

“Anne, James said you had a nightmare and –” he

started.

“With Harry,” she said. She wanted to make sure

he knew it had nothing to do with whatever was
inside the locked bathroom door in the back of her
mind, she wanted to make sure that he knew that
there was nothing that would pull away from him
and keep her there when she was that happy and
feeling so much lighter after another Horcrux being
gone – there were just two and the man himself to
go. “I want you.” There was no denial in him that
he wanted her back, but he still hesitated. “We
don’t need to do anything other than cuddle if you
don’t want to, Little Prince, you know that.”

“Princess, of course, I want you. There’s not a

doubt in my mind that I want you and not a
moment in sight where I want anyone other than
you,” he insisted. “But are you sure?” she nodded.
“Words.”

She loved when he said that.

“I’m sure,” she said.

“Then so am I,” he said. He took her waist firmly in

his hands and kissed her deeper. His hand cupped
the side of her face, thumb gently caressing her
temple. “When I came in, your grandmother made
sure to tell me that you’re off the Potion today,” he
commented between kissed, he could feel the heat
of another wave of blushing coming to her cheeks.
“We can just do other stuff if you don’t feel
comfortable with the Charm.”

“I never used it,” she admitted. “I know how to do

it, though. Madame Pomfrey taught me and the
Misses Weasley insisted on it as well.”

“Neither did I, but I was forced to practice quite a

few times,” he said. “They’re good, but I’ll pull out
as well, to lower the chances.”

Anne nodded. She trusted Regulus’ charm-skills

enough and she was trusting that he had self-
control enough to pull out at the right moment.

“Go lock the door, then, Little Prince,” she said,

smiling.

Regulus was quick to let go of her, go to the door

and manually lock the door, as if making sure there
would be no mistakes. He warded the door against
magical unlocking-charms and turned back to Anne,
now surprisingly near of him.

He didn’t see it coming, but he was pressed against

the door by her hands, his back hitting the
doorknob awkwardly. He didn’t mind it, he just
leaned slightly down to kiss her and allowed her to
deepen the kiss once she was ready. Her arms
went around his neck, bringing him down to her
even more, her chest against his with enthusiasm.

His back ached.

“We might need to move. There’s only so much a

silencing ward can do with us right against the
door, moving it on its jambs,” he groaned against
her lips.

Before pulling away, she did bite his lower lip and
brought it to herself before letting go of him.

As he made sure the door was locked once more

(not wanting another accident to happen, especially
when there were guests in the house), he watched
her pull her shirt over her head to reveal her
braless upper-body – he groaned at the sight,
feeling the familiar feeling of blood rushing from
one head to the other. Anne had such power over
him that it made him feel dizzy, but never weak.
She didn’t look away from him as she unbuttoned
the side of her skirt and allowed it to pool at her
feet, revealing the unsexy, beige-coloured high-leg
brief knickers. He smiled fondly at the sight; she
really hadn’t expected visitors.

“Don’t laugh,” she said, glaring at him jokingly.

“I’m not laughing. I find this endearing,” he said.

“Besides, you won’t be wearing it for much longer.”

She shivered at his words; he could see the hair on

her body stand as her breath seemed to escape her
lungs. But there was another moment that made
her lock her breath into her chest: it was when
Regulus stepped just a few centimetres away from
her, took off his shoes and socks and then kneeled
down.

Regulus Black, the Heir of the House of Black,

kneeled down in front of Anne Potter and held her
hips with great care, caressing the sides of her
body before hooking his fingers of her knickers and
pulling down.

She made a small moan and he smirked.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” she said to him.

“Says you,” Regulus answered. “Anne, you’re the

goddess I worship every night, which I pray to
before going to sleep. You hold my life and my
death.”

And with that, he leaned in and kissed the mount

between her legs. His tongue reached out, licking
he slit as she stood in front of him. Her legs parted
even more and her hands went to rest on his
shoulders to keep herself standing when her knees
seemed to start to shake as she gasped, her mouth
falling open in pleasure. If she hadn’t been wet
before, she was at that moment.

It was a mixture of the wonderful feeling of his

tongue caressing her most sensitive place and the
sight of the man she loved that seemed to adore
her and worship her on his knees in front of her.
She knew, if she asked, he would do anything for
her – the power she felt left her drunk. Nobody else
could make her feel like this, no matter how they
tried.

But as soon as his teeth grazed ever so lightly over

her clit, her knees stopped working and she
moaned loudly. He held her up and smirked up at
her, leading her to the bedroom bench at the end
of her bed and helped her sit on it. He raised her
left leg and put it over his shoulder as he sat,
completely dressed, on the floor.

He leaned for air for just a moment and then he

drowned on her taste of passion and her smell of
jasmine. It was so easy to forget of the world
outside when he was like this, lost in her, that,
when it was all over, he knew that he would end up
feeling guilty for being so happy and carefree while
others suffered. He sucked on her clit, refusing to
let his mind wander away from her – her loud moan
and the stuttered of her moving hips made him
come back to the moment.

“Merlin, you’re delicious,” he mumbled as he put

two fingers inside of her. And he glanced up to see
her holding onto her own breasts, head thrown
back and eyes rolling at the feeling of his breath on
her. “Come on, Princess. Be a good girl, cum for
me, please.”

It seems like the ‘good girl’ had done it for her.

With a loud scream of pleasure and exhaustion,
Anne’s hips froze before her body shook. He felt the
gush of liquid soaking his fingers and coating part
of his hand and face as he licked her clean. She
moaned several times as she came out of her high.

“Holy shit. Holy fuck, Regulus. Little Prince, my

Little Prince,” she was saying, eyes closed, body
coated in a thin layer of sweat.

He adored to watch her in her post-orgasmic slow

down. She looked positively divine with her chest
going up and down quickly as she gathered her wits
back. Her leg was still over his shoulder, though it
was just her feet that kept it there since her legs
didn’t have much strength left. She had thrown
herself back and her back and head were resting on
the bed. Her eyes were slowly opening to look at
him.

Those slow eyes, inviting him in had him standing

in a second.

“Help to get on the bed?” he offered.

“Yes, please,” she said, sweetly.

Regulus pulled her legs a bit, making her yelp as

she slipped from the bed. He took her arms and put
it around his neck as he put a knee on the bench,
putting an arm under her knees and the other
around her back. She made a small giggling noise
mid-yelp as he raised from his position, carrying
her and insisting on a small spin.

“You’re going to drop me!” she warned.

“You know I won’t,” he laughed.

He pretended he would, though, making her yelp

once more and hold on tighter. She kissed his jaw
and neck, peppering him with several of them. He
did drop her this time, but on the middle of the
bed. She looked at him, opening her arms as if
expecting him to hug her – he did. He dropped
himself to stay closer to her, but not letting his
weight crush her as he settled between her legs
and above her.

“Want to stay on top again?” he asked, kissing her

neck and the small place where her shoulder and
neck met before a small lick right under her ear.
She giggled. “Or are your legs still shaking.”

“Don’t flatter yourself too much,” she teased. “But

not today.”

“What do you want? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

“That’s so hot,” she admitted on his ear.

He leaned back to kiss her lips in a quick peck.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she answered. She raised her

eyebrows. “But if you don’t take those clothes off,
I’m kicking you off of me.” He chuckled, leaning
back and siting on his ankles and unbuttoning his
blouse. “Only you to wear silk at moments such as
these without even meaning to have sex with me.”

“I always mean to have sex with you,” he teased.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m joking.”

“I know,” she laughed.

He threw the blouse to the side. His mother hated

that blouse, always saying that it made him look
too feminine, but he didn’t mind really – besides,
Anne found him attractive when he was wearing
silk.

He got to his knees to unbuckle his belt, threw it to

the side and then unbuttoned his trousers, quickly
– but ungracefully – he kicked off the trousers and
then leaned over her one more to kiss her. As they
were kissing, he took off his underpants, quickly
distracting her from what he thought to be an
embarrassing scene. He hated how ungraceful he
was on taking his clothes off, it was never meant to
be attractive, it was always something that he
needed to do, but there he was wishing that Anne
would only see him under the pink-lighted colour of
love and attraction.

“May I?” he asked.

She parted her legs even more, embracing his hips

with them.

“Please,” was her answer.

She didn’t have to ask again.

He led his arousal onto her opening and gave a

little tentative thrust, hoping for a good reaction
and as soon as she made a small moan of approval,
he entered the rest of his erection into her.

“Oh, God, yes!” she groaned on his ear.

“Anne, you’re amazing. You’re doing so great!” he

said on her ear.

They started moving in tandem. Her lips undulated

and his hips thrusted forwards – a dance that had
started to awkwardly now was being mastered by
the two people in that bed. Not too long ago, such
familiarity wouldn’t have been expected; she was a
survivor of one of the worst types of violence and
he had a fear of intimacy that was impossible to
compare, both messed up by their own families and
there they were, together, free and happy for once.

And as Anne made a loud scream, trying to muffle

it with her hand, Regulus decided he needed to tell
her what he had been hiding from her. And soon
after, he pulled out with a hiss, gaining a whimper
from her, and came on her belly, doing his best not
to crumble on top of her.

He almost passed out to her side, taking gasps of

air as breaths and turning to glance at the giggling
red-headed girl lying beside him.

“You enjoy being on top so much,” she said

amused.

“Well, so do you. And I was rather happy when you

were on top of me as well,” he said. “Give me just
a minute.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“You want to go again?” she asked.

“No! Merlin, Anne, I don’t think I will manage to do

so for a bit more, but you want me to, I can resolve
you,” he said, blushing. “Again.”

“I’m rather alright with how I am right now, thank

you very much,” she said.

“I just meant I’m going to get up and get

something to clean you up before it all dries,” he
said. “It must be uncomfortable.”

She nodded.

In a moment, Regulus was standing and walking

into her bathroom. She heard the sink running and
soon her came back with a wet towel, cleaning her
stomach and the middle of her legs gently, not
wanting to overwhelm her with the feelings after
two orgasms. Then he threw the towel on the
laundry-box and sat down on the bed, this time
with his back on the headboard; Anne quickly
moved from the feet of the bed to the headboard,
sitting beside him and letting her head rest against
his chest, enjoying to listen to how his heart was
still slightly out of rhythm. All because of their
activities, she thought, proudly.

“I love you so much,” Anne whispered on his chest.

“You have no idea how much I love you and all I

could do to keep you here, in my arms, forever,” he
said, holding her tighter. “But now that we’re done,
I feel very awkward with the knowledge your family
is right downstairs, probably eating lunch and –”

A loud ‘pop’ made him jump in bed and Anne

squealed, holding the sheets around her tighter as
Coco appeared at the foot of the bed, holding a tray
with a lot of food; enough food to make her little
arms shake with the weight she was carrying. She
put it on the bedroom bench with a small huff.

“Coco brought food for Miss Anne and Mister

Regulus,” Coco said. “Coco see nothing.”

She put her two small hands in front of her big eyes
and quickly took a step back.

“Thank you, Coco,” Anne said, voice wavering from

the startle.

“Yes, thank you,” Regulus followed suit.

Once Coco disappeared, Regulus let go of Anne

much to her dismay and leaned forward, almost
getting in all-four to bring the tray of food closer to
them. He put it on his lap over the sheets, and yet
he could feel the cold of the metal on his skin. He
hissed, but didn’t complain as he looked at the
contents of the tray – grapes (his favourite),
strawberries (Anne’s favourites) and some other
fruits, one getting his attention more than any
other, watermelon.

“Grandma surely wants you to stay in bed with me

for a little while longer,” joked Anne. “Watermelon,”
she scoffed with a little laugh.

“What’s wrong with watermelon?” he asked. “It’s

messy and I’m quite sure she knows we’re in bed,
but I don’t understand why it’s funny.”

“It’s an aphrodisiac fruit,” she answered. “It’s

known for making men want more sex… quicker,”
she kissed his neck. “I think she’s stalling us so
everybody leaves until you’re free to walk around.
Do you think that’s her way of keeping us busy?”

Regulus laughed as she reached and ate a slice of

watermelon herself, watching the juice run down
her chin to her neck. He leaned in and licked the
juice before licking her lips, moaning with the
delight of taste mixed with her skin.

He kissed her lips once more, but leaned back

before it could go much further than kisses. She
leaned towards him, but he chuckled and shook his
head, insisting that they eat first. Which they did,
allowing themselves a few more moments of
cuddling with the tray at the ground, beside
Regulus’ side of the bed.

He took a deep breath, his heart starting to race as

he made the decision.

“You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,”

Regulus said, looking up at the ceiling and taking a
deep breath. Anne looked up at him, confused.
“The pleasure you bring, the desire you bring out in
me, the control you have over me, and how much I
like it.”

“You’re so sucking up at me because I’m good in

bed,” she teased, rolling her eyes and giving him a
weak push on his shoulder.

“You’re absolutely great in bed, my love, but this

isn’t me sucking up to you because of it, but it’s
because I love you and because I’m in love with
you and I want a lot of things to happen in my life
from now on,” he said. There was something off
about his voice, Anne thought as she sat up,
turning to look at him completely, allowing the
sheet to slip off of her body, but he didn’t look at
her breasts, his eyes stuck on hers. “And because
we really need to talk. I love you as my girlfriend,
but, listen, Anne –”

“Are you breaking up with me?” she asked,

suddenly, cutting him off.

He blinked in shock.

“No,” he said. “Why would you think so? Anne,

Merlin, I’m trying to ask you to marry me. Why
would I break up with you?” he chuckled, the
surprise still choking him up. ”I don’t understand
your mind sometimes, Princess.”

He sounded so casual in tone that Anne almost

didn’t notice his hands shaking on his lap, but at
the end, she did and she breathed through her
nose to calm herself down. She watched his body
half-hidden by the sheets as he leaned against the
headboard of the bed.

Feeling watched as Anne didn’t answer, he slowly

got up and, naked, he walked to where his trousers
were and reached for them, looking for something
on the pockets and took a very small black box with
velvet-y outside, showing it to her.

“I went to my family vault the day before last to

get this,” he said. “It wasn’t in my plans to ask you
today, especially after yesterday and all that you’ve
been through with the Horcrux and with my
birthday party, but I’m finally seventeen and I
wanted to… well, you know, be an adult. I know it
doesn’t mean much to you, age, I mean, you’re
just year older, but a lot of years younger and it’s
confusing, but –” he stopped himself from rambling
further. “The thing is that I want more. I know I
want more. With the war, I think we’re going to
have a long engagement with time enough for you
to change your mind if you want to and –”

“Are you asking me because you think we’re going

to win or because you need a reason to wish we
win?” she asked, once more cutting him off.

He froze, trying not to feel hurt by her sharp words.

“Does it matter?” he asked, bitter. He swallowed

down his saliva. “Look, I understand your question
, but I can’t help but feel hurt by your undying trust
issues,” he admitted. “I’m asking you to marry me
because I love you and I want to share the rest of
my life with you. I want to share my everything
with you. Shouldn’t that be enough? Must I have
another reason but the obvious? Am I not Slytherin
enough for you?”

She blushed as she opened her mouth, trying to

think of something to say.

Regulus put on his underwear back on,

uncomfortable with the situation he was in while
being so vulnerable. Anne knew what she was
doing, however, when she got up from the bed and
shrugged on his shirt; she didn’t close it around
her, just allowed it to rest on her shoulders,
unbuttoned. Merlin, she looked great with his
clothes on.

“That’s not what I mean, Little Prince. I’m just

nervous, I’m sorry,” she said.

Though it took him a moment, he understood that

she, too, was as nervous as him. Perhaps even
more by the way her breath was quick and shallow.

“Anne –”

“You were saying you love me and then you said

that we needed to talk and said ‘but’ and I thought
you were going to break up with me, that’s a pretty
good reason to be nervous. And there’s that
‘looking for a wife’ sign around your neck that your
mother put there. I thought you got engaged and I
still hadn’t told what happened last month.”

“What happened last month?” he asked, frowning.

She blushed once more.

“You can’t be mad at me,” she warned. He didn’t

answer, just crossed his arms, looking at her. “Your
father found out about us at your graduation party
and called me out on it when we were alone at the
back garden. We talked for a while and he… well,
he gave me permission to marry you.”

His eyebrows raised as his eyes widened. It was

more than shock; it was plain astonishment of his
father’s decision and Anne’s nonchalant manners
over it all that was making him start to feel dizzy.

“He did what, now?” he asked.

“He gave me his blessing or something. Quite the

uncomfortable piece of magic, I must admit. The
magic was similar enough to yours for my body and
mind to feel assured, but my magic screamed that
was something slightly-off about it. It had a few
dark undertones even if it wasn’t a curse.”

His whole body was growing cold and he thought

that he might have to sit down soon enough.

“How do you know? How do you know it wasn’t a

curse that he placed on you?” he asked.

“Because I’ve been cursed enough times to know

how it feels, Regulus,” she answered, firmly.

He looked away from her, down at his feet,

knowing that she was right and hating himself for
not remembering that. Still, that didn’t make his
worry die down.

“He gave you permission and his magical blessing

for the marriage and you didn’t tell me.”

“Well, I didn’t think it was that important. You

didn’t plan of marrying me so soon, so I thought
that he was just talking non-sense, I mean, he was
quite sick already and even had a fever.”

“And my father, a known pureblood supremacist,

saying that he allowed you, a known half-blood, to
marry his son and Heir after he told that he knew
that you were in a relationship with me sounded
like nonsense to you?”

“At the time,” she admitted in a guilty whisper. “I

just noticed how serious he was when he used most
of the magic that he had left on giving me the
blessing, putting a bloody spell of me.”

“And you still didn’t tell me!”

“I was embarrassed!” she exclaimed. “I let a man

who openly hates me and my family put a fucking
spell of me, willingly. And in the very next month I
went and drank a shit-tasting bourbon directly from
the hands of the Dark Lord while I keep insisting
that I’m old enough, smart enough to end a war
while I keep making terrible decisions after horrible
ones. I’m sorry I didn’t run to you about being
stupid again. Is that what you want to hear from
me?”

He shook his head slowly as she finished talking.

“I’m upset you kept this from me, but I would

never blame you for what you had to do yesterday
on my birthday. He wanted to embarrass you,
that’s why he put a spell to make the alcohol
stronger; he didn’t expect you to actually swallow
it, he wanted you to spit it out, and he certainly
didn’t expect you to keep it down if had drunk it,”
he said, frowning at her. “I wouldn’t say you were
any more than just tipsy when you left if I hadn’t
known what Severus had to shove down your
throat after you threw everything back up.”

She blushed.

“Not my brightest moment,” she admitted.

“Could’ve been much worse.”

She knew he was right, of course. She hated how

right he was. Instead of a Sober-Up Potion being
shoved down her throat, it could’ve been a bezoar
had she been a bit more careless with her words
while talking to the sensitive and proud Tom Riddle.

“Anne, do you know what he did to you? My

father.”

“He gave me his blessing.”

“It was more than that. It means you’re safe,” he

said. “He just made sure nobody in my family could
harm you, they aren’t allow to have a say on our
relationship anymore and they can’t do anything
against you. He’s still Head of the House when he
blessed you, so he gave his own name and title to
protect you. You’re destined to be my wife and the
House is destined to go to you… when you’re ready,
if you’re ever ready, of course.” And thought the
mental image of Walburga bowing down to Anne
was amusing, Regulus forced himself to keep going.
“What did he want back?”

“Nothing I wasn’t willing to give. He wanted the

promise that I’d make you survive.”

“That bloody bas—”

“Nothing I hadn’t promised to myself before,” she

added.

He smiled at her, finding it sweet how determinate

she looked and sounded.

He took a deep breath, getting to his knees in front

of her.

“Anne, do you want to marry me? With or without

the blessing and the promises, is that your wish?”
he asked. “I won’t break up with you if you say
‘no’. I want to know the truth.”

Anne laughed at his nervousness.

“Of course I want to marry you!” she said.

It took him a bit more than a second to put the ring

on her finger and take off the shirt she had put on,
because no matter how much better she looked
with his clothes, she looked much better without
any at all when she was in his arms.

Anne still tasted like watermelon.

Chapter 102: Chapter One

Hundred and One -
Summary:
Mothers...

HOPE IS THE LAST TO LEAVE, OR SO THEY SAY

The ring made Anne squeal to herself even a whole

week after the day she had been proposed to.

Regulus had told her that he had been in doubts to

which ring to get. The first he got was the one his
mother had used, an Australian Opal ring being
hugged with a small and detailed silver-made
dragon, but he didn’t want anything to do with his
mother on ‘his fiancée’s finger’, besides the
meaning wasn’t all that great to a relationship –
releasing attachments and emotional amplification,
which isn’t great for a war. He also said that
diamonds were a muggle thing when she asked
why he had gone through several stones to get to a
few selected ones and continued that diamonds
were too simple, therefore, were not very common
in rings, especially engagement ones.

But he said that once he saw the one, he knew it

right away.

Alexandrite Stone in white gold made to look like

very small leaves twisted to make a ring. It must
have cost a fortune, she knew, but it was so
beautiful and inviting that she couldn’t help but
almost cry as he chanted the meaning of the stone,
thrusting into her again, eager to make sure she
knew how wonderful they were going to be –
empowerment, hope and joy; all that they needed
in such a difficult moment, he added that the
Muggles, too, believed it to be powerful for luck and
intellect.

Regulus had wonderful taste, she had to admit.

She lied there, alone in her bedroom, reminiscing of

all the sweet things they had done together in the
privacy of her bedroom. All sweet nothings
whispered, all love swears and all caressing
touches.

Until somebody knocked on the door.

“Yes?” she called out, trying to act natural as she

put her hand down.

She didn’t take off the ring at all, just acted natural
with it, hoping that if people noticed, they’d just
assume it was a cool ring. If she didn’t make a big
deal out of it, then probably people wouldn’t make
a big deal out of it.

The door slowly opened and a grinning red-head

poked her head through.

“Lily!” Anne said, surprised, as she sat down on the

bed. She saw the blonde hair right behind it and,
for a moment, she thought it was Marlene, but then
she saw the pure ice-blue eyes looking at her.
“Petunia!”

“Hi, baby!” Lily said. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Anne answered. “Come on in! Come on in!

I’m sorry for the mess. I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

Lily walked in, but had to look back and nod in

reassurance to Petunia that it was alright to come
into the room. Anne smiled, getting up from the
bed, exhibiting the ugliest tone of pink in her shorts
not making the greatest combination with her
green shirt – Lily laughed at it, having to look away
to keep some poise, but Petunia wasn’t as discreet
as her lips snarled at the sight.

“Now, that’s a fashion statement,” Petunia

commented.

“Yeah, well, I was lying in bed and daydreaming

and that was the plan for the day,” Anne said. “I’m
really close to look for a job, though. That’s how
bored I am.”

“Do you want to work right now, Anne?” Lily said,

raising her eyebrows, not explicitly saying anything
about the war, but making Petunia look a bit
confused. “I mean,” started Lily, smoothly adding a
lie. “You were the one that said that had no idea
which direction you wanted to go.”

“Yes, but I decided,” Anne admitted. “I want to be

a Healer, a doctor, if you must say in the Muggle
way.”

“I figured,” Petunia dismissed. “Is that a… good

profession?”

“A great one!” Lily said. “I’m so proud of you,

Annie! Amazing. You’ll fit right in with all the other
Healers, and your grades must suffice.”

“They do,” Anne said. “I asked Madame Pomfrey

through a letter last week.”

Since the door was half-way open now, Remus had

no trouble in shove himself into the room with a
bottle of wine in hands.

“Anne, look at what Mister Evans brought! Is that

wine you like,” he said, showing it off to her. “Do
you think you can drink it so soon after your last…
alcohol-induced-breakdown?” the nickname he
gave to her shameful act after Regulus’ birthday
certainly was catchy since Sirius and James started
using it as well. She had to admit it was better than
‘total loss’, as Sirius had offered.

“My last alcohol-induced-breakdown was literally

forced, fuck off,” she attacked, grabbing the bottle
from him. “And hell yeah, I’m going to drink it,” she
added. “Coco!” she called out. The elf popped up,
smiling at all the people in the bedroom and giving
a quick greeting to which one of them by name.
“Would you take this to the wine-cellar, please?
Bring it out with desert. Mister Evans gave us as a
present, it’s a 1961, so we must make good use of
it.”

She nodded and popped off once more.

Petunia looked quite uncomfortable, far from being

used to the appearance of house-elves. Anne
couldn’t blame her, she remembered when she was
eleven and saw Dobby for the first time; she had
been terrified of the creature that looked a lot like a
really big, naked cat, even after he spoke in English
to her, she still hid behind Harry for all interaction
until she gathered some courage.

“Coco is harmless, as long you don’t try to harm

anyone in from the House,” Remus said.

“I’ve seen her last time I was here, but she’s…”

“Weird for a Muggle?” offered Remus gently.

“Believe me, I’m sure most people would think so.”

Lily put her hands on the back pockets of her bell-

bottoms. She rather liked the way Petunia seemed
to be slowly opening herself to the world again, but
she worried for her older sister anyways.

“I suppose,” Petunia dismissed. She glanced

between Lily and Anne before making the decision
to keep the conversation going. “Are you like Lily?”

“Like Lily?” Remus asked confused.

“A Muggleborn,” Lily explained.

Petunia nodded in agreement. That was exactly the

word she was looking for.

“Oh,” Remus said before shaking his head. “No. I’m

a half-blood. My father is a half-blood, but my
mother is a Muggle. I was raised in both worlds,
sort of, at least. My father works in… well, worked
in the Ministry, he’s in between jobs right now. My
mother was a nurse, even worked in combat! She
was born in ’33, so she managed to help here and
there after the war, even went to the borders in ’57
with the whole IRA movement. She really liked to
tell all these stories, was very proud of it all.”

“That’s very… I didn’t know that, Remus, that’s so

nice!” Lily said.
nice!” Lily said.

“I wish I was as brave as your mother, but I’ll be

here in England, quite happy as a teacher,” Petunia
said in a light tone.

“I think it’s very brave to be a teacher, believe me,

you can ask Professor McGonagall how she needs to
be able to deal with as many children,” Anne said.
“Especially when Mister here is involved,” she
added, poking Remus in the ribs.

He laughed.

Mister Evans had cut his hair, no longer reaching

his ear, but neatly buzzed off. Misses Evans,
however, looked as elegant as ever with her long
blonde hair with curls at the very end, wearing a
sage-green dress.

Both seemed to understand that the relationship

that Lily was looking for with James was a lot more
serious than they had initially imagined, so they
seemed a lot more observing than they had been at
Easter. Their eyes wouldn’t leave James as he used
up all the manners his mother had taught him, but
sometimes they would watch the relationship
between Mia and Monty with interest, going as far
as observing Anne as she served some more
mashed-potatoes in her own plate.

“Oh, dear, you certainly eat a lot!” Misses Evans

commented in a light tone.

Though she clearly had wanted nothing more than

a comment, Anne felt quite attacked by the way
her nose reminded her of the Petunia of her original
time. It wasn’t quite disgust, it was… something
else. Something that, for a moment, Anne couldn’t
name, until she saw the face in Petunia paling.

“Well,” Anne started, feeling herself grow cold,

“when you grow up without much to eat, you end
up quite relieved when you have something on the
table.”

She had commented last Easter that she had grown

up with her aunt and uncle and gone to a muggle
school while she could, but no more than that.
Though, by her reaction once the subject had been
brought up, she thought people would have
understood it was a bit less than an ideal situation
to grow up in.

“Still, don’t you fear putting up weight?” Misses

Evans said.

“Anne has been severely underweight for a long

time, Misses Evans,” James firmly said. “Forgive
me, ma’am, if I sound rude, but I don’t think
anybody’s weight should be put in question unless
for medical purposes, but most especially at the
table.”

Misses Evans blushed.

“Yes, yes, of course. You are correct, my dear,” she

dismissed.

She had been embarrassed she had been scolded,

but no by what she did.

Anne hadn’t been much worried of her weight. She

had always been so worried with having enough to
eat just to make through the night during the
summers and then enough to keep her so
underweight that the neighbours would start
worrying, but never did anything because ‘teen girls
always have a bad relationship with food’. Gaining
weight was a luxury she didn’t have outside of
Hogwarts. Gaining weight meant she was safe –
meant that she was allowed to look her age without
worrying.

She couldn’t blame the woman in front of her for

not knowing that, but she couldn’t blame her when
all her hunger disappeared in distaste.

James looked firm and mature as he slowly filled

Anne’s cup with juice, not daring to look at the fork
she was putting down at the side of the plate.
Sirius was angry, clearly. Remus was
uncomfortable, glancing around to look for some
support or some explanation of what to do next.

“Anne, darling, would you mind going to the kitchen

and ask Coco to prepare desert to be served?” Mia
said.

Anne was quick to accept the escape and nodded,

leaving the dining room, but she didn’t close the
door all the way, stopping for a second to breathe,
and then to listen once the voices started.

“Mum!” scolded Petunia. “How could you say that?”

“It was supposed to be a joke. I do that joke with

you, Petunia,” Misses Evans answered.

“Well, I don’t like it and Anne clearly didn’t enjoy it

either,” Petunia insisted on defending her.

“Who is Anne to all of you, anyways?” Misses Evans

questioned.

“Rose, please,” Mister Evans groaned.

“Chris, I know you like Anne, but it’s important to

know who is the woman living with my daughter’s
boyfriend,” Misses Evans insisted. “And there’s no
way they are cousins. They look too much alike.”

This was it, Anne thought as her mind started to

work something through, a lie to throw at them to
keep them quiet. But Mia was smarter, she stuck to
the one lie that most people seemed to know at
that point.

“Fleatmont’s daughter,” she answered, her voice so

bored that Anne almost flinched.

Mia never sounded bored, sometimes merely

casual, but that bored tone was an attack, a way of
saying that the scene Misses Evans seemed to be
doing was so annoying to the point where she was
just waiting for it to end, no longer wanting to
engage her too much with scolding her for her
rudeness.

“James’ sister?” Mister Evans asked, surprised.

“Half-sister,” corrected Remus. “Father’s part.”

“A mistake I did during a fight, I’m sure you can

understand what a bit more of the usual amount of
alcohol can do to a man in distress,” Monty
managed to say, though he sounded almost forced.
He wasn’t that amazing of a liar, but a man
admitting to cheating on his wife certainly could
sound that nervous as well. “Once I found out of
Anne’s existence, her brother had already passed
and I brought her in.”

“You had a son with that woman as well?” Misses

Evans asked.

“Yes, a twin,” Sirius jumped in, saying it quickly. “A

pity. He sounded like a nice lad. I’m sure we’d get
in a lot of trouble together, had he been here with
us.”

Anne held her breath, hoping that it would be

enough to keep the tears inside as well as she
stumbled towards the kitchen. Once she was in the
doorway to the kitchen, she took a deep breath
before opening and mumbling the orders to Coco,
grabbing the firewhiskey bottle and dragging it with
her back to the dining room.

Mia smiled upon her entrance.

“Oh, you found it! Your father’s favourite brand!”

Mia said. “Thanks for bringing it, darling. I forgot to
ask that of you.”

“The payment is a cup for me as well,” Anne half-

joked, half-demanded.

Monty smiled to himself as he opened the bottle.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He poured three cups, giving one to Anne and one

to Mister Evans, quickly sipping his own with a
grateful wink towards his granddaughter.

When desert was served, every trouble seemed to

have been forgotten and it seemed the lunch would
be getting to the end in complete smoothness, until
a vicious knock on the window of the dining room.

“Anne, you should really ask your boyfriend to stop

writing to you during meals,” Monty scolded.

“If it’s another book, I’ll freak out,” Sirius warned.

But once Monty waved his wand, making the

window open and the owl fly in, the letter wasn’t
dropped in front of Anne. It was in front of Mia.

The woman seemed calm as she looked at the

blank envelop, opening it without recognizing the
simple red wax-seal. Mia wasn’t an easy woman to
read, but even those who didn’t know her well
would see how she grew pale and as her hand
gripped the letter tightly as she got more and more
towards the end of it. She bit her lip as she nodded
to herself, absorbing all the information in front of
her, and then she looked up, eyes filled with tears
as she took a deep breath.

“Remus? It’s your mother.”

Hope Lupin was still alive when the group of Potters

walked into the Muggle Hospital with the Evans in
tow, all worried about the way Remus Lupin hadn’t
made a single sound as he got dressed in Muggle
clothes and walked towards the Floo, demanding to
go to he Muggle Hospital neighbourhood and not
thanking anyone when they said they would go with
him to see his family.

The Lupin mother had managed to write Mia, whom

she had kept in minimal contact, once she was
alone in the hospital bedroom to warn her son that
she was having her last few weeks at the hospital.
Lyall was sick in worry and had just left the room
for a few minutes after fussing over her time and
time again to get something to eat because he was
about to faint of hunger at any second.

Mister and Misses Evans did all the paperwork for

them to go into the room, insisting on breaking the
rooms since Hope was considered a dying-patient,
giving them a sob-story about how Remus had
been in boarding school and recently graduated,
just now finding out of his mother’s situation.

Anne had rarely been in a hospital, but she knew

the smell enough to make her nose itch as they all
walked through the corridors.

213 B.

That’s the room.

Remus’ hand held the doorknob, but didn’t turn it,

fearing what he would see on the other side.

“Moony? We’re here,” Sirius was the first to say.

“Do you want me to go in first?” James said. “I can

tell you what to expect.”

“What if she doesn’t want to be my mum

anymore?” Remus managed to speak out, voice
wavering.

Misses Evans, Petunia and Lily decided to sit down

on the bench on the other side of the corridor,
giving them privacy, but Mister Evans didn’t get the
memo at first, standing there and touching Remus’
shoulders, he almost raised the boy from the
ground, though they were almost the same height.

“Ella calli di riw ddiwrnod, lad,” he said. “But that’s

your mother in there and she needs you as much
as you need her. Everything one has in the world is
borrowed, but not family – family is forever.”

“She didn’t do anything when my father kicked me

out,” Remus said.

“Because she knew you would have somewhere to

go, somewhere where you would be happier, boy,”
Monty jumped in. “Mia kept in touch with her for a
reason, to keep her updated about you. She always
asked if you were happy. I’m sure she won’t be
anything but happy to see you here, with your
family.”

“Listen to your new father, lad,” joked Mister

Evans.

“Remus, do you want us to go in with you?” Anne

asked. All eyes turned to her; of course they were
going in, they thought. But then Remus hesitated
and all eyes turned to him. “We can stand outside if
you want some privacy, we can understand what it
is to want some time to process.”

“I did when Uncle Alphard died,” Sirius said, more

like an afterthought of how he was smothering
Remus than a commentary to the conversation.

“Come in with me?” Remus said to Sirius. “Just…

Sirius and James. Ok?”

Anne nodded, not daring to as much as be upset

about it. She smiled at him with the best
comprehensive smile she could master. She knew
that Remus would never dare to say that he
couldn’t manage alone, so it was important that she
had given him a choice; it showed to those he knew
how much he needed them, but it still protected
him from those who didn’t know enough.

As Remus opened the door to the room, James and

Sirius walked in, but Remus hesitated once more,
turning to Anne.

“Annie?”

“Yeah?”

“May I tell her the truth? I think she would be

proud of me if she knew I’m the godfather of
someone as brave as you,” he said in such a low
whisper that she almost didn’t hear him. She knew
that there would be no danger, Hope would not
survive much longer. She nodded her head, but
Remus was looking at the ground and didn’t notice.
“Please?”

“You can tell her everything, and make sure she

knows you saved my life several times, more than
you even noticed,” Anne said.

And he walked in.

Anne caught a glimpse of the woman lying in bed,

her hair was the same colour as Remus’, her eyes
were closed and she looked tired. She had several
tubes, one up her nose, one glued to the side of her
face and several attached to wires and connected
to her hands and arms.

She looked away.

Hope Lupin was visited several times a week by

Remus in the moments Lyall was working, even
though the hospital was in Cardiff.

...

Hope died a couple of weeks later in August 21st,

Remus wasn’t invited to his own mother burial.

Chapter 103: Chapter One

Hundred and Two -
Summary:
The first attack of Death Eaters
that become famous

Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for
notes.)

FIRST ATTACK

Anne walked down the stairs and sighed, still

sleepy, but knowing that it was the only time where
she would share her meal with her whole family
that day, after all it was training day for James and
Sirius, Monty had a lot to do as well and Remus
during the night, so he would sleep again after
breakfast.

Still, she was shocked when she got to the dining

room and saw only a very pale Mia sitting at the
head of the table, newspaper on her hands as she
sipped her no-longer smoking tea. She looked
exhausted.

“Grandma?” she called out, scratching her head as

she tried to shake off her sleepiness away. “What’s
happening? Where’s everybody else?”

“Annie. Good morning, dear. Remus is still asleep,

Sirius didn’t wake him up today,” Mia answered,
but she took a moment before continuing. “Monty
received a Floo call during the night and all trainees
were called back right away. Something happened
last night, Anne.”

She felt her stomach dropping.

“Who?” she asked. “Who died? Was it Mum?”

“No. No, darling! Merlin, I should’ve thought that

you’d think that right away,” Mia said, putting the
newspaper down and shaking her head in shock.
“No, Lily is alright and safe in her house. A man
died, a Muggle man, and this time they put a Dark
Mark above his house; it’s the first time they used
the Dark Mark, as you said you would.”

“They are late. The first Dark Mark was used in

1976 in my timeline,” Anne said, sitting herself
beside Mia. “Do you have a name?”

“Daniel Evelince,” Mia said. “A single father from

Manchester.”

“The child?”

“Already grown, married and living in South Africa,”

Mia said. “Not public information, of course, but
Monty was informed because he was just sent to
South Africa to inform her of her father’s passing.”

Anne frowned.

“Why did they send Monty there?” she asked.

In a normal situation, if a Muggle was killed in a

magical situation, the Ministry would have sent
someone from the adequate department to tell the
woman a lying version of events, probably a car
accident or something as simple as a heart attack.
For them to send the Head of Aurors, it could only
mean one thing…

“You know why,” Mia said.

The young woman, completely unprotected and

completely ignorant about a world that did belong
to her, was a target.

“Why do they want her?” Anne asked.

“Apparently, his father was a muggleborn, but he

didn’t inherit the magic and neither did his child.
The Death Eaters think that they could use either
him or the girl to prove to the world that
muggleborns can’t genetically pass on the magical
genes, therefore they must have stolen it,” Mia
explained. “Such a horrid and backwards way of
thinking the twentieth century. I feel completely
disgusted by being a pureblood and by marrying a
pureblood; I hope people don’t look at us and think
that we think like that.”

“Of course, they don’t,” Anne said. “Look at me!

Look at Remus! You’re literally urging James to
propose to a muggleborn witch as soon as possible
because you want grandchildren.”

Mia ended up laughing at the tone in Anne’s voice.

“Well, you’re not going to be the one to give some

to me right now, so I’m trying to convince James or
Sirius to give them to me as fast as possible,” Mia
said. “I’m tired of waiting.”

Anne recognized the fear behind her voice even

though her face didn’t betray her.

“You’re not going to die any time soon, Mia,” Anne

said gently. “I know that seeing Hope go was scary,
but you won’t. You can’t. You mustn’t. With the war
coming, you’re the only comfort any of us can have
– you’re the mother to so many people, and though
I call you ‘grandma’, I’m quite sure you’re sort of
my mother as well when mum couldn’t be here with
me.”

“Children grow up.”

“But they always come back,” Anne said. “I mean, I

did… perhaps too literally.”

Mia laughed once more.

Seeing Hope passing away had been terrifying.

Hope was younger than her, had been more athletic
than her and had been a mother younger than her,
and yet she just went away without much of a
struggle. She had, too, seen the way I destroyed
Remus from inside out and how he was fighting for
some normalcy in his life, she had seen how the
war would not help any of her children to grow up.
Mia was terrified of what her death could mean to
her children, so she was urging them to find
something to live and fight for – a child, a lover, a
hope.

“Is there something more to it?” Anne asked when

silence reigned once more on that dining room.

“Monty was already supposed to be back,” Mia

answered. “He’s a whole hour late and I can’t get in
touch with him.”

Anne felt nausea hit her so hard that she knew that
she had only not thrown up because there was
nothing inside her stomach. She tried calming
herself down with the fact that Monty had a lot of
experience and a lot of understanding on how Dark
Wizards worked, there was no reason for them to
be so scared when he was known as the best Auror
in the department for years – but he was older
now, he was slower now and he had a lot to die for,
a family to protect. Monty was never that late.

“I’m sure he’s alright, maybe he’s… trying to get

the girl to a safe place. He doesn’t know South
Africa a lot. Do you know where he is?” Anne
asked.

“He’s supposed to start in Pretoria and then take

her to Cape Town under protection, obliviate her
and then come home,” Mia answered. “She lives in
Johannesburg, but the major political concentration
of the South African Magical community in that
province is in Pretoria. They’ll take her to Cape
Town by air, Muggle way, during the night. Cape
Town is near the sea; it’s an easier escape plan for
a Muggle than floo or something like that.”

Anne frowned.

“Why do you think he’s taking so long? Were there

dangers that he was made aware of?” Anne asked.

“Of course,” Mia said, looking away from her. “They

wouldn’t get the Head Auror for nothing, Annie.”

Anne had to bite her own lip.

“And the boys?” Anne asked.

“Investigating the crime scene in Manchester,

learning and then trying to recreate the… fight, if
there was a struggle at all, after all he was a
muggle, it’s not like there was a duel or something
like that,” Mia sighed loudly. “I’m not worried about
them. They’re safe and most likely are going to
take a long time to come back, if they come back at
all until tonight. If they’re tired enough, they’ll
spend the night on the dormitories.”

Anne pulled her legs up, holding her knees close to

her chest as she tried to hide her struggle to
breathe. She closed her eyes, willing her brain not
to think of the worst case scenarios that it insisted
of thinking of.

“Is this what you do?” Anne asked. “Wait?”

“Yes, ever since I retired, that’s what I do every

time Monty leaves. That’s what Lily will do. That’s
what you will do,” Mia said. “That’s the destiny of a
woman at some point of her life.”

“That’s sexist.”

“That’s the truth, either we like it or not,” Mia said.

“Men are easier to distract, women can have a
whole lot of things in their mind while their bodies
work and yet we can’t stop thinking about this. In
days like this, I ask Coco to take the day off and I
do everything around the house. I can’t stop,
though. My ears are connected to the Floo, my eyes
connected to the window, my bones connected to
the house, willing for him to come in and to comfort
me for waiting for so long. Anxiety… perhaps more
than that, fear. Fear. The most primal and terrifying
fear I have ever felt is of not knowing. Knowing is
easier, all it takes is acceptance and then moving
on, but not knowing is so much worse,” her eyes
were filled with tears as she looked up, trying to
hold them back. Anne looked away to give her
some resemblance of privacy. “We wait for months
to know if the child is alright. We wait for years to
know if our body will change more. We wait for
hours to know if Death is taking someone we love –
since the start of time has been like this.”

“Mia, we’re going to be alright,” Anne said, willing it

to be true.

“Do you ever think about the Muggle wars?” Mia

asked. “Here, women were always willing and
allowed to fight. For them, it wasn’t always like
this. I think of them. I think of those women sitting
down on the parlour, hands shaking as they try to
be their best versions, waiting for the men to come
home and knowing that they might not die beside
them; I think of them sitting on the window, the
nausea so strong that they are so slim that they
look like a ghost, all because they feel so alone by
not knowing. But that’s marriage – it’s knowing
without news.”

Anne felt the ring heavy on her hand as she shoved

her hand in her jumper’s pockets. She looked back
at her crying grandmother to see that her eyes
were on the backyard, on the trees that appeared
on the window, shaking with the fall winds.

“Whatever do you mean?” Anne asked.

“I know Monty is alive,” Mia said firmly. “I feel like

if he dies, I’d die with him. I’m sure he’s alive, but I
wish I knew he was alright.”

Anne had to look away once more, reaching with

her free hand for the newspaper.

September 10th, 1977 – MUGGLES AND WIZARDS

TERRIFIED ALIKE. A MUGGLE MAN KILLED BY DARK
MAGIC IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING. It
read. ‘A muggle man’, they mostly talked about
him like that. But his name was Daniel Evelince, he
was 57 and he had skin under his nails because he
fought back. Nobody talked about who survived his
memory; nobody talked of his daughter, about his
son-in-law or his grandchildren.

Anne tried to think of the man and who he was

while he was alive, though some part of her mind
did think if Regulus was involved in this attack, if
he was alright, if he was crying and shaking again.
She tried to stop once she noticed her hands were
shaking, but she couldn’t stop thinking of how he
clung onto her, begging her to make the feeling of
being a monster to stop after his first kill.

“That ring on your hidden finger and the way you’re

shaking makes me wonder if you know what I’m
talking about more than you’re letting on,” Mia said
suddenly after a minute of silence. Anne looked up
at her, eyes wide. “Don’t look so surprised, my
dear. There’s very little of what happens in this
house that I do not know. Congratulations, by the
way.”

“He asked me the day after his birthday and we

wanted a week or so to ourselves to think about it
and celebrate, then we would tell everybody else,
but then Hope passed and it just didn’t feel like the
right time when Remus was suffering so much,”
Anne admitted, knowing that there was not a single
way she could manage to make Mia think
something other than the truth. “But I do think I
understand. I would feel if something happened to
Regulus.”

“Would you?”

“If he dies, I think part of me would die with him,”

she said.

Mia raised a single eyebrow. ‘Part of me’, Anne had

said. A lot healthier than Mia’s version of the story
and the feelings that usually followed, she had to
admit. She wasn’t sure it was healthy enough,
however.

Anne still had a lot to fight for, a long life to live,

with or without Regulus in it and she knew that
much, but she wouldn’t be completely happy
without the knowledge that the man she loved so
much wasn’t happy as well. She had admitted that
she would continue surviving without Regulus, but
she would never admit that she would live, she
thought it impossible – and by the way her eyes
looked so far away from that dining table as she
thought of him, Mia feared that she agreed with
Anne. Anne would survive enough to fight, enough
to see what she had planned work out and then she
would give up, and Mia was terrified of it.

Once more, Mia had to remind herself that the

young girl in front of her went through unspeakable
things and needed a lot more support than she
dared to ask for, especially if she felt like she could
become a burden. She promised herself that, with
or without Monty, she would survive until Anne was
safely attached to the world before leaving it all
behind to meet her other half.

“Does anyone else know?” Mia asked.

“You, just you,” Anne admitted.

“You’ll have to tell the others sooner or later,” Mia

said.

“I know.”

“They’ll all be upset if you keep that from them for

too long, dear, and in a war, we need to keep the
relationships we have as safe as we can,” Mia said.

Anne scrunched up her nose, knowing she was in

the wrong.

“Am I going to be insensible if I tell them after

Hope?” she asked. “I know that I didn’t want any
good thing to happen after Harry died. Being happy
made me feel guilty, and that’s something I don’t
wish upon anyone.”

Mia sighed. “There’s only so much you can do for

Remus right now, my dear. Though a lot of people
say otherwise, grief is something one has to pass
alone; support is good, of course, but there’s a
point where the road must be followed alone,” she
said. “Remus doesn’t want your happiness to end,
Annie, he just needs to process his sadness and his
anger. Maybe you’re right to give him some more
time, but he also is smart enough to understand
that the world around him won’t stop just because
he’s locked in his bedroom.”

Anne wanted to agree with her, but she felt horrible

about it.

Remus was smart enough for it, but she hadn’t

been. She had been angry in her trauma, she had
wished harm and sadness upon people that
deserved nothing but happiness out of the sheer
guilt choking her – nobody deserved to be happy
when her brother, the best person she knew,
couldn’t be happy as well. She was not a good
person, she knew that, she had learned that while
still very young when school taught her that lying
children were horrible, horrible people and she had
survived all that time by lying to everyone about
everything she had to.

Still, she knew Remus enough to know that he

wasn’t sad at the moment. He was angry; angry
enough to scream at Sirius, who escaped to sleep
at James’ room until his boyfriend had calmed
down; angry at himself for not being there for
every step and for not seeing his mother slipping
away from him, perhaps even angry that he had so
little time to say goodbye to her. Remus was an
angry person and he hated it, because I only
reminded him of the monster inside of him, it was
like that part of him was trying to claw its way out
from the Moony compartment to the Remus’ one,
and he wasn’t ready to deal with it – he wasn’t
ready to become like that man that made him what
he was. Greyback was more wolf than human.
Remus feared to lose a single inch of his heart to
the wolf begging for attention and for release.

“Remus is… stuck,” Anne said.

“Remus is going to wake up soon,” Mia said. She

looked at the clock, making Mia chuckle. “Not
literally, Annie. But Remus just needs a little shove
of someone that can deal with the pressure to
really see the world around him.”

Anne knew that she was talking about Sirius’ not

being able to help a lot.
Due to his own traumas and fears, Sirius didn’t do
well with people screaming at him, even if he knew
the person didn’t mean anything of what they said;
that was why he was running to James to cry
himself to sleep every night. Remus needed
someone a bit more realistic at the moment, a bit
less… gentle.

Anne had her memories urging her not to let it all

happen again. Remus had his future to fight for –
past and future; goddaughter and godfather.
Perhaps it was destiny preventing Anne from going
absolutely bonkers.

“I’ll talk to him soon,” Anne said.

“You should.”

In her original timeline, the Muggles found out

about the wizarding existence through a few
Muggles being able to break the Obliviate Spell with
a few triggers because of how many attacks from
Death Eaters happened following one another; it
was so many that the Ministry of Magic couldn’t get
to every single Muggle who saw something slightly
off. It was the 90s, so TV and even computers were
becoming more and more common, so it didn’t take
long before they all had gotten to one common
conclusion: different is dangerous.

Anne had been sixteen when they found out. She

was living in the woods, listening to news through
radio channels, mostly in wizarding channels, who
were quick to tell wizards to be careful about
muggles as well. In her new timeline, however,
Muggles were blissfully unaware of the danger they
were in, continuing living their lives without much
hesitation. They gathered on big, noticeable places
for fun and made no trouble with family parties and
noise. Happiness on all their sides – they had just
left wars; the Second and Third Cod Wars were
over and they were more than happy to be with
their families and friends.

Therefore, it was no surprise that a single murder

in Manchester didn’t stop people in Cokeworth from
gathering at the shopping mall that Sunday
morning.

Lily Evans was hesitant to go, especially with her

family being completely unaware of everything
happening in her world. Sure, she had made sure
they knew nothing at all, she thought they were
safer if they didn’t want to get involved, but she
was starting to regret her decision now that Mister
Christian Evans was sitting on the sofa and
complaining once more to Lily that Petunia and
Rose were late.

“Come on!” he whispered to himself as the man

kicking the football missed the goal again.

“Dad, you know you don’t have to come with us,

right? You can just stay here. Mum will drive us,”
Lily said.

“And make Petunia complain all the way there and

back that your mother is terrible at driving? No.
Your mum will be in a foul mood,” he answered.
“Are you intending to meet James there? Why don’t
you want me to go?”

“Of course not!” Lily said. “He trained the whole

night yesterday and just got home. I got his letter
five minutes ago; he must be passed out in bed at
this hour. It’s not like I had time to convince him to
go anywhere after spending the night awake.”

“He’s a good boy. Determinate,” Christian

commented more to himself than to Lily. “Though
the family dynamic does make me a bit… confused.
I mean, his dad cheated on his mum; don’t you
think that’s a… hint on how he grew up?”

Lily looked down at her feet. It would be so much

easier if she could explain everything to her father,
maybe then he would completely like James and
stop being in war with himself to decide if he still
liked Anne now that he knew she was a ‘bastard’
from out of a wedlock. He was such a Christian, as
his name suggested, that he was blind to how the
girl herself could be so much more than her
parent’s products. Besides, her mother was always
complimenting Anne with some backhand
commentaries that made both Lily and Petunia
extremely uncomfortable.

“It’s a lot more than that, Dad. James is a good

person. He would never do anything like that to me
or to anyone,” Lily said. “All the girls in school liked
him and when he tried dating Danielle Greene, he
made sure to let everybody know he was very
much in a relationship. He made sure everybody
knew we were in a relationship as well when he
started dating; he’s very proud of it and he loves
me a lot.”

“Love sometimes isn’t enough to keep a

relationship alive.”

Lily knew that. She had seen couples she knew to

love each other fall apart.

“This one is,” she insisted, naively, perhaps. “I’m

sure this one is.”

She thought of how she had imagined Harry – dark

hair like his father, white skin like hers, eyes like
hers, nose like James’, lips like Anne’s (like
James’). That relationship would work out. Harry
would come to show it, and Anne was there to
prove it.

“You’re young and –”

“I’m an adult. James loves me. I love him,” she

said firmly this time. “He’s the one, Dad. I’m going
to marry that man and I really wish you could
accept that as soon as possible, because our
families will become one. Fleatmont Potter made a
mistake that could have ruined his life, or so you
believe, but I doubt anyone would change anything
if that could mean Anne would be in our lives; that
girl is amazing, Dad, and I’m quite sure you two
are more alike than you think. You liked her. You
really, really liked her and I don’t see why her
father’s name has to change anything about it.”

“She’s the product of an affair.”

“It doesn’t matter, she’s just a girl,” Lily said.

“Anne’s been through things that no one will ever

be able to understand completely,” said Petunia.
They both turned to the stairs were Petunia stood,
Lily almost gasped when she saw her sister in a
dress – a short dress, something she hadn’t worn
since she broke up with Vernon. “She’s strong and
understanding and I hate to think that you would
not like her, Dad, because she’s everything I wish I
had been.”

Rose sighed as she walked down the stairs.

“You shouldn’t want to be other people, darling,”

Rose said. “I love that dress, by the way.

“I’m not wishing to be Anne, I’m wishing to be like

Anne,” Petunia answered, shaking her head
slightly. She shifted uncomfortably now that
someone had made a comment on her attire.
“Anne’s uncle was a bad, bad man and he did
horrible things to her and to her brother. Her
brother died in their care; did you know this?”

“She implied so,” Rose agreed. “The girl, however

–”

“Don’t call Anne ‘the girl’!” Lily exclaimed, getting

up from the sofa. “Enough of this. You’re talking
about my family, Mum.”

“You’re not married to James,” Christian reminded

her.

“Yet,” Lily said. “I must tell you, however, that he

proposed several times already and every single
time he had a different ring with a different stone.
If you cut me off, I doubt I would starve.”

Christian took the hit hard. He had been working of

a factory worker since he had been fifteen, leaving
his studied behind to make sure he would have
enough money to buy an engagement ring to his
sweetheart at the time; she ended up marrying
someone else and, at the wedding, he met her best
friend: Rose. Rose had a teaching degree and had
just gotten her first job – they worked, both, until
they got married. Soon after, he got in as a police
officer. They worked two more years before Rose
found herself with child and she settled down, the
little family money she had and the money he
made barely cutting it for them, but they had a
good life – a comfortable one, if the month was
good enough. Two children, a house in their name
and happiness. They had it all. The idea of losing
one of their children was terrifying, especially now
that both of them were more together than ever
before… if they didn’t accept the life Lily had
chosen, they would lose Petunia as well.

“I’m sure there’s a lot that we don’t understand of

their manners, Rose,” Christian said. “We’ll be more
informed soon enough. Now, please, can we go to
the shopping mall?”

Rose and Christian walked to the door.

Petunia turned to Lily.

“Did he really propose to you?”

“At least twice a year ever since we were thirteen,”

Lily admitted.

“Jesus, he’s bonkers,” Petunia grumbled as she

walked off.

The small argument between the family had made

Lily’s mind leave from the war in her world for a
moment, but as the car stopped and they all
walked into the shopping mall she felt her gut
scream.

Call it sixth sense, but something screamed at Lily

to not leave the ground floor of the building as she
looked around, as she tried to breathe through
contracted lungs, holding onto her sister to make
her stop walking right away. Christian turned to
look as soon as Petunia yelped at Lily’s nails almost
stabbing her and Rose turned as well, ready to
scold the girl for fighting once more, but then they
all saw Lily’s pale face.

“Oh, dear,” Rose said, running to her daughter as

Petunia held her sister’s elbow. “Did you eat?”

Lily could only think of Peter Pettigrew’s words as

he played with his new deck of tarot cards before
Sirius stopped that by talking about something of
the necessary attributes of someone that would
marry into the Black family. It says that you should
learn to listen to your body better. You have talent
for Divination, Lily, but you don’t care for it much.
Some Muggles call it gut-feeling, right? Listen to
your gut. It knows a lot more than you think.

“Let’s go to the food court, Christian. Lily is about

to faint,” Rose insisted.

Petunia almost carried Lily as Christian ran forward

to ask for the food, something quick and salty
enough to get Lily on her feet once more. And Lily
allowed herself to be dragged around, too weak to
tell anyone of how she was scared and of what she
was scared.

As they sat, the first loud ‘pop’ rang and echoed on

Lily’s ears. Nobody seemed to have noticed, but Lily
knew the noise of apparition well enough.

“We got to go,” Lily said.

“I think she’s right. We got to go to a hospital or

something,” Petunia said.

“Home, please,” Lily said.

“No, not home. Hospital!” Petunia said to her sister.

“You’re about to pass out and –”

Someone screamed.

There are several types of screams, Lily would

realise while she grew up.

There is the scream of a startled child, loud and

short. There’s the scream of a wounded person,
loud and mixed with sobs. And then there is the
scream of a horrid thing happening, one that is
filled with terror – loud, long and impossible to
ignore.

The third one is the most common one in wars.

Petunia turned, looking around for the person

screaming as Christian came to them with sugared-
water. Lily forced herself to drink – she needed
energy, she needed to fight. She just felt like the
worst was still about to come.

“What was that?” Rose asked.

Another scream, this type followed by more ‘pops’.

“Is that gunshots?” Christian asked.

“No,” Lily said. “Those are wizards preparing to

fight. We need to get out of here.”

She understood at once what the horrible feeling

had been. It was a ward. She had walked into the
shopping mall and felt the anti-apparation ward and
panicked because she hadn’t felt it there before;
her subconscious had been quicker to realise an
attack was coming than her mind.

Rose was quick to grab a hold on Lily’s arm and

drag her up to stand.

“Come on, then,” she said.

“No!” Petunia said. “What about the others? We

need to get everybody out!”

Christian looked around.

Too late.

The first spell hit right the table where they were
gathered around, making it fly up the air and break
in several pieces, wood flying everywhere. Petunia
fell to the ground with a scream, protecting her
face and dragging her mother and sister down.
Chris jumped over Petunia, protecting her.

Lily stood a second later, wand in hand and

throwing a hex towards the man in black on the
other side of the food-court. The man was dressed
in long, wizarding black robes with a white,
decorated mask. He was taller than her by a lot and
defended himself by erecting a shield without much
hitch.

People were screaming and beginning to run to get

out.

“Mum, Dad! GO! RUN!” Lily screamed.

“NO! Lily –” started Christian.

Rose ran first and Lily was a bit hurt that she didn’t
think of her daughter, until she noticed that she
wasn’t running towards an exit, she was running
towards the fire-alarm and activating it by pulling
the small lever.

The Death Eater attacked a man not too far away

from where they were and Lily jumped forward,
barely escaping her father’s hand trying to hold
onto her dress’ skirt. She raised a shield before the
man and the Death Eater turned to her.

“GET SOMEONE WHO CAN DEFEND THEMSELVES,

YOU COWARD!” she screamed.

“YOU INSOLENT MUDBLOOD!” screamed the man

back.

The slur used to hurt, but no more. She dared not

to let a word that was created to hurt people like
her get under her skin. It was just a word and a
word shouldn’t hurt… not like her hexes did, at
least.

A stupefy on the chest of the man made him fall to

his knees as she approached.

“Crucio!” he said.

She jumped out of the way.

At the back of her mind, she could hear Petunia

screaming ‘here, through here’, gathering and
leading people out of the shopping centre by
waving her hands and jumping up and down
towards the emergency doors.

“Stupefy!”

“Locomotor Mortis!” the Death Eater tried.

“Levicorpus!” Lily said.

The man raised a metre or so from the ground

before the spell was broken and he fell, face first to
the ground.

“You’re one annoying bitch, aren’t you?” said the

man. “Let’s end this at once!”

“Petrificus Totalus!” Lily screamed.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” he yelled.

She threw herself to the ground, cursing for not

paying more attention when James said he would
teach her to duel, but only thinking of how
attractive he was. She rolled to the side when
another spell (one she didn’t know) of yellow colour
hit the ground where she had been lying on. She
kicked a table, making it fall and turn into some
type of barricade between her and the Death Eater.

She had been so focused on him that she didn’t see

the several muggles running down the stairs behind
her towards the exit, but she did hear the scream
when one of them was hit by a hex on the back and
he fell down the stairs.

Lily hated herself for turning and hated herself even

more for looking at the dead man on the ground,
limbs in awkward angles.

A triumphant shriek of laughing made her cringe.

It was Bellatrix Lestrange, masked and clothed as

she should be in raids, was on the first floor of the
shopping centre with two other Death Eaters, both
taller than her. And she was coming down the stairs
with eerie calm, not caring that some muggles were
escaping, because now her eyes were stuck on Lily
Evans, sitting on the ground with her wand tightly
held by her right hand and she changed her
direction to walk to Lily.

The Death Eater she had been fighting before hit

her with a Stinging Hex and Lily screamed at the
pain, but got up and ran.

If she ran outside, she would only make the Death

Eaters follow her towards where people were
running to – she needed to get attention, she
needed to protect those muggles and she needed
help.

As she ran deeper into the shopping centre, she

jumped out of the way of the hexes and curses.
She screamed when glasses were broken as she
threw herself in corner of corridors and turned to
run away.

“Come on, little girl!” screamed Bellatrix in a singy

voice.

Anger. Lily could only remember how James had

said Anne had been tortured by Bellatrix. That
voice, the naturality of her violence. She was
carrying a child and yet she was in the middle of a
raid, more than happy with destroying families
without thinking of her own; perhaps it had been
boredom that brought her there, but Anne had said
that she would be far from action for a few months
still, Lily couldn’t understand why she was there,
fighting.

She turned around another corridor, she ran right

into another Death Eater, who yelped as hey both
fell to the ground, his mask and his wand slipping
from him. Lily jumped up – Evan Rosier scrambled
to get his wand, but she was quicker. With a good
Stupefy, he was thrown across the corridor,
through one of the shop’s windows.

“Holy shit!” screamed another man. The first Death

Eater she had been fighting was turning the
corridor, running to see if Evan was still alright as
she ran faster. “Bella, I think he’s dead.”

“Shut up, Crabbe. Get the mudblood!” Bellatrix

screamed. “Before the Dark Lord knows we’re
here.”

Lily almost gasped. Voldemort had not ordered the

attack this time, they were doing this out of fun. It
made her feel nauseous.

A hand over her mouth made her try to scream and

bite, but even as she drew blood of the hand out of
panic, the person didn’t let go of her, though they
did groan in pain. Another arm went around her
waist, pulling her towards their body as they
ducked into a half-closed store of shoes. Another
Death Eater, she realised as he lied on top of her in
the shadows; for a moment she imagined she
would die there, alone and scared in the dark store,
with a man on top of her.

“Stop struggling, you dunderhead!” groaned the

man, his blood dirtying her face.

Lily almost fainted.

Severus Snape took off his mask to show off his

face. Even in the shadows, she could see the split
lip, paleness and the bruise on his cheek. They had
really done a number on him.

“Sev—”

“Shut up,” he said firmly.

Noises outside made her listen to him. Someone

ducked into the store as well and Severus raised his
wand, but lowered as soon as the person pulled
their own mark down and Lily sighed in relief of
seeing Regulus Black unharmed.

“You found her. I told Bella she had gone another

staircase,” Regulus said. “Are you alright, Lily?”

“Why are you two here?” she asked, eyes filling

with tears.

“I disobeyed orders, they’re punishing the city I’m

from to get the Ministry looking at me,” Severus
answered. “I didn’t know you’d be here, Lily, really,
I didn’t. It’s Sunday and school already started, I
thought people would be at home or at church, not
at the mall. I chose the place I thought would be
less people.”

Lily’s eyes softened as she saw with a bit more of

light how the paleness was from pain and from
actual fear.

“I contacted Anne. She’s contacted Moody,”

Regulus said. “The Order and the Ministry is in its
way, Severus, we need to go now before we’re
caught and our cover is blown,” he turned to Lily.
“Attack me.”

Lily slowly sat down.

“Lily, don’t hesitate, you need –” started Severus.

“STUPEFY!” Lily screamed.

Regulus was thrown back against the shoe boxes,

groaning in pain as he sat down, a small cut
bleeding from his forehead being his only clear
wound.

“Lily, listen to me,” Severus said, not even helping

his friend. “You need to tell Anne that this was not
planned ahead. The Dark Lord is out of the country,
so Bellatrix decided she’s the Dark Lady or
something equally as crazy and therefore is in
charge. She asked me to have sex with her, I said
‘no’ and she got angry. She attacked the place I
said there would be more people – nothing was
planned. She’s just bored and angry.”

Lily nodded, trying her best not to imagine the fact

that Bellatrix was trying to have sex.

“Come on,” Regulus said, now standing. “Run to

the emergency exit and, before leaving, hit the
ceiling with a bombarda.”

And Lily did just that, trying not to feel scared as

they put on their masks again and waited a few
seconds before running after her. Just as she
crossed the doorway, kicking the door open, she
pointed the wand to the glass ceiling and screamed
at the top of her lungs:

“BOMBARDA!”

That was when the whole mall broke and fell into
pieces, throwing her forward with the gigantic
pieces of concrete and glass fell to the floor.

“LILY!” Petunia screamed.

And that was when Lily’s eyes rolled back and she
fell into her sister’s arms, unconscious.

Notes:
I hope you all liked it!

What songs do you think it would

get along well with the story's
vibe. I'm making a playlist and i
wanted you guys opinions.

Chapter 104: Chapter One

Hundred and Three -
Summary:
The aftermath of an attack as
traumatic as that can lead to a lot
more than just bad things

THE ONLY HAPPY AFTERMATH

“The fainting was most likely out of the emotional

shock from the attack,” Anne said, Madame
Pomfrey listened to her assumptions in the training.
“There are a few bruises, splints and cuts, but
nothing majorly worrisome. Am I correct?”

“You missed something,” Madame Pomfrey said.

Anne looked at Lily who looked as surprise as she

felt.

“What did I miss?” Anne asked.

“Well, I think that’s all I have though, Madame,”

Lily said. “I feel nothing else than a bruise or a cut
on me.”

“There’s a small crack on the bone, right here,”

Madame Pomfrey said, pointing with her wand to
the bone above her eyebrows. Lily felt like a
particularly bad bruise was growing there, but
apparently it was more than that. “I’d think she hit
it somewhere as she fell, but Miss Evans held her,
so I’d say she hit it on her sister’s jaw.”

“That she did,” Petunia said, sounding a bit

impressed as she touched her own jaw, which was
growing a small bruise.

The whole Evans family was standing on the Potter

Manor’s parlour again, impressed by the precision
of magic one more. They were all still shocked and
scared, yes, but proud of Petunia and Lily – Petunia
had led several people of the mall and even refused
to let go of the door until people walked out and
nobody else seemed to be coming, while Lily had
held her ground against Death Eaters.

“Are you hurt, my dear?” Madame Pomfrey asked.

“No, barely a bruise,” dismissed Petunia.

Mia walked into the room once more, she had left
to get the bruise-paste for Lily, but once she heard
Petunia, the bruise-paste ended up on her hand.
Petunia hesitated with it on her hand before Rose
walked to her, got the paste, opened the jar and
applied on her daughter’s chin.

A loud noise made Rose yelp and Petunia grow

white. They calmed down once they realised it was
just Monty, James, Sirius and Moody walking into
the room, all dirty and messed up, though Anne did
notice the new leather eye-patch on Moody’s face.

“How many?” Lily asked.

Everybody looked at her, surprised by her question.

“Three,” Monty answered.

James understood at once what she had asked. She

had asked how many people died. He sat down
beside the sofa she was lying on and kissed her
forehead gently, so gently that she almost didn’t
feel his lips on her.

“Emily Castro, fourteen, and her mother Analisa

Castro, they were from Spain and were here
visiting the older daughter, who married a
Cokeworth man. Bellatrix killed them, according to
eye-witnesses” James said. “There was also Cassie
Hayes, seventeen, was there with her friends.”

Lily’s eyes narrowed.

“How did Cassie die?” she asked.

Anne crossed her arms, uncomfortable. There was

a reason to why James held back the way Cassie
died and she had a terrible feeling about it.

“She had been hiding inside the mall under a table.

When the mall tumbled down, she was still inside,
too scared to come out and run to the exit,” James
admitted.

Lily looked she was about to be sick once more.

She had destroyed the mall, therefore that blood
was on her hands either she accepted it or not. She
had just killed someone. She had killed Cassie
Hayes, she was seventeen-year-old that lived in the
same town she did and could not go back home to
her family and friends because Lily killed her.

“It’s not your fault,” Anne said.

“It really isn’t,” Sirius agreed. “Lily, you did what

you had to do and you go yourself and so many
people out. You got the Death Eaters paying
attention to you, their attention away from all those
people.”

“You have no idea how terrified I was when you

screamed and shouted, running deeper into that
demon’s belly,” Christian Evans said. “God, Lily,
you can’t blame yourself for surviving.”

But she could, Anne knew she could, because Anne

blamed herself for surviving sometimes as well. It
wasn’t a hard thing to do and it was perhaps too
easy to fall into the comfort of the familiar feeling
of blame – it was easy to imagine how that person
you never met was most likely a better person than
you and therefore deserved to live a longer life,
perhaps even going as far as thinking that, gosh,
they deserve to live more than you did. It’s
terrifyingly easy to hate oneself when one survives.
It didn’t matter than Lily had just done what she
had to do to survive, it was still a decision she took
and that took the life of a person, young and
innocent to what was truly happening.

“The Muggles’ memories were fixed, they’ll think

that the mall fell to pieces,” Sirius jumped in,
talking to take the attention from everybody from
the tearing Lily to him. “Soon there’ll be an
investigation and they’ll find that there had been a
few mistakes in the building and it would fall
anyways. Three lives were taken by the shambles.”

Moody changed his weight of leg.

“There’s another matter we need to talk about,”

Moody said. “With the whole family.”

“What happened now?” Christian grumbled.

“You cannot go home,” Moody answered.

There was silence for a moment.

“Whatever do you mean?” Rose asked.

“I mean that your house has been compromised,”

Moody answered. “Somebody walked in while you
were away, looking for you. The house is a mess.
We’re trying to detect any traps; two of my best
aurors are at it at the moment.”

“And what do we do? I need to work. We need a

place to stay,” Christian said.

“The Potter family has gracefully offered shelter in

their Cottage for the time being and the Order has
decided that it would be best for your family to go
into hiding,” Moody said.

“What about our family? Our friends? Our works?”

Rose asked.

“They have all been dealt with,” Monty said this

time. “They all think that you have gone on
vacation for a few months since Mister Evans has
not taken a vacation in a few years, so he had it
‘accumulated’ or something like that. They’re safe.
They’re safer by not knowing anything. Perhaps
knowing that you’re ‘out of the country’ might be
better for them still.”
“We couldn’t accept it,” Lily said. “Mister Potter,
this is – Monty this is too much.”

Monty smiled at Lily once she fixed her treatment

of him. He was fond of her, she was nice and kind
girl who treated his son and his granddaughter
quite well and dealt with all the information they
had about Anne a lot better than he had expected
any other normal teenager to do, especially one not
all that familiar with the extension of magic such as
a muggleborn still learning of the ways of life.

“Of course you can accept it, dear,” Mia said,

shaking her head. “That’s why we offered it.”

“To take a house—”

“A cottage, it’s just a cottage,” Mia dismissed. “We

barely use it when it’s not the holidays.”

Anne frowned to herself, quickly hiding her

expression and schooling a neutral face in less than
a second.

Mia had the terrible ability of forgetting how rich

her family actually was, especially when compared
to a working muggle family. Christian was a police
officer and had been in a factory before that and
Rose was a teacher. Neither made a lot of money.
Anne had been to their house; it was a common
Cokeworth house for a family of four.

The Cottage was… a lot.

“Thank you, Misses Potter,” said Petunia. “Really,

thank you.”

Petunia was a lot more scared than she had

admitted to being and the idea of going back at all
to her house after all that happened was less
attractive than she had expected it to be, even
before the news that somebody had broken into the
house. She wanted to be near magical people; she
was a lot safer around them, she found herself
discovering more and more as she grew more
informed.

Rose had just turned to scold her daughter, ready

to say that one shouldn’t accept things such as this
when Monty cleaned his throat.

“I doubt the family has much of an option, Misses

Evans,” he said. “Please, I hope you can
understand things a bit better with the explanation
that comes after such an attack like this, but you
must take the advices we here give you. For your
own good. For your family’s well-being.”

Christian turned to Lily, who was slowly sitting

down on the sofa, James helping her and gently
sitting behind her, allowing her to rest against him.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us

anything,” he admitted to his daughter.

“I thought it was for the best, Dad,” Lily said. “If

you didn’t know, then you wouldn’t want to get
involved and wouldn’t want me to leave this part of
my world behind. I love magic. I want to fight for
my right to use and for the right of people like me
to live without fear, without danger.”

“So that’s who they’re targeting? People like you?”

Petunia asked. “I thought they were targeting
normal people.”

“Muggles,” Anne quickly corrected.

“Yes,” Petunia whispered, shaking her head as if

scolding herself for her mistake mentally.
“Muggles.”

“They’re targeting muggle-borns,” Sirius answered

this time. “They believe they have stolen their
magic, not that they were born with it like they
were. It’s… complicated, but it’s a very old idea
from the time of the Witch Trials and all that, it’s…
more than medieval! But it’s an idea that survived
through all this by fear and false-superiority.”

“Think Hitler,” Anne offered. “We have our own

Hitler.”

“Hitler?” James asked.

“I still had family in Germany and Poland at the

time he was in power,” Mia said. “It’s a fair
comparison, Anne, but a cruel one.”

Petunia looked pale, Rose looked revolted, but

Christian looked possessed in his anger as he
glared at his own hands.

“You’re fighting a whole war at eighteen years old,

coming back home and smiling as if nothing was
happening and I was a terrible father for not
noticing something was off. Something such as this
isn’t dealt with alone, Lily. You should’ve told us.
We wouldn’t have made you give up your world if
you didn’t want to, even if it would make us feel
like you’re safer – Lily, there’s so much in your
would we don’t understand, so we need you to
explain it to us,” Christian said. “What type of
father lets his little girl fight a war without offering
to fight with her?”

Anne couldn’t help but look at James, who was

already looking at her with the same deep face.
There was no denying that James was doing
something right to Chris’ eyes, even though he
didn’t know that.

“Oh, Daddy,” Lily whimpered, eyes filling with

tears.

Anne had to look away to not let her own eyes fill
with tears.

Christian hugged Lily so tightly that Madame

Pomfrey hissed, but didn’t scold them.

Anne jumped when an arm got around her

shoulders, flinching away from the sudden contact
only to find Sirius smiling a bit at her, but not
looking into her eyes. He knew what she had been
feeling, she guessed. She wondered if he missed
his dad when he looked at things such as those.

Through the sobs, whimpers and sniffs, the

explanation of the whole timeline of the war was
given to the Evans and the protection spells were
explained to them as well – it was hard, but they
were convinced to go to the Cottage the next night,
but spend that one in the Manor. Monty and James
would escort them to their house the next day to
gather their things to move them.

That night, Mister and Misses Evans didn’t mind

that their two adult daughters insisted on sleeping
in the same room as them. Truth be told, it was
their presence and safety that calmed them enough
to allow them any sleep at all.

James Potter hesitated before walking into Lily’s

bedroom right behind her, across the room where
his father and her parents were in. He was
disgusted by the state of the beautiful, quaint little
house – it was a mess; clothes everywhere, broken
dishes, broken windows and even the TV was
broken.

Inside Lily’s room, he sighed and looked away.

Even her underwear had been messed with and he
gentle waved his wand to put her navy-blue bra
back into her drawer.

“This is just rude at this point,” Lily complained.

“Whoever was in here, they seemed pretty

interested,” James said, bitterly.

“We must ask Severus if he knows anything about

this,” Lily said.

However much of James that wanted to frown and

roll his eyes about Lily commenting on Severus as
she held one of her pink lacy knickers, he knew she
was right. If Anne asked anything, he would sing
like canary. There was a part of him, deep inside –
the part that he had been burying away from view
ever since he saw the genuine worry over Anne and
Lily in his eyes when Lily was attacked by Rosier
and the way he had been trying to become a better
person for Anne – that wished Severus wasn’t
Anne’s friend; as a father, he worried he would see
Anne crying as much as he had seen Lily cry over
that boy, especially after being bluntly racist (could
he call blood-supremacy a racist concept?) towards
Lily, even if it was some sort of initiation program.
He wondered if Severus would try anything with
Anne had Regulus not expressed interest before
him, and wished the answer would be ‘no’, but he
couldn’t be sure, not with the way Severus hounded
around Anne as if he was a bodyguard; still, part of
him told that it was pretty much the same way
Sirius would hound her when they were together
and that was the only thing that calmed him down
enough.

“I’ll ask Anne to do so,” James dismissed the

conversation.

“Do you think you can spend the night on the

Cottage tonight?” she asked.

He almost choked on his own saliva.

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

“Tonight. I’m asking if you think you would be

allowed to spend the night,” she answered with
naturality. “I talked to Petunia and my mum, they
both said that they were fearing that they wouldn’t
be any safe in the Cottage without the others being
armed with magic and all that.”

“The place is safe, Lily. The only ones that know its
exact location are my family and I… and well,
Snape that one time he was sick and Anne needed
to get him out of some party without being too
suspicious, but I doubt he saw much; the wards
warned my dad and he took Anne and him away to
your house by Apparation. The wards are mostly
blood wards that have been added to your family.
Your safe and nobody will go in without our
permission and, even with our permission, we can
feel when people come and go,” he answered. “The
place is safe.”

“I know all that,” she said. “They don’t seem to

do.”

“I fear your dad might not be as welcoming with

the perspective as your mother and sister,” he
admitted to his other reason for hesitance.

Lily almost laughed as she shoved more clothes

into her bag without as much as folding them.
James had never realised how messy she really
was, but he didn’t seem to find in himself to care
about it, he thought it endearing, if he was quite
honest. Lily was always in such a hurry that he had
never noticed that her ‘hurriedness’ was just part of
her personality, not some poor time management
problem. The only time she seemed to be organised
and calm was when she was painting or drawing.

“My father will listen to whatever you have to say

after all you and your family did for us, James,” she
said.

“Well, I don’t like the idea of Regulus spending the

night,” he said.

“But he does… often,” Lily shot back.

He almost cringed, but held back as he nodded,

acknowledging that Regulus Black did spend quite a
few nights in the Manor, especially in the last few
weeks.

“I’ll warn my parents and Anne,” he said.

“You don’t need to look so guilty about it, it’s not

like we’ll do anything. It’s a Cottage, it’s small and
–” she looked at his face. “James… how big is that
bloody Cottage?” He looked around her room and
out in the corridor since he was standing in the
doorway. “Is it bigger than my house?” He
hesitated. “You are filthy rich, aren’t you? I
should’ve known! God, you little toe-rag!”

“Hey, come on!” he exclaimed as she started

grumbling under my breath. “Are you actually
angry that I’m rich?”

“I’m angry that you didn’t tell me, exactly, how

bloody rich you are,” she said.

“Is that something you do? Because it sounds cocky

to do so, and I thought you hated cocky, so I didn’t
say anything,” he admitted.

Lily almost laughed at his reasoning.

“Well, at least it’ll be fun to see my family reaction

to that. They’ll see I’m marrying into a good, rich
and powerful family and they won’t be able to
complain about a single thing I do,” she said.

The room grew still in the next second.

“Did you just propose?” James asked.

Lily blushed deeply. Shame washed through her as

she thought that young her would hate her very
much.

“I suppose I did,” she said.

“Well, then yes,” he said.

She glared at him.

“That’s so anticlimactic,” she complained.

“You’re the one that was so unromantic, not me. I

don’t see you in your knees,” James complained
back.

Still, he smiled at her as he put his hands on his

back pocket and took a ring.

“Are you taking a piss right now?” Lily asked with a

laugh. “You had a ring with you all the bloody
time?”

“I had this ring with me since we started dating,

Lily-flower,” he admitted with a laugh. “It’s
Emerald, your birthstone. I wish you were July,
really, I can totally imagine you with a Ruby in your
finger, but… I think we can leave that for the actual
wedding.”

“You’re barking mad, James,” she said, walking to

him.

Perhaps it was odd timing, but nothing seemed to

be as perfect of a proposal as James being the one
to say ‘yes’ like they had done with their first date.
Lily could never think of herself accepting a
marriage proposal in another way – it had always
been James Potter, and in every timeline he would
be standing in the doorway of her childhood
bedroom, offering her a very shiny ring of gold and
emerald with a smile of pride and love on his lips,
adoration on his eyes.

She started the kiss, a mess of giggles and lips.

But they were interrupted by the cleaning of a

throat to see Monty Potter standing at the corridor,
pretending nothing much was happening.

“Potter, remember you are here in official Auror

business and refrain yourself from… personal
moments,” that was Fleatmont Potter, the Head of
department standing in the doorway, not his dad.
Though he did see the amused glance at Lily’s
finger, now decorated with the ring. “Five minutes
to meet us all downstairs, Miss Evans.”

He did smile as he walked away, but James was

blushing nonetheless.

“Well,” he said once his father was out of reach. “I

doubt he will think much before allowing me to
spend the night with you, bride-to-be.”

Lily blushed even more.

“Oh, shut up and help me pack my stuff,” she

dismissed his joke.

And nobody thought twice when James announced

he wouldn’t be going to the Manor that night. After
squeals, screams and scolding during lunch, the
engagement announcement was accepted by the
family, not one of them besides Mia noticing that
Anne stroked her own ring under the table with a
smile on her lops.

Another step towards her brother getting there.

Harry Potter would soon be comforting her pains
away.

Nobody said anything when a buquet of flowers got

to the Manor, addressed to Lily filled with Lily of the
Valley. There was no signature or card with it, but
they all knew Regulus was asking for forgiveness.
‘Rebirth’, ‘sincerity’; those were the meanings of
the flowers, and Lily accepted each and every one
of them.

Chapter 105: Chapter One

Hundred and Four -
Summary:
Some truth comes out to the Black
family and Orion and Regulus
makes sure they wouldn't come
out.

Notes:
I think I'm done with my
chemo???? I'm not sure yet, but I
think it's done. Ill let everybody
know soon enough, so forgive me
if the chapter feels rushed, I wrote
it on the hospital waiting room
after some blood tests lol

BLACK FAMILY ENGAGEMENT

Evans-Potter

Lord Fleatmont Potter and Lady Euphemia Potter

are pleased to announce the engagement of their
son, Mister James Potter to his sweetheart, Lily
Evans, daughter of Christian and Rose Evans on
this day, the 26th of September of 1977.

Mister James Potter is an Auror in training following

the footsteps of his parents, both famous for their
amazing record of hunting down Dark Wizards. Miss
Lily Evans is a muggleborn witch with a famous
green-thumb who is the personal apprentice of
Advanced Herbology in the infamous Bittersweet
Green House in Diagon Alley. And due to their
careers only now growing, they plan on a long
engagement.

A summer wedding is planned.

We, of the Daily Prophet, wish the couple and

merging family all the happiness there is to be had
in such trying times.

There was a loud hiss on the table, making clear

Bellatrix’s disgust for the situation the Potter Heir
found himself in his personal life and Regulus had
to hold back a grin from the imagination of Anne’s
happiness with the news; she had told him with
their Parchment almost ten days before that one,
but only now with the Evans family safely put away
from the public eye that they decided to announce
it.

Ever since all their daughters were married, his

uncle and aunt had moved into Grimmauld Place to
help take care of his parents as well, seeing that
Regulus was so often working in his internship.
Unfortunately, his meant that Bellatrix would stop
by constantly since she seemed rather bored in her
own house with her husband ignoring her and her
Lord barely making time to ‘satisfy’ her since he
was so busy planning so much – ‘much’ that
Regulus had yet to hear about.

“What is happening to the world,” complained

Walburga loudly.

“Absolutely disgusting,” agreed Bellatrix. “The

Potters are really falling from grace, allowing filth to
go into their blood,” he looked at Regulus, who was
very busy buttering his breakfast toast. “Again,”
she added.

“Again?” asked his aunt.

“She’s talking of Anne,” Regulus coolly explained.

“Oh, the girl,” Druella said.

“Yes, the girl,” Orion said, tone tired, but clearly an

interesting commentary since he had barely been
speaking at all. “And her name is Anne.”

Regulus looked up from his toast to his dad. They

hadn’t talked about the wedding blessing he had
given Anne, but he seemed to know that Regulus
knew, because he had that glint on his eyes
whenever Regulus was daydreaming alone in the
music room or in the library.

Cygnus rolled his eyes at his cousin’s odd

protection.

“The girl is interesting, Orion, but not enough to

issue a whole conversation at the breakfast table,”
he looked at Regulus before looking back at the
Head of the House. “I expected this protection from
Regulus, but not from you.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Walburga asked,

frowning at her brother.

“Regulus clearly had been sleeping with the girl

since he brought the girl over for us to meet,”
Cygnus said.

“I was not,” Regulus said.

“He just said he wasn’t,” Walburga said.

“Don’t lie to your mother, Regulus. And don’t be

naïve, Walburga,” Druella said. “It was clear by the
way you two acted around each other.”

Regulus put his toast down on his plate trying to

look as natural as possible as he rolled his eyes,
sipping his tea before answering his family’s stares
with a very well-trained glared that he had
perfectionated while still in school.

“I wasn’t sleeping with Anne,” Regulus insisted.

“Anne is my friend and a good person, she’s a half-
blood. What’s the matter with it? She’s dating
Severus Snape, another half-blood friend of mine.
Their relationship was even talked about and
complimented, if you must know, by the Dark Lord.
I don’t see how it’s any of your business at this
point.”

Cygnus didn’t seem pleased at the way he was

speaking and even less pleased with the fact that
he had no say in any of it.

“Are you going to tell me you never slept with the

girl?” Bellatrix said with a laugh. “She looks like a
–”

“Like a what?” Regulus asked, this time his anger

slipping a bit.

Bellatrix’s grin grew.

“Like a whore,” she finished the sentence, tongue

passing across his teeth and lips, delighted at the
attention she was receiving.

Regulus coldly looked at her as he tried not to let

his disgust pass through his lips. He reminded
himself that if he held back just a little more, just
enough for the wedding, then Bellatrix would have
to bow to Anne if she didn’t want to be kicked out
of the family and burnt from the family-tree.

“If you weren’t pregnant, you’d be kicked out of

this house,” Orion said.

All eyes turned to him in surprise.

“Why are you so protective of the girl, Orion?”

Walburga asked, hand wrapped so tightly around
her tea cup that Regulus was surprised nothing had
broken yet. “Do you have something you wish to
share with all of us?”

Orion’s voice was wavering a lot, but he seemed

completely awake and firm as he turned to look at
his family.

“I gave Anne and Regulus my blessing for their

marriage,” Orion said. “And as Head of the House, I
forbid any of you to talk about it to anyone outside
of the Black family, including your husbands and
lovers.”

A wave of powerful magic came over all of them

and Regulus felt his stomach drop.

The pandemonium came soon after.

Bellatrix’s gasp was so outraged that it almost

made Regulus laugh at the thought that she had
some decorum left in her, but she stumbled to her
feet with her knees shaking that he almost thought
she would have the baby right there. Druella ran to
her, begging her to sit down and think of the child
inside of her, but she looked as pale and shaken as
her daughter seemed to feel.

Cygnus refused to move from his seat, surprise and

shock so big that he saw no reason to do anything
other than gape at his cousin, shaky hands
grabbing firewhiskey small bottle from the pocket
of his coat and drop all of it into his teacup, putting
away all the discreetness he seemed to have had
up to that point. He grumbled something under his
breath.

Walburga’s screams were so loud that Regulus

couldn’t understand a single thing she was saying,
but he could understand she was angry and that
made part of him want to hide under the table,
shaking like when he did when he was a child.

If that was the moment to tell the truth, then it was

the time for Regulus to drop his bomb as well.

“Anne hasn’t been dating Severus, never has; she

has been dating me. We are engaged,” Regulus
threw the information on the table and carefully
stood. “And as Heir of the House of Black, I forbid
conversation about this subject or about Anne.”

Magic waved out of him at once, a lot less subtle

than his father’s.

All the women turned to him this time. The screams

were directed at him and Bellatrix’s eyes closed
tightly as she tried to take deep breaths.

“YOU ARE AN INSOLENT LITTLE BOY, YOU HAVE NO

RESPECT FOR MY NERVES OR FOR THE FAMILY I
WORKED SO HARD TO BUILD!” Walburga was
screaming. “I FED YOU, I CLOTHED YOU AND I
CARED FOR YOU. THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?”

“You did all those things because you had to,”

Regulus said, sipping his tea once more. “And most
of those things were actually done by Kreacher, and
I don’t think he’s going to insist on taking
responsibility.”

“YOU ARE SMART, REGULUS, THINK OF IT!”

Walburga continued on screaming.

“Mother –”

“Whatever she has on you can disappear if you tell

us,” Druella quickly jumped in.

“Listen to your aunt, Reggie,” Bellatrix said.

“Don’t call me Reggie. You lost all opportunities of

me letting it slide in the moment you put a spell on
my fiancée’s cup with the idea of getting her so
drunk she would do something stupid. Don’t you
think I know you wanted the Dark Lord to kill her?”
he said firmly, getting up from his seat on the
table. “The Dark Lord, in all his kindness, decided
to overlook it and allowed you to go up to sleep,
pretending he didn’t know. You knew he would give
some burbon to her, you knew he was instered in
getting to know her better and you put a spell on it
anyways. Do you understand that you could’ve
messed up his plans? You were reckless and
unthinkably stupid.”

“Don’t talk to her like that, boy!” Druella exclaimed.

“I AM THE HEIR OF THIS HOUSE AND SHALL SOON

BE HEAD OF IT. ADRESS ME PROPERLY!” he yelled
as loud as he could, hand slapping the table in front
of his with strength enough to make one of the
wine cups fall to its side. “One more mistake, and I
shall remember it forevermore once I’m Head and
have the power to kick you out of this family… and
take people in and back in.”

“Are you threatening to take your cousin back?”

Walburga said in a pitiful spit, disgusted by her
son’s action.

“If you dare me so, I’ll take Sirius back,” he said,

barely looking at his mother. “I have the control
here and so does my father, who already gave us
his blessing. Dare to as much as think of something
as stupid as coup and I’ll know, and I’ll make sure
you all pay for its pitiful excuse of an intervention.”

“Druella, Bellatrix, sit back down and shut up,” said

Cygnus.

He had yet to say something more than necessary,

so all eyes turned to him in surprise. He wasn’t one
to take decisions such as this; he would usually
allow his daughters and wife to do whatever they
wanted, but now he was stepping in.

Regulus smirked to himself.

Cygnus knew his place.

“We gracefully congratulate your happiness and ties

to a new family, Lord Black,” Cygnus said coldly
even without his family’s support. Regulus didn’t
have the title yet, and yet he knew what was
happening: he had just gained a new ally. “We
expect nothing less than a great choice from you.”

Cygnus knew his cousin was to die soon. And he

knew his destiny – money, title and job – would be
in ties with Regulus; when he was the Head, he
would have everything in his hands and he was
protecting himself and his family.

Regulus smiled at his power.

“I made a decision!” Regulus said to Anne.

“And given is a stupid decision, I elected to ignore

it until I hate half-a-mind to talk about it without
slapping that smug look off of your face,” Anne
answered firmly. “Why did you tell your family,
Regulus? This will only put you in danger. My
position is bad already as it was before, but this
new… information coming to light, you are the one
who put your neck in the line.”

“They can’t do anything to me, Anne,” he said,

rolling his eyes.

She paced in front of him in the Music Room of the

Black House, Grimmauld Place. She had been
invited and was surprised when she found out there
were people in the house while she was there. She
seemed to be shaking as she walked back and forth
as he sat on the piano bench, back to the piano.

“But the Dark Lord can,” she said, stopping and

turning to him. “Oh, Regulus, don’t you see? If
something happens to you because of this, I will
never forgive myself. I don’t think you should have
done that.”

Regulus got up, his back making a small noise from

being in the same position for so long. He didn’t
have much a problem to take long strides to her
and take her hands in his, carefully turning her and
leading her to sit down on the chair a few feet
behind her. He kneeled in front of her and kissed
her hands gently.

“They won’t tell anyone,” he said. “There’s such a

thing as Head of the House magic and Family Ties
magic. It’s not common, but it’s something that my
family is adept to. The Head of the House can
demand outrageous things and one has to do it if
they still want to be part of the family. The others
can make ultimatums, such as the ones I did this
morning; they know I’ll be the Head of House soon
and I’ll have the power of decision over their lives
in every way that matters and with the Family Ties,
they know I didn’t promise anything in vain, I
meant every single word.”

“What if they do something to you?”

“They can’t. I’m the only male Heir. Both my

cousins are married off. We have no maidens to
take over for a while until someone else has a male
and merge Houses, which would be a great shame
to our family,” he said. “My simple existence is my
armour at the moment.”

Anne didn’t understand the real fights families so

pure and so traditional had to face and how
Regulus’ sex had anything to do with it, but still she
was happy with the fact that he was safe.

“Why did you call me over, then?” she asked.

He raised his eyebrows.

“You thought I called you over to protect me?” he

asked, smiling just a little bit.
“Actually, yes,” she admitted.

He chuckled.

“I asked you because I wanted to formally

introduce you as my bride to my family this
dinner,” he explained. “You can leave if you want
to, but I’d really be proud to show you off as I
wanted since we first got together.”

He put his ankles back on the ground and slightly

lifted his body to give her a small peck on the lips.
Anne chuckled, but kissed him back.

“Your mother –”

“Might as well drop dead to me if she doesn’t

accept you,” he said.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because she won’t accept me,” Anne said. “And as

much as I hate her, I know you can’t hate her,
even if you try very hard. And you’ve been trying…”

He looked down, knowing very well that she was

correct. Carefully, he put his hand on her leg and
smiled at her, finally looking up once more.

“I love you,” he said.

“I have no shadow of a doubt of it,” she answered.

“Good,” he said.

“Good,” she answered.

The doors of the music room clicked open and the

clicks of heels against the wooden floor, still
Regulus didn’t move from his very submissive
position – on his knees in front of Anne, holding
onto her legs with great devotion in his eyes. He
didn’t mind Walburga glaring at them as she stood
beside them.

“Dinner is ready,” she announced.

“You could’ve sent Kreacher to say that if you

wanted, Mother,” Regulus said.

Walburga looked down at them with disdain, but

her eyes were focusing mostly on Anne at that
point.

“You said you didn’t want anything from my family

the first birthday of my son you were invited to,”
Walburga said. “I wonder when did that change.”

Anne almost sighed as Regulus leaned away from

her, allowing her to get up from her seat and slowly
he rose beside her, half a step behind her.

“I warned you that your behaviour wouldn’t keep

Regulus submissive for long and I told you that I
knew you hated me because of that,” Anne said. “I
remember the conversations we had very well,
ma’am. And I remember that I know that I’m the
personification of the reminder of your failure of
keeping Sirius away. I remember I called you a
tyrant. And I stick to every word I said that day,
with the only exception that my friendship to
Regulus grew – it pains me that you’re not happy
for your son, because I knew he wanted you to
accept me, but I knew you wouldn’t.”

“And yet, here you are,” she spat towards her.

“And here I’ll stay. I did also say that I didn’t want
to give you the satisfaction of being exactly who
you expected me to be,” Anne looked deeply into
Walburga’s eyes. “You expected me to be the side-
piece, but I am to be his wife. I am to be Mistress
of the House of Black, Lady Black, and there’s
nothing you can do to stop either of us.”

“I warned you, Mother, that there’s nothing you can

do to change my mind,” Regulus said, taking a step
forward, being almost in front of Anne at this point.

Walburga’s face went from white as a ghost to red

as a pepper before going to slightly purple.

“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING. YOUR

FILTH IS COMING INTO OUR HOUSE! INTO OUR
BLOOD! YOU’RE DIRTYING THE FUTURE OF THE
HOUSE OF BLACK!” Walburga yelled. Anne was
surprised that she sounded exactly like the portrait
she had met. “YOU HALF-BREED BITCH!”

“YOU DARE TO RAISE YOUR VOICE TO ANNE ONCE

MORE, MOTHER, AND YOU WILL FACE
CONSEQUENCES UNDER MY HANDS! I AM TIRED
OF THIS CHILDISH BEHAVIOUR!” Regulus
screamed back.

Anne took a step back in surprise. Regulus didn’t

scream often, but when he did, she was reminded
of the powerful set of lungs he had inherited from
his mother and trained with Quidditch.

“You can’t speak to me –”

“I can and I’ll continue doing so until you

understand that you’re under my wing now. Father
is dying and I’m the Regent and Heir of the House.
You have no power over me anymore,” he told her.
“Anne is also the Heir of the House from this
moment on and you will treat her accordingly.”

With white, cold fury in her eyes, Walburga dared

to think of a way to hurt her son until she
recognised that look staring back at her. Orion’s
eyes. Everybody had always said that Regulus had
her eyes, which was something she never
understood since she shared the eyes of the Black
family, the same colour as her husband’s. However,
she could understand now – there was life in her
eyes even in her anger, there was some spark, but
she knew Orion’s eyes enough to fear a single glare
from him. When angry, there was nothing but cold,
freezing indifference behind them.

Walburga’s anger disappeared.

She looked at Anne to see the almost smug look in

her face, but perhaps she was imagining that too.
She had been imagining a lot of things and Druella
had been the one to tell her that the things and
people she had been talking to weren’t really there
– she thought that, perhaps, she was special, that
she could see things that others couldn’t because of
more powerful magic, but she wouldn’t dare to say
it out loud, especially in front of Anne Potter.

She looked away from Anne and, with great pain in

her heart, made a small bow.

The dinner table was set and Kreacher had made

sure to put Regulus sitting in front of Anne this
time, not beside her, for modesty’s sake, which
Anne never really got, but thanked the elf
nonetheless. The little creature disappeared with a
big, exaggerated bow to her. Regulus had looked at
her and chuckled under his breath as he started
putting a plate to himself.

“Good to see you,” said Orion once everybody

started eating.

“You too, Lord Black. I wonder when I was going to

see you again,” she said.

She had thought it would be his funeral.

“And I doubt I was alive in your thoughts,” he

teased.

“I have regard enough for you to not lie to you,”

was her careful answer.

Though that made Orion start laughing, his

chuckled turned to loud coughing that made his
body almost fold in half as he raised his shaky hand
holding a black handkerchief to wife the blood that
escaped his mouth.

She knew his illness tended to only get worse and

she knew it would take him before summer was
over, but still it was shocking to see him at that
state, wasting away so quickly and looking so
weak.

His coughing reminded her of Fred’s last few days,

crazed fever coming from the infection and the
coughing worsening, throat bleeding from the
strain, face sweating from the pain, fever and
exhaustion since he could barely sleep. His
coughing was keeping everybody awake as well,
but George not once complained as he tried nursing
his twin back to health. The silence once Fred was
gone as a lot louder than his coughs and it made
sure to not let anybody sleep either.

“Here,” she mumbled, reaching for her bag. All

eyes on the table followed her hand as she
searched for something and took out an orange
square. “Pastilles. They won’t stop the coughing,
but they’ll numb your throat and mouth, it might be
uncomfortable to eat or drink anything and you
might spill because of it, but it’ll stop hurting so
much.”

“Anne wans to be a Healer,” Regulus jumped into

making a conversation.

Cygnus watched his cousin take the pastille without

hesitation, trusting Anne’s speech blindly. It was
out of character to him, but to someone to close to
death and so desperate for relief, there was nothing
he could hesitate for.

“Anne will be married soon, Healer can wait,” said

Bellatrix.

“Healing can wait if Anne wants it to wait,” was

Regulus’ answer in a cold, warning tone. “Anne will
do whatever she wants to do once she’s married to
me.”

The ‘anything’ in the sentence made Anne raise her

eyebrows, confused by its meaning, but she said
nothing.

“Your half-blood children –” started Druella.

“The future heirs of the house,” corrected Cygnus.

Druella glared at her husband, but knew he was

correct.

“Remember, Aunt Druella, who’s fathering your

daughter’s child,” Regulus said. “Isn’t the Dark Lord
a half-blood himself? I don’t see why in her case it’s
a good thing and in mine I should be ashamed of
the woman I chose to spend my life with.”

Which was a lot more than Bellatrix could say, he

seemed to add in silence, but everybody on the
table seemed to know what he wanted to say.
While she was married to a pureblood, her heir
would be a half-blood as well and the father of the
child wanted nothing to do with her besides a warm
bed at the end of the day. Regulus was one of the
lucky ones, everybody knew that as well. Not
everybody in the pureblood society could find any
type of love at all – and he seemed to find many
types in a single person. Either Anne was special,
or destiny just really wanted the two of them to
meet.

“You’re still the Heir –”

“Don’t cross the line, Druella,” Cygnus warned.

“Keep yourself in your place. Wish them happiness
and shut up at once.”

Druella glared at her husband once more, but

quieted down.

Bellatrix looked at Anne up and down.

“Are you pregnant already?” she asked.

Anne’s eyebrows rose.

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you engaged to him because you got him to

get you pregnant? Is that how you tied him in?” she
asked, glaring at her.

“What an uncouth question, Bellatrix,” said

Walburga, not eating, but messing with the food
around her plate.

She said it out of simple duty as an older woman to

help a younger one, but nothing else, she had
indeed thought of that possibility as well, though
she had no courage to ask such a question. She
needed Regulus to stay – she had already lost a
child to the Potters, she wouldn’t dare do
something that she knew would lead her to do the
same once more; besides, Regulus was the only
one that was left to take over and, if anything
happened to that, she would be the one to be
blamed. The mothers are always the ones to blame.

“Anne is to be Lady Black soon,” Regulus said,

looking from his plate. “But there are no heirs in
mind for a few more years. We want… a few more
years of freedom for the… situation the world is in
right now.”

Because they were going to fight, but no one in the

family seemed to be correct to what side they were
on.

But Bellatrix did hate Anne for a moment, jealous

of the love she was experiencing and jealous that
she didn’t have to trick Regulus into the
relationship. Why a half-blood like her deserved
more love than she, a pureblood, was allowed to
have? Unfortunately, she was forbidden to talk
about it and even her memories were blocked from
intrusions because of the Family Ties; her Lord
would never know and she would never be satisfied
with the life she would lead as the wife of a man
she didn’t love and the mistress of a man that did
not love her, mother of a child she would never be
able to connect with and Mistress of a House she
did not care for, lost in a war she entered for love
and would never be able to get out for loyalty.

Bellatrix, for a small moment, wished she was

Anne. And Anne smiled, completely safe and sound
under Regulus’ eyes and the protection of a family
that wasn’t hers, something she would never have.

The Black soon-to-be mother looked away and

wished to be anyone but herself and then her mind
disappeared from her again.

Chapter 106: Chapter One

Hundred and Five -
Summary:
The mix of emotions brings forth
bad consequences

THE COMBINATION

The full moon had been very trying this time.

James had a long scratch that was already healing

on his back from when Moony threw him back
against one of the walls from the Shrieking Shack
when he tried to keep him from leaving. Sirius had
been thrown against a tree once he managed to
push Moony back into the house with a big bite on
his ankle, he had hit his head on the bark, but he
was nothing other than just a little bit dizzy by the
time the sun came up. Peter had been thrown
around a lot, but James managed him to stop him
from hitting any walls or getting too hard by getting
him in between his antlers and avoiding having to
use them on Moony.

But Remus was the worst. Whatever was troubling

Moony, it made him scratch himself, cry and whine
the whole night as he attacked several times the
animals that he knew to be his mates, the mates
that would help him through the night and even get
him from hurting himself several times. The deep,
long and bleeding in Remus’ chest was the proof
that something was off of its place.

When the four teenagers got back to Potter Manor,

they were about to drop from exhaustion,
stumbling across the mudroom after walking from
where they had apparated. Peter ran forward,
calling out for someone, anyone to come and help.
James held the door as Sirius dragged the
unconscious man in his arms inside and then
helped his friends with Remus’ other arm before
dragging him into the parlour.

“Call for Anne, Wormtail,” James said. “ANNE!

ANNIE! COME DOWN! GET YOUR AID KIT!”

“ANNE! ANNE! ANNE!” Peter screamed as loud as

he could, running up the stairs.

Monty as on the door of the parlour in a second,

still in his pyjamas. It was Tuesday, but it was his
day off. Mia followed, tying her robes around her
sleeping gown and running forward, but gasping at
the amount of blood. The red was soaking through
the carpet – it was a worse injury than Moody’s.

“What happened?” Mia asked.

“Himself happened,” Sirius said. “The stupid piece

of shite is so emotionally constipated that even his
werewolf form can feel it.”

“Not the moment, Padfoot,” James said. “He

scratched himself, cried the whole night,
whimpered and yelped.”

“Anyone else hurt?” Monty asked.

“Nothing we can’t deal with. Remus’ needs more

attention,” James said.

Monty realised how calm he sounded and looked

even though his hand was shaking. His eyes were
glistening a bit too much, but he was holding back
his tears as well as he could. He was focused on
getting help for his friend.

Anne stumbled in with her aid-kit in hand and Peter

right behind her.

“Stupid! Stupid!” Sirius sobbed.

“Peter, get him out of here,” Anne said.

Peter ran to Sirius as fast as he could and gently

wrapped his arms around him, insisting on getting
him up from the ground, whispering how he
couldn’t help Remus at the moment and it was best
for Anne to have the space to do so. James
followed, knowing that he couldn’t stomach being in
there with his unconscious friend, who he knew by
Anne’s face that was in danger.

“We need to stop the bleeding,” Anne said. “I need

help.”

“Tell me what to do,” Monty said. “Tell me what to

get. I’ll do it. Mia, you help here in here.”

“Clean cloths – the stripped ones that Lily cut last

time; we have some left in the other aid kit. Bring
it whole,” Mia said. Anne was focused on getting
the silver out of her aid kit and the cleaning
potions. “Silver will hurt him!” Mia said, surprised
that Anne had her bloody hands trying to open the
small jar of silver.

“It helps to clean off, Remus was the one to teach

me this in my own time,” Anne explained. There
was ‘pop’, the jar was opened and Anne shoved her
four fingers of her left hand in there, taking a
scoopful of it. “Hold him down. This will hurt a lot.”

Mia held Remus’ shoulders down with all her

weight. Anne dropped the silver cream on top of
the long scratches.

It was an immediate reaction. Remus screamed as

loud as he could, eyes opening with the shock of
the pain, pale chest going up and down even faster
as he sobbed. He fought as hard as someone that
lost so much could, kicking and having to fight off
Mia’s weight over his shoulders and arms, but it
didn’t matter much, because he was soon out
enough, this time Anne wasn’t sure he would wake
up any time soon.

Monty ran in, several strips of cloth on his hand.

Mia took them and watched as Anne folded them in
half and forced them against the cuts – she copied
her.

“This will stop the bleeding?” Mia asked.

“It’ll help the silver go in, the bleeding needs to

stop with the pressure as well, but the silver needs
to go into his bloodstream,” Anne said. “It’ll keep
him out for a few more hours and take the
werewolf related illnesses from him – we don’t want
him to end up half-a-werewolf even during the day
like Greyback. That’s how he got this way.”

“Untreated wounds?”

“Yes. Werewolves have a few bacteria that are

harmful to them that they carry, but are dormant
unless they get hurt, either by themselves or by
others. That’s why it scars, because it’s untreated,”
Anne answered. “It’ll be found out in 1984 by
Minthius Patterson, a father of a werewolf little girl
who was attacked when she was seven. She was a
pageant girl, you know? It killed her to have so
many scars, so he decided to try to not let her get
more. He did it. Fathers do a lot for their little
girls.”

Once Anne and Mia had felt the bleeding slow

down, the cloths were taken and Anne made sure
to fully cover Remus’ cuts and scrapes with the
powerful Quick-Healing Potion that Severus had
sent her not too long ago (a batch that was too
good to sell, according to his tutors) and then
shoved down anti-bacterial and a few others
potions to fight off the infection that might come on
his mouth. Then, she put the Blood-Replenishing
Potion down his throat.

Remus is out of the woods.

This time.

Sirius was shaking, unable to as much as take his

tea to his mouth. James had just stopped crying
and was now sipping the tea in small amounts.
Peter was trying to keep both of them in check.

It wasn’t that Peter wasn’t scared or worried for his

friend, but he was the least hysterical one at the
moment. He was angry, even though he knew he
had no right to feel that way at all. Remus didn’t do
that on purpose and he had no control over what
he was doing during that night, and yet he was in a
very hidden fury as he made sure to keep James
and Sirius in place. He, too, understood that Remus
was grieving and getting over the fact that his
mother died and that was a hard thing to do, he
remembered the state of his own mother would get
whenever she would talk of his father, but he
couldn’t forgive him for all the pain that he was
forcing Sirius through.

“We had a fight,” Sirius said, voice wavering from

crying and sobbing so much. “Maybe he hadn’t
forgiven me yet. I should’ve known better. I know I
can’t fight with him the day of the full moon, that’s
so stupid of me.”

“You’re dating. You’re living together,” James

dismissed. “Fighting is… expected at some point.
You two are in a difficult position right now. Remus
isn’t one to accept help, but you know he needs it
and you’re the best one to give it to him.”

“You can’t help who doesn’t want to be helped,”

Peter said, throwing himself to sit down in front of
Sirius.

They were sitting in the small round table of four

chairs in the kitchen. Coco was throwing some
breakfast together for the family.

“What the fuck, Pete?” Sirius whimpered.

“I’m being honest here, Sirius,” Peter said. “Remus

doesn’t want help.”

“He does. He just doesn’t know how to ask it.”

Peter rolled his eyes discreetly in secret annoyance.

There it was once more, Sirius bending without

breaking all for Remus and Remus refusing to see
what a good-guy and how devoted Sirius was for
him. It took him a moment, but he recognized the
feeling inside of him as – unfortunately – jealousy.
He always wanted someone to treat him like that
and Remus was taking it for granted. What he
didn’t realise, however, was that he wasn’t jealous
of the relationship in itself, it was that he jealous of
Sirius in specific and he didn’t know what he had
done. There were nights that he would lie in bed,
listening to his mother slowly becoming worse for
wear after the stroke she had. She couldn’t even go
to the bathroom by herself – that was something
no son should be helping their mother’s through; in
his family, daughters helped mothers, and yet…
there he was.

He hated how Remus could push his friends away

and play around with them and they would come
back time and time again. Still, his friends seemed
to be pulling away from him in rapid speed.

“He’ll be fine,” James said, taking the conversation

to another area. “Anne’s with him. She knows how
to do this.”

“Since when did she become a Healer?” Peter asked

confused.

“She’s good at it, from before coming here and all

that,” James said.

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“What did she do before she came here?” Peter

asked.

“Had an uncle worse than my mother,” was Sirius’

answer. “Crazy bitch,” he grumbled to himself soon
later.

The screaming had stopped a few moments ago,

but Peter could see from his position that Monty
was still coming and going to get more and more
pieces of cloth and even came back out with a huge
amount of white cloth tainted with bright red blood
dripping down to the ground. As he came back once
more into the parlour, he waved his wand and the
blood was cleaned.

It took almost fifteen minutes, but Monty came out.

He wasn’t dirty with blood as Peter had imagined
him to be.

“Boys?” Monty called.

The two that had their backs to the door of the

kitchen turned, eyes wide to their dad.

“How is he?” James asked.

“He’s better,” Monty said.

“Is he awake?” Sirius asked.

“No.”

“Is he out of the woods?” Peter asked.

“No,” Monty said, voice a bit lower this time.

Defeated. “Anne’s trying, but he’s not holding the
blood potion down. She’s saying that it might need
to be done on the muggle way.” ‘Muggle way’ was
not a good thing when it came to medicine, Peter
knew that much as a half-blood. “Do any of you
know Remus’ type of blood?”

“He’s an A+,” James answered quickly. “Same as

me, same as Anne.”

Sirius blushed, clearly embarrassed that he didn’t

know something as important as that about his
boyfriend.

“Then, she needs you, James,” Monty said, leaning

against the doorway. The boy got up, but hesitated.
“Go inside, James,” insisted the father.

James still didn’t move.

“Is he… How does he look?” James asked.

The thing was that James had never seen a dead

body before starting to work, and all those dead
bodies he had seen and helped dealing with, none
of them were of people he cared about. Remus was
wasting away, slipping away from them, and James
wasn’t sure he knew how to deal with it.

Monty looked at him and shook his head.

“Go inside,” he insisted.

James held his breath and did.

Remus didn’t look too hot right now, that was all
Peter had gathered from the interaction as he
started to feel nauseous. He didn’t want to lose his
friend, even if their contact had become rarer, a
day a week or so through letters, but never more
than that and it was always Remus or James
initiating it.

Sirius pushed some hair away from his face.

“He’s not going to die, is he?”

“Anne is taking care of it,” Monty said. “Now, come

on, both of you. Let’s get you to a shower, wash off
all this dirt.”

And blood, Peter added mentally.

It was already night again when Remus’ eyes

fluttered open, confused by how warm and
comfortable he felt when his last human memory
was that he was lying on the wooden, rotting floor
of the shack, waiting for the pain to become
completely unbearable and for his mind to lose all
conscience.

“Remus?” whispered a voice.

With some difficulty, he turned his head to look, but

his head felt so heavy that it just fell limply to the
side. He groaned at the pull on his muscle on the
neck and looked around with just his eyes moving.

Anne was sitting down on the ground beside him,

holding his hand. He was lying on the sofa on the
parlour by the angle of walls.

“Annie?”

“You’re okay. You’re back home,” she said.

He grumbled an agreement. He knew that he was

home.

“Is anybody hurt?” he asked.

“Just you,” Anne said. “And you were hurt badly.”

Remus wanted to say that he was still hurting, but

he was terrified that she would take it as a physical
pain. His body was still half-sleeping and there was
no way he could feel anything but the warmth, but
his heart hurt.

“But nobody else?”

“Nothing worrisome,” Anne insisted. “Though, Peter

did break his little-toe by hitting it on the chair on
the kitchen, but you had nothing to do with it,” she
smiled a little bit.

He wished he had the strength or the courage to

muster up some laugh, for the story was funny
enough. He would talk to Peter about that situation
once he was feeling better, maybe even tease him,
but at the moment even the idea of Little Peter
screaming and cursing until Anne fixed him up
wasn’t funny – he hopes Sirius had given some
chocolate to Peter, he liked chocolate after the full
moon as much as Remus did.

“You can’t do this again,” Anne said firmly.

His mind came back to the reality of where he was

and what he had done.

“I lost control. I can’t control myself during the

transformation,” Remus said bitterly.

“I’m not talking about your transformation, I’m

talking about gathering all these horrible emotions
you have and bottle it up,” Anne explained. “You
need to talk about it, otherwise your
transformations are going to be more and more
difficult. Want to know how I know that? Because
you told me that. After Sirius died, you went off the
tracks for a while and Tonks was the one to bring
you back, keep you safe from everything and
everyone, including yourself.”

“Sure, go on about how I was a burden,” he said,

rolling his eyes.

“I’m not. That’s not what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m
explaining something you explained to me, because
you seem to have forgotten it.”

“Anne –”

“When you hurt yourself like and you can stop it

and you doesn’t, you hurt the people that care
about you as well,” Anne cut him off.

“You’re not the best of people to scold me about

this, Annie,” he said.

“But Sirius will not, and James is terrified of making

things worse to you and Peter is just terrified in
general all the time,” she answered, though she
didn’t say anything about the way Peter was
avoiding Remus because he was in love with his
boyfriend. “So… I’m going to be the bad guy here
and be honest. You’re grieving, talk about it.”

“I don’t need to talk about it. Talking about it won’t

make it stop hurting,” he snapped. “We’re in the
middle of a war, Anne, I need to get over it and
stop this weakness.”

“Your mother died, Remus, crying isn’t weakness.

You cared for her and I don’t see anything wrong
with it, but we need you to keep yourself alive. If
you’re gone, we’re the ones that will grieve and…
well, I did a lot of things because of grief. I’m here
because of grief, because I couldn’t take and I
didn’t know how to deal with it,” she said.

“Time will make it stop,”

“It will not.”

“It did to you.”

“It did not,” she said. “Grief is not finite. You get
used to it, to the pain and it becomes… bitter
nothingness after a while.”

“It won’t, I know it won’t. This feeling won’t ever

disappear and turn to something else. If it doesn’t
go away at once, it won’t ever,” he said. “This
sorrow can’t be natural. Being stuck in the same
place, in the same bloody feeling is horrible and I
hate it and it won’t go away. It’s too much.”

“If the sorrow is so much, it means that you care

just as much,” Anne said. “It’s important to keep
your mother in your mind, don’t get me wrong, but
she’s gone and you can’t let that dictate your life.
Sirius is trying to help you and you’re pushing him
away, screaming at him and making him hate
himself for caring. I care, I’m trying to help, but
God, Remus, it’s hard to help someone that doesn’t
want to be helped.”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“Allow him to get any closer than he already is,” he

said. “I thought I was going to die when I heard
she passed. I can’t deal with it again. I can’t deal
with someone I love leaving me behind again; you,
Sirius, James, Peter, Mia, Monty, Lily. I can’t. I
really can’t. I won’t bear it. I won’t make it.”

Anne almost gave a pitiful laugh, but she held back.

That sounded so familiar.

“That’s not how this works.”

“What works?”

“Humans,” she answered. “You care. You can’t stop

making yourself care just because you’re scared,
because that’s not how people work. I heard once,
‘grief is the price you pay for love’. It stuck with
me. Can’t you see that your grief is, partially,
good?”

“Good?!”

“Don’t you think hurting is better than feeling

nothing?” Anne asked, eyebrows raising.

“I’d give anything to stop hurting. Maybe

nothingness is easier to deal with. There’s a war
coming, no – there’s a war here, raging on us,
already taking people from us and I can’t allow
myself to dwell on the past and indulge on
paralyzing and crippling sadness and pain. I’m an
adult! I’m fighting in the resistance, for God’s sake!
And I can’t get out of bed sometimes because I
miss my mum. It’s pathetic!” he grumbled.

Perhaps he said too much, too far, because his

wounds hurt and whimpered before he sobbed. This
time his pain was more physical and soon enough
he was given another pain potion which he
recognised as Madame Pomfrey’s own recipe, the
one he had been taking ever since he was eleven.

“Here we go. There we go,” Anne was whispering,

caressing his face and pushing his hair away from
his face as he slowly came back to the present,
pain slowly lessening. “Remus, come on, you’ll be
alright.”

“I’m tired.”

“You can sleep if you want to.”

“Not that type of tired,” he said. “Tired of feeling all

of this. It’s overwhelming.”

“I know,” she said understandingly. “But no matter

how much I care and how much I love you, I can’t
help you go through this. I never learned how to go
through this either. I just kept holding on because I
had so much to do, threw myself on my work and
James can attest it wasn’t the healthiest decision.
You have people who would do anything for you –
tell them what you need. We’ll do whatever we
can.”

“I don’t want I need.”

“Then tell them that, too,” she said. “Communicate.

Say that you want to be alone or that you want a
hug or that you don’t want to sleep by yourself, but
don’t throw hurtful words when Sirius is trying to
convince you to get up to eat something.”

He looked at her. He wanted to scream at her, too.

Wanted to tell her that his grief had nothing to do
with her and she needed to leave him alone, but he
couldn’t.

James had once said that he understood why his

friends would complain that they couldn’t say ‘no’
to him, always blaming his eyes and how wide they
could become when he wanted something from
them. He understood now that Anne’s eyes didn’t
compare to James’ only in colour, but also in clear
‘deer-in-headlights’ effect – if she asked the whole
world to the right person, she would have it.

He couldn’t push her away.

Pushing her away would be pushing his friend and

his goddaughter. Pushing her away would be
pushing his best friend’s daughter and his
boyfriend’s sister-in-law, in one way or another.
Pushing her away was pushing the girl he talked to
his mother about, the one that made his mother
say that she was proud of him for.

He couldn’t push her away.

“You’re right. I’ll talk to Sirius.”

“Good. Now, sleep. Rest, because it’s four in the

morning and I’m about to black out,” she said in an
exhausted voice. “I love you, Moony.”

It was the first time that she had called him ‘Moony’
unironically.

“I love you, too, Annie.”

“When everything gets better, we’ll figure this all

out,” she whispered.

With a loud swoosh, Anne walked forward to give

space for Mia to go through the Floo as well. They
had just helped Christian to go to through the Floo
to the Manor and now they were popping up at the
Cottage for some fun.

A tradition of the Evans family, according to Lily

and her mother. Lily had invited Mia and Anne over
to talk about the wedding and decide some little
details, make everything look pretty and make the
bride happy and unstressed until the wedding.
Women in the family would meet once every two or
so weeks to get more details out of the way – in
this case, with such a rushed marriage, they were
to meet every week to deal with everything was
fast as possible.

“You’re here!” Lily squealed once they walked

further into the little parlour. “I’m so happy you’re
here!”

“You asked us to be here, we’d be here, of course,”

Mia said with a chuckle. “How are you, my dear?”

“I’m fine, Mia. What about you?”

“Wonderful, my dear, wonderful,” dismissed Mia,

looking over Lily’s shoulder to Rose and Petunia.
“Hello, Petunia. How are you?” she made sure to
talk to the younger woman before even meeting
Rose’s eyes. “Rose, good to see you again.”

“The same, Euphemia. Great to see you,” said

Rose, still a bit embarrassed by all the things she
had said about Anne and Monty in their last
meeting. “Anne, you look great in yellow.”

That was a lie. Anne knew that much. She looked

great in green, white and silver, but she ‘good’ in
yellow and red, never great, though. It was nice,
however, that Rose was forcing herself to be
somewhat friendly to her, even though she felt like
judging every single thing she ever did – Rose was
a mother and she truly loved her children, that
much was clear and it was the reason she was
accepting so much of her life being taken away to
make sure her daughters would be safe and sound,
even if in a world she didn’t know and did not like
very much, but accepted in the hopes of not losing
Lily.

“Thank you,” Anne dismissed. “So? What are we to

decide today?”

Lily held Anne’s hand.

“Before anything else, I wanted to ask you

something,” she said. “I talked to Petunia last night
and I explained that a wizarding wedding has to
have magic.”

“Yes?” Anne said, confused. “I think that’s pretty

much the whole point about the magical ties and all
that.”

“Therefore, the maid-of-honour needed to be

magic.”

Anne felt her stomach drop in surprise. It wasn’t a

bad thing, but she knew what was coming next.

“Are you –”

“I want you to be my maid-of-honour,” Lily said.

She hadn’t been the maid-of-honour in her own

brother’s wedding. She had been a bridesmaid, but
the maid-of-honour had been Hermione and the
best-man had been Rony. She never stood chance
against her brother’s friends and she had never
thought too much about it, after all she was lucky
that she was there at all while there was a really
bad war going on around them.

“Lils –” started Anne.

“If you don’t want to, if you think that would be a

bit awkward, we can just… find another way.
Delegate the maid-of-honour magical duties to the
bridesmaids and all that, and then Petunia can be
my maid-of-honour. If you want to be part of
James’ groom’s party, I can totally understand it,”
she said in a hurry, hand shaking as she let go of
Anne’s hand.

“I want it.”

“I don’t see a problem with it, Anne,” Petunia said,

worried that it was the reason she was hesitating.
“I don’t understand much of the culture or the
duties perform. I can understand my sister’s wish
to have you there, as well.”

“I want it, I really do. I just… I never was –”

“Not even in your brother’s wedding?” Lily asked.

“No. I was a bridesmaid,” she explained. “I was just

taken aback, Lily, I’m sorry. I do want to be your
maid-of-honour, really.”

“Really?”

“Really, really want to be your maid-of-honour,”

Anne giggled.

The almost childish excitement made Mia smile to

herself.

It was in moments like this that it was reminded to

her that she was only still alive because of Anne.
According to the things she had found out when she
was younger, Mia was supposed to have died in
1976’s Christmas holidays of Dragon Pox. James
was to be married without his parents; Lily was to
be married without her sister. Anne’s presence and
actions had changed so much for the better in their
lives. Mia and Monty were the most thankful of
those people, of course, because of her they were
able to see their son getting married and even went
as far as meeting their grandchild – if everything
continued to go well enough, they would see the
other grandchild as well.

“This will be grad!” Lily said. “Even Remus is

excited about this! He sent me a letter, offered up
to give me a hair-piece that belonged to his mother
for the ‘borrowed’ part of the wedding. It’s nice to
have a half-blood in the vicinities, James had no
idea what he was talking about when I said I
accepted it.”

“There’s no wedding traditions such as these in the

wizarding world?” Rose asked, surprised.

“There are a few, of course, but not that one,” Mia

said. “If it hadn’t been Lily telling me about it, I
would have never known about it.”

“What do you have?” Petunia asked.

“All guests are given small bells at the entrance in

traditional weddings, the bells are rung during the
kiss,” Mia said. “I had that in my wedding. I rather
liked it.”

“Harry didn’t have that. He had an almost Muggle

wedding, much to his wife’s mother’s disdain,”
Anne added. “But he did have the wands pointing
at the sky in honour of our dead friends and family,
like trying to make them be a part of it, even
though they weren’t anywhere in our world.”

“That’s beautiful,” Rose admitted.

Petunia raised her eyebrows.

“Did you lose a lot of people?” Petunia asked.

“More than cared for,” was Anne’s vague answer.

Silence. Heavy and stuffy. One second. Two

seconds.

“Ok… Anne… what is that ring?” Lily asked,

eyebrows raising as she changed the subject.

Chapter 107: Chapter One

Hundred and Six -
Summary:
Orion Black is gone and Lord
Regulus Black watches the world
around him change.

GREAT IN BLACK

Darling Anne,

A letter such as this should’ve been easier to write.

Father is dead.

I shouldn’t feel so badly about this. He was my

father, but he was the one that allowed and
enabled my mother to do what she wished to me
and Sirius for so long. I shouldn’t mourn the man
that hurt me so much. Because of him, his ideas
and his eagerness to keep our family name afloat, I
was dragged to the wrong side of a war that I
didn’t even want to fight in. He saw my bruises, my
cuts and my mental state after the tortures my
mother put me and my brother through, and he
looked the other way.

When I was younger, I hated how much I blamed

him, after all he never as much as raised his hand
against me without reason as my mother did, but
now that I’m older and I see children the same age
as I was when I was first hurt by her in front of
him, I shudder. I was thirteen. I was younger than
Barty! And I shudder at the thought of what the
fifteen-year-old boy has to go through, I can’t
imagine seeing a thirteen-year-old suffer as well. I
hated how much I hated my father and now I hate
that I can’t suddenly love him now that he is dead.

I don’t know how I’ll deal with the funeral, Anne-

Girl.

The simple idea of those people that didn’t know

the true him, the monster that he could be when he
wanted, all coming to me and giving their feeling
and condolences as if they meant anything makes
me nauseous. How disgusting it is to pretend to be
sad over your father’s death and not mean
anything. And don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for
what he did for us, especially for you and I am
touched that what he asked in return was for my
protection, but Merlin knows that there’s not a
single moment that my mind doesn’t whisper that
we are better off without him.

I’m the Head of the House of Black now, Lord

Regulus Arcturus Black. How pathetic. How such a
decaying name makes me feel like I am someone
else entirely.

Regulus Black, the one that it’s yours, I like him. I

like how you describe him as kind and smart, I love
how you make me love myself. But Lord Regulus
needs to be someone else – he needs to be cunning
and intelligent; and though I know that it won’t
make you be any less of a friend, it makes me
worried of how you’ll see me. You saw several
versions of me, and I still fear that you’ll find one to
hate.

The funeral will in the 12th, I hope you can come.

Severus will accompany you.

Faithfully yours,

Regulus

My dearest, Regulus,

My heart goes out for you. Either you accept it or

not, either you choose repress it or not, you just
lost your father and the changes that shall come
from it will certainly impact you. As you said, you’re
the Head of the House now and there’ll be duties
and responsibilities that will come from it that you
will need to be prepared for – what are your duties?
What are you next moves? You can pass them
through me if you want to talk about them, I’m a
keen listener when I want to be. I won’t even
ramble, I promise!

I will be present at the funeral, as you surely know

that I wouldn’t leave you alone in such a moment. I
wrote to Severus and he said he’ll pass by the
Manor at noon so we can go there together; he said
he would write back to you to explain why we
would go there so late, so I hope his letter has
already reached you by the time you read mine,
otherwise it might be a bit confusing.

My family sends their ‘feelings’, though Sirius did

look a bit too happy, so I’m ignoring them
completely. Sirius did say, however, that you are
welcome to write him if you want to talk to him as
well; coming from him, I think that’s quite the
invitation, so keep an eye out for letter from him
coming as well (and keep them away from your
mother).

Platos, it’s not something I’m familiar with. I’m

trying to become a Healer, is there a book you can
lend me?

I will see you soon, Little Prince.

Your dear friend,

Anne Potter

PS: I forgot to tell you in the start of this letter, but

my mother and her family found out about our
newest accomplishment. I explained everything to
them and they are very excited; they wish to meet
you soon, but I haven’t told my male side of the
family anything just yet.

Dear Anne,

Platos isn’t an illness per say, it’s a curse, but it

became common enough in a few families several
decades ago that it was called an illness a lot. I
doubt you’ll find any commercial books about the
subject, it’s mostly family books that might tell you
something about it. You can get ours to read. The
whole thing is that the father of a half-blood witch
(another half-blood) was very upset and offended
that his daughter had been turned down by a pure-
blood wizard she had been seeing for a long time
because they found out that her mother was a
muggle-born, though she did have a surname that
was easily confused with a pure-blood surname at
the time, but they found out that she wasn’t a
pureblood and they freaked out. You know the
story, you know how it goes. The man was smart,
though, created a whole new curse to throw on
those who wronged his family.

The family that had first refused his daughter in

marriage was the Black Family, no surprise there,
I’m sure, my dear. However, he published a book,
which was taken off the market in a few months
and mostly burnt, but he did teach quite a few
unhappy fathers how to protect and find vengeance
of their daughters’… honour before the book
disappeared completely. And there it was – Platos,
the name of the father. I can understand him to a
certain point and I can see your own father doing
something similar if something horrible happened
to you because of me and my family; I’m quite
scared of your dad, even if I do respect him… most
of the time.

By the way, tell Sirius to stop writing. Mother found

his letters and I really wished she had just
screamed at me, but she whined and complained
for hours and I can’t do anything other than listen
to her. She’s crying a lot as well, not just because
of my father, but because it ‘means’ (in her head)
that I will accept Sirius back into the family now
that I’m the Head. Of course, she doesn’t seem to
understand that Sirius doesn’t want to come back
to our family at all, he’s quite happy as a Potter;
happier than he ever was with us; understandable,
too, but I wouldn’t dare to say that to her in the
moment.

That’s the biggest thing and the reason I wrote this

second letter in a single day, Anne-Girl. My
mother’s mental state has been declining quickly in
the two days without my father. With my aunt and
uncle living with us, it’s been easy to deal with her,
but without them I would’ve been completely gone
mad – she’s refusing and fighting against the
shower, she has been crying a lot and having a lot
of nightmares by the point of waking up screaming,
even during the day. It’s been harder for her than I
had expected it to be.

My mother and father didn’t love each other, as

half of the world must have noticed, but she’s
completely gone now and left behind the shell of
the woman she used to be when I was a child. Last
night, she didn’t speak for hours before going to
bed and waking up wailing in horror and then she
didn’t speak anything that made sense, talking to
wall for hours. I’m terrified. She’s my responsibility
now and I have no idea of how to properly care for
someone in that state and neither does my aunt,
because she just screams at her and yells, hoping
she will obey her like Bellatrix did when she was
younger, but I know this isn’t how this works.

I asked Narcissa to get a Mind Healer, to see if he

can slow down the decaying of her mind.
Fortunately, he’s muggle-born and might have
Muggle medicine that will help her a bit, though I
do wonder if it’s of any worth after everything she’s
done to me, but I can’t bring myself to not care for
her, the thought of leaving her in that state
thinking that I could’ve done more to help her
makes me hopelessly sad, so I need to try. As a
half-blood, do you have any advices? Schizophrenia
is surely something I’m just starting to deal with,
so I’m worried.

I’ll see you tonight, then, my dear. Please, do warn

your family that you will spend the night at my
place, please. I don’t want to be alone tonight, so if
you can, please, stay with me. I’m not one to wish
to sound needy, but I need you tonight, Anne, I
need a friend and I need the comfort only you can
bring me. With my family out of the way, nobody
will make a big deal and nobody outside the very
close family members are invited; the Dark Lord is
in Bulgaria at the moment, talking to some
supporters about moving them to England and all
that, so he won’t be present either.

Don’t see my request for company as pressure for

you to do anything, I just don’t want to be alone
and, if you don’t want me to, I will not touch you at
all, but I have the hope that you know that already.

Forgive me for rambling, Anne-Girl I feel a lot

better from my worries when I’m focusing on
writing as if I’m talking to you, even if it’s just play-
pretend.

With all my love,

Yours,

Regulus.

Severus crossed his arms under the watchful green

eyes of Lily Evans and trying to ignore her father’s
glare at the same time. Though he was in the
Potter Manor, it felt like the Evans’ House.

With Mia and Monty giving a speech on an

important meeting for soon to graduate Aurors
(where James and Sirius were included, sitting in
the audience, pretending to listen to the speech like
they hadn’t seen the practices their parents had put
on), the Evans were asked to stay at the Manor
with Remus and Anne, two steps away from being
called babysitters. Though Remus seemed a lot
better than the letters of Anne had described to
him, he still seemed a bit too skinny and too pale if
compared to the happy young boy he used to see in
the corridors. And Anne was to leave the house and
the Evans were expected to glare at Severus, even
though he wouldn’t be the one touching her at the
end of the night, but the man in the family didn’t
know that.

If honest, Christian Evans had never liked Severus

very much. To him, Severus was just the odd and
bad-smelling boy from the next over
neighbourhood that insisted on following his
youngest daughter everywhere and then the boy
that made her cry herself to sleep for a whole
summer not too long ago. Severus could
understand his side now that he was taught how
terrible and horrid he had acted, but that didn’t
mean he liked to be glared at – if honest, he
wanted to say that he no longer held any interest in
Lily, that his interest in Anne passed not by
anything other than friendship and explain in
details how he was sorry and that he had changed,
but he owned nothing to anyone, so silence was his
only defence, much to his dismay.

“Anne mentioned she won’t be coming home,”

Christian said.

“She will spend the night at my house, Mister

Evans,” lied Severus quickly.

Lily visibly held back a laugh as she served herself

some more tea. She knew very well where Anne
would be spending the night and had watched with
amusement the girl chugging down a whole Anti-
Pregnancy Potion as she finished her make-up not
but three minutes before coming down to find
Severus walking out of the fireplace.

“She’s almost ready, Severus,” Lily said, changing

subjects quickly.

“She better be alright when she comes back

tomorrow morning, lad,” Christian said. “I’ll be
waiting at eight in the morning, o’clock. One
minutes late and –”

“Dad, please,” Petunia said, biting into her scone.

“Anne is a grown-up; she can take care of herself.
Not even her dad is worried about her, you
shouldn’t be, either.”

Severus tried not to raise his eyebrows, not trying

to show how he disagreed. Though Petunia was
certainly talking about Fleatmont, Severus was
quite sure that James was very much worried about
Anne. That man seemed to worry about her more
than about himself, which he thought to be quite
pathetic… until he found himself doing the same in
the moment Lord Voldemort was in the same room
as Anne, then he understood how the visceral
feeling of protection over someone could take over
and make a Gryffindor out of him, reckless and
impulsive, even if he controlled himself a lot better
than his schoolmate. He had seen Regulus is such a
state as well, running through the ballroom to get
to Anne as fast as he could, not worrying about
how people would see it as.

If he needed to bet, he was sure he would get quite

a few galleons by copying the very face James
would be wearing on his chair, trying his best not to
go home and fuss over Anne.

In that moment, Rose Evans opened the double

doors of the parlour and helped a flushed Anne
walk in as she fought to put on her coat.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said as she stumbled forward.

Severus held her by the arm, trying not to hurt her.

“Careful,” was his answer.

“Sorry,” she said. “Am I too late?”

“A minute and twenty-three seconds,” he said,

raising his eyebrows in amusement. Anne chuckled.
“Now, let’s go. Regulus is probably pacing in front
of the fireplace waiting for us.”

He couldn’t miss the way Rose’s lips twitched at the

name.

And he couldn’t miss another thing as he held

Anne’s hand in a gentlemanly way – a ring. Severus
had to stop himself from smiling, though his lips did
go to a grin as he led her to the fireplace.

“Bye, guys. Tell Remus to eat the soup I made

when he wakes up, please,” Anne said, getting the
floo powder. “I love you.”

Severus raised his eyebrows at her once more.

“I love you, too, baby. Careful,” Lily said from the

sofa.

“Will be,” Anne dismissed.

Severus hated how easily it was to smile when

Anne and Lily were together. He thought it to be
rather cute, though part of him hated how much he
didn’t have the same with his own mother – no pet
names, no friendship link, no sweet looks; his
mother was always somewhat empty, even before
she was dead.

The green fire swallowed them quickly as he

mumbled the name of the Black Family Ancestral
Home and, in the next second, Anne was walking
out of the fireplace, still holding his hand and
pulling him out with her.

Narcissa stood on the corner of the parlour, a

bourbon cup in hand and low eyes stuck on the
ground as she sipped it. She didn’t look up at the
noise of the fireplace, but did sigh before closing
her eyes for a moment. Once she opened them, it
was clear why she had been hesitating - she had
been crying.

"Hello," she said.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Narcissa,” said Anne.

Narcissa’s eyes watered again.

Anne, uncomfortable, let go of Severus’ hand to go

to her, who accepted a hug without complaint. She
had never thought her to be too close to her uncle,
but she seemed genuinely upset. She wouldn’t dare
ask question or say anything other than the
necessary at the moment.

“Thank you,” she breathed against Anne’s shoulder.

The door opened to reveal Lucius Malfoy walking

into the parlour, face pale and exhausted. Another
surprise to Anne as she pulled back to see him and
greeted him politely, he nodded, seemingly not
trusting his own voice to say anything in return
besides a small and very strained ‘thanks’.

“Your father is here?” asked Severus. Lucius looked

at him in surprise. “You’re wearing your purple tie.
You only wear your purple tie when your father is
near.”

“He decided to come. He used to tutor Orion at

school when they were younger and they played
Quidditch together for a few years. He thought it
would be polite to make an appearance,” Lucius
said. He would never admit, but his father seemed
quite upset over the younger man’s death. “This
means a lot of unnecessary measures. The old man
can’t do anything without making himself be the
centre of attention, even when it’s not his own
funeral.”

It was hard to miss the bitterness.

Anne supposed Lucius was finally missing the

enchantment that most people had for their
parents. It usually happened in teenagers, but she
supposed later was better than never. If Lucius was
no longer completely controlled by his very
supremacist father, than that meant there was a
chance of him being on Narcissa’s side – perhaps
another spy would do the Order some good,
especially on the moral side of things (they were
expecting action any day now, but the lying in wait
was making it difficult to do anything without
constant anxiety choking them).

“How’s Regulus?” Severus asked.

Grateful that he asked that so she wouldn’t have to

do so, Anne walked back to his side and reached for
his hand. Though Severus tensed up, clearly not
into the idea of touching her more than usual in
front of Lucius Malfoy, his ‘superior’ in ranks.

“Anxious, but as good as it can be expected,”

Lucius admitted. “He’s young.”

“He’ll learn,” Narcissa said, voice still wavering.

Anne’s confusion was quickly hidden when Lucius’

arm went around Narcissa’s waist and petted her in
comfort on her lower back. Severus’ eyes followed
the movement for a moment before looking away
with this normal, blank face.

“It’s his first week as Head of the House, get him

some time to get used to it,” Severus said. “He just
received all of the paperwork he has to do and his
mother is refusing to help him at all.”

“Walburga is done. She’s lost her mind completely,”

Lucius said bitterly. “Refuses to answer when
people ask why she isn’t talking to Regulus. Even
stopped breathing on purpose so we would stop
asking.”

Anne knew that it wasn’t the whole truth and she

really wanted to ask Narcissa if she knew the truth.
The Family Ties and the Head of House Magic were
stopping her from saying anything that would
reveal Regulus’ and Anne’s secret; she probably
tried to break through it and that was why her
breathing had stopped, just until she stopped
struggling against it. Completely expected from a
family such as the Black, but still a scary concept
for Anne to accept from her very Potter point of
view – though she believed that Dark Magic could
be used for good, if used correctly (thus becoming
Grey Magic in usage terms, though not accepted so
in theory), she knew that this was Black Magic,
Family Magic… Dark, dark, very dark magic from
before that surname was even spelled like the way
it was at the moment.

Call her a nerd, but she couldn’t wait for the

moment where she would be calm enough to go
through the whole library without fear of being
killed by a book, something that only marriage
would get her.

But she needed time, she needed the war to be

over before she explored Family Magic any further,
even though she had begun searching up some
Potter Family Magic, something they didn’t seem
too interested in keeping; there was so little on the
subject that she had become bored and walked
away, going to study Blood Magic in Wards and
Protection Spells (written by an amazing
Argentinian, but Chile-resident Alana Del Blanco)
and Blood Magic in Offensive Curses (the
Bulgarians certainly did know how to explain a good
curse, and Irina Penka was the most amazing
example of that).

“She’s grieving as well,” Anne said, trying to

dismiss and diminish Walburga’s reaction. “Not
everybody is rational in their grief.”

“Mourning is exhausting,” agreed Severus. “One in

the mental state that Lady – forgive me, Misses
Black finds herself certainly is a lot worse.”

Anne turned to Severus and raised her eyebrow.

“Misses?” she asked.

“Did no one tell you once you were officially a

Potter? How irresponsible. In families such as this,
if the husband loses title, the wife loses it as well,”
Lucius said.

“But he didn’t lose his title, he died,” Anne said.

She tried to imagine someone not calling Mia ‘Lady

Potter’ is Monty died first; she couldn’t, the respect
people had for her was too much for it to be easily
dismissed.

“His title was therefore passed to his oldest

recognized son,” Lucius explained.

The fact that it was needed to put the word

‘recognized’ in front of it told Anne a lot of the
traditional marriage of a pureblood and she was
thankful that Regulus wanted to step away from it.

Severus seemed to be thinking the same thing as

Anne because his hand touched her lower back.

“We must get going, say our feelings around,

Anne,” he said gently.

Anne nodded to him.

“Excuse me,” she mumbled.

As they turned to leave the room, Lucius cleaned

his throat.

“Yes?” Severus said, trying not to sound too

annoyed.

“When viable, do come here to the parlour with

Regulus, please, we need to talk,” Lucius said. He
sent a charming smile at Anne. “Surely you can
understand it’s business that a young woman like
you shouldn’t hear about, my dear.”

“Nothing I’m interested in, I’m sure,” Anne

dismissed.

And nothing that she wouldn’t know about, either,

she completed in her mind.

Outside of the parlour, the house was surprisingly

alive with people that Anne never even heard about
and from outside of the country moving around,
eating canapes and drinking expensive wine in
conversation of low-volume, all dressed in black
and purple, no one seemed too sad, but they were
all sad in the exact amount to not be rude. Still, it
was easy to hear a louder talking of a shrill voice.

Walburga was sitting not too far away from the

coffin in the middle of the dining room that no
longer had the long, dark wooden table. She was
talking to Druella and Cygnus, both by her side,
willing her to stop crying – not proper, that much
Anne knew; not a mother, nor a wife was allowed
to cry in public, but a daughter is. Anne saw no
meaning behind it and, for the first time, pitied
Walburga; she had lost the man that she had once
loved, but the world seemed to want her to keep
her pain inside and in silence.

“We don’t need to talk to her, if you don’t want to.

We can just find Regulus,” Severus said when he
saw her eyes resting on Walburga.

Anne shook her head. The pity was strong enough

for her to muffle her disgust for the woman for a
moment.

With long, confident steps she walked to Walburga

and gave an acknowledgment nod to Cygnus and
his wife. Discreetly, Cygnus put his head down in
an exaggerated nod mimicking a terrible bow and
his wife just looked away, taking a step back to
give Anne space to get closer to her future mother-
in-law. Walburga looked up when the shadow of the
girl got to her and her blue, haunting eyes tried to
dig into Anne’s.

“What are you doing here?” she asked between her

teeth. “Regulus is –”

“Regulus is alright without me,” Anne said. “How

are you, ma’am?”

The respectful tone clearly got Walburga by

surprise.

“How do I look?” she asked bitterly.

“Like a grieving wife, like a devoted one, as well,”

Anne answered. “As a scared woman, if I must be
completely honest.”

And within reason, Anne had to admit. Now her life

depended solely on her son, whom she manipulated
to be depended on her and who had escaped her
spell because of the woman standing in front of
her, whom she had attacked and hated on in front
of him. The tables had turned too early in the game
and all security and comfort she could’ve found in
her husband’s death after so many fights
disappeared.

“Did you come here to gloat?”

“I came here to say that, if it’s up to me, I won’t

ask Regulus to cast you away. If he does so, it’s
because he wants it,” Anne said. “I will not like you.
I will not love you. I will not care about you. But if
it’s seen as my duty to care for you, I shall with as
much kindness as you show me and if it’s empty,
then I’ll be the personification of nothingness. Can
you understand this much? I’ll be your mirror.”

She didn’t want that; she wanted a slave. She

wanted a daughter. She wouldn’t find that in that
half-breed, but kindness was better than cruelty.

Walburga’s bottom lip trembled.

“They tell me he’s dead, but he keeps talking to

me,” she admitted in a low voice, whimpering.
“He’ll haunt me forever for what I did to him.”

“Walburga –” started Druella, shocked and taking a

step forward.

Cygnus held her back by the arm.

Anne kneeled down in front of Walburga as the

woman went back to crying, sitting on her chair.

“Misses Black, he’s gone. What you see is not your

husband. It might look and act like him, maybe
even more cruel, but it’s not him and it’s not his
ghost,” Anne said gently. “He’s gone. What you see
if your head playing tricks on you.”

Cygnus shook his head to Anne. And they both

knew at that moment that Walburga wouldn’t
understand that. If it was just the hallucinations, it
would he easier, but delusions were setting in and
the stress was too great. Walburga wouldn’t get
better. She would never be the same she was
before.

Anne got up, ignoring the confused and stiff

Severus standing to the side.

“Let’s find Regulus,” Anne said.

“With pleasure,” Severus grumbled.

Anything to be away from Walburga, he seemed to

want to say.

And it wasn’t hard to find Regulus hiding in the

kitchen with Kreacher, drinking wine and snacking
some chocolate with great ease as if his father’s
body wasn’t right on the next room and people
weren’t looking for him everywhere.

“Miss Anne-to-be-Mistress!” Kreacher said, a big

bow as soon as he took notice of her. “And Mister
Snape, sir.”

Severus grumbled, closing the door quickly. Anne

smiled at the elf.

“Hello Kreacher, how are you feeling?” she asked.

“Kreacher is very sad Master Orion in no longer

with the House of Black,” he admitted, nodding
sadly. “But Kreacher is happy Master Regulus is
Master of the House… But Kreacher can’t say he’s
happy.”

“I understand, of course,” Anne said, nodding to

the elf.

Kreacher seemed grateful that she understood

simple and basic manner, since he expected less
from her because of what he was taught about
blood-status.

Regulus smiled at them.

“Hello, you two,” he said.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, smiling back at

him. “I’m sure you wanted a bit more time as Heir
before… this.”

“Well, I knew I didn’t have much time, so I asked

out of internship, I leave in two weeks counting
tomorrow,” he said. “I had guessed I had until
Christmas of last year. He held on quite nicely, if
the doctors had anything to say about this. Mother
says he refused to die because he knew I’d mess
up, but she barely makes any sense either at this
point, so I’m ignoring whatever she means to say.”

“Good idea,” Severus said. “I’m sorry this is

happening to you.”

“It could be worse,” Regulus dismissed his friend’s

words. “I’m a bit tipsy, so, please, take me away
from this place and make me look sad and tired
before I get out of the kitchen, dear friends.”

Anne smiled a bit.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think you look great

in all-black, Little Prince,” she said, kissing his
cheek as she pulled him away from the chair he
was sitting in, hoping to make him look depressed
for the rest of the day.

Severus sighed loudly.

Regulus chuckled.

Chapter 108: Chapter One

Hundred and Seven -

FUNERAL COMFORT

The reactions of the women of her family to her

explanation to the ring passed several times on her
head as she watched the service to Orion Black in
hopes of keeping her entertained and looking
somewhat pensative as everything happened.

Rose Evans’ gasp was loud as she put her hands

over her mouth, actually surprised that Anne was
already engaged, even though she seemed to have
forgotten her daughter (same age) was also
engaged and her older daughter (by a single year)
had ben engaged and had broken it off already.
She started a rapid line of questions about Anne’s
fiancée, asking every detail about the story of the
ring once she said it was a family-heirloom.

Lily had let a loud squeal come out before a high-

pithed scream before she hugged Anne to tight that
she felt like she could barely breathe, almost as if
she was being squeezed by Nagini or something
worse. She had started rambling about Anne’s
relationship with Regulus and how Regulus was an
amazing match. “… Did you know that he refused to
kiss Anne in front of James with anything more
than a peck?! He’s so respectful,” she had said.
“And then this isn’t the first jewel she got her and
he’s right and a Lord as well. He’s very smart,
skipped a year, Mum!”

Petunia ran forward to hold Anne’s hand to see the

ring better so close to her face that Anne refused to
believe she could see anything other than a blur of
colour, but she insisted that she could see real
stones if she was close enough and then Rose
insisted that it was indeed a talent of Petunia. She
had deemed the stone ‘amazingly good’,
‘outstanding’ even. Proudly, she said that Anne
deserved a good stone and that she needed to have
a good marriage, and more proudly she said that
she was happy that Regulus was someone
important in the wizarding world. If anyone saw,
they’d think Petunia already knew she was family
with Anne by the way it seemed like she was the
one entering the family as well.

Quietly, Mia watched with high-chin, knowing all

details well enough. She was proud of her
granddaughter, but she was proud that she was
witnessing a mother-daughter moment of Anne and
Lily as Lily listening to everything eagerly,
squealing and nodding keen to every detail.

Now, seeing Orion being taken away by the men in

the family made Anne know that the wedding was
coming closer and closer and that the war followed
– though she didn’t know if before or after the
happiness she had promised herself to indulge.

“We must go,” Severus said, touching her shoulder

once the coffin and the immediate family was gone
from the room and people started moving to go
back to their houses. “Do you want to go home or
do you want to go to my house until Regulus calls
for you?”

“Yours, please,” she said.

“It’s not much,” he warned as if she hadn’t seen in

on the Room at school already.

“I lived inside and shared a cupboard, I think you’re

fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Come on, I need
to get these shoes off.”

The parlour was full and people were struggling to

go out with floo in a graceful manner while tipsy
and tired. Anne was sober, but her feet did hurt
enough for her to stumble once she stepped into
the fireplace and she had to hold herself to the
structure around the fireplace in Severus’ house
once they gone through, kicking off her shoes in a
hurry and moaning loudly in relief as her feet
touched the carpet.

“Now, that’s a sound I didn’t need to hear,”

Severus grumbled, throwing himself in the sofa.
Anne barely looked around, he noticed, clearly not
doing anything that might make him uncomfortable
in his own house. “Congratulations, by the way. I
forgot to tell you.”

“For what?” she asked, looking up from her feet to

him in confusion.

“The ring… Regulus asked for help to pick, I was

with him,” he explained. “I know I send a book over
as present with a note, but I never said it out loud.
I though such situation insisted on a vocal praise.”

“Does it insist on a hug as well?”

She raised her eyebrows, an amused, but hopeful

look in her face. He narrowed his eyes at him.

“Absolutely not,” he cut her off with a mocking

glare. She smiled. “Do you plan on marrying soon?
It would be a… smart idea.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“And why do you say that?” she asked. “We’re

young. We have time.”

Or so she hoped, she completed in her mind.

“That’s wishful thinking, you can’t be sure of

anything with everything that’s coming. It’s safer
for you to be his wife, it makes his family your
protectors as well,” Severus said. “Well, perhaps
the word ‘protector’ might be a stretch, but they
certainly will have duties towards you that they
don’t have now with you as his fiancée. And, if
something bad happened to him, you have the right
to everything that is his.”

“I don’t need his money,” she said with a smile, but

deep inside some bitterness settled on her chest
with the idea that Severus thought that of her.

“I meant his title, I’m quite aware of the family

you’re coming from, Anne,” Severus added, rolling
his eyes at her. She seemed to relax once he
explained. “Money is the least of our concerns.”

“Our?” she asked, once more she sounded amused.

Severus blushed.

“Regulus might have asked me to be his best-man

and, therefore, you’re also my responsibility now.
This makes me something close to a brother
according to the pureblood customs he’s following.
With Black out of the picture, there’s me left,” he
said. “And Orion Black asked me to do the same,”
Anne opened her mouth to say something, but he
shook his head. “Don’t ask. He was already sick
and confused, I was barely understanding what he
wanted to say, but I admit that he was smart to
ask me to keep an eye on you and tell Regulus
about the marriage-blessing if you didn’t.
Thankfully, you did.”

“I couldn’t hide it anymore. It didn’t sound

important, I thought it was mostly paperwork
shortcut, I didn’t think there would be a literal
magical protection around me even as a fiancée.”

“Orion Black was smart. Let’s hope Regulus will be

smarter.”

“Whatever can that mean?”

“That he needs to get some control of his family

and quickly. They might not be able to talk about
this to anyone, but they certainly can find a way
around it if they want to,” Severus said. “He needs
to get their respect, if not then he needs to get
their fear. He needs to set an example of what
happens if someone disrespects him – I urged him
to shut Bellatrix off at once while the Dark Lord is
away and her husband refuses to talk to her, but he
fears for the child. A soft heart, that one has.”

“He’s kind,” she corrected.

“He’s stupid. She’s the perfect candidate at the

moment, I know you can see it, Anne. Hormonal,
scared and alienated of the power she believes to
have,” Severus corrected. “So listen to me, Anne,
go on and marry the man as quickly as you can.
Take a weekend for the honeymoon and don’t tell
anyone, just… go out of this place for a while and
talk to him, teach him the control you have over
those animals you call friends.”

In any other situation, she would glare at Severus

for calling her family and friends ‘animals’, no
matter what he went through with them. But there
was something in his eyes that made her eyes
narrow in suspicion, not anger.

“You know something.”

“Lucius said something big is coming.”

“Lucius is always saying something big is coming,

Severus,” Anne said. “He likes the attention that
pretending to know things brings him, but Narcissa
said nothing to me and she sat beside me during
the service.”

Severus looked down at his hands in his lap.

“Narcissa is a bit off of orbit this week. She lost the

child she was carrying,” he said. “Lucius told us
accidently. Complained that he had no one to brag
to, because Narcissa wanted to be alone all the
time because of the baby.”

“I never knew she was pregnant.”

“Neither did she. That’s why he’s so confused to

why she’s so upset about it. He has no emotional-
range at all,” Severus said bitterly. “My mother lost
a child when I was young, she didn’t even know she
was pregnant when she got beat up by my father,
but she wailed as the blood made the carpet filthy
as if she knew and loved it the whole time. I don’t
understand it, but I can… feel bad.”

“That’s called ‘compassion’, and I always knew you

had it, though you’re quite good at hiding it,” she
teased him. Anne walked, sitting down beside him
and pulling her legs up and tucking them to the
side. “Did Lucius say anything else?”

“Just that the Dark Lord would get stronger soon.”

“Any particular way?”

“I suppose physically or magically,” Severus

guessed. “If it was a political game, Lucius would
brag he was involved, but he has little information.
The Dark Lord seems to want to do this by himself
this time, so I would guess it has something to do
with the Horcruxes you’re hunting.”

“Most likely,” she agreed, nodding to herself. She

passed her hands on her face, exhausted as she
closed her eyes tightly. “I’d guess he’s finding a
place to hide the Salazar Slytherin Locket.”

“Or finding something else completely different,”

Severus said. She sighed. “I know you don’t like
the idea, but your presence did change things a lot,
you said it yourself. It’s a valid worry.”

“Of course, that is valid, but the Locket already

exists and he has it already. It was created long
before I came here and before you were born,” she
said. “I do think he’s about to think of the cave.
After the cave, after he uses Kreacher… then we
can worry about the rest.”

Severus scoffed a little laugh.

“Don’t let Regulus hear you talking about Kreacher

that way,” he warned half-jokingly. But the more
sober tone took over after her response chuckle.
“Anne, I’m being very serious here. Do what it
takes to make both of you safe, please.”

She frowned.

“I received a ‘please’, unasked for and unprompted.

I’m worried,” she admitted.

“Unfortunately, I do feel like you should be,” he

admitted in return. “Don’t tell Regulus I’m urging
you to make a move, he’ll feel like I believe he
can’t protect you truly and needs his family’s help,
he’d never forgive me.”

“Our secret is safe,” she comforted him.

She was in the middle of lunch with Severus,

laughing at how angry he seemed when she said
she didn’t like Advanced South African Potions from
Adam Rollor, even though he seemed enchanted by
the book and by the writer, when Regulus sent
word that he was back home and those who
weren’t allow to be in the home were gone. That
meant that he was calling for Anne.

Severus did his very best to not look disappointed.

Anne wasn’t as annoying as she usually was that
day and the bantering and teasing was becoming
fun, but she was going away now and would leave
him in that horrible house, dark and alone with his
thoughts and anxiety as all he could think was how
things would get worse. Though, he had to admit,
every day he woke up, he’d think things would get
worse – and they did, but they weren’t the in the
very worst situation yet, and that worried him far
too much.

He gave her some floo powder.

“Do send word if anything happens,” he said.

“I will,” she said, quite relaxed. “Thank you,

Severus. Really, thank you.”

“It’s alright. And remember –”

“Hurry up and keep quiet, yes, I’ll remember,” she

said, rolling her eyes theatrically. He nodded once,
watching her step into the fireplace and smiling at
him. “Thank you so much, Sev.”

He almost frowned, uncomfortable with the

nickname, but he found himself not caring much.
He nodded again, pretending like he wasn’t surprise
that he hadn’t found the uncontrollable desire to
cringe when she said his childhood nickname.

And with that she threw the floo down and said the
correct name. It was barely a second before she
was standing in the fireplace at the parlour of the
Grimmauld Family House, trying to deal with the
anxiety building up in her stomach with the idea of
spending the night in Grimmauld with Regulus.

Stepping out, she hesitantly looked around at the

empty parlour with closed doors. She stood there,
in the middle of the parlour, in silence for a second.

“…and she’ll spend the night because I say so,” she

heard coming from the corridor. It was Regulus’
voice. “Not a single one of you have the right to say
anything to me about that. I’m an adult and, since
today, the Head of the House.”

“Don’t be immature,” spat another voice. Walburga.

“If she’s spending the night so easily, after your
father’s funeral at that, then she’s a whore.”

“Don’t you dare say that!”

“Walburga, please, not right now,” said a third

voice. Cygnus sounded almost exasperated, not
nervous as Anne had expected him to sound. “And
Regulus, do understand your mother’s side.”

“I’m trying to protect your virtue,” Walburga said.

“It’s been lost before Anne was even here,” he

answered. “And Merlin-only knows what you would
if you knew with who.”

“That Harshwood girl –”

“As if!” Regulus laughed, clearly annoyed. “If you

really do need to know, it wasn’t even with a girl.”

Anne closed her eyes, cringing, knowing exactly

what would come next, but thanking that she was
hidden away from the family inside the parlour.

“I MADE A MISTAKE WITH YOU. FIRST SIRIUS AND

NOW YOU, BOTH FREAKS! WHERE DID I MAKE A
MISTAKE? OH, YOU HAVE NO PITY OF ME. YOU
LITTLE SHIT! BLOOD-TRAITORS! UNNATURAL
FREAKS!” she would scream at the top of her lungs.

Anne was tempted to turn around and go back into

the fireplace for Severus’ place, a shelter before
waiting for Regulus to come calling once more, but
she stood in place, waiting for the discussion to end
then.

“Walburga, you’re crossing the line, please,” said

Druella, clearly taken aback. “Don’t say something
you will regret.”

“She regrets nothing, Auntie,” said Regulus, she

could hear a bitter smile on his tone. “She regrets
not a single thing she does or say until the person
is dead. I’m sure she’s regretting all her lovers now
that Father is dead. I’m sure she’ll regret all the
words and slaps she gave me when I’m dead.”

“DON’T YOU DARE DIE ON ME. YOU’RE WEAK!

YOU’RE WEAK, YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. THAT’S
WHY YOUR FATHER DIDN’T WANT TO DIE,
BECAUSE HE KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO
THIS FAMILY ONCE HE WAS GONE. USELESS!
DISGUSTING! YOU’RE LESS THAN FILTH!”

“THAT’S YOUR CHILD, WALBURGA! HOLD YOUR

TONGUE!” Cygnus finally screamed.

“Please, let’s all calm down,” Druella insisted.

“Come on, Walburga, come with me. I’ll prepare
you a bath. You can be asleep before Bellatrix
comes back.”

Silence. Silence. Silence.

The double doors opened and Regulus walked in,

clearly angry. Until he stopped, surprised at her
presence.

“I didn’t feel the wards,” he said, more to himself

than to her. “Hi. How are you doing? How was
Severus’?”

“Hello,” she said.

“How long have you been here?” he asked,

frowning. “You shouldn’t have to listen to this
mess. Mother has been out of control lately,
screaming her head off like a banshee.”

“You shouldn’t have to listen to this either, Little

Prince,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

He shrugged as an answer.

“I did think losing him would hurt less than it does,

but I’m alright in general,” he answered. “I suppose
there’s part of me that feels grateful for all he’s
done for us as Head and… as my father, I suppose.”

“You did lose your dad.”

“I lost my father; I don’t have a dad,” he quickly

corrected.

With long strides, he walked to her and gave her a

little peck on the lips. She smiled into the kiss,
leaning for another kiss, though deeper it was still a
lot proper. She pulled away first, looking into his
eyes with worry.

“Are you certain you want me to spend the night? I

don’t want you to get grief from your family
because of that,” she said.

“I want you here, Anne. NO. I need you here. I

don’t think I can spend another night here without
waking up to think I need to check up on Father,
but only hearing silence. I’m too exhausted,” he
explained. “Your presence will calm me down. We
don’t need to do anything, as we always say; I –
Please, just don’t leave me alone tonight, please,”
he said. He hated how easily he resorted to begging
her, but deep down he knew that she would never
leave him if he really needed her, even if he begged
her to go home. He could trust her. “And, well, you
told me you only went into my room once in your
timeline.”

“To clean it,” she agreed. “But Kreacher kicked me

out,” she added.

“He would do that.”

“He did that,” she corrected with a little laugh. “He

hold you very close to his heart. It’s more than
servitude, it’s love. He loves you a lot, Regulus.”

“And I love him as well, he took care of me a lot

more than people would think, more than elves
usually do for the children,” he said. “Mother was
very present physically while my father was not,
but a child prefers warmth of love over food, if it’s a
made a choice. Mother made sure I was alive,
Kreacher made sure I was happy. I accepted that
was my life and that my mother wouldn’t change
for me or anyone else, no matter how much I tried
to get her attention – after a while I understood
that not getting her attention would be even better,
so I stopped. Sirius had something dangerous…
Hope. He wanted more than what he had, he didn’t
seem to understand that he wouldn’t get it in here,
until he found it somewhere else and left.”

“Well, Sirius was never the best in reading social

cues,” Anne said, trying to lighten up the mood. It
was always hard for Regulus to talk about his
brother. “He’s getting better at it, though. Remus
has been breathing down his neck so he’ll become a
bit more sensitive to others.”

“I pity Lupin, then,” Regulus chuckled back.

“Almost as much as I pity Barty.”

“Barty… it’s been a while… What happened to him?”

“In school, busy with the attention he’s getting,” he

said, a small smile. “He’s been in two relationships
already.”

“The boy is fast!” she mused.

“Quite. The sixth-years Ravenclaw thought so as

well,” he said. “He said that a lot of girls want him
now that he’s been in the newspapers as my
probable successor, just in case I don’t have
children.”

“Older? He’s aiming for older girls?”

“Well, I did aim older as well,” he teased. “Well,

though I’m not sure I reached the target there.”

“I am older than you, a whole year,” she said.

“Even though I am younger than you by almost
nineteen, so I get it that you’re confused.”

He laughed, kissing the side of her head.

“Let’s go to bed. I’m exhausted.”

Anne expected an awkward breakfast, but that

situation she was in did win a prize. It was a lot
worse than she had expected. Walburga did have a
talent for making things uncomfortable when she
was glaring, forbidden by Regulus to say a word
while Anne was in the room and she certainly
seemed to want the girl to walk out of the dining
room so she could go back to screaming at her son
as she had been doing before Anne had walked in.

As someone that grew up with the Dursleys, she

was quite good in pretending she didn’t see glares,
but Walburga’s was a level she wasn’t used to. She
felt like going back to Regulus’ room.

“I must be going,” Anne said as she glanced at the

grandfather clock in the corner of the dining room.
“I’m expected to be back home around eight. My
mum is waiting for me.”

“She’s not your mother, by what Regulus told us,”

Druella quickly said.

Anne looked up, knowing very well that she was

talking about Mia. She shrugged, as if the comment
wouldn’t have hurt her if she had been talking Mia
in reality.

“Well, she loves me and takes care of me. She’s my

mum,” she answered. “Because that’s what mums
do. This has nothing to do with blood, if that’s what
you’re implying, Misses Black.”

“Perhaps you should go, indeed,” Cygnus said,

uncomfortably shifting and looking around.
“Bellatrix should be back at any moment now. If
she brings her husband, then it might be an
uncomfortable explanation that Regulus has no
power in.”

Anne nodded, agreeing with the uncle, even though

Regulus frowned. He knew his uncle was correct
and that it was better and safer for Anne to go, but
he didn’t want her to go. Still, she smiled at him,
kissing his lips in a very light and chaste peck
before allowing him to walk her to the parlour,
closing the double doors behind him.

“Thank you for last night,” he said.

“My pleasure,” she teased.

“Indeed,” he teased back. He leaned in for another

kiss. “You should wear something that will cover
you up for a while. I’m sorry if I got too excited,”
he blushed. “I was quite lost in you. And, well, with
the new bed.”

“Let’s just thank Merlin that my silencing charms

held for the night and say our goodbyes before
Bellatrix gets here,” she said, kissing him once
more. “Be careful. Write Barty and tell him that I
miss him. I love you.

“I love you, too,” he said.

And with that, she took a handful of floo and was

gone.

Chapter 109: Chapter One

Hundred and Eight -
Summary:
Anne deals with her PTSD and
triggers, but makes an important
decision. Welcome to October!

Notes:
Gods know how I'm freaking out
about this election day. Holy sh-t.
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

MASKS AND COSTUMES

And there was the most hateful moment of the year

to Anne, right in front of her, and she had not a
moment to prepare herself.

Halloween. The moment where people would look

at her and Harry with a lot more pity than usual,
the time where her stomach would feel heavier and
food seemed tasteless, the time of the year where
she would look in the mirror and wonder if Lily and
James suffered before their bodies hit the floor –
now that she knew them, now that she loved them
as well, she felt the loss that had yet to come a lot
stronger than she had even felt before.

The dread was deep inside her stomach, creating a

deep pit settling there as she allowed Coco to help
her dress, trying to focus mostly on how good the
costume looked and how Lily would certainly like it
a lot once she saw it. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert; Anne
of Green Gables. How cliché, she thought to
herself, to dress herself as the character she was
named after, but still, she couldn’t help herself but
to like the idea so much. She fixed her hat in
silence.

“Thank you, Coco,” she dismissed.

“Miss,” she answered, making a little bow. “Coco

will help Future-Mistress Lily, alright? Call Coco if
yous need.”

“Will do, will do,” she said smiling at the house-elf

through the mirror.

She put on a mask – not a physical one, she had to

admit to herself, though it did feel like one. Her
face felt heavy, her eyes felt like they weren’t
seeing very well as if she had a net over them, her
smile felt shaky and… there was no other way or
word to describe it; her smiles looked fake, even to
herself all alone in her bedroom.

Anne tried to think of something that would make

her happy.

Regulus smiling at her after a small peck, holding

her face between his hands as if it was the most
precious thing he had ever held. James laughing of
a terrible joke she made, arm around Lily, who
laughed with him simply because she liked his
laugh and had not heard the joke at all. Sirius
quietly admiring the ring Remus gave him when he
was alone, and the day she had caught him also
admiring the ring his father had sent him before
dying. Remus preparing a plate for Sirius for
breakfast before he was even awake, and the way
he knew all the things he ate and the things he
didn’t. Severus reading a passage of a book to her,
voice bland and bored, though she knew that he
was doing that only because she had complained
she couldn’t sleep and Regulus was already
sleeping beside her in the Requirement Room.
Fleatmont would always make tea before Mia woke
because she liked to drink tea first thing in the
morning and he didn’t want her to have the work to
do that, and he had started making waffles as often
as possible for Anne. Mia would always buy the
littlest thing for her children, just because she saw
it and it reminded her of it in a normal day.

Anne thought of the feeling of having a bedroom all

to herself for the first time in forever and the way
her heart seemed to be in her throat when she saw
the beautiful view of the gardens through her
window. She thought of the feeling of having
Regulus’ arms around her in that bed right behind
her after he had asked her to marry him, and she
had accepted – the happiness and realisation of
probable life after survival.

She couldn’t understand herself. She thought

herself to be disgustingly pessimistic.

All those things. All those people. She had

everything she had asked the world to give her in
her original timeline, things that she had promised
herself would make her happy, and yet there was
the dread, the fear and the imminent doom coming
for her. How selfish. How terribly spoiled of her.

“Fuck,” she mumbled to herself, closing her eyes

tight before tears could come up. “Fuck me.”

“Well, now, that’s not something I don’t look

forward to do doing, but I doubt my character of
the night would like the wording,” said someone by
the door of her bedroom, one she had not noticed
that had opened.

Regulus Black had dressed up as Gilbert Blythe

without as much as knowing Anne’s costume for
the night. He looked as handsome and as charming
as ever in brown trousers, white blouse and hat in
hand. His curls were tightly taken over, smoothed
back, a single strand of hair falling to his forehead.

“Reggie,” she said, getting up from her dressing

table’s chair and walking to him for a hug; he
welcomed the touch gently, knowing something
was wrong, but not daring to ask just yet. “I’m glad
you came. I thought you wouldn’t after Severus
said he had to stay in Scotland for the week.”

“Look, I know I don’t like parties, but you asked me

to call. You call, I come, that’s how things work
with us,” he kissed the top of her head before
letting go of her and looking at her face. “Why are
you upset? What happened?”

“I’m not,” she lied. “Nothing happened, don’t

worry.”

“You are, of course that I’m going to worry,

Princess. But please, don’t lie to me. If you don’t
want to talk about it, you just say so, but don’t lie
to me,” he said. Anne looked down at her feet,
refusing to meet his eyes. “Anne, is this the day I
don’t touch you? I can do that, if you tell me to.”

“No, it has nothing to do with that,” she said,

shaking her head and reaching for his hand as if
that meant she could prove to him that his touches
were what seemed to be keeping her head in place.
“It’s Halloween.”

“And you don’t like it?”

“Not particularly. That’s the day my parents died,”

she answered.

Regulus suddenly felt silly and stupid. He should’ve

known that. She had told her whole story to him,
including specific dates and events as traumatic as
a person could live through, and yet he had been
stupid enough to forget something as big as the
day her whole story seemed to really start – this
day, years forward of the one they were living in,
brought forth the constant and imminent danger
into her life because of her brother’s survival.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for not putting two and two
together, Anne. Merlin, I’m so stupid!” he said,
blushing.

Anne shook her head.

“There’s no need to say that!” she said, looking up

at him. “Regulus, I blame you not. I had forgotten
about it as well until a few hours ago and suddenly
everything came falling apart, crashing down on
me. It’s just… recent, that’s why it’s so bad at the
moment. Give me a few hours and I’ll be back to
normal.”

“You don’t need to go back to normal today, if you

don’t want to,” he said. “I’ll talk to your father, I’ll
explain –”

“He’ll feel guilty as well and he’ll stop the party

from happening,” she said holding his hands tight,
holding him in place, with her. “They deserve a
party. They’ve been under a lot of pressure in the
Ministry and Monty wanted a day off; they all like
Halloween, genuinely. I think it would be nice if I
was there for a while, and then we can just come
back here and rest. What do you think?”

“I think that in the moment you want out, you need

to tell me and we’ll barricade the door and stay
here all night. We can steal some of the sweets and
sneak them up the stairs, so we don’t bother Coco,”
he said, he gave her a half-smile, still clearly
worried of her mental state in that day and party.

She smiled. Regulus did understand her a lot more

than she expected him to do sometimes. She was
always taken by surprise, but she was always so
proud of whom she chose to share her life with.

“And, by the way, we still need to tell my family

about our engagement,” she said. “I mean, there’s
nothing scarier to most of them – might as well use
Halloween, allow them at least a few jokes to make
them stop annoying us.”

He chuckled, kissing her forehead.

In the back of her mind, Severus’ advice burned.

She bit into cheeks, forcing her smile, but now the
advice made her anxious – he was so certain that
something bigger than even Lucius knew was
coming and Regulus did seem tenser than before as
well. They didn’t know anything for sure, that much
she knew, otherwise they would’ve told her
something.

But perhaps Severus was a lot more right than he

expected himself to be.

Regulus felt his stomach churn and turn every time

Anne would get out of his sight as he stuck around
Sirius for reputation’s sake, often talking to his own
girlfriend in a friendly tone, but there were too
many people that didn’t know anything and he had
to tell them in a laughing manner that ‘Severus did
tell me to come and keep an eye on this one’, much
to Anne’s dismay.

Anne was wearing a mask; she didn’t need to tell

him that for him to know it. The way her smile
never got to her eyes made sure to let him know
and that had him worried.

If it was any normal day, Anne would be in bed,

shaking and scared of everything and everyone for
hours. He would be there, or James would be there,
to take care of her when she couldn’t do so herself.
But she was in the party, wanting to make
everyone have fun and forbidding herself from
feeling too much and all he wanted was to get her
out of there and scream at her to let it all out at
once; that falseness was a lot scarier than the
anger and screaming she would show sometimes.

“What’s up with her?” asked Sirius suddenly.

Regulus turned to him. Both his brother and his

boyfriend were staring at him.

Sirius raised an eyebrow that was exaggerated with

fake hair as the fake, big teeth escaped from
between his lips. He was dressed in white
undershirt and black trousers – Freddie Mercury, he
had presented his costume with pride, but Regulus
had shrugged. He knew Queen, Anne liked it, but
he hadn’t known the singer’s name. But he did
know Remus’ costume without as much as a glance
by the makeup and the bright coloured clothes he
was wearing; David Bowie.

They formed quite as sight as a couple, Regulus

had to admit to himself.

“What?”

“Annie. Something’s wrong,” Remus said, watching

Anne looking around in clear distress as she served
herself some punch and leaving the cup behind
before walking to hold Lily’s (who was dressed as
some sort of hippie, which wasn’t much of a
costume according to Sirius, who insisted Lily was a
hippie herself) and talk to her and Petunia (some
sort of general, by her clothes, though Regulus
wasn’t sure she meant to be anyone in specific).
“She’s been out of it today.”

“Well, her parents did die today… or will die today,

but in a few years,” he said, frowning and looking
away from Anne. “She’s been a bit… uncomfortable
with the idea of a party, but she likes the idea of
everybody else having a party.”

Sirius paled.

“Shit.”

“Fuck,” Remus agreed.

Regulus shrugged.

“She didn’t want to tell James because he would

cancel the party and she thinks he needs a party,”
Regulus said.

“In that I can agree,” Sirius said.

“What the fuck?” Remus said, glaring at his

boyfriend.

“I’m not agreeing that James needs a party, you

great arse, I’m just saying that he would cancel
everything if Anne told him that,” Sirius said, rolling
his eyes at Remus. “Now, I’m a bit…”

Though Sirius didn’t seem to find a good enough

word, Regulus agreed that he should feel like that.
As the man that would be thrown in prison if
nothing changed, he should know the day his best
friend and his wife died, leaving behind their two
babies behind.

Regulus heard Anne’s voice of surprise and looked

up, smiling at his own surprise once he noticed that
the person that he had recruited to make her feel
better had just gotten there with a small smile,
dressed as Sir Lancelot.

“Barty!” Anne said. “HI!”

“Excuse me,” Regulus quickly mumbled and made

his way away from the couple.

Barty smiled at him and Anne made a little squeal

once she understood how Barty had managed to
get out of school to come to a party: Regulus’
influence. She threw a hand over Barty’s shoulder,
rambling about how there was non-alcoholic drinks
and good food just a few metres away and how it
was wonderful that he was there, even though she
had sent an invitation, she hadn’t imagined he
would actually come, but sent it anyway to not let
him feel left out. As soon as Barty walked towards
the food table, Anne turned to Regulus with eyes so
shiny that he feared she would start crying at any
moment.

“Regulus, you’re wonderful!” she said. “Thank you

so much for getting him to come here tonight.
Seeing him made everything better.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that; I told you before,
Princess, he’s aiming for older women and, besides,
let’s not grow his ego that much,” he teased.

If there wasn’t anybody that didn’t know of their

relationship there, she would’ve jumped into his
arms with a kiss so good that it would make the
people that insisted to stay there, blush. Well, the
way she was looking at him was enough to make
him blush, even though she looked the other way
to stop herself from saying or doing something that
she would regret.

“I wish we were alone,” she said.

“I wish we were alone, too,” he answered.

James Potter’s laugh made Regulus look over his

shoulder to see the man walking towards them with
a big smile and throwing an arm over Regulus’
shoulders, leaning heavily against him, already too
drunk to know anything of what’s happening
around him.

“Hello, you two,” he said.

“Hi,” she said.

“Sweetheart, you need to be careful with your

eyes,” he said.

“And why is that?”

“I would think such a good Occlumens would be

better in not making eyes at her man in the middle
of a party,” he explained.

Anne blushed, looking away once more.

“I’m trying.”

“I…” he frowned and grimaced. “I can pretend I

didn’t see and make a bit of a scene in, like, half-
an-hour if you want to go upstairs.”

The idea of her dad allowing her to spend alone-

time with her boyfriends so openly certainly was
surprising and, perhaps, a bit shocking, but quite
sweet nonetheless. James was finally
understanding that inside a relationship such as the
one they had, sex was a normal thing and shouldn’t
be seen as taboo; as long as he didn’t have to see
anything or hear anything about it, of course. He
sounded more like a friend than a dad at the
moment, which meant he was really trying to be
nice to them.

“That would be nice, Dad,” she said in a lower

voice, to make sure nobody would listen. “Thank
you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, though it sounded

almost painful to him. “Silence up the room,
please.”

As if she hadn’t done so before.

It wasn’t a hard half-an-hour to wait through. Barty

was a great conversationalist now that he was
losing his timid nature and made a good friend with
one of the older girls who had just turned
seventeen, though Anne did grimace at the fifteen-
and-seventeen-year-old couple as they made a
small kiss before Barty took some floo to go back to
school before midnight. It was as soon as Barty
was gone and the clock chimed midnight that Sirius
(Freddie), Remus (David Bowie) and James (some
random wizarding singer that Anne didn’t know) got
up on the dining table they had brought to the
ballroom, pushing some food away. They started
screaming about music and initiating the karaoke
part of the party.

James nodded at Anne and Lily gave a little wink

over her shoulder as Anne slipped away from the
party, dragging Regulus with her up the stairs. Lily
felt her stomach drop as soon as she saw Anne’s
smile disappearing as soon as she thought no one
could see her, dropping so fast that her eyes shined
with unshed tears. She looked away before Anne
could notice she was looking.

But up the stairs, Anne refused to cry completely

until she was inside her bedroom, closing the door
behind her.

Regulus stood in front of her, waiting with his arms

separated from his body so when she threw herself
against him for an embrace, he just accepted it and
kissed the top of her head.

“Everybody’s alright,” he whispered against her

hair, smelling jasmine and strawberry. He took a
deep breath. “Hear that? That’s your dad singing
really badly,” she allowed a little laugh midst a sob.
He smiled to himself, proud of what he managed to
get from her. “My brother is probably going to join
him soon and – oh, there he is! Hear that? Sounds
like two dying cats. How much do you want to bet
that Remus is probably playing air-guitar? He’s
drunk enough.”

“Remus is never drunk enough to play air-guitar in

front of everyone,” she said.

“That sounds like a complaint,” he teased.

“We need to get him high to get him to play air-

guitar. The Welsh holds his liquor,” she said. “He’s
Welsh,” she sounded about to cry now.

“You mentioned,” he said, frowning in worry.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” she said, voice

wavering violently. “I feel like I’m dying. I can
barely feel my lips and my whole left side isn’t
working well.” He could feel her hands shaking as
she tried to grab onto him tighter. He held her
close. “God, Reggie, I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m
dying.”

“No, you are not. I know you feel like you are, but
you aren’t. You are home and you’re safe,” he said
to her, helping her sit down on her bed. “Anne, I’m
here with you.”

Anne sobbed once more.

The sense of imminent doom was taking over her

head and heart. So many things in her plans could
go wrong and so many people could get hurt if
anything was out of the ordinary. The amount of
trust she needed to keep going was too much, and
she had too little to give away in war-times.

“Something is going to go wrong. Someone is going

to die and I’m going to die with them. Something’s
wrong. Something’s wrong!” she sobbed. “I don’t
want anything to do with this anymore. I want to
go home. I want my brother! I want Harry! I want
Harry!”

He held her tighter as her whole body shook from

sobs. The power he felt he had inside her family,
inside this fucked up world he lived in seemed to
disappear completely as he could do absolutely
nothing to help Anne and make her pain stop. He
was a Death Eater, he was the one that ignited the
force that would kill Lord Voldemort in her time,
and yet there was nothing he could do when the
woman he loved was sobbing in despair in his
arms. Harry wasn’t alive – whatever that could
mean. Either he wasn’t born yet, or he was dead.
But there was no way Regulus could bring him to
her.

All he could do was wait.

He allowed her to cry, holding himself together as

best as he could to not cry with her. He kissed her
hair and petted her back, he whispered sweet-
nothings and meaningless apologies for something
he couldn’t do until she calmed down.

Fifteen minutes was too long of a time for a panic

attack to last, but Anne held herself like a
champion once it was over and she sat on the
bathroom floor after Regulus had to help her there
and held her hair back as she threw up.

“I’m tired,” she announced.

“I know,” he said. “Do you want help to brush your

teeth?”

“I want to stay here for a moment.”

Anne almost went back to crying when he didn’t

hesitate and sat beside her on the ground, back
against the bath.

“This one was a long one,” he commented.

“Yeah,” she said. “It happens in certain parts of the

year,” she added after he looked at her.

“Summer,” he guessed.

The time she was at her personal hell.

“Summer smells like being fourteen sometimes and

I just can’t take it, but I usually can get over it if
I’m with other people, it just gets hard when I fall
asleep,” she said. “Halloween isn’t like that. It was
always more of a… hear-say type of thing. I don’t
remember anything at all, I was just a few months
old, but Harry does… did remember Mum
screaming, pleading before dying and the flash of
light of the Killing Curse. I was lucky, I suppose.
But to know they died this day – today of all days,
in a few years, makes things a lot harder, especially
now that I know them.”

“I can understand that,” he said.

They stayed silent once more and Anne’s head was

working fast, looking for somewhere safe to hide. If
she imagined Harry, if she… if she…

“I quit my internship,” he announced. “I couldn’t do

this anymore.” He was clearly trying to keep her
attention in him, and she was grateful to him, even
if it felt annoying at the time. She looked at him.
“Besides, Mother wants me training for my Seat.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re going to be a politic,” she teased,

forcing a smile.

“As if! You’re a much better politician than me,” he

said. “I hate politics. I want to be a musician.”

“You have money enough to keep yourself afloat

while you try to get money with music, it’s a hard
career. Though… all careers are hard,” she said. “Or
we could get married already and I’ll keep you fed
and warm, love.”

“I’d like that,” he laughed.

Anne looked at him.

Severus’ voice whispered in her ear.

“I’m not joking,” she admitted. “I think we should

get married soon. We don’t need to tell anyone; we
can just take Barty and Severus with us and escape
this shit for a while. One night of happiness
somewhere else without having to look over our
shoulders in fear someone will recognize us,” she
said. “We can go to Norway!”
“Italy!”

“Italy!” she agreed. “We can to your hometown.

Get married in the place your life started, quite
poetic – you can get a song out of that.”

“Eloping. How romantic,” he said. “I’m the romantic

one in this relationship, dear Anne-Girl,” he smirked
to himself. “It’s a lot nicer to call you that when you
do look like Anne Shirley,” he added.

She smiled a bit.

“Let’s elope… Friday night, you can come. We can

get Severus as a witness; Barty won’t even have to
know so he won’t be in danger. A weekend away, a
getaway for anyone that asks,” she said. “Nobody
else needs to know.”

“Why are you so adamant nobody needs to know?”

he asked.

“Because my family will ask for a party and I don’t

want that. I just want you. Well, I hate to say that,
but your family won’t attend anyways, so they’ll
just get the news when we get back and then we
can tell my family that we’re married, not
engaged,” she said. “We can get a wonderful trip
and alone-time together out of it.”

“I’ll write you the date. Tell your grandparents

you’re having a getaway weekend with me in one of
my family’s properties,” he said. “I’ll take you to
fair Verona, Anne-Girl.”

“Two literature pieces mixed in. I like the sound of

it,” she admitted.

“Good,” he smiled, kissing her cheek. “I have a

huge library there.”

Notes:
Leave a comment!

Chapter 110: Chapter One

Hundred and Nine -
Summary:
A wedding

TWO LOVERS IN FAIR VERONA

Friday, the 4th of November of 1977, at five in the

afternoon, while Mia and Anne sipped tea in the
parlour, Regulus Black got out of the fireplace and
smiled at his soon-to-be-wife, unbeknown to her
grandmother, the groom saw the bride before the
ceremony – and all Regulus could do was thank
Merlin that Anne didn’t have a wedding dress for
him to be forbidden from seeing her in.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” he greeted. “You look

great, Mia!”

“You charmer,” she accused. “But I do like myself

in this pink dress.”

“Then you see I’m telling the truth and nothing but
the truth, of course,” he said back. “Forgive me for
being short, Annie, but are you ready? The elves
are preparing everything for our arrival. I’d hate to
keep them waiting.”

Coco appeared as if she had been called with

Anne’s suitcase. The elf seemed a lot happier than
normal, she had enjoyed that Anne had asked her
to pack her things and had said she wouldn’t help.
Much to Anne’s mental-Hermione, Anne had been
too tired to dare offer to pack up herself; Lily had
been freaking about the wedding, even though it
was months away still, another reminder to why
Anne didn’t want the party Lily seemed to want.

“Thank you, Coco,” Anne said.

“Thank you, Coco,” Regulus said.

“Now, now, you two go and have fun. But, please,

Annie, don’t come back here with a baby for me to
care for just yet. Give me a few months with my
grandbaby and then you can give me all the great-
grandbabies you want,” Mia said. “Besides, I want
the ring to pass to the other finger first.”

“Not planning on any babies any time soon, Mia,

rest assured,” Anne said, rolling her eyes.

Regulus smiled as if he had done no wrong ever in

his life as if the weight of the potion flask on his
pocket had triplicated. He had a surprise for Anne –
so she wouldn’t have to drink that awfully sweet
and sickly potion, he had asked Severus to make
something up that he could take. It as effective, if
not more, though it was dangerous to drink more
than once a month (it lasted a week or so) because
of the hemlock in it. But no babies on the planning,
certainly, he thought to himself.

“We’re going to Verona-Black, Mia, if you need to

talk to us, you can reach us there or just send
Coco,” he said.

And quickly they left while Mia digested the

information that Coco was to be allowed into the
property of another wizarding family without
written permission and that could only mean one
thing; they were joining families.

In any other situation, she would’ve been upset

about it and called them to come back straight
away, but she saw Anne’s brilliant smile as the
green flames engulfed her after the two days after
Halloween that she had been lost in her own mind.
She wouldn’t dare do anything such as that to
them. If the couple wanted to elope, she would
allow them to have some time, and, when they
were back, she would tell them all she truly thought
about young couples who eloped away from their
families during a war time – well, she didn’t have
an exact opinion, but she would form it while they
were away, she was sure of it doing so. Still, she
was too happy for them to do anything about it.

She looked at Coco.

“I want babies to take care of, Mistress,” Coco

admitted.

“Not yet, Coco, not yet,” Mia mumbled.

The Verona-Black Property was, as anything owned

by the Blacks, old and beautiful, even if a bit
exaggerated for her taste, but she couldn’t say she
didn’t like it. She was rather impressed either way.

They were transported by the floo to a small living

room, but an amazing one nonetheless. The
fireplace was behind two armchairs of dark green
velvet with a small round coffee table in between
with a heavy book about Necromancy. In front of
the armchairs there was a black leather couch of
two seats. Underneath the small area there was an
off-white rug, but most of the living room was in a
dark wooden floor and off-white quaint walls,
besides one of them – it was mostly glass and Anne
could see a lot of the property. There was a lake
and garden with a smaller building on the side. The
lake had the sunlight hitting its waters and it
reflected right on the garden in front of the house,
which accommodated several plants and flowers;
she noticed, then, that the smaller building was
greenhouse, covered in ivy and smaller bushes of
violet-coloured small flowers surrounding it.

“This is beautiful!” she said.

“It’s my favourite property of the family,” he said.

“It’s where I was born. Mother had been fighting
with Father, so she came here to clear her head,
but I came early and she couldn’t go back to
England where my father already was with Sirius.
They had just moved from France to England.”

“Sirius was born in Lyon,” she said, suddenly

remembering the information.

“Yeah, after they go married in Sydney, my parents

didn’t want anyone to count the months or notice
my mother getting bigger too fast, so they moved
to France since she was already at the end of the
first trimester,” he told her. “After Sirius was born,
Mother went off the rockers for a while, refused to
carry Sirius or care for him at all, so they moved to
England because of Uncle Cygnus and Aunt Druella,
so they could help with the babe. And then I came.
Mother wanted to prove to everyone that there was
something wrong with Sirius, not with her, so she
had another child, another boy at that, to prove
that she wasn’t the problem. It didn’t work. She
didn’t want anything to do with me either, but she
forced herself quite a bit, I suppose she hated me
for it for a while and that’s why Kreacher took such
care of me when I was three or so.”

Anne was surprised. She had never imagined

Walburga had post-partum depression. She had
just put together that there was something off with
her ever since she was younger, but she never
thought it would go to the point where she would
refuse to care for the boys – they were her pride
when she was younger, the proof that she had been
the right choice to marry the Heir and have two
boys when her brother had only girls.

“There’s nothing wrong with you or Sirius,” she

said.

“I’m aware of it now,” he said.

But he wasn’t when he was a child. He blamed

himself, he blamed Sirius and anyone else, just so
he wouldn’t have to blame his mother. She knew
that already; that Regulus had put his mother in a
pedestal when he was younger and that he wanted
nothing more than her approval and, perhaps, if he
was lucky, her love as well, but it still hurt her to
hear him say such a thing in such a defeated tone.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you around. Soon

Severus will be here.” She nodded. Regulus put her
bag down. “Kreacher!” he called. The elf appeared,
happy to serve. “Put Anne’s bag in the master
bedroom, please.”

“Yes, Master. Welcome, Mistress,” he answered,

getting the bag and popping off.

She turned to look at Regulus.

“Mistress?”

“It’s his way of saying congratulations, calling you

Mistress early is a huge deal,” he explained. “He
likes you.”

“Well, I like him, too,” she said.

Regulus smiled to himself.

He held her hand, leading her out of the living room

towards the only door of the room. It led to a
corridor, which had two doors – one of them didn’t
have a handle, one had to push it and it would go
back to its original place by itself, it was white and
smooth; the other one was double-rolling-doors of
tinted glass in white wood. Regulus pushed the first
one open.

The dining room had no wall of separation from the

small kitchen besides the different type of floors.
While the dining had its original wooden
floorboards, the kitchen had white tiles and in
between a small counter that took half of its
entrance and it reached Anne’s hip. There were four
chairs at the glass table, one of them being a high-
chair.

“We’d come here when Mother didn’t want to be

around anyone,” he explained when her eyes
stayed at the high-chair. “Most of my baby things
are still here.”

“I like it. It’s nice that you have nice memories

here,” she said.

“It’s where I spent most of my best childhood

memories. I learned Italian here, I learned how to
swim on this lake. Our family didn’t usually fight
here,” he admitted. “And Sirius liked it here as well,
so he would complain a lot less when we were here
and he would sneak me out to go to the wizarding
village nearby and the Muggle town.”

“This does look like a place Sirius would like,” she

said.

He kissed the side of her head as he put his arm

over her shoulder. Slowly, he led her out to the
corridor once more and pulled just one of the
double doors to the side. Her eyebrows raised.

“Father’s Study,” he said. “Well, mine now, I

suppose. And it’s the library as well, so feel free to
come and go as you want, even if I’m working
here.”

“You sound sure we’ll spend a lot of time here,” she

teased.

“When things are over, we’ll be here, taking some

time off from everything and everyone and we’ll be
happy,” he said. “Disgustingly, unconditionally
happy away from this pathetic and senseless war.”

She wanted that. She wanted everything Regulus

had to offer her, but she feared creating too many
expectations. So, for that moment, Anne just
nodded her head and smiled at him, not trusting
her voice to say anything other than her fears.
Regulus looked away. He didn’t need eyes or ears
to know what Anne was feeling or thinking. Her fear
was palpable and clear to him because it was his as
well: to lose her.

The Study/Library was one of his favourite parts of

the house. The back wall was completely filled to
the top with books of all languages, and not a
single one of those had anything to do with work;
they were silly, light romance books that his
mother liked to read and that he had grown fond of
as well. In the wall turned to the side of the house,
overseeing that Muggle town, there was a bench
where one could sit by the window, drowning
themselves in imagination and sunlight of the end
of the afternoon. In the other corner there was a
small table with a candle that would never die,
there was some parchment there and some ink, but
nothing was written there.

“I like it here. It’s… yellowish.”

“It’s because it’s old,” he said.

“It’s because it’s happy,” she corrected him. “I look

good in yellow.”

He smirked.

“You look in anything… or in nothing at all,” he

said.

She smiled at him, turning to look at him. He

leaned down and kissed her lips chaste as he could.
She leaned against him when he pulled away, her
lips chasing after his – she wanted more.

“No,” he said. “Not here. Not yet.”

“Please,” she said.

“We’ll marry in a few hours,” he said. “And then I’m

yours for as many hours one can count.” He wanted
her. But he held on, because he was used to it.
There was not a moment in time that he had not
wanted Anne Potter, and there would not be a
moment in time he wouldn’t want Anne Black.
“Now, let’s go upstairs and then I’ll show you the
greenhouse.”

She sighed, but nodded.

They walked back to the corridor and in the

corridor, beside the front door there were stairs
that Anne had not noticed. She smiled. The stairs
were of the same off-white colour as the walls in
stones, though the top of the steps were of marble.

“Do be careful of the steps, they’re quite slippery,

so don’t walk around in socks, you’ll fall” he
warned.

“That sounds like a personal warning,” she teased.

“I was a child,” he defended himself, allowing her

to go on the stairs before him. She laughed,
holding onto the iron rails of the circular stairs.
“Oh, stop that!”

“I can’t help it. The image of little old you falling is

too funny, sorry,” she said.

“Sirius was chasing me and threatening to throw

his shoe on me. I ran as fast as I could. I was only
in my underwear – I was seven and it was quite
traumatic,” he added details. He wasn’t undressed,
but he wanted to make Anne laugh.

It worked.

She laughed the laugh. The one he loved where she

would throw her head back and struggled to
breathe sometimes, her legs doubling its efforts to
keep her standing as she leaned against his chest,
head resting on his shoulder.

Once they were recuperated, they reached the top.

Three doors.

“Nursery that Sirius and I shared,” he said, pointing

to one of them. “Our bedroom. And Hobbies
Room.”

“Hobbies?” she said.

It was the closest door. It was a single one and it

was charmed to be silent. She understood why in
the moment he opened the door.

“Mother likes to paint, but Father was always

partial to music,” he admitted. “I learned it to
impress him.”

There were canvases everywhere and of all sizes

possible and a mess of paints and brushes on one
side of the room, but the other side had a white,
majestic piano that Anne had no doubt in her mind
that it was where Regulus was taught to play as
well. The same-coloured walls as the rest of the
house, but the window was bigger. It was directly
above the living room, so it had the same
overlooking view of the lake, gardens and
greenhouses.

Anne watched Regulus entering the room from the

doorway, hesitating to go inside somewhere that
felt so personal.

He sat at the piano and looked at the sheet of

music on the holder in front of him, a sad green
appearing on his lips.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Father wrote this,” he said. “I hate that I miss

him. I hated him when he was alive, I don’t
understand why it hurts that he is dead.”

She wanted to have an answer to him, wanted to

make him feel better and explain that grief was
complicated and that there was nothing he or she
could do rationalise it, but she had said It all in that
one night in Grimmauld Place as he cried on her
chest (before he looked for another type of
comfort). To repeat herself would be cruel to him.
To be quiet would be cruel to her.

Anne stayed quiet.

“Play it for me,” she asked.

He looked at her over his shoulder and nodded,

scooting to the side to give her some space in the
bench. She walked into the room and sat beside
him.

“He wrote this about his lover,” he said. Anne felt

cold. “He met her here and made a vow to my
mother that he would never see her again, that’s
why Mother came her when she wanted to be away
from him, because it hurt him to be here. Her name
was Isabella Santos, she was Portuguese and…” he
looked at her, raising his eyebrows and smiling at
bit, “…a muggle.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Are serious?”

“He loved her. No doubt of it,” he said, looking

away.

His fingers reached for the white and black keys

and almost immediately started playing. Anne was
surprised until she noticed that Regulus had heard
Orion playing that song before, so he was familiar
with it, so it quick for him. The song was
melancholic, longing and painfully slow, until it built
up – more and more and more, and when she
expected something to break, it stopped. The initial
melody came back. Orion had gone back to the
boring life of having a family, the life he had never
wanted. And Regulus knew all about it since he was
a child; he knew that he had never been wanted.

She looked at his eyes. Cold steel over the keys.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you to our bedroom.”

And Anne loved it.

The bedroom was right across the Hobbies Room

and it was completely beautiful, no matter how one
would look at it.

This time the walls were in a more yellowish off-

white tone because of the wallpaper, it had the
Black Sigil engraved in silver, barely perceptible
with the sun not hitting – the sun would go through
the small double doors that gave way to a balcony
and through the one, big skylight on the ceiling
right above the bed. The bed was in the middle of
the room in all its majestic king size, it had white
bedsheets and covers, it looked inviting and warm.
Beside each side, there was a small bedside table in
white wood in contrast with the dark wooden floor
and on top of it there was two candles in both sides
already burning and there was a dresser on the
opposite to the window on the other side of the
room against the wall and a wardrobe opposite to
the bed, beside the door, opposite to its hinges.

“We don’t usually spend too much time here

anymore,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of furniture
in the bedrooms.”

“I can understand that, and that doesn’t make this

place any less beautiful,” she said. “God, Regulus,
this is… amazing. Really. I barely find words to
explain how much I love this place.”

“I have one more surprise,” he said.

“One more?”

“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I

got you a wedding dress,” he said, smiling a bit,
but blushing.

Her eyes widened.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m not saying that you need to marry wearing

that, you can marry wearing the trousers you’re
wearing now and I’ll be the happiest man I can be
either way, but I thought you might like this one,”
he said. “It – Merlin, Anne… I can’t imagine anyone
else wearing this dress and looking half as good as
you.” He smiled. “It’s in a box in the wardrobe.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but walked to the

wardrobe either way with the nervousness only a
bride could feel. Inside, there was a red box with a
black, satin sash in a bow. She took the box and
put it on the bed. It was a silly muggle tradition
that the husbands shouldn’t see the bride, and an
even sillier tradition that the man shouldn’t see the
wedding dress. Regulus had been the one to see it,
buy and pack it – she still hesitated, but swallowed
her anxiety down.

She opened the box to see the dress, taking it out

of the box and laying it down on the bed.

It was white, but not blinding, it was a soft white

that was easy on the eyes. It had a square neck
line in its satin fabric, being tight around the torso
with discreet lacing in the back, but letting go
around her waist, going down in an ‘A line’ model.
What took Anne by surprise was the sleeves; long,
romantic puffed sleeves.

She looked at Regulus.

“You are Gilbert Blythe in disguise, aren’t you?” she

teased.

“I think puffed sleeves are romantic,” he

immediately defended himself.

“And you are correct,” she said, smiling at him. “I’ll

wear it,” she said.

He smiled back, though he looked over his shoulder

in a somewhat alarmed manner. She tensed, but he
smiled soon after.

“I’ll leave you to change, then, and I’ll be back to

help you with the laces in a moment. Severus just
crossed the wards and I need my clothes as well,”
he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said.

Severus Snape held his breath as Regulus

appeared.

He knew Regulus was considered a handsome man

by many people; he was tall, slim and charming in
the best of ways. But in his wedding day, even he
had to admit that Regulus was amazingly
handsome, if not almost deity like. The curls of his
hair were more defined and less wild, the happiness
made his flushed on the cheeks and part of his
nose; he was wearing a white blouse with bishop
sleeves and very tiny buttons on the front paired
with black trousers, the suspenders made him look
more elegant as he walked down the stairs with
black, shiny shoes. He had his waistcoat and coat
on his hands – the waistcoat was black with white
details of patterns that almost seemed to move
with him, the coat was long enough to reach his
knees when it was on and charcoal.

“Well, you clean up nice,” Severus teased.

“I look hot, Anne told me so already,” Regulus said,

winking at his friend, but stopping at the small
mirror on the wall near the stairs to check his hair
once more. “I wanted to put on some makeup, but
I don’t know how to do it and Anne was busy with
hers.”

“She wouldn’t mind helping you with that,” Severus

said. “And you were with Anne? And she allowed
it?”

“Yes?” he answered, confused.

“It’s a muggle tradition for the husband not to see

the bride the day of the wedding,” Severus
explained. “I know it’s not as common in the
wizarding world, but she was raised muggle. I
suppose I expected some reluctance.”

Regulus frowned.

“That’s silly,” he said.

“I suppose,” Severus dismissed. “The dress – did

Anne like it?”

“She didn’t put it on yet, but she said she liked it.
She didn’t want to ruin it with makeup. She’s doing
it muggle style, said the situation requested it.”

Severus smirked to himself, sipping the wine

Kreacher had brought him out of Anne’s request.
She knew Severus loved wine, though he often
drank whiskey with the other man when in
company, but comfortable enough to keep on wine
around people he enjoyed. He was grateful that she
had noticed it, because he wouldn’t have said
anything out loud if asked to.

Regulus took the glass from Severus’ hand and

sipped it before slipping it back to his hand.

“You’re nervous,” Severus said, amused.

“Of course, I’m getting married,” he answered to

his friend.

“To a woman you’ve been together for a bit over a

year, yes, not a very long time,” he said. “But
there’s a war on the brewing and you’re both
involved. If this is something you want to do, you
should just do it. She knows you inside out and you
know her fully, why are you nervous?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I think I’m just

hoping she won’t leave me.”

“Regulus, I don’t think that girl can do anything

that is not motivated by love,” Severus said,
leaning against the wall and watching Regulus. “Her
revenge, her anger, her hatred; all are based off of
love she has or lost. She loves you. She would do
anything for you.”

“You’re quite romantic today,” he answered,

amused.

“I’m quite honest today,” Severus corrected. “I

don’t think Death can stop her. She would crawl out
of a grave to make sure everything is going
according to her plans.”

Regulus smiled to himself.

“She’s quite determinate,” he said, agreeing with a

shake of his head. Severus rolled his eyes at his
lovesick friend. “I love her.”

“That’s why you’re marrying her,” Severus said, as

if he needed to be reminded of that.

But it was interrupted by Regulus smile

disappearing at once.

Anne was coming down the stairs, Severus realised

and turning around to look at her to understand
why Regulus couldn’t seem to find words to say
anything, only to find himself wordless and
breathless as well.

Ethereal. Godly. Anne was out-worldly.

“Hi, Severus,” she said, smiling at him.

“Hello,” he managed to choke out.

Her smile widened.

Her eyes were carefully painted brown and her red

hair was half-up, half-down. Her lips were blood-
red.

She touched her hair as she noticed him watching.

“I had a friend, Ginny, who called this hair-style

Juliet. I thought it would be a nice style to try,” she
shrugged. “Call me cliché.”

“You’re anything but,” Regulus said, jumping into

the conversation. “You look like everything I have
ever imagined when I was child for a goddess of
love.”

She blushed.

“Alright, you two, keep it to yourselves until after I

leave the house, which is after the wedding,”
Severus cut them off. “Now, come on, the Officiator
is waiting for you two at the Lake.”

Severus walked Anne down the aisle when asked

to, though he looked the same as if he was talking
to them, Anne could see the twitching of his lips as
he watched the old man saying words Anne couldn’t
understand in Italian and Regulus answering him,
dealing with the bureaucracy before the binding
ceremony started.

“I, Regulus Arcturus Black, promise you, Anne Lily

Potter, that not even Death can do us part. I will be
your friend, your partner in crime, your lover and
your follower until the day I die, and after that I will
be your protector and guide. In this place, our new
place, I promise you fidelity, faithfulness, support
and worship to the point of blasphemy for as long
as you want me to and when you don’t, I will be
there to stand through it all. Bad, good; growth,
fear. I’ll be here through all stages of life,” he said
to her, making her eyes water.

“I, Anne Lily Potter, promise you, Regulus Arcturus

Black, nothing but all of me. The good, the bad, the
better and the worse. I fear I will say nothing of
new because I said all I could to you and you know
everything on my mind and soul. From this day
forth, I choose you to be everything you can be so I
can be proud of your achievements as if they were
mine as well,” she smiled. Regulus chuckled. “We
lived through a lot; we suffered through a lot and
we’ll be happy. It’s our turn now. We’ll work on it.
And here’s my promise to you: I will try my hardest
to make nothing lack, to make our life the one we
wanted as children, before all the most terrible
deeds were done to us and while our mind was
innocent and hopeful. With compassion, hope,
determination and nothing less than everything I
have, I will be yours as I have been from the first
day we met.”

And with that, they were bound for life.

Severus smiled. He knew Voldemort had no chance

now.
 Chapter 111: Chapter One
Hundred and Ten -
Summary:
The Honeymoon.

Notes:
SMUT! A LOT OF SMUT!

HONEYMOON

Regulus giggled at the taste of the lipstick spread in

his mouth, cheeks, neck and chest as Anne tried to
get rid of it with some paper, but had no success as
she sat on top his shirtless form, watching the red
spread on her own face.

“Just use magic,” he said.

“I can’t reach my wand,” she said. “Clean me,

please.”

He reached to the side where his wand rested on

the bedside table, having to move just a bit for
that, making her moan in disagreement, for she
didn’t want him to go away from her. He rolled his
eyes at her clingy manner – they were both
irrigated on wine and the taste of their honeymoon.

“I need to move to reach it, Anne,” he said.

“If I wanted anything to change, I would have

moved to get my own wand, my dear husband,”
she said.

He shivered.

“Forget the bloody mess, I don’t care,” he said.

‘Husband’, a simple word and it had such a power

over him. Not that Anne wouldn’t get that effect out
of him with any other form of calling him or any
other title that wouldn’t show her love for him, but
hearing such a definitive term certainly made his
heart swell in pride… amongst other things. It was
so certain now, it sounded so eternal to be a
husband of someone as Anne.

He almost sat himself down to capture her lips once

more, not caring at all about the red mess around
his lips. He needed her and her alone – he was
thirsty and hungry. Regulus starved for her.
Regulus burned for her.

Anne’s hands went from his shoulders to his

shoulder-blades under his shirt, pushing the fabric
out of the way, the suspenders hanging around his
hips since he had no time to take them off of his
trousers. She threw the shirt to the side, it hit her
bag when it fell to the ground, making a small
noise, but she didn’t care, too busy with the feeling
of Regulus biting her bottom lip ever so gently. The
hand that was holding the paper she had been
trying to clean herself from the lipstick crumbled
the paper, she threw to the side as well, making it
bounce on the wall before falling to the ground.

There was very little to be said as Regulus reached

down to her legs, caressing the back of her calf
over the whiteish stockings and pushing up the
skirt of the dress to her knees, then reaching back
down and helping the small heels to leave her feet.
She chuckled when his fingers brushed the soles of
her feet on accident, giggling once he did it again,
this time on purpose, pulling away from him for a
false glare.

“Sorry, it was an accident,” he teased.

“Liar.”

“Can you blame me?” he asked, raising his

eyebrows. “Your giggle is adorable.”

Blushing, as if she wasn’t on top of him already,

Anne slapped his chest, making him gasp in false
offense before she leaned down, making him lie
down on the bed and kiss him like that.

“Help get out of this dress,” she said, forehead

against his and eyes still closed.

He pulled back, head resting on the bed completely

now.

“Do you think you’d feel comfortable keeping it

on?” he asked.

Her eyes opened in surprise before her grin

appeared on her lips, eyes widening as she
swallowed down the information.

“Are you serious?” she asked, almost laughing.

He blushed.

“You look stunning in it,” he answered, as if that

was the whole reason.

Anne, in that bridal dress had been owner of his

attention completely from the moment she walked
down the stairs in it. Regulus thought of his
attraction to her in any other day was completely
debilitating, but in that dress, it was simple
intoxication. As a bride and as a wife, Anne was
music and he could see or hear anything other than
her.

She smirked.

“I can keep it on, then,” she said. “I want to try all

you want to try tonight.”

“Anne –”

“I will tell you if I want you to stop,” she said

firmly. “Tell me what you want me to do. Just tell
me if I’m doing it right.”

He smirked.

“You want me to praise you, you mean,” he teased.

She smiled.

“Well, I always want you to praise me, Little Prince,

especially in bed,” she admitted.

That gave an electric shock down Regulus’ spine as

he leaned towards her ear and kissed the bottom
before pulling away from her once more.

“Lie back, then, Princess,” he said.

Anne was quick to get out of his lap, lying back on

the bed and watching him as he got up from the
bed, undid his belt and let it fall to the ground, but
he didn’t unbutton his trousers, he watched her for
a moment before smiling tenderly. She looked
beautiful, lying there, watching him with a small
grin, excited to know his next move.

“What now, dear?” she asked.

“Legs apart, rest them on the bed,” he said.

She did so, revealing to him that her stockings got

to her thigh level, tied with a silk ribbon to the
waist of her knickers. He smiled. Her knickers were
lace, as they usually were, but not white as he had
expected – she sported emerald green knickers
once more with another layer of black lace over it.
That had to be his favourite one so far, but that
didn’t stop him from untying the silk and pulling the
knickers with something of less than gentility from
her legs, letting it fall to the ground at the foot of
the bed, watching the middle of her legs with
unsatiable hunger.

“Good girl,” he said. That gave some result as Anne

bit her own lips, but her smile grew. Regulus
kneeled down on the ground and Anne got to her
elbows, trying to see him. “Ah-Ah. Back to lying
down, wife.”

And with that he reached to the end of the rems of

her dress and pulled the skirt over his head. For it
being an A-line dress, there were no petticoats, so
he moved freely to kiss and gently bite the inside of
her thighs with great care, living through the
moans and gasps of frustration coming from Anne
as he deliberately avoided her centre, even if it
cried for his attention and he cried for her release.
Until he couldn’t help himself anymore and drowned
himself in the power her pleasure gave him.

Anne gasped so loudly it was almost a scream.

“Oh, Regulus, fuck!” she whined.

His tongue caressed the outer lips before the inner

ones, holding her thighs open and putting them
over his shoulders. Finally, the tongue circled the
entrance between her legs and he moaned loudly,
trying to move her hips to get some penetration out
of the feeling, but he pulled back to kiss right on
the clitoris.

Anne’s hands left the sheets to search for his hair,

but as soon as he felt her hands, he took them and
held them, intertwining their fingers. It made her
gasp and her hips twitch around his face. Once his
tongue reached the entrance once more and, this
time, entered her just enough for her to feel it, she
lied back down, letting go of his hands and
grabbing onto the sheets with strength enough for
her knuckles to turn white. He used his, now, free
hands to grab onto her bottom, bringing her
delicious taste closer to his mouth, then using one
of them to penetrate two fingers into her entrance,
leaving her to scream loudly and curse all winds.

“Holy shit! Fucking hell, Regulus!” she slapped the

bed. “I’m cumming.”

Contrary to what she thought, he didn’t stop to

torture her. He moaned against her, voice vibrating
through her own body as her back arched and as
she reached her peak. She screamed, thighs
trembling around his head.

Boneless, she fell against the bed and gasped for

air as her ears heard nothing but the rumbling of
her heart, barely listening to Regulus as he got up
from the ground to look at her face, her liquids
glistening on the bottom of his face. He walked to
the side of the bed, sitting down beside her and
some hair out of her face to watch her still hazy
eyes looking back at him.

“You look stunning,” he said in a whisper.

She didn’t hear him, still panting for breath.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too, my great girl” he answered. He

leaned down, kissing her lips very lightly before
pushing himself off as she slowly sat down. “Do you
want to continue?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Then get on your hands and knees, darling. Be a

good girl for me,” he said.

He didn’t need to ask twice.

Anne carefully made sure the dress wasn’t caught

under her knees as she kneeled down on the bed,
putting her hands on the mattress as well, and
waited. Not for long, however. Soon she felt the
fresh air hit her bottom half, making her hiss and
glare at the open window, but she didn’t have much
time to think; hands caressed her bottom cheeks
gently, spreading them apart before caressing her
down her legs, pushing her stockings (fairly loose
now that there was nothing tying them up) to her
knees and tickling the back of them.

She caught herself leaning back, wanting more of

that touch, but was rewarded of nothing more than
empty air. Regulus clicked his tongue, not liking her
reaction. She sighed in frustration, leaning forward
once more, trying to be as still as possible.

She felt the bed moving under her as Regulus

kneeled down behind her and she sighed in delight
this time as she saw his trousers falling on the side
of the bed, followed by his underwear. She held her
breath in anticipation, wanting nothing more but
him to do everything he wanted to her.

His member touched her entrance before sliding

down to her clit, hitting it ever so lightly, but it
made her moan either way and tip back. He held
her waist in place and gently pushed himself into
her before, at once, going all the way in. She
gasped, her arms almost giving out from under her.

“Fuck,” she groaned.

“Good girl. Taking it so well. You’re doing such a

good job,” he said, leaning over her and kissing her
spine and making his way up to the back of her
neck, pushing her hair out of the way. She pressed
himself against him and he sighed in pleasure.
“Great job, darling. I love you so much, wife.”

“Oh, husband!” she managed to say. “Please.”

And she didn’t need to ask twice.

The first thrust made her moan and hold onto the
sheets once more, but the second came stronger
and she almost screamed, but bit the inside of her
cheeks. Their bodies moved together, already well
accustomed to the way they needed to be in
synchrony to make that experience pleasurable for
both of them.

In a mix of moan and groans, Anne let go of the

sheets and leaned back, getting to her knees and
holding onto the headboard of the bed with a
groan. Regulus almost lost his balance, but held
onto the headboard as well, body just undulating
against her as he held her breast with some force.
He moaned against her ear with the new position,
his other arm going around her with his hand
resting against her stomach, pushing her against
him even more. Her back arched her back, reaching
behind her to pull on the back of his neck so they
could kiss.

Between the sensations, it was barely the most

comfortable of kisses. It was a mess. Tongue,
saliva, teeth and noises into one another.

It built up quick for Regulus. He reached down with

the hand that was on her stomach to reach under
the skirt to flick on her clitoris – he wanted her to
cum once more before he reached his own peak as
she had done before. Anne moaned. Regulus
gasped, going faster. The bed creaked under them
and hit the wall, making a lot of noise. Anne
moaned. Regulus went faster.

Regulus came at once, so suddenly that his body

couldn’t hold itself straight anymore and he fell
forward, against Anne, who held him as she was
crushed against him, the headboard and wall.

The feeling of Regulus spilling himself into her

made Anne cum once more with a loud yelp before
she moaned, coming down from her high between
Regulus’ thrusts and strokes.

“Holy shit. Holy fuck. We should have done this

earlier,” she breathed out.

Regulus breathed.

“Shit,” he said.

He threw himself back, sitting down on the bed and

getting off of her, getting out of her in the process.

She looked over her shoulder to him in surprise.

“Did you just cuss?” she asked.

Regulus smiled at her.

“What we did tonight requests a curse-word, wife,”

he answered.

Anne sat down as well, the climax of both of them

spilling from her. She opened her legs to take a
look, cringing at the mess. She hissed.

Regulus reached out for his wand and gave it a

small wave, making the mess disappear from Anne
and the sheets.

“Now, this is a honeymoon,” said Anne, smiling at

Regulus.

Anne smiled before she was completely awake,

knowing very well in whose arms she was in. Her
head was resting on Regulus’ chest and his arms
were around her, legs intertwined with hers, the
sheets covering most of their bodies. She felt safe,
warm and, most of all, she felt home.

Nobody was ever able to understand her so fully or

trust her so blindly as Regulus had done. There had
been no one that left her as comfortable alone or
accompanied as Regulus’ simple memory would
make her feel, he didn’t even need to be there and
he would calm her down. In return, she had
promised herself as she lied there that she would
do whatever it took to make him keep that calm
and somewhat happy aura that was left after
everything that they would need to go through.

When she got to that timeline, she had never

thought about this.

War. That was her mind. Harry was her priority

above all else. Love. There was not space for it,
there was no time for something as useless as that
– but she couldn’t hold herself back once it entered
her life in the form of the kindest man she had ever
encountered as he took pain from all sides in
silence just to survive. And after him, things
changed so much that it was hard to not feel selfish
as her priorities changed.

Harry was there as well, but because he had torn

her shell open so gently, she had refused to close it
off again and now so many people had walked right
into her heart and she couldn’t bear any of them to
get hurt without fearing she would do something
very stupid in return. And Regulus was right on top.

“I can see the wheels turning in that head of your

even with my eyes closed,” he said. “You’re already
plotting and I didn’t even receive a good morning.”

She looked up at him from his chest and watched

as he forced one of his eyes open, though clearly
still sleepy.

“Good morning,” she said, lamely.

“Morning,” he answered. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” she said. “It feels odd.”

He stayed in silence for a moment as he took in

everything those six words meant. It did feel odd.
It felt like the calmness was a reminder of how
awful things were around them while they stood
quietly and selfishly in the eye of the storm.

“We deserve some happiness as well, Anne; some

quietness before we can barely see each other for
weeks or even months again,” he said. “Nobody
would condemn us for wanting some of what so
many have, even during times like this. During
wars, time doesn’t stop and people don’t stop
living, and I can assure you many of other people
are feeling just as guilty as you are right now for
similar reasons and they have people like me to tell
them they deserve to enjoy something.”

She smiled a bit to him.

“I don’t know what I would do without you, Little

Prince,” she admitted.

“Probably wallow in your self-pity and guilt until

someone else dragged you out, because you have
enough loving people in your life to do so,” he
answered, smiling. “I, on the other hand, without
you would be serving unwillingly a madman in
hopes he didn’t kill me or my family. You know how
it is, a Death Eater story and all that,” he joked.

She slapped his chest weakly.

“Don’t joke about that!” she half-scolded.

Before he could answer, a loud and familiar ‘pop’

made him raise his head from his pillow to look at
Kreacher standing at the foot of the bed, twisting
his pillowcase-shirt nervously as he looked around
the room.

“Yes, Kreacher?” he asked, rolling his eyes and

dropping his head back to the bed.

“Kreacher wanted to say welcome to Mistress.

Mistress Anne is to be an amazing Mistress,
Kreacher is sure!” the old elf said, nodding to
himself. “And Kreacher made surprise breakfast!
Wedding present.”

The mention of food made Regulus raise his head

again.

“Well, we appreciate both, Kreacher,” he said.

“Thank you so much, Kreacher,” added Anne,

raising her head again and holding the sheet
against her chest as she sat down. “Would you
mind bringing it up? We would like to eat in bed
today.”

Kreacher nodded, excited. He popped away in the

next split of a second to gather the food he
prepared.

“That was sweet,” Regulus commented.

“Kreacher is so nice in this timeline,” Anne said,

amused. “I wish my Kreacher was this nice from
the start.”

She rested against the headboard, hand reaching

out to brush some of his hair away from his face as
he sleepily pushed himself to sit down against the
headboard as well. He held her hand, kissing the
back of it before keeping it on his lap, the sheets
covering his lap under their joined hands.

Kreacher appeared once more, with a big tray filled

with food – bacon, eggs, beans, toast, biscuits,
pastes. No matter how much they ate, it would be
leftover food, for sure. But Kreacher seemed to
proud and so happy as he put the tray on the bed,
a bit too close to Regulus’s naked legs just barely
covered for comfort.

“Thank you,” Anne said once more.

“Whenever you need me, Mistress,” he said,

bowing.

And he went away once more.

“Do you want to eat now, or can I eat you out first,
wife?” Regulus asked suddenly.

The surprise made Anne turn to him, mouth open in

surprise as she fell to belly laughs and shaking her
head.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” she admitted, laughing.

“Let’s eat first. We are going to need energy if I
want to do everything that I want to you,” she
smirked. “I mean, it’s my turn now.” She kissed his
cheek. “Besides, I have something to give you
before anything else happens between us and I lose
my focus once more.”

He reached for the beans and toasts, putting them

on and taking a bite.

“Alright? What do you have?” he asked.

She sighed, getting up from bed and hissing at the

pain in her legs and back as she stood up, cracking
her neck as she stood. Regulus smiled smugly to
himself as she walked with some difficulty to her
bag and could barely hold himself back from
laughing when she bent down – she looked at him
over the shoulder with a false glare, but holding a
small box.

“Here,” she said, showing it off to him.

“Show me,” he urged.

She walked back to him, sitting down beside him.

“I have my necklace and my wedding ring, you

gave me both, but I never really gave you any
jewellery,” she said. “So… it’s my turn to give you a
ring. You can use it as a wedding ring, if you want
something for that. But I ask you one single thing.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t take it off. Ever,” she said.

He watched her open the box and take the ring off
of it, and watched her take his hand to slip the ring
into his finger. He watched how beautiful it was. It
was silver made, dark silver, almost grey and the
ring had a stone on top of it; it was black and
irregular, but she could feel Anne’s magic all over
it.

“You made it,” he said, surprised.

“Remus helped me,” she admitted. “Ever since he

started making candles, he learned a lot about
making a lot of things, including melting metal.”

“What was the silver before?”

“A key,” she said. She smiled just a little bit. “I will

take your surname legally once everything is over,
but this is my way of making you take mine, even if
somewhat just in an informal manner. It was one of
the keys to the Potter Manor, and it still works as
one if you touch it on the front gate,” her grin
grew. “Because of your father’s blessing, I have full
access to your belongings in the vault and to your
home. You have full access to my home, but I
cannot give access to the vaults, since they’re not
officially mine – though, I did open one… It doesn’t
have anything yet, but I imagined we could… start
it together.”

“You mean –”

“One without the family fortune,” she explained.

“One for us. One that can go to our child so they
can learn how to deal with money… their own
money, if we have one someday, of course. This
isn’t a request and no pressure.”

Regulus laughed a bit, admiring the ring and barely

registering what she had said. Until he did.
Suddenly, he understood very well that she had
made a decision that she had felt strongly against
before – now, Anne wanted children.

He looked up at her.

“Child?” he asked.

“One day,” she said. “On the future. Distant…

future.”

“But a palpable one,” he added.

“A reasonable one, yes,” she answered.

He smiled.

“And what made you change your mind?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Is that the fact that we got married
and, therefore, the child wouldn’t be a bastard.”

“I care little about the legality of a child, Regulus, I

care that I love and I want a piece of our live living
and breathing,” she smiled at him. “I love you so
much… and, besides, I wrote Mister Singh from
your party, you know, to ask him how to do it and
then Remus did it for me. He thinks it’s just a
present I want to give you.”

“It’s pretty. I’m sure Mister Singh asked questions,

though,” he said.

“I said it was for my dad,” she answered. “The key

thing can be done for a father as well, so he didn’t
ask questions.”

“Who told you about this tradition anyways?” he

asked, raising his eyebrows. She smirked. “It was
Severus, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“That romantic man!” he exclaimed. “You’d never

thing he’s never dated anyone, still he knows all
the courtship rules,” his grin grew. “And all the
courtship rules we broke, too. Gave me quite the
earful when he found out half of the things that we
were doing without a proper relationship agreed by
your parents and all that until I explained some of
the things to him, and then finally you told him the
truth and he sort of left me alone after that, after
all we did have the knowledge of your parents.”

“Severus is a bit backwards,” she said.

“He was just worried for your reputation,” he

disagreed.

She smiled to herself.

Severus and Barty stood awkwardly on the dining

room where Kreacher had led them into before
popping away to tell Master and Mistress of the
arrival of their expected guests since Anne had
written to them, asking them for dinner on their
last day on their honeymoon. It was Sunday, so
Barty was allowed to leave school with the
company of a wizard above eighteen and Severus
already lived in Scotland.

As long as they were back and sober before eleven,

they were allowed to meet each other whenever
they wanted. And Severus and Barty got along very
well, much to Regulus’ surprise. Regulus had
thought they would both be less than talkative, but
they wouldn’t stop talking to each other about
everything – the man had even joked that Barty
ought to call Severus ‘Uncle Sev’ (and received a
withering glare in return).

“Why do you think they are taking so long to come

down?” Barty asked, distracted by the view to the
backyard filled with grass, it looked almost like a
field.

“They’re probably dressing,” Severus answered,

barely thinking twice. “This is their honeymoon
after all.”

Barty shivered.

“Ew.”

“As if that’s not what you’re doing in broom closets

back home,” Severus teased. “Don’t act like an
innocent child. That façade went away a long time
ago, Barty.”

“I mean, yes, I am, but that’s not what I’m trying

to do,” Barty said, still looking a bit disgusted as he
turned to look at Severus. “It’s just weird having to
think of Anne like that. I mean, I can see Regulus
doing the oddest of things, but Anne is so –”

“If you say the word ‘innocent’, I’ll throw you out of
this window right away and you know the Blacks
can afford that,” Severus grumbled.

“Can afford what?” asked someone.

Anne stood at the door, leaning against the

doorway with a grin on her face. She wore a dress
of a light shade of yellow that usually wouldn’t look
good on anyone, but agreed with her hair very well.
It was long and the clicks on the ground made sure
to tell them that her shoes had a bit of heel.

“You look great!” Barty said, jumping onto another

conversation as fast as he could. “Anne, I missed
you.”

She opened her arms.

Barty walked towards her and hugged her without

hesitation, but quickly let go of her. He couldn’t
deal with much more touch without the idea of it
being sexual or offensive – no in between; no
romance, no friendship, no comfort. Perhaps
Severus was right, he realised, he needed a Mind
Healer to stop him from jumping from bed to bed in
school before he got hurt somehow or sick.

Severus smiled just enough for her to know it was

a smile and walked towards her as well. Finally, a
hug happened, much to Anne’s delight by her
giggle before he let go of her and took a step back,
crossing his arms in front of him, clearly as
uncomfortable as he had expected it to be. But he
had forced himself through the experience.

“I did say that the next hug would happen in your

wedding,” Severus said. “You were quite drunk
when I left.”

Severus didn’t like drunk people. He understood, of

course, the difference between Anne and his father,
even when Anne was drunk, but that didn’t mean
that she allowed her to be too close to him when
she smelled like wine and giggled, trying to get
more and more attention from Regulus – Severus
wasn’t too socially aware, but he knew enough to
know it was time to get out when the newly
wedded couple finished their toasts and plates of
food to leave them alone. He had wanted to stay a
bit more since the celebration seemed happy
enough and Regulus was in a great mood, perhaps
a better one than he usually had in good days, but
he wouldn’t dare.

“Well, I appreciate you came back two days later

for the hug, then,” she teased. Her smile faded just
a bit. “I usually hold on the drink when you’re
around. It’s my second time making this mistake.”

“Second?” Barty asked.

“The Dark Lord came to visit Regulus on his
birthday one day and she received a spell on her
back that made all alcohol a lot stronger, Bellatrix’s
own creation,” Severus said. “As a victim of it
myself, I do not blame you, Anne.”

“And then I did it again.”

“On your wedding day,” he dismissed. “I know you

don’t drink too much when I’m around.”

He didn’t say he was grateful and, if he was

completely honest, it made him feel like a burden
for Anne to know his home situation seemed to fuck
him up so much, but he was aware that she made
that with his well-being in mind. He was grateful.
He wouldn’t dare to say it, however.

“Regulus is still waking up. We were reading and he

fell asleep,” she said. “He’ll come down in a
moment.”

Barty smirked.

“Reading, sure,” he teased.

Anne chuckled.

“Oh, Barty, we were indeed reading,” her grin

grew. “One needs to take a break after four times.”

Severus shivered with the information, once more

not wanting to know any more than that about his
best friends’ sex-life.

“What shall we eat?” Severus asked, changing

subjects.

Chapter 112: Chapter One

Hundred and Eleven -
Summary:
Anne can't afford to be rejected.

REJECTION

Anne looked at her wedding gifts in her own

bedroom, missing her husband terribly for she had
been a week without him already, even if they
wrote in the secret notebook for one another every
single day, still it wasn’t the same thing as being
lost in Verona-Black House, playing hide and seek
still in her wedding dress while tipsy.

Severus had given her two small vials. Poison and

antidote. Poison that he made himself as a wedding
gift from the Irish plant, Lilith-Green-Eye,
extremely dangerous and magical, but very it was
very rare as well. It was a rare enough poison for
the Aurors to never think of it, rare enough for it to
be deadly since antidotes of it aren’t easily found;
rare enough, however that he had been able to
make just one small vial of it and asked her to be
careful with it. The bad thing of this poison is how
easily it’s absorbed by a person – eyes, nose,
mouth, skin. One touch, one death. Barty was a lot
more normal with his gift as he watched Severus in
clear fear. It was a book, thankfully, but one that
made Anne blush like a lovesick schoolgirl. “Magical
Motherhood for Morons”, it was written. Since she
was raised muggle, he had said, he thought it
would be a nice addition to her magical-family’s
library, since they probably didn’t have anything
like that. She was grateful, of course.

Severus had given Regulus a beautiful dagger,

which Regulus exposed in his bedroom in place of
the one he had given Anne ever so long ago; it had
a white handle with golden specks and with a
(surprising) muggle blade that wouldn’t break or
rust as easily as normal magical blades. Barty had
given him another book, this one mostly as a joke
and rite of passage, since a friend of groom would
always give “Bound and Chained: Marriage is
Death” to him during the honeymoon – Regulus
rolled his eyes and laughed it off, but didn’t unwrap
the book completely, which Anne laughed of; then,
he gave another book to him before going away,
which made Regulus laugh and blush almost as
much as Anne had done before, “Pureblood Magical
Married Ritual: Sex-Magic and much more.”. Still,
however impossibly embarrassing those gifts were,
Barty’s gifts to Regulus certainly were looked
through and even used for a simple magical
protection of jewellery use, a warning to the other
person in case the other takes off the ring.

Now, Anne stood in her own bedroom missing her

husband in another white dress, but this one for the
Christmas Party. Sure, Regulus was to come as
well, but he wasn’t there yet and she wanted
nothing more but to see him.

With Peter finally having made amends with his

sister, who finally accepted to visit her mother and
brother with her husband and son, he would be
away for the night. This meant that Anne could be
herself that night, touch and kiss Regulus as much
as she wanted during that night… and tell her
family the whole truth.

“ANNE!” screamed someone.

Lily and her family were at the manor, finally.

“ON MY WAY!” she screamed back.

She fixed her dress, allowing her cleavage to

appear just enough to get Regulus’ attention, but
not anyone else’s, especially with the Evans at the
house.

She walked out of her bedroom, walking down the

stairs with the dress rising up her thighs as she
walked, but she didn’t mind much as her heels
clicked on the floorboards. She was happy with the
idea of having another Christmas with her family –
she was ever so happy that even a war wouldn’t
stop her from having a good time with the people
she loved.

Downstairs, Chris Evans was helping Euphemia put

on the table.

“Hello, dear Anne.”

“Hello, Chris,” she answered, smiling a bit at her.

“Happy Christmas,” he said. She quickly responded

politely to the greeting. “Whatever is wrong?” he
put the mashed potatoes for lunch down and looked
at the girl, standing there. “Did something
happen?”

Mia put her head out of the kitchen and quickly

made her way to the dining room as well.

“Anne?”

“Mia, my… boyfriend is coming over and staying the

night. Would you mind that?” she asked.

“You know I don’t,” Mia said. “There’s something

more coming, however. I can see that in your
eyes.”

“You, my dear, are not the best of liars,” Chris

agreed.

Anne blinked at him with the surprise that the

sentence brought to her. Though Mia and
Dumbledore insisted she wasn’t as good of a liar as
she thought she was, she had never gotten any
difficulty because of that. She blinked once more.

Is that a grandparent talent?

“Is Anne trying to lie again?” asked Monty, coming

down from his office.

She rolled her eyes.

“Yes!” Mia said in a cheerful tone.

“My, my,” Monty complained.

“Now, I’m just starting to fear for my future. If my

poker face isn’t as good as I think, I might be in big
trouble in the, you know, war that is coming
towards us,” Anne said bitterly.

It was a grandparent talent, indeed, she found

herself thinking as Monty came, put a hand on her
shoulder before making his way towards the
parlour. He stopped once more, glancing at Mia,
but before he could form the question he wanted to
ask, she smiled at him and raised her eyebrows.

“Misses Evans is with the children in the music

room, but your owl is in the parlour if that’s what
you were going to ask,” Mia said. Her grin grew.
“But if you were going to ask if it was Sirius playing
the piano that you can hear, I quickly urge you to
realise that it’s James trying to impress Lily just a
little bit more.”

Anne smiled to herself, watching Chris smile to

himself once more.

“James is decent at the piano, but his flute is surely

impressive,” Anne said to Chris.

“I apprehended his flute last night because he

wouldn’t stop practicing it and he needed to go to
bed and sleep, that’s why he’s playing the piano for
entertainment,” Mia explained.

Anne almost smiled once more as she thought of

Regulus playing for her family once more, perhaps
he had another song he had made, then he could
play it after dinner. If things went well, the family
would be a myriad to emotions that needed some
sorting. She planned to tell the Evans’ the truth
that night. It needed to be before the wedding,
especially because they – especially Rose – still
seemed awkward around Monty for having ‘cheated
on his pregnant’ wife in fear that James would do
the same, following his example. Anne wanted her
parents’ marriage to start with no lies and no
secrets in between them and their family; in times
like this, trust was important.

Alone in her mind, Anne thought of how hard it had

been to open herself up to others and to trust
people again.

Regulus had taught her a lot of the duality people

saw in good and evil, and how they needn’t be in
neither one of those categories to do something
good for the world. James had taught her a lot of
trust, as well, as he learned how to be a father
without any practice or warning. Lily had taught her
a lot of love with the blind trust that she put on
those she loved, a step in the darkness without
closing her eyes in fear, eyes stretched out for
someone to hold her. Sirius taught her how to be
confident on others by the way he protected those
he loved fiercely and loyally. Remus taught her the
idea of actual love not having to hurt and that one
needn’t look for approval in her first life, and in this
second one he taught her that it was alright to look
for help and it didn’t make her any less
independent.

“Annie?” Mia called.

“Yes?” she said, coming back to reality.

“You’re spacing out. Did something happen? You

don’t need to lie,” she insisted. “Do you want to
stay in your bedroom? I’ll tell you when your man
is here.”

Though Anne clearly blushed with the idea of

people thinking of Regulus as her ‘man’, but smiled
nonetheless, because she liked it either way.

“No, I was just thinking,” she said. Chris talked to

Monty from the corridor, walking into the music
room soon after. Mia turned to Anne now that they
had some privacy and raised her eyebrows, urging
more information. “I’m married?” she said.

“I know.”

Anne sighed.

Of course, Mia was the one to find out first.

“I’m going to tell everyone the truth… the whole

truth, even for the Evans,” she explained. “I think
they deserve to know as well. I hesitated while they
were away from safety in case Death Eaters took
them, though it’s hard to use Legimency on a
Muggle, both Tom and Severus, if he forced him to,
would be able to gather some information from
them. I had rather liked the idea of my true identity
not being the midst of the chaos.”

“But now they’re in the safehouse and there’s no

way they’ll be attacked,” Mia added to her
sentence, knowing where Anne was going with it.
“Are you sure? This isn’t something you can take
back with an Obliviate without tainting your
relationship with Lily.”

“I’m aware. I’m sure,” she said. “I talked about this

to Regulus and even asked Lily before gathering
courage to tell them, and though she thinks they
might not react all that well straight away, she said
she thinks they’ll come around after a few days.”

Not everybody could be James Potter, jumping into

the role she said he could have without hesitation
or fear. Some people, like Lily, would be cautelous
and would look before jumping, if they jumped at
all. Perhaps the Evans’ family wouldn’t want her at
all, and Mia was clearly worried about how Anne
would take the rejection. Anne didn’t deal well with
rejection, she knew that much, but she had been
preparing herself for that because in situations like
this, Anne was always trying to expect the worst to
happen – war plans, everything would work out
well in her mind, but personal things were always
the worst of the worst. Anne never wanted to
create too many expectations.

When Lily took some space from her after she told
her truth, Anne had been deeply hurt and had tried
hiding it as best as she could, but still people
noticed because the pain was so big. Loss was a lot
easier to deal with than rejection, she found herself
thinking a lot of the time. In loss, the person was
taken away and, in most cases, abruptly (at least
to her experience) and against their wishes (once
more, to her personal experience); it was painful as
anything, but Anne had dealt with it so much in her
life that she grew used enough to function through
it. In rejection, it was clear that one’s not good
enough, the person can look at the other and see
them going on about their lives and still know that
the person simply doesn’t want them. And Anne
never knew how to deal with it.

Anne had been rejected before, of course, after all

she was human and had been a teenage girl before.
She had dealt with it in odd ways – if a boy
rejected her approach in a mean way, she tried to
search for a way to hurt them back; if a girl
rejected her friendships, she would step away and
pretend it didn’t hurt. But it had never been
important. She had never truly wanted something
other than survival and, perhaps, some fun
throughout the first life she was given; but then
she was given a real family that cared for her and a
man that would do anything she asked him to and
she knew happiness truly and fully. She had never
waned before, until she did. She wanted that
happiness to not die and she feared being rejected
by the very people she waned to be accepted by
would cause nothing other than that very bit of her
fear.

So she hoped, secretly and deep with her mind,

that they loved her while she tried her best not to
let herself be fooled by the actual chances of
Muggle people understanding a time-travelling
story fully without resistance.

Coco finished putting on the table and stood on the

side.

“Mistress Mia will wish for nothing more? Yous will

be fine?” she asked, looking up at them.

“We will, Coco, thank you,” Mia said, still watching

Anne worriedly.

Coco walked off, going to her own bedroom on the

first floor, away from the rest of the house – her
own insistence since she liked to sleep early and,
therefore, wanted somewhere far away from her
Master and Mistress and the children, all who had
the horrible habit of walking and eating during the
middle of the night and early mornings more than
during the afternoons. ‘Owls, those wizards are’,
she had been caught saying to herself as she
walked away with a fond smile.

“You will be there, will you not?” Anne asked,

frowning.

“Where else would I be if not beside you, Annie?”

she asked, raising her eyebrows and hugging her
from the side, an arm around her shoulders and
squeezing her lightly. “I’m so proud of you.”

Anne smiled at her.

She liked when Mia seemed proud of her.

“I know,” she said back, cheekily.

Mia chuckled, letting go of her. She was about to

tell them to go to the music room when they both
felt the wards’ changing.

“ANNIE, YOUR BOYFRIEND!” Monty screamed by

opening the music room just enough, as if they had
not felt it as well.

Mia laughed at her husband’s almost uncontrollable

excitement. Even if Monty wouldn’t say anything,
he did like Regulus quite a bit. He thought the boy
to be smart and strong enough to take care of Anne
the way she deserved after they were both gone;
he had taken almost ten minutes of their nightly
conversation about the children in the house before
going to sleep – that night he spoke of how proud
he was of James for being truly and purely in love
with a woman as good as Lily, he spoke of how he
had been talking to some friends in the Ministry
about same-sex marriage and couldn’t help but
hope the law passed soon so Remus and Sirius
could marry already and then spoke of Anne, of
how wonderful of a girl she was; there was the
surprise, he took time to add Regulus into the
conversation as well, even though he didn’t spend
as much time in the house as the others, just
because Anne was so love and so devoted to him.

Anne smiled at Mia and ran towards the front door.

Mia followed her slower.

When she got to the mudroom, Anne was leaning

fully against Regulus’, lips connected to his and
arms around his neck. She chuckled at the sight,
making Regulus open his eyes and blush, though
Anne refused to budge.

“She knows,” she said.

“Even though I suspected it already, and I’m happy

to know even us couldn’t fool Mia Potter, my dear,
that doesn’t mean I like kissing with people
watching us, Princess, especially not your
grandmother,” he said, kissing her forehead as she
took a step back. “Hello, Mia. You look beautiful
tonight, as you usually do.”

“I called you a charmer already, Regulus,” she

teased, but she did look wonderful and elegant in
her long white skirt and red silk blouse. “Come on
in, close the door. You’re letting the heat go out. I
swear, all the time I say that we need to put some
warming charms in the garden as well, but I always
forget to actually do it.”

“I can do it for you tonight, if you wish,” Regulus

said. “My warming charms are quite good.”

Mia smirked, glancing between him and Anne. “I

would imagine so,” she teased.

Regulus blushed once more and Anne, this time,

followed, staring at her grandmother’s eyes in
shock. Ever since Anne had walked into her
bedroom while Monty was away to ask for Mia to
buy more Anti-Pregnancy Potions for her without
James seeing it (and James seemed adamant to not
let Anne out of the house without companion and
without the idea that she was with Regulus or, in
the days he was in a good mood, Severus), Mia
found herself listening to details of Anne’s life that
she had been excited to know… well, perhaps
‘excited’ wouldn’t be a good word, but relieved
would fit right in – Regulus was kind in bed, even in
the throes of passion, he wouldn’t hold her too tight
or convince her of things, he always waited for her
to do the first few moves into a real intercourse. He
listened to her, he waited for her and he wanted
her to have as much fun as he did.

Anne was well. Anne was happy. That was all Mia
needed to know to like the boy enough to accept
him into the family without blinking.

“Come along now,” she said, turning around and

leaving the two young adults standing in the
mudroom. “Do clean off the snow of your boots
before walking further, though!” she said loudly as
she disappeared into the corridor.

“Yes, Mia,” Regulus said, stomping on the carpet of

the mudroom already with some snow from Monty
going outside to cut some of the roses for the table
decor.

Anne waited for him and without a glance around,

reached for his hand. He was happy that once more
they could show affection to one another without
fear of someone seeing it. It was such a small thing
that they needn’t complete privacy for caresses or
chaste kisses – this was her house; her family was
right over there and he was going to be presented
to them in an official manner.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“I am if you are,” he said. “Are you sure you want

to do this? You can’t turn back once we start.”

“I can do this,” she insisted.

He smiled at her, proud of her confidence.

Anne walked towards the kitchen and with a loud

scream of ‘FOOD’S READY’, she sat down on her
chair, looking at the chair beside her expectantly.
Usually, it was rude for a husband and wife to take
seats side by side, but her family wasn’t as formal
and he sat down, still tensed up.

Regulus hated meeting new people and was even

recognized as a shy child when he was younger,
but Anne had really got into his shell and he flirted
with her before he even knew what he was doing
and she caught on and reciprocated it. Now,
however, he couldn’t flirt his way out of the
interaction they were about to have, if he did, it
would be too weird. He needed to be friendly, to
sound smart and not do anything overly loving to
Anne, otherwise he would be seen as disrespectful.
That would be so much weirder than meeting
James’ parents, who already knew the whole story
and who saw him as Anne’s friend before significant
other and who knew his brother well-enough. Now,
however, he would have to help Anne tell a lot of a
very bad story to her grandparents.

People started walking in.

“Hey, Reg,” Sirius said, bored as he threw himself

on the chair.

“Hello, Regulus,” said Remus.

“Hey,” he answered.

“Oh, Regulus, you came! Nice of you to finally join

us!” Lily said, smiling at him. “How are you?” she
leaned into his ear. “Congratulations,” she
whispered.

“Quite well, and thank you,” he answered.

Lily put a hand on his shoulder as she walked by

him, sitting beside him and smiling at James, who
simply nodded at Regulus, kissed Anne’s head and
sat on the other side of Lily. Anne smiled at her
parents, receiving a wink from Lily.

“Regulus,” Monty said, firmly.

“Sir,” Regulus greeted just as firmly.

Anne reached for his hand under the table.

He didn’t recognize the couple and girl that walked

behind him with Mia – a red-headed man held
hands with a blonde woman. The blonde girl walked
right behind them, talking to Mia.

“Oh?” the red-headed man said.

Regulus made mention to get up, but Anne held

him in place.

“Let’s eat, shall we, Chris?” she said. “Regulus, this

is Christian Evans and that his wife, Rose Evans,
they’re Lily’s parents. And that’s Lily’s sister,
Petunia.”

Regulus felt his stomach drop. Anne didn’t really

talk about her odd relationship with her aunt in
their present, but she did mention a couple of
things of the late relationship they held; the
violence, the fear and the clear state of distraught
the mere presence of that woman could bring to
her because Anne had wanted nothing more than to
be loved by her. She had said how Vernon had
never really been her uncle, he had never been her
blood, but Petunia had and she tried to make it
work – Petunia had been the one that taught her
that blood meant nothing, and she made sure to
teach Regulus the same thing.

“Hello,” he said, firmly.

“Hi!” Rose said, knowing who he was.

“Hello,” Petunia, eyeing Regulus carefully, also

knowing who he was and approving of his
appearance now that she was looking straight at
him.

The family sat. Mia nodded at Anne.

Silently, they filled their plates while the family

watched Regulus fill his own plate in silence. They
wouldn’t say anything in front of the Potters, they
had learnt their lesson after James’ snappy attitude
after they commented on Anne’s appetite, but they
were clearly curious about why Anne suddenly had
another man beside her – while Petunia and Rose
tried to understand why Anne as going to tell the
truth, Christian just had no idea who that boy was.

“I need to tell everyone something,” Anne started

as soon as Sirius started eating. He barely looked
up from his plate. “Well, something for Chris before
anything else.”

“Sure?” Christian said, confused.

“I never dated Severus Snape, he’s just a friend.

For safety reason he’s the only I’m publicly going
out with, but in the truth I’m in a relationship with
his friend,” she glanced at Regulus, who nodded in
encouragement to her. “This is Regulus Black, he’s
the one I’m with and Severus’ best friend.”

“Only friend,” grumbled Sirius under his breath,

shoving more mashed potatoes into his mouth.

Anne glared at him, trying to remind the boy that

she, too, was Severus’ friend and for quite some
time at that point. He seemed to remember it at
the same as Remus, because as soon as Remus
glared at his boyfriend to join Anne, Sirius looked
up guiltily and made an odd face before looking
away as well.

“Why –”

“Because I’m a spy,” Regulus answered before

Chris could ask. He was too nervous to wait for him
to finish. He cringed, but continued on. “I’m Sirius’
brother, as you probably already gathered. I
needed… some sort of security if I wanted to keep a
relationship and a spying role, so nobody can know
I’m with Anne. She’s getting too known.”

“For what?” Rose asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Anne is known for being a bit odd,” Sirius quickly

answered.

Anne looked at him, confused.

“I’m not, though,” she said. Regulus shrugged,

clearly not quite agreeing with her. She glared at
him in response. “Who has been saying I’m odd?
Why?”

“Anne, you are a… bit odd,” James said with a small

voice.

Mia glared at him from across the table, clearly not

liking his response to his daughter.

“What? Why?!”

“You act different,” Remus answered. “There’s a

whole reason behind it, of course, but for those
who don’t know it brings up quite some questions
that nobody can answer. And the whole ‘changing
schools’ mid-school year didn’t really help with your
reputation or anything. I know you don’t care for
reputations and all that, but the rest of the world
does and you have one,” she raised her eyebrows
at him, urging him to continue. “They called you an
‘old soul’, but nothing more, if that’s of any
comfort.”

“Old soul,” Lily repeated. “I can see that.”

Anne rolled her eyes.

“I’m quite young, thank you,” she said.

“You don’t act young very often, though,” James

said.

“Oh, please, I have a doll on my bedroom. I think I

act quite young,” she snapped back. “But that’s not
the point. The point is that Regulus and I got
married.”

Regulus looked at her in surprise.

He had expected some careful and well-chosen

words before she dropped the whole information in
her family’s lap, but she just threw it at them and
now leaned back in her chair, waiting for the
reactions. And did she have enough reactions at
once to pay attention to.

Mia crossed her arms, already aware of it, but

clearly not over the fact that they had called no one
to be there. Monty choked on his juice, clearly
upset and coughing as he looked up at Anne, trying
to say something, but not managing to do so while
so breathless. Rose’s jaw dropped as she stared at
the young couple and Petunia just raised her
eyebrows in surprise since she always thought
Anne would’ve liked a party to go with it, but said
nothing – if she had a fiancée so handsome such as
Regulus, she too would’ve wished to marry him as
quick as her... even though she had not managed
to keep herself until marriage. Petunia looked
away, locked into her memories. That choice had
been taken her from her.

James’ jaw dropped as he held onto Lily’s arm a bit

too tight by the way she cringed away from him; he
stumbled up from his chair, gasping for air as he
looked for words, just staring at Anne in complete
shock.

“Ah—I—Annie ---” he panted. “Holy –” he stopped

himself before he cursed. “You piece of –.”

“James, calm –” started Remus, getting up from his

seat as well.

“No! Do not dare to tell me to calm down!” James

said.

Sirius, who had been frozen up to that point, turned

to Regulus.

“Did you get her pregnant?” Sirius asked.

“Oh, God,” Lily sighed, closing her eyes and

massaging the sides of her temple. “Boys, please,
this is ridiculous.”

“Listen to Lily,” Mia said. “You’re making fools out

of yourselves for something so trivial, boys.”

Monty reached quickly, in the second James,

angered by Sirius’ question, reached for his wand.
He took the wand from his son’s hand before he
found himself without a grandson-in-law.

“Of course not!” Anne exclaimed, getting up from

her chair as well.

Regulus crossed his arms, sliding down on his chair,

wanting nothing but to disappear. He knew Potters
could be dramatic, after all he did know Anne quite
well, but he hadn’t thought so much drama would
happen.

With James and Anne standing in front of each

other, talking over each other and not letting
anyone understand what they were saying to each
other. Remus walked around the table, now
standing beside them and ready to separate them if
needed; the most dangerous one was, clearly,
Anne, who seemed more than happy to slap James’
head face off if he dared do anything against
Regulus.

“If you dare –” she had been saying.

“Are you? Are you –”

“No! I’m not pregnant!” she insisted.

James took a step back, taking a deep breath. His

hands were shaking.

“James, sit down, please,” Monty said. That was his

auror voice, not his father voice. James obeyed him
right away. “Sit down, Anne, right away! Stop this
nonsense, both of you. Remus sit down as well,
dear, please.”
Remus put both hands on Anne’s shoulders and
pushed her down to her seat before walking around
the table to sit down on his own seat. He watched
Anne closely as she breathed deeply and crossed
her arms.

“Let me be clear,” she said loudly. “I’m not

pregnant. He asked me to marry him months ago
and I said yes, we went to Italy and we got
married. What’s so wrong with it? Severus was our
witness and we stayed the weekend away. I don’t
see the problem!” she uncrossed her arms. “It’s not
like I need permission. I’m an adult!”

“Making stupid decisions!” James said.

“Says you! You’re the same age as me and you’re

also engaged.”

“Well, I didn’t elope!” he exclaimed back. “I’m here

with my family.”

“Look –” started Regulus.

“Not now!” James and Anne said at the same time.

Regulus leaned back once more, a bit annoyed with

the loud noises around him and looking at Sirius as
if begging him to tell him what to do. Sirius
shrugged, also lost on what to do or what to say.

“It was safe this way,” Anne said. Regulus nodded

to himself; that was what he had wanted to say.
“This way there was absolutely no way for the
information to leak. Here, we have family only, but
in England, somebody could’ve seen the paperwork
and leaked it.”

“They can still see the paperwork. Did you file the
paperwork, children? Otherwise, the marriage isn’t
valid,” Monty said.

“It is because I have a family blessing,” she said.

The table went silent, either from confusion or

simple and utter shock.

Mia coughed.

“Walburga Black gave you a magical blessing?” Mia

asked.

“No, Father did,” Regulus answered this time. His

voice was calm if compared to Anne’s and
everybody seemed to be listening. “He gave the
magical blessing before I even thought of actually
marrying Anne. He knew, somehow. He liked Anne
to an extent and knew I wanted nobody but her,
especially in times such as these, so he allowed a
marriage – Anne has total access to my vaults and
my family vaults, she carries the surname and the
title. Anne is Lady Black ever since we signed our
names under Raoul Gallo.”

“Master Gallo’s still alive?” Sirius asked. “You went

back to Milan?”

“Verona. He travelled to us, sped up the paperwork

since he owed me a favour,” Regulus corrected.
“Kreacher prepared the house for us for the
weekend.”

“But Snivellus as a witness when we’re right here?

This hurts a lot more than you can imagine, Anne,”
James grumbled.

Anne reached for her glass of juice, but Regulus

was faster, taking the glass away from her before
she could throw it at her father.

“He’s a better Occlumens, already recognized by

the family wards and all that,” Regulus answered
quickly. “And he wouldn’t think of punching if I
kissed my wife in front of him,” he added when
James rolled his eyes at him.

James glared.

Regulus sipped Anne’s cup of juice as if it was his,

since his own was empty and he didn’t want Anne
having access to her cup. Sure, she wouldn’t attack
her dad physically and wouldn’t dare to hex him
either, she loved him too much, but throwing a cup
of juice wasn’t out of her reach at that point of
anger. As a good husband, he needed to not enable
such behaviour – as a good wife, she would do the
same for him.

“This is –”

“Please, think before you speak,” Lily said, face

flushed in a mixture of anger and embarrassment
for her fiancee’s behaviour. “James, it’s a decision
they made and that they were allowed to make
because they’re adults. You cannot mandate things.
Anne isn’t a child.”

He knew that, of course, he wasn’t a complete fool,

though he did look like one at that moment. Still, a
wedding made him feel like he was losing Anne and
like the world, once more, was being unfair to
them; he had barely gotten her and now Regulus
wished to get her away from him and from the
small family they were constructing. This was
supposed to be a happy moment in a normal
family, and yet there was a hint of grief in the back
of his mind and of his heart that allowed him
nothing but anger and sadness.

“When do you leave?” he managed to ask in the

deathly silent table.

“Do you want me to –” Anne said, surprised, eyes

wide and hurt. He looked up in alarm by the
wavering of her voice. “James, I know you’re
angry, but cast me not away.”

“Cast you away? Anne!” he said, sounding as

surprised as her. “I wish nothing of the sort, I
understood you were leaving home to live with him
now that you’re making the news public.”

Anne’s eyes softened. Regulus put her juice back in

place. Since living with Gryffindors, Anne seemed
to have been becoming one herself in emotional
secure places such as home, but one step away and
suddenly she was the sly woman he loved to see in
public.

“No, James, I’m staying until this is all over, of

course,” she said. “I talked to Mia already, and she
allowed Regulus access to the floo even when
locked. A personal access, like Lily and her family
have. Regulus is willing to live here, with us, when
he’s not requested to be home for any reason at
all.”

With James’ anger and sadness slowly dying down,

the possibility of a pregnancy squashed and the
awkward silence at the table, Anne turned to the
Evans family, who was gawking at her in confusion
and surprise.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, but I thought you,

too, deserved to know this before I continue my
story,” she said. Lily looked down at her plate,
pushing it away and knowing that she would start
feeling sick to her stomach as the story progressed.
James held her hand over the table, calming her
down. “You all are my family.”

“It’s a nice sentiment,” Chris said gently.

“In more ways than one, Chris. You are all my

family… by blood,” she answered. “I’m sorry for not
being all to gentle in this story, but I have found
the less gentle I am the quicker this goes by. I am
Lily’s and James’ daughter, who came back in time
to save them and many other people from a tragic
end.”

Regulus sighed, this time reaching for the wine at

the table, not the juice and pouring some of it into
his cup, sipping it soon after as he watched the
confusion turn into revulsion.

“This isn’t funny, Anne,” Rose said.

“It’s not meant to be funny,” Anne answered. “It’ll

get worse from now, but I beg you to listen to it
until the end before questions.”

“Anne –” started Remus, carefully.

“Leave her be, Remus,” Mia said. “They deserve to

know. Lily is about to marry into the family, they’re
safe into our house and Anne is taking a lot of risks
by allowing them such, they might as well know
why she’s so set in getting them out of the war
alive and well.”

“One would think we would already be used by

Anne’s ways,” Monty said in a light voice, sipping
his own wine. “And yet, every time… she never fails
to surprise me.”

Mia smiled to him.

Anne turned to the Evans’ family once more.

“My full name is Anne Lily Potter, I am the

youngest of two children Lily and James Potter had.
I had a brother names Harry James Potter, he was
born in 1980, I was born in 1981; and we were
happy for a few months. Until our house was
broken into and both Lily and James died protecting
us,” she said. “Lily did an old Blood-Magic in
complete despair since the man that had broken
into our house was after Harry, and the Killing
Curse ricocheted. He lived. He was known as The-
Boy-Who-Lived.” She took Regulus’ cup, took a sip
of the wine and continued. “The man lost his
corporeal state.”

“He died?” Chris asked, face pale.

Though she had asked him to keep the questions

until the end, she answered him.

“No. Things would’ve been a lot better had he died

that night, but his soul survived, hidden away in
objects scattered around the UK,” Anne answered.
“Harry and I were taken from the ruins of the
house and given away to the only blood-relative we
had; and that was you, Petunia.”

The girl looked slightly green. She had heard Anne

saying that her aunt and uncle had not been the
kindest to her, and Petunia couldn’t see herself
being anything other than kind to Anne, especially
if she was a baby.

“I was the one who was supposed to receive the

babies,” Sirius jumped in once Petunia opened her
mouth to speak. “One of our friends, who’s not
allowed to know anything this time around,
betrayed us. I went after him. He blew up the place
we were in, faked his own death and killed several
people with the explosion. In shock, grieving, I
didn’t tell anyone the truth and was taken to
Azkaban.”

The family had heard of Azkaban by Lily’s retelling

and by Monty’s certainty that two of the men that
had attacked their house had been taken to the
place, which was worse than death itself. They
feared the name alone.

“If Sirius couldn’t take them, then it would’ve been

me,” Remus said. “My condition was made public,
however, and they were taken from me.”

“Condition?” Rose asked.

“I’m a werewolf, ma’am. That’s not well seen,”

Remus answered, blushing.

They were Muggles, they knew so little, and yet

they seemed hesitant for a second before Mia
glared at them and caressed Remus’ hair.

“The thing is, Harry and I stayed with Petunia for

our first decade,” Anne answered. “We… survived…
somehow.” Petunia looked down, ashamed of
something she had not done, but knew to be
capable of. She felt like throwing up until that part
of her was torn from inside of her. “I do not blame
you, Petunia, now that I know everything you were
forced through. I can understand that you did what
you thought you had to do to survive yourself, I
like to tell myself that I wouldn’t do the same, but I
can’t be sure… I forgave you long before I admitted
that much to myself.”

“You said… you knew how it felt,” Petunia said.

“Was it him? Was it Vernon?”

Rose’s eyes widened as her own face grew sickly

green. Her hands shook as she took the cup of wine
to her lips.

“Yes,” Anne admitted. “He did a lot of what he did

to you to me as well once I was fourteen. It took
me two more years before I could flee.”

A whole year more than Petunia had made herself

hold on for. She had no idea how Anne could seem
to alright, so happy and so normal when she had
trouble bathing herself sometimes. But there she
was, married, happy and able to tell her own story
– she felt weak when compared.

“Anne, the story,” Mia said.

That brought Anne back to reality.

“When Harry turned eleven, we received news and

it was explained to us the whole story. Uncle
Vernon had insisted that our parents had passed in
a car accident and that Dad was drunken and Mum
was so in love with him that she allowed horrible
things to be done to us, and said nothing. He said
the scar my brother had in his forehead was from
the accident – he had a scar from the Killing Curse,
a lightening shaped scare in his forehead, usually
covered by his hair,” Anne told. “Harry was taken
to school, while I stayed behind. We, too, learnt
that the man that killed our parents was still alive
and searching for a way to come back to our world
and kill him, finally. For year, we had to fight it; in
his first, the Dark Lord tried to reach for a stone
that might be able to help him, in his second, one
of those objects with his soul inside possessed a girl
and unleashed a monster into the school that tried
to kill muggleborns and those who would stand in
the way.”

“A monster?” Rose asked.

“A basilisk. A giant snake whose eyes can kill those

who look directly at it and petrify those who
indirectly meet its eyes in things such as
reflections.” Monty answered. “It’s hibernating at
the moment and locked away. The school is safe.
I’m waiting for the war to be over to search for
someone who speaks the tongue of snakes so we
can get access to it and kill it.”

Anne smiled to herself. Of course, Monty had a

plan.

“In his third, Sirius escaped Azkaban once he

understood that man who betrayed us was nearby
in his rat form,” Anne said.

“A rat?!” Petunia said, shocked.

Petunia was terrified to death of rats. Anne

remembered having to chase a rat away from the
house in the middle of the night once.

“Yes, a rat, a quite big one, too,” Anne said. “He

was posing as one our friend’s pet for years at that
point. Sirius recognized its form in a picture and
escaped to kill him. We had a small accident, and
the man ran away and Sirius was recognized as a
runaway still.”

“Why didn’t you escape from Vernon?” Petunia

asked. “You had a chance.”

“At that point things weren’t that bad yet, I was

twelve and I had very little idea of what was
happening for real. The thing is, we couldn’t,” Anne
said. “Mum’s magic made us stuck to blood-
protection, you were the only one that knew about
our magic and that was able to take in for having
enough blood shared with Lily. Your parents had
died already, car accident.”

It was still odd to hear her refer to Lily as Mum, but

Rose nodded to herself as she took in the
information.

“In his fourth, a Death Eater got into the school,

disguised as a professor. A Tournament, a very
dangerous one, too, was happening in school that
year. The Triwizard Tournament. That Death Eater
put Harry’s name into the Goblet of Fire, which was
what chose the participants. Harry’s name was
chosen, even though he wasn’t old enough for that
and even though he hadn’t wished he would be part
of that game. He wanted a normal year, that was
all, and that was taken from him… again,” she
continued her story. “He almost died. In the two
first tasks, he survived, but the third almost killed
him and managed to kill another constant. Cedric
Diggory. The Dark Lord made the trophy a portal-
key, which was activated once Harry touched it, but
Cedric was holding onto it as well and they both fell
on a cemetery where the Traitor and the Dark Lord
were waiting for them – Cedric was killed within
seconds by a Killing Curse. Harry’s blood used to
bring the Dark Lord back to the physical world. He
managed to escape and bring Cedric’s body with
him. The imposter pretending to be the professor
was taken to Azkaban and given the Kiss.”

“That’s when they take someone’s soul out,” Monty

explained quickly.

Chris nodded, understanding. Rose felt some relief,

but she feared the worst was yet to come. Petunia
held her breath, the next summer in the story,
Anne would be fourteen.

“During the summer, Professor Dumbledore

decided we would be there for the whole summer.
Uncle Vernon was so busy with… me, I suppose,
that he didn’t mind Harry going out and walking
around the neighbourhood, so I suppose there was
some good to it,” Anne said, absolutely ignoring
what really was happening inside the white
bathroom door in her mind. “Harry went out one
day, near the end of summer at that point and got
into trouble with our cousin and his friend, our
cousin was a known troublemaker and bully, so
there wasn’t much for him to do in the summer but
hurt people. That was his fun. But he usually left
Harry and I alone after the magic thing traumatised
him a bit,” she told. “But something odd happened.
Harry said thins got cold and dark so suddenly that
Dudley thought he was doing something to the
weather, but he wasn’t, so they both got scared
and ran away, trying to get back home as soon as
possible. That was when the Dementors attacked –
Harry saved them, but for that he needed to use
magic. That wasn’t well seen by the Ministry and he
had to go to court to not be expelled from school.
We were taken from Petunia’s house for her safety
and taken to a secret house, the headquarters of
the rebellion which we made part to some extent at
that point. Sirius’ house. Regulus’ house, I
suppose.”

“Isn’t it weird that you met your husband as an

adult and you a child?” Petunia asked.

“We didn’t meet,” Regulus said. “I was already

dead before she was born.”

Petunia looked down. Future didn’t seem all too

bright for anyone at that point.

“We went back to school, Harry won the case and

proved that he was defending himself. Still, the
Ministry wanted to keep an eye on him, nobody
believed the Dark Lord was back, no matter how
much he insisted and offered his memories to prove
so, nobody wanted to believe and the Ministry
didn’t want anyone to believe either; they couldn’t
deal with the panic, I suppose,” Anne said. “They
Ministry sent this horrible woman to check up on
the school, taking a position in the docent body.
She was horrid. Tortured the students in her
‘detentions’, marked their skins with horrible
phrases. Harry got: ‘I must not tell lies’ carved into
the back of his hand.”

“And the Headmaster did nothing?” Rose asked.

Anne looked at her before looking at Chris. He had

a terrible frown, but said nothing. He usually was a
lot more talkative than his wife and yet he was in
complete silence.

“He couldn’t, or at least that’s what he said at the

time. He said he needed the attention of the
Ministry and if he tried to defend one of us, he
would’ve been taken away from his job, not that it
did any good. He was taken away either way,” she
answered. “That was when the Dark Lord took
another attack. In the peak of that horrid woman’s
power, the Dark Lord got into Harry’s head and
shared a false memory of him torturing Sirius in the
Department of Mysteries in the Ministry, so he
gathered some of our closest friends and we
attacked, but when we got there, there was no
one… until we touched a prophecy. Harry’s
prophecy – the one that made the Dark Lord go
after us at all; he needed Harry to take it, the
owner of the prophecy. Once it was on his hand, he
attacked us. We almost died. Until the Order got
there and saved us, but we lost Sirius in the way,
Bellatrix, his cousin, killed him. I tried to take my
revenge, but the Dark Lord was there and was I so
young and weak; God, what could I do at
fourteen?” she took a deep breath. “Still, we
cleared Sirius’ name that night and the whole world
believed us, finally, that the Dark Lord was back.”
Another deep breath. “We went back to the house
after that.”

“My house?” Petunia asked.

Anne nodded.

“Things got worse… darker. In the next year, we

found out about the objects and what they are
called. Horcruxes. But once we found that out, the
headmaster was killed; a hit, really, ordered by the
Dark Lord and executed by Snape, under the
complete support and knowledge of the
headmaster, of course,” she answered before
anyone could say anything. “We were sent back to
the house and this time we knew that we wouldn’t
go back to Hogwarts, especially after the Muggle
found out about us and started to attack anyone
that presented powers at all. That was when we ran
away from the house to keep the muggle family
safe and hid away on a friend’s house, a magical
family with a protected house, and then we went
out to hunt for those damn things. We found most
of them – missed one, the snake. That was when
war came.”

“War?” Rose repeated, tensing up. “You’re already

at war.”

“I’m talking about the Last Battle,” Anne specified.

“In May, at Hogwarts. It killed mostly everyone on
our side. The Muggle threw bombs, the Death
Eaters killed my people one by one and I tried to
survive as best as I could. I will not go into details
of that night, but both sides lost virtually
everything. Harry was killed and he was the symbol
of resistance, even if I had stayed, nobody would
follow me for I was nothing but his shadow. Remus
saved me; he gave a Time-Turner and I was sent
here. I was turning it when I was hit by a spell in
the back and it broke in hand.”

“I don’t understand,” Rose said.

“A Time-Turner has rules. You can only go back for

a few days, at most, and one cannot change the
world by using,” Anne said. “But it was broken, that
meant I went back far too much and I had no hope
of going back to my own time. I was seen and I
was heard, I changed a lot of things already. This
world is no longer the one I grew up in. This is a
different timeline altogether; this means I started a
different segment of the original timeline.”

“It means that everything is different now,”

Regulus added, simplifying what she had said. “And
the war is going to be a lot different this time
around.”

“Because I’ll save everyone,” Anne said, hopeful.

But it was all wishful thinking.

Chris had been to war before. He had served his

country. He had that thinking and that wish for
goodness before and he knew the dark path that
had led him to. Yet, though he wanted to tell her to
stop thinking like that and that it was impossible,
he didn’t – he didn’t have the hear to break her
heart even more, not after the things she had told
him and his family.

He got up from his chair, unable to look at the

young girl standing in front of him and knowing she
had been a soldier longer than he had. He couldn’t
deal with the fact that he had never been able to
protect her.

“I need some air,” he said, leaving the table.

“Dad!” Lily said, getting up.

“Not now!” he answered.

Anne stayed sitting there, holding onto her own

legs, not daring to touch Regulus at the moment.
She had been rejected once more.

Petunia, awkward, but wanting nothing more than

to apologize for things she had not done, turned to
Anne.

“You do look a lot like your mum,” she admitted.

Anne forced a smile to her.

Chapter 113: Chapter One

Hundred and Twelve -
Summary:
Things start to move along.

Notes:
Comment what you think it will
happen next! I want to see your
guesses.

ACCEPTANCE

Three days of silence from Christian Evans made

Anne thinking she was going crazy, her tunnel-
vision barely allowing her to eat when Regulus or
James were forcing her to. Three days of hesitance
from Petunia made her fear her anger for the secret
she kept from her make her turn into the Petunia
she knew. Three days of Rose’s pitying looks made
her want to tear her own hair out.

And yet Regulus refused to leave her side.

When Mia wasn’t beside her, pretending to need

her around the house for chores just to keep her
busy, Regulus was beside her. When she didn’t
need him, however, he was stuck in the music
room, door closed and sheet music coming and
going – he was writing a new song, though he
hadn’t shown or commented on it to anyone yet,
Anne just assumed by the ink on his hands.

It was only on the fourth day, when Monty and the

boys were out, Regulus was checking up on
Grimmauld Place and its residents and Mia was on
the garden with Coco that Chris appeared once
more, walking out of the fireplace to see Anne
sitting in the parlour already, reading a book,
though not turning the page, just staring statically
at the words printed.

“Hello,” he said.

She looked up lazily.

“Mia’s at the gardens,” she answered.

He stood there for a second as she looked back

down at her books, but he did notice her hands
shaking a bit.

“I would imagine so. It’s Wednesday. She’s always

at the gardens at Wednesdays,” he said, moving
slowly to sit down on another one of the
comfortable chairs. “Anne, I came here for you. To
apologise.” She looked up at him once more. “I
needed to think. I needed some time.”

“Lily did as well.”

“Lily is a lot like me in a lot of ways, not just the

hair,” he said. “Which you got from me as well, as I
can see now.”

“Well, it’s not something one can miss about me,

the red-hair, I mean,” she said. “That’s why my
name is Anne, after all.”

“After the book, yes?” he said, an amused grin on

his face as she nodded. “Rose gave that book to
Lily when she was a kid. Lily used to hate her hair
with ardent passion, something you seem to share
with her, but Lily stopped once Anne’s story was
read and she saw herself in another character.”

“I never hated my hair. It was the only thing I had

from my mother besides a beat-up book, which my
brother showed no interest for,” she said bitterly.
“We weren’t allowed to have pictures of them. I
had not known what they looked like exactly until
Harry brought back with him a few pictures that
some of their friends got him in his first year, while
I rotted away in a bedroom, forbidden from coming
out unless for school. I knew Lily had red hair, but
nothing more than that.”

She looked up once more.

Chris was pale once more, all the amusement and

well-intended humour gone from his face and eyes.
He could scarcely believe his oldest daughter was
capable of such cruelty, but he stayed quiet, just
watching anger emanating from Anne.

Though she had said that she was ready for

whatever their reaction was, she had not expected
him to walk away to the gardens and come back
two hours later, taking the floo without his wife or
daughter, not saying goodbye to anyone. Once
more, Anne underestimated how much her feelings
had a control over her; a mistake she had made
more than once, and one that should not be
repeated.

She blinked, pushing away her feelings. She

occluded them well.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she sounded a bit

mechanic at first. She cleaned her throat, making
herself appear more believable. “You had nothing to
do with this, I have no right to be angry at you.
You weren’t even alive. I had no right to resent you
or expect anything from you. I threw everything
your way and I should’ve seen it coming, really.”

He looked down.

“I hope you know that, if I had been alive, I

would’ve taken you without hesitance,” he said.
“You and Harry.”

“That’s kind of you to say,” she dismissed. He

hadn’t known him; how could he sound so sure?
“But I require not your kind lies. The truth is what I
want in your cordiality, sir. That is all. It’s enough
that you’re here now, it’s enough that you think it.”

“I’m not lying. You’re my granddaughter, and

you’re family. Even if we shared no blood, Anne, I’d
see you as family,” he said. “And you have no idea
how glad I am to see that even after horrible things
happened to you, you still have the Evans’ strength
in you. I can see it, behind your eyes – it’s bright. I
see it in Lily, I see in Petunia. I’m sure I’ll see in
Harry as well, when the time comes… though I
hope he’ll never need it.”

Acceptance.

Though the word surely sounded bewildering

stunning, she couldn’t approve of it taking its roots
on her heart and head. She needed some coldness
to access the situation, to see if she was safe at all
at the moment. She hated herself for admitting this
much, even to herself, but her trust had been
broken – she had grown too used to her family’s
kindness and was taken by surprise by the rejection
(even if temporary) of her other part of family. She
had made a mistake, once more, she had expected
too much from someone that knew too little. Even
if she said she was holding up no expectations, she
had lied even to herself and it hurt a lot more than
she had expected.

She looked up, smothering her hope in silence.

Could she allow herself to open up?

She smiled.

“You know, I always wondered where I’ve got my

hair from,” she admitted. “Aunt Petunia said it had
been from mum, but she never said it came from
you, too.”

“Well, it came from my mum,” he admitted. He

smiled, sitting down on another sofa. He crossed
his legs in false comfort. “She had an even redder
hair, but my sister had the blackest of hairs I’ve
ever seen, so dark that she was named Brenna;
you see, my Da was Scottish, my mum was Welsh.
My sister became a nun after I married, much to
most of the people from my neighbourhood’s
dismay; many of the men were interested in her,
but she never wanted anybody at all.”

“A nun?” she asked, surprised. “I’ve never met a

nun before.”

“I’m sure your father would be happy if you

became a nun,” he teased.

She ended up smiling even more.

“He tends to get overprotective sometimes,” she

admitted. “Especially when men are involved, even
if that man is Regulus. Do not misunderstand,
Chris, he does like Regulus quite a bit, but… he’s
still my dad, I suppose.”
He shrugged.

“All dads are like that. I really do like James as well

and he’s going to make my Lily his wife, that
doesn’t mean I want to know too much about their
lives and, well, we do have some difference in
morals,” Chris said. “I raised my girls to be
Christians and it was quite the shock to know Lily
ended up being a witch and it took me a while to
accept that it wasn’t a sin… she had been born that
way, she was happy that way. It was odd at first,
to hear her talking of classes and singing frogs,
flying in brooms and making potions in the
dungeons of a castle we never seen.” He sighed.
“What I meant to say, is that I take time to see and
understand change. Once I get it and accept it,
nothing makes me happier than your happiness.
Then, tell me, Annie, are you happy?”

“I am,” she said. “As happy a person going through

a war can be.”

“Then I am happy to be your grandfather. And I am

happy to see you happy,” he said. “You remind me
of Brenna, you know?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“That’s your sister, the nun,” she said, just to make

sure.

“Yes,” he answered. “You have the look in your face

when you’re upset. It’s like you refuse to feel what
your heart seems to be screaming towards you, the
jaw so locked in place that one would fear to break
teeth. She would give me that look sometimes,
when I was cruel. I was so foolish – I was a young
man, rudeness was fun and light, especially with
my sister when my father wouldn’t pay attention to
me. If he was rude to me, I was rude to her. And
she would give me that look, that sympathizing one
that made me feel like I was a child again. She
would mumble to herself sometimes: ‘he has no
idea of what he’s doing’, and that made me feel
even worse,” he smirked. “Now I know that she
knew I was listening and was doing it on purpose.
At first, it was the truth and she was truly upset,
but she learned it made me hurt too, so she kept
on doing it. Smart lass, she was.”

“And where is she right now?” she asked.

“Paris, teaching English and Latin to young girls,”

he answered. “We don’t talk often, but I hope she’s
as kind to them as she was to me.”

“She was older than you?”

“Younger, but taught me a lot more than I did,” he

answered. “While I taught her to cross the street,
she taught me that kindness, truth and honesty
sometimes hurt a lot more than meanness. Kill
them with kindness,” he scoffed a little laugh, lost
in melancholy. “I feel like you’re going to teach me
a lot, too.”

“I fear I have nothing for you,” she admitted.

“You have love.”

“You know how to love.”

“Not the way you do,” he said, shaking his head.

“Not as blindly, not as forgivingly. Not as kindly.”

“I’m anything but kind,” she dismissed. “I’m not

forgiving.”

“The fact that you stand in front of my oldest

daughter and smiles is kind after everything she’s
done to you,” he said.

She shook her head.

“That’s different,” she dismissed once more. “I have

nothing to forgive from her, she’s done nothing
wrong towards me, and all she did was for lack of
knowledge of what else to do. When I was born,
she had been lost poisoned by… him. He’s the proof
of my lack of kindness; he’s done nothing to me,
and yet I cannot forgive him. And the Headmaster,
he’s done nothing to me yet, and I cannot forgive
me or look him in the eye without any thought of
revenge of what’s may never come to pass… what I
know that he’s capable of doing.”

“I said you were kind, not that you were stupid,” he

answered. “I would kill the man if I ever see him
again. And the Headmaster is an arsehole.”

She ended up laughing.

Chris was saying those things to make her feel

better, she knew. He knew the headmaster very
little, as Muggle father, he barely spoke to the man,
most often than not he got in contact with Minerva
McGonagall, who was responsible for contact with
the muggleborn’s parents. Still, it was nice that he
had such a hatred for Dumbledore only because
Anne didn’t like him at all; it felt… grandfatherly
enough.

“Can you forgive me, Annie?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said, shaking her

head.

“Can you love me, Annie?”

“Is there a way I cannot?” she asked as if that was

answer enough.

And it was.

Chris smiled.

Chris Evans spent three hours more simply talking

to her in the parlour, drank tea and ate scones with
Anne Potter, his granddaughter. He talked about
his family, his story and tried to catch her up with
all she’s missed while she was away – she learnt
she had no cousins, but that her Aunt Brenna was
surely similar enough to her that they would get
along. Chris left with the promise that one day,
after the war, Brenna and Anne would meet and
that she would be baptized. Anne didn’t say she
didn’t want to be baptized, and that the idea of God
angered her enough for years as she hid in the
back of the cupboard, begging someone to save her
from her own life.

She smiled at Chris as he flooed away. Her smile

kept on her lips after he disappeared.

She had been accepted.

Happy in her fantasy of safety, Anne allowed

herself to relax from her plans for a whole day after
Chris left her alone in the parlour, drinking lavender
tea with all the windows closed, fireplace roaring
with the actual, heating fire and a good, heavy
book on her lap. But once her euphoric state did go
down, she went back on focusing on a few things of
the Order.

Dear Miss Anne Potter and Misses Euphemia Potter,

In this letter I bring difficult news. We received

word from a source we thought to be trustworthy
and managed to get information about an attack
that was planned on a small Muggle village near
Inverness; the group of Aurors we sent were
tragically attacked and we had a lot of missing and
fallen people, some were injured. In this letter, I
inform the injury of someone you care deeply in the
Potter family and with Mister Potter Sr and Young
Misters James and Sirius Potter away for another
mission, I fear I must be the one to deliver such
news for you and Misses Euphemia Potter.

Auror Moody had to have his left leg amputated

after an encounter with the now known Death Eater
Evan Rosier. Mister Rosier is now a fugitive of the
law and I urge to be careful for, according to Moody
himself, he finds himself to be in search for you.

Therefore, I write this letter out of request of Mister

Moody to urge you to safety. He wishes both of you
well and safety.

Forgive me for the intrusion on your life,

Initiated-Auror Dennis Dewa.

The news of the death of five young Aurors just

newly initiated and the disappearance of another
young muggleborn female Auror took quite the hit
on the peace the Manor and the family acceptance
brought to Anne.

However, she was surprised at the fear she felt at

the idea Moody had lost his leg, she cared little for
the old man, but she was surprisingly worried about
him. Perhaps, she tried to convince herself, she was
worried about him because he was so important for
the Order of the Phoenix and for the position he
held inside the Ministry, maybe even the position
he held in Dumbledore’s esteem. Also, she had
some sympathy for the fact that he thought to warn
Anne so quickly (the day after he lost his leg and a
few hours after he woke up) about Evan Rosier’s
wish for revenge – she had embarrassed him, no…
she had humiliated him by attacking him public as
a known half-blood with little to no respect for his
pureblood position.

As she shared the news with Mia, she set off,

running to St. Mungus to see Moody, but insisting
on Anne staying in the Manor. She stood in the
parlour once more, alone.

Remus was working. Sirius and James were away

with Monty on a mission. Regulus had a scheduled
meeting with his bank manager. She was alone.
She dared not think too much on her own, for
whenever she did her thoughts were dark, cold and
scary.

So she took the floo to the safest place: family.

In the Cottage, which seemed pretty much the

same since the holydays she had spent there, only
now lived-in, she felt comfortable enough to floo
without prior warning since they now knew her to
be real family.

As she stumbled through the fireplace, she looked

around at the empty living room.

“Hi! It’s Anne!” she called out. “May I come in?”

“Anne?” she heard Petunia calling out.

“Annie!” Chris’ voice boomed from the kitchen.

“Come on in. Come on in!”

She went further into the cottage, smiling at the

warm welcome.

“Hi!” she said, as Chris appeared into her vision.

“Where’s everyone?”

Petunia came down the stairs quickly, almost

running and with a huge smile on her face.

“I dreamt of you literally last night and clean forgot

to write to you about that,” she was telling her.
“Lily said I needed to tell you as soon as it was
morning, but I forgot. I dreamed that you ate so
much that you were feeling, like, so uncomfortable
that you threw up everywhere. Lily said that it’s a
pregnancy dream.”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said, frowning. “How about

we start the conversation with ‘Hi, how are you?’
before you go on telling me I’m pregnant?” she
laughed. Petunia shrugged, leaning against the wall
comfortably. “Where’s Rose and Lily?”

“In the back,” Chris answered. “Some Columbine

grew in the back and they are taking care of it.”

“Right before winter?” Anne asked, surprised.

“It’s a magical household, I thought that was

normal for you all, having flowers bloom in the
snow and all that,” Petunia said. “Lily used to do
that when she was kid, blooming flowers at will, I
mean, especially if she was happy or something like
that, she used to do it all the time, especially
around her birthdays. I thought it was pretty.”

With Lily being born in May 1st, there was no

surprise on her flower-connected natural magic.
Anne thought it to be cute and oddly satisfying to
hear from Petunia; she was seeing magic as
something natural, and also not something
particularly dangerous, it was something ‘pretty’,
finally.

Naturally, the two soon led her to the back of the

house, where Rose was kneeling down beside the
flowers and Lily was using a soft version of
Aguamenti to water the plants lightly.

“Morning, Anne!” Rose said, surprised to see her.

Lily looked up at the girl.

“Hi, baby.”

“Good afternoon,” Anne answered.

“Is it afternoon already?” Rose asked, shocked. “Oh

no. I didn’t cook anything. Is Mia with you, Anne?”

“Mia is at St. Mungus,” she answered. “That’s the

wizarding main hospital here in the United
Kingdom.”

Rose got up from the ground, grabbing Lily’s arm to

pull herself up and stumbling once she was
standing. She looked even more shocked, but
eyebrows almost touching each other in confusion
and worry. Lily, however, looked less confused or
shocked, her worry came above all else in her pale
face.

“Who?” she managed to choke out.

Anne knew that reaction. She often had that

reaction. The worst always came forward on her
head if someone as much as hesitated on telling
her something that might have happened; death
was always in the back of her mind, ready to jump
forward.

“Moody. He’s alive,” she answered. “He’s lost a leg.

He’s alive, awake and threatening people, I’m sure.
I came here to tell you this and to ask if I can
spend the night. Remus is working tonight and I’m
scared of being all alone in the Manor tonight.”

Rose started nodding.

“Of course, you can stay, Anne,” she dismissed.

“This is your house.”

“Yours now, and it’s Mia’s before it was technically

mine… by heritance, one day, perhaps,” she said,
shrugging. “In the end, it’s not really mine, like the
Manor. It’s not mine.”

Lily almost rolled her eyes. Anne had some

difficulty still with dealing with the fact that now
she had money and she had access to everything
the Potters had, she barely saw her own room as
hers, but was becoming more and more
comfortable with the idea, still something as big as
a whole house and other properties belonging to
the family weren’t something she would start
seeing as hers for some time more. Anne had no
idea how much she was seen as completely of the
family.

They started moving back into the cottage. Lily put

her hand around Anne’s shoulders, leading her and
comforting her at the same time. It was odd how
scared she seemed to be for someone that didn’t
even like the man.

“Mia is staying the night at St. Mungus?” Lily asked.

“Taking care of him, yes,” she answered. “Probably

will regret it in the morning, but she likes the old
man for some reason.”

“They worked together, Annie. She was the one to

integrate him into the job, it’s expected that they
are somewhat close,” Lily explained. “I know you
don’t like him, but they are good friends. Why don’t
you like him?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t. He’s… he knows too

much and acts too little, or acts too much and
knows too little, never somewhere in the middle,”
she said. “He’s impulsive and violent to an extent
where it gets worrisome, but never towards me, of
course, just… something about him tickles me the
wrong way.”

“And he said something to you, didn’t he? You’re

not one to just not like someone,” Lily said. “I’d
understand if you were hesitant about him or,
perhaps, cold. But your anger seems too
overgrown.”

“He did make a comment.”

“And?”

“He said I wasn’t raised well, or something along

those lines,” she answered as if that wasn’t
important. The thing is that Anne remembered the
sentence very well, word by word, tone by the
decibels in her mind, but Lily didn’t need to know
anything about that. “Something about my parents
not caring for me. He doesn’t know the truth, of
course, but it didn’t make me feel any better.”

Lily sighed.

“Anne –”

“I know. I can’t be angry at him for something he

doesn’t know.”

Sometimes, Lily’s impartiality and wish for peace

annoyed Anne. She wanted everybody to get along
and wanted to fight as a defence, only, which
wasn’t something Anne agreed with – there are
times and places where attacking first might be the
best of courses, but Lily refused to believe that.

She first noticed Lily’s tendency to bend for others

when Marlene and her had a fight and Lily mediated
it as best as she could at eighteen-years-old. But
she did insist Anne to apologize. Of course, Anne
did. She had just gotten Lily back from her
withdrawn from her because she was told the truth,
she didn’t want to lose her again and she would do
anything to keep her by her side, even apologize
and accept apologies. Anne understood to some
extent, Marlene was Lily’s best friend before Anne
came along and Anne did her best to not get in the
middle of them, but that friendship took its toll by
the fight, even if Anne did her best to bend –
Marlene had yet to forgive Anne for taking Lily
‘away’ from her. Because she didn’t know the truth,
Marlene thought the world to be against her. Lily
was getting married and, although she was invited
to be one of the bridesmaids, she was somewhat
upset that Anne (whom, to her, Lily knew for less
time) had been asked to be maid-of-honour.

Anne took the sudden drop in the number of letters

between Lily and Marlene as a sign that Lily knew
Marlene was upset and had confronted her about it.

“Girls, why don’t you all go up to wash up? I’ll

prepare the food,” Rose said. “Chris, come help me
in the kitchen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chris said, quickly moving after her,

though he didn’t look very excited about it.

“Dad hates cooking, but likes baking,” Petunia

explained as she saw Anne raising her eyebrows.

Petunia and Lily seemed to be sharing a bedroom,

even if they didn’t need to. Anne made no
comments as she walked into the bedroom that
used to be used by Sirius and Remus when they
were there.

Lily went to wash herself first, taking a quick

shower with the door open as she rambled to
Petunia about the flowers growing outside and how
they could be used in potions. Petunia listened
actively about how those flowers blooming in such
cold weather could make Anti-Pregnancy Potions
stronger.

“They taste horrible,” Anne commented.

Silence for a second. Lily chuckled from inside the

bathroom, turning the shower off and reaching for
the towel, still hidden by the curtain she dried and
hid her body, stepping out soon after as waddling
her way into the bathroom with her humid feet.
Petunia walked into the bathroom to wash her
hands and arms.

“I forgot you used them. I was sure for a second

that you used the Charm,” Lily said. “Is it that
bad?”

“I feel like throwing up at the smell alone and,

honestly, at the first few days I was so dizzy,” she
said. “Remember when I walked right into the wall
after Potions? That was the reason. But you do
know my blood-pressure drops easily.”

“Mia said hers does as well when I commented you

were skipping meals again,” Lily said. “Did she start
sending the food up to your room?”

“Yeah. In the bad days,” she agreed, dismissing the

darker side of the conversation.

Petunia walked out of the bathroom.

“If the potion tastes so horrible, why do you keep

drinking it? You’re married now. Nobody needs to
know you were sleeping with him before marriage
and nobody would judge you, really,” Petunia said.
“You can get a pill over the counter and just use
the spell, doesn’t one exist?”

Anne made no comment in the way Petunia seemed

almost ashamed that Anne had sex with Regulus
before marriage. To her it was normal, to Petunia it
seemed something a lot less natural.

“The Anti-Conception Charm is trusted by many,

but not by me,” Anne admitted. “I suppose I was
raised too Muggle to believe that a Charm is
capable of stopping it, I need something that goes
inside of my body to calm me down.”

“That’s all I can think about!” Lily said.

“I suppose it makes sense,” Petunia said, sitting

down on one of the beds.

“James said that he uses –” Lily stopped herself.

She turned to look at Anne, compressing her lips as

if she allowed something to escape which she
wasn’t supposed to hear.

“The Charm, I know,” Anne said rolling her eyes.

“Look, just because you’re my mum and he’s my
dad, it doesn’t mean you can’t talk to me as if I’m
your age, because I am. I don’t want the sordid
details, but believe me… it’s a lot better to talk to
you about it than to him. He tried once, couldn’t
look me in the eye for a week because I asked him
if the dizziness of the potion was normal, because
that meant I was having sex.”

“Your dad is dramatic,” Lily dismissed.

“And you think I don’t know that?”

“You are as well,” Petunia joked.

Anne almost seemed offended, but said nothing,

especially after the other two girls started laughing
at her reaction. Once they calmed down, Lily turned
her back and let the towel drop, dressing herself
quickly before sitting on the other bed. Anne made
her way to sit beside Petunia.

“Anne, don’t think this too weird, but I have a

question,” Lily said. Anne raised her eyes and
eyebrows, urging her to continue. “Did it hurt?”

“What?”

“Your first time.”

Petunia turned. Her first time had been horrible –

she had been frozen under the weight of Vernon
and unable to say anything other than ‘ouch’ and
‘sorry’. She regretted even thinking about it.

“I don’t remember it all too well,” Anne admitted.

“It was in my original time, really.”

“Wait, I thought it was with Regulus,” Lily said,

eyes widening.

“Not really,” Anne admitted. “Don’t judge me –”

“Of course not!” Petunia said. She judged Anne

silently, but held herself from commenting on it,
recognising that Anne’s relationships had nothing to
do with her, especially in the original timeline.

“I didn’t want to die with my only experience

being… that man,” she said, voice wavering. “I had
a friend who didn’t want to die a virgin and he
thought he was straight at the time, which he
wasn’t, so I went to him. Ginny, Harry’s wife
already at the time, said it was nice and all that, so
I went with him to a rented room and we tried it. I
was tipsy. He was tipsy. We were nervous. It was
awkward and a bit painful, but in general it wasn’t a
terrible experience… I think it was more my own
mind playing tricks on me than anything. I suppose
a normal once ought to be uncomfortable, but not
painful. Since it was only one time, I can’t tell you
anything more.”

“But with Regulus?” Petunia asked, eager to

understand more.

“It was different,” Anne admitted. “We didn’t jump

into it at first chance, it was gradual. It made both
of us comfortable and understanding of the
situation of the other.”

“He knows?” Petunia asked, growing cold. She

knew he knew something, but never imagined him
to know to that extent. Perhaps that was why his
eyes were so cold towards her in that dinner. “You
told him everything?”

“Not at all. I never needed to tell him anything,”

she admitted. “He knew. One look at me and he
knew that someone did something horrible and I
did confirm that something happened, but he
knows nothing of what extent. Only one person
does.”

“Who?” Lily asked.

“Here? Sirius,” she said. “He knew in the other

timeline as well. In the other timeline, Dumbledore
knew because I asked him for help, which he
denied. Severus knew as well, he invaded my mind
in worry I was trying to protect someone that might
have assaulted me, but I just knew he would be
angry and unable to help me. He helped me as best
as he could, but nobody could take me away from
that man, of course, I knew that and I had been
warned about that already.”

“That’s why he was so excited to beat that man

up,” Lily said, nodding.

Nobody said the name of the man. Petunia felt a

small flower blooming in the back of her mind;
hope. Perhaps she could forget him as well as Anne
did.

“Do you want to know?” Anne asked, looking up at

Lily.

“Only if you want to tell me,” Lily answered,

shaking her head calmly. “The fact that I know you
were hurt makes me so… angry. I never felt this
angry before, Anne, and if you want to tell me, I
fear I might not be able to hide it so well. If you
can deal with my anger, which is not and shall
never be aimed at you, than I’m prepared to
listen.”

“Thank you, but I don’t think I can,” Anne said.

“Then we continue the other conversation,” Petunia

said. “Regulus… How was it with him?”

Anne blushed with the memory.

“It was before your birthday, Lily,” she said.

“I remember us teasing you about it in the

bleachers,” Lily said, smiling at her.

“I had a row with Rosier. He thought it was nice,”

she explained. Nice, quite the word when he had
used ‘hot’ in that breathy voice. She tried to
repress her shiver. “We met in the Come-And-Go-
Room and he couldn’t keep his hand off of me. I
never felt so… powerful over him. If I had asked
him to do anything, he would’ve. He told me he
loved me that night for the first time, after we were
done, just lying there in silence… He didn’t expect
me to say it back, he just wanted me to know, but I
did love him, so I said so. It was scary or
pressuring, it was nice and soft and frenetic to
some extent.”

Petunia accepted that this was what a relationship

should sound and feel like and accepted it was time
to move on and forget about the few, but
meaningful moments where Vernon had been kind
to her. Lily accepted that, perhaps, holding on and
torturing herself by not allowing James to repay the
favours she did for him wasn’t a way to keep
herself closer to God. Anne accepted that she was
family.

“GIRLS, FOOD. LET’S CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS!”

Chris screamed from downstairs.

One more happy moment for the memories of the

core of a war that was about to get worse.

Chapter 114: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirteen -
Summary:
Things get a turn to the darker
side.

Notes:
This chapter wasn't supposed to
come out until next month, but I
am too excited and hyperfocused
on the fic at the moment. I want
to finish as fast as I can because I
have another Regulus fanfiction
coming.

JANUARY 1ST OF 1978

Not a single person dared to breathe.

The air was heavy and chests could barely move as

the men and women in the line, looking at the Dark
Lord dared not to look away, afraid of what he
would do if he somehow noticed they weren’t
paying attention to his angry pacing.

He knew.

Tom Riddle knew that his ring had been stolen from
his house. It had been made in August of 1942, it
was one of the most personal items he had in his
possession – or at least that he thought he had. It
had disappeared. His anger now made the bodies at
his feet ooze the brownish-reddish blood at the
most expensive carpet at the ballroom of Malfoy
Manor as he stepped on it, leaving boot-prints
around.

The Inner-Circle stood there, watching in fear of

what would come next.

His anger only seemed to grow as more and more

information came to light. Information that he
could’ve gotten before, but he had been too
pretentious and too cocky to check more than the
first week. Now, he waited in silence for the last
information he would be able to get in a single
night – he knew the Diary had disappeared; now he
waited for the Lestrange brothers to come back for
Elizabeth Fawley-Lestrange and Bellatrix Black-
Lestrange, who stood side by side, hostages under
the Dark Lord’s control while their husbands went
to check on their vault in Gringotts for the Cup.

Severus Snape was as still as a statue. He knew

the answer to that question he had asked, but
would not answer. He didn’t dare look at Regulus,
who stood across from him, in the other line, in a
forced relaxed composure. Severus always thought
himself to be a good actor, but Regulus certainly
won by far as he scratched his nose in a
comfortable looking way.

“USELESS!” Voldemort screamed at Abraxas and

Lucius Malfoy, who bled on the floor by the nearly
healed Sectumsempra they had been under. “The
lot of you are useless. I gave you the most prized
of my possessions and you lost it! You don’t even
know when you lost it and you look at me with this
stupid face.”

“My Lord –” tried Abraxas.

“My friend, my dear friend. So shut up before I cut

you tongue out!” Voldemort snapped. “When is it
possible that this possession of mine was taken
from here? When were meetings held and events
held here? I want a list!”

Narcissa was clearly the smartest of the family.

While Abraxas tried to tell his lord the dates and
times by memories, shaking in fear of making a
mistake and because of his blood-loss, Lucius said
nothing as he stared at the ceiling of the Manor,
regretting joining the organization at all. Narcissa
got a book from a desk and came back into the
room, offering it to the lord.

“The meetings, festival and events of any kind held

in the Manor for the last year or so, my Lord,” she
said, not daring to look into her eyes. “If any of this
is of interest, I might be able to find the list of
guests of each gathering.”

She wasn’t stupid. If there was someone that had

taken liberties into the Manor and robbed it in an
event, then it was someone she trusted enough to
allow to go around the house unaccompanied and,
more than anything, someone she loved enough to
not notice. It left, in her mind, a single moment
where she had been distracted enough to not notice
anything like that happening: her wedding. She
didn’t want to taint the date. Besides, she had the
terrible suspicion she knew exactly who had taken
both items. Anne. She had passed information of
the moving of the ring to her and she heard nothing
from it until the Dark Lord announced it was
missing and, again, she had been invited and
trusted inside the Manor without an escort. If it had
been her, Narcissa had been an associate and
would be punished with her if she was caught.

Still, she gave the information she had nearby to

save her

The Dark Lord went through every single page,

searching for something that got his attention as if
the book would scream the traitor’s name at him.
When it did not, he threw the book at the side, it
falling near Severus’ feet.

“Names, names, names!” he roared in anger.

“Names mean nothing to me. I need actions! I need
someone to tell me they have suspects!”

People looked down, looked away or just stood

there in fear of saying a single thing wrong.

Voldemort was about to start screaming again or

just torturing people once more when the fireplace
roared and the Lestrange brothers stepped out
without a box on their hands, faces pale and hands
shaky.

“My Lord –” starts Rabastan.

“Where is it? Where’s the box I gave you?” the man

asked, turning at once to them.

“Sir, I –”

“WHERE?!”

“Gone, my Lord,” answered Rodolphus.

The movement with the wand was fast, hit

Rodolphus straight in the chest. He fell back with a
loud wail of despair as hi whole body shook, trying
to find a way to get away from the blinding pain the
cruciatus curse put upon its victims. He couldn’t
think, he couldn’t act – all he did was scream.

Elizabeth whimpered, hands flying to her mouth to

keep herself quiet. Narcissa moved quickly, walking
to her and holding her elbows to keep her standing
in place as she wanted nothing but to run away
from that place. She had been married off to that
family because her parents wanted her to, but she
had not a single wish to go through with that. She
looked around, looking for something or someone
that might be able to help her. Her eyes met
Severus’, her mouth moved with the word ‘help’,
but he looked away, face as stony as ever.

“SHUT THAT GIRL UP!” Voldemort said, turning to

Bellatrix in warning, raising his wand, too.

Like a kicked puppy, Bellatrix whimpered, no used

to Voldemort talking to her like that. She put a
hand over her big belly (she was about to give birth
to the child at any moment) and turned to
Elizabeth, hissing orders of silence towards her.
Elizabeth forced herself to bite into her finger,
urging herself into silence because of the pain.

She wanted her mum. She wanted her dad. She

waned her little sister. She wanted be far, far away
from that awful, bloody place that smelled like Dark
Magic and felt so small and so big at the same
time.

“I gave you that box for a reason. I told you to put

it in your safe because you promised me that it was
the safest place one could store important things…
AND YOU LOST IT!” the man went back to
screaming at the standing and the lying brother.
“Disgusting, useless fools! I want the names of
everyone that has ever been inside the bloody
vault. Now!”

“Just us, my Lord,” said Rabastan, not trying to

help his brother to get up from the ground. “Our
wives and… Regulus.”

Severus felt his stomach drop in ice.

The Lord’s attention shifted from the brothers to

the young man standing in silence between Evan
Rosier, who looked like shocked by the name
mentioned, and Anya Romanova, who was there as
Evan’s courting-mate, they were to be married
soon enough (quite a surprising news, but nothing
Severus cared enough to pay too much attention
in). Regulus seemed calm, if not a bit offended that
Roddy had pointed his finger towards him.

“When I was still in an internship. I was interested

in the wards, I did not write down anything without
permission and it was not mentioned anything
about a box of yours into their vault, my Lord. I’m
nothing but loyal to you, you know that, my Lord. I
made my name with you.” Regulus said with
conviction.

“Prove it to me.”

“Have I not proven enough? Have I not killed and

tortured and endured torture as well in your name,
my Lord?” he said in answer.

Regulus had never been slapped by Voldemort, he

had been under terrible and deadly spells, but
never under his hand. It so shocking when the
stinging came to the side of his face that he raised
his hand to his burning cheek, jaw almost falling in
surprise. He blinked several times with his wide
eyes.

“You dare insult my motives, boy!”

“Of course not, my Lord. A temporary lack of

judgment out of shock,” he tried to fix things.
Perhaps if he could pass it off as a teenager blown
temperament, then he would be safe. It had been a
mistake to lose his head. “I fear that you might
think I would betray you when I hold nothing but
respect and devotion to you, my Lord. I live to
serve.”

The grin in the man’s face was nauseating.

“Yes, you do,” he said, sounding amused. “I know

all about your loyalty.”

To one who knew not Regulus not better than

oneself, they wouldn’t have seen the fear in his
eyes as he looked up and nodded as if there was
nothing else that he lived for. But Severus knew
Regulus better than he knew himself and he knew
that he thought only of Anne, fearing she would be
found out.

“Regulus, my dear servant, I found out

something…” Voldemort said, smirk growing even
in his anger. He found something else to play while
his mind worked to create a plan. “During you
cousin’s wedding, and I talk of Narcissa’s wedding,
of course, you were walking around the Manor.”

Regulus felt his whole body grow cold by the way

his shoulders tensed. Severus tensed up as well, he
knew little of what happened during the wedding
since he had entertained Anya Romanova for as
long as possible before she noticed Regulus was
nowhere to be seen, which took quite some time
because she needed to pay full attention to him to
understand him (English was not her best of
languages).

“My Lord?” Regulus said, trying to sound confused.

“Rodolphus, what did you say you saw during the

wedding?” Voldemort asked.

Rodolphus, eager to serve and make up for his

mistakes, answered without hesitation.

“Regulus was snogging Severus’ girl,” he said.

Regulus glared at Rodolphus.

“And you were about to shag some other girl,” he

attacked back.

Bellatrix didn’t seem happy with that information,

but said nothing. Voldemort, however, seemed
delighted with the drama he had stirred.

“Now, now, this conversation isn’t about him,

Regulus,” the oldest man said, shaking his head in
false disappointment. “This is about you and how
you and the girl disappeared during the wedding,
which was the biggest event we had at the Manor.”

‘We’, he said. As if the Manor belonged to him as

well. Narcissa wanted to scream that the man had
no control over anything, that she had chosen the
decorations, the dates, the events hosted. She had
the control, not him – that was her house! She
stayed silent. Anne had warned her that it would
happen. Anne had warned her that there would be
no words in her mouth when he said something she
disagreed with, she warned that she would be
enslaved by her own fears and the respect she had
for her husband. One wrong word from her, and
they were both dead.

“Anne –”

“Were you sleeping with the girl that night?”

Voldemort asked. He looked over his shoulder to
Severus, who did his best to not show his
nervousness. “Were you having some fun with the
girl that belongs to whom you call your best
friend?”

Regulus no way out. Roddy had seen him holding

her against him, pressed against the wall, leg
around his wait and then they both disappeared.
Though they were destroying the Horcrux, nobody
knew that. What they knew is that he didn’t go
back home until early morning, alone and with the
same clothes of the night before. He wanted to
protect Anne’s reputation and honour; if this story
continued, he would be congratulated and perhaps
even celebrated, but the fault and shame would
befall her. But he couldn’t do anything other than
agree, for his own good.

“Yes,” he answered. “I took her away and we spent

the night together.”

Severus wondered what to do and how to react.

Jealousy would be a good answer, but it would be
completely out of character to him, so he just stood
there, trying to pass his stillness for shock as he
just stared at Regulus.

“Was she any good?” Voldemort said, adding more

strain.

Severus couldn’t breathe very well. He didn’t like

hearing people talking of Anne that way, he had
seen her in way too many ways to see her sexually,
even if he knew Regulus had her as wife. To him,
Anne was a girl, not a woman. She was the girl that
used her school-robes or pyjamas, rarely using
other robes; she was the one that tried to smother
her giggles when he did a blunt, dry joke to not
give him the satisfaction of knowing he was funny;
she was the one that stopped her friends from keep
on teasing him and the one that didn’t look away
from his own faults and mistakes, making him take
responsibility and accountability. His disgust was
taken as anger by the way Evan Rosier shifted
uncomfortably.

Regulus bit the inside of his cheek.

“Yes, my Lord. She was good, she was fun,” he

answered.

“Did she part her legs easily?”

“Yes, my Lord,” he answered.

He wanted the conversation to end. He refused to

look anywhere other than Voldemort’s eyes. He
wanted to scream, he wanted to run away. He
wanted Anne’s comforting arms around him.

Voldemort turned to Severus.

“Did you learn your lesson about the bitch? I told

you it was a horrible decision,” he said. “I can find
someone a lot more fitting of your position, my
boy. I do forgive you, of course, you couldn’t know
she was that loose with anyone besides you. Did
she bleed the first time you took her? I doubt it.”
Severus frowned. Voldemort’s grin grew. “I
understand your anger, but remember your brother
did you a great favour by proving her unworthy of
your eyes… and your information.”

Severus felt his heart stop.

“My Lord? Information?” he asked, hoping he

sounded confused.

Bellatrix grew a grin. Narcissa stilled.

“Perhaps it’s my own fault… I should’ve seen it

coming from a half-breed like you,” he said, grin
disappearing completely. Severus’ heart came back
to his heart, stuttering and staggering across his
chest, looking for a way out of that situation. “One
look, one night in her bed and you would swing
sides,” he turned to the mostly pureblooded people
standing. “ONE MUST NOT TRUST ALL HALF-
BLOODS. I gave him kindness! I gave him mercy
for mistake that wasn’t his, but his mother’s. And
yet he repays me with treachery!”

With a wave of the wand, Severus was attacked by

ropes as he yelped before grunting as he fell to the
ground, tied up to tightly that he could feel his
blood having trouble going around his extremities.
He groaned once more, trying to free himself. He
looked at Elizabeth – she looked away.

There was silence when the man had expected a

roar of agreement to his words.

“My Lord, it does not explain the vault’s problem,”

said Rabastan, now standing beside his brother
once more. “Though I agree Snape is a horrible
person and should be thrown for our circle, I don’t
see how he could’ve done anything. He was never
there.”

Voldemort once more turned to Regulus.

“That’s where you come in, Regulus. Did you tell

anything to your dear Severus?” he asked.

“No, Lord.”

“CRUCIO!”

There was no time or breathe on his chest to

scream, so Regulus fell to his knees on the floor
with his mouth wide-open, gasping for air as he
barely held back the bile that rose from his
stomach. He was shaking. His whole body felt like it
had been torn apart and suddenly sown back
together again.

“DID YOU TELL HIM ANYTHING?!”

“I would never betray our cause!”

“You betrayed your friend, you slept with his

sweetheart. How can I be sure you did not betray
us, as well?” Voldemort asked, crouching down to
be around Regulus’ height. “Evan Rosier was right
when he said that the girl was more powerful than
we seemed to believe. He was right she was a
snake on the grass.”

He pushed Regulus away by his face, making the

weak man fall to his side. He groaned, forcing
himself to sit up once more before standing up
again.

“She –” started Evan.

“I HAVE NOT ASKED FOR YOUR VOICE!” Voldemort

said. He almost twirled around, looking for each
and every still person in the room. “How can I be
sure you did not betray our cause, Regulus?”

“Bellatrix married him. He’s family. I do not betray

family,” Regulus lied. “I am Head of the House of
Black and I demand my family’s respect and
devotion,” that was an order, but he added,
“because that’s all I show to them.”

It roped them in by their magic by the way Bellatrix

groaned. If they disagreed, they would be probably
breaking the eternal vow they had with the Head of
House, no matter who that was. Regulus smiled to
his ancestors in his mind, thanking them for
keeping the women in the family even after their
marriage into another family. Now, Bellatrix and
Narcissa could do nothing but stare, knowing very
well the truth of who Regulus’ loyalty really lied and
unable to say anything.

Voldemort searched for the lie. He found none

other than his own mind.

He turned.

“Then it must have been another leak,” he

mumbled. Once more, crazed dark-brown eyes
looked around searching for one single facial
expression that did not fit the happiness and
euphoria he felt, eager to find the mole they had
inside their group. He found it. He followed the
quick movements of Severus’ eyes around the
group as he struggled and held back his whimpers
of pain. “My, my, my… I am taken aback.
Elizabeth… I never expected this to come from
you.”

Regulus wanted to scream. Anne had told him that

it was going to happen sooner or later, but he had
never imagined it would happen in front of him and
he wouldn’t be able to do anything. He wanted to
find a reason and an opportunity to get her away
from that place as fast as possible.

The girl whimpered, looking at the man with wide

eyes.

“No, sir –”

“Lord,” he corrected.

“My Lord, I did nothing wrong!”

He looked her up and down.

“I do not believe you,” he admitted.

“I did nothing. I swear, I swear that I’ve done

nothing wrong. I barely even talk to Severus!” she
said.

“And yet you insist on calling him by his first name

even though he’s now a publicly recognized traitor.
That does not bode well with you,” he said.

He raised his wand once more, ready to tie her up

and start another set of torturing.

“My Lord, she’s a woman,” Regulus said suddenly,

now standing once more. “She’s Lestrange’s
woman. For you to punish her when she’s not even
marked might bring some questions about respect
from lower classes. Of course, us of the Inner Circle
would never dare, but they aren’t as smart as us.”

Flattery. Submission. Those were the two things

that completely worked with Tom Riddle, so
Regulus knew what he was doing as he said those
things. And those were the things he expected
others to want as well, from… someone – men were
expected to want those things from their women,
their women expected it from their children and the
children were expected to want it from servants; it
was always a cycle.

Regulus knew the cycle. He had broken it. He had

never wanted flat flattery and submission from
Kreacher while he grew up. He had never wished or
even thought about it from Anne, his wife.

With his ego stroked, the Dark Lord turned back to

the whimpering and crying woman in front of him,
she tried to sob in silence, her shoulders shaking as
she stood there, silently begging for her life. She
was waiting for his decision, for his hand to shift
the balance of her universe. He looked her up and
down with interest before looking back at Regulus,
clearly thinking of what to do next.

“You are right, Regulus, you are right,” he said,

blinking once before nodding to himself. “Now…
Look at me, girl.”

“Yes, my Lord,” she managed to choke out.

“I will allow your husband to discipline you in the

way he thinks best, maybe he’ll make you
understand the great embarrassment you put your
new family through tonight and the great trouble
you’re making me go through as well,” he said,
almost hissing those last few words towards her.
She whimpered once more, nodding even though
she wanted to say that she had done nothing
wrong. “And I expect you to be able to get on your
knees and beg for my forgiveness when I see you
again,” he looked at Lestrange once more. “Make
sure you leave her alive… Now take her out of my
sight. ALL OF YOU, OUT!”

People started moving.

Severus Snape was left on the ground with Tom

Riddle staring right at him, grin growing with the
satisfaction of knowing the man could not get away
from him at all.

Regulus Black hesitated at the door, but Narcissa

Malfoy pushed him through, closing the drawing
room’s door and giving one simply look as she
leaned forward and whispering:

“Wait for me in the kitchen.”

Things were good at the Potter Manor.

Lily and Anne had two more hours to kill before

leaving to go to a small bakery in a Muggle
neighbourhood to talk to Marlene, Dorcas and Mary
about the wedding plans Lily had in mind. James,
Sirius and Remus had just gotten back from Peter’s
house after his sister gave a little birthday party to
their mother.

The little group was sitting around in the parlour,

fireplace burning bright to placate the January cold
outside, warmness of happiness and
comfortableness surrounding them as they watched
Anne and Lily struggle at the chess game that they
had sitting in between them in the sofa. Anne was a
lot better in chess than she had been before, but
Lily was just as dreadful at it as she had always
been. It made Anne laugh for she was only the
better one in that game because Remus had taught
her well.

Everything was so good and comfortable that if felt

like nothing could go wrong…

…until it did.

The fireplace roared even before the flames turned

green, growing so tall and so suddenly that Lily
staggered and flinched, hands flying to protect her
face and grabbing Anne’s hand as if ready to run
with her. A fire so tall and a noise so loud meant
that it was someone breaking through the wards –
it was not someone allowed into the house without
permission first and had used too much floo
powder.

Then, a body rolled out of the fireplace. Rolled

being the correct use of the word because someone
had pushed him into the fireplace and rolled him
into the passage, for Severus Snape couldn’t do so
by himself, after all he wasn’t even awake; Anne,
for a moment, dared to allow the thought of him
not even being alive go through her mind.

Anne got up, staggering forward.

James reached for her, grabbing her wrist.

“Don’t get too close,” he tried to said. “Don’t!”

Pulling her hand away from him, she managed to

get to her friend, balance disappearing as she fell
to the floor on her knees, hands touching him and
forcing him to roll. She felt her heart and some bile
on the back of her throat.

No. She wouldn’t dare to accept the worst, even as

her fingers looked for a heartbeat on his neck.

She looked down.

In the ashes and powder, there was blood and big

chunks of flesh scattered around. She found from
where they were from soon enough.

“Holy shit,” Remus breathed out.

James said nothing this time around.

Severus’ left arm was in a shambles, torn apart as

if he had been attacked by a wild animal’s mouth.
There was a whole piece of it that was missing,
found in the pieces of flesh around, and, through
the oozing blood, she could see the layer of fat
under some of the missing skin and the white of the
bone in a few places where there was nothing
separating it from the air. Some pieces of flesh
were hanging by a thread, a small piece of skin
holding for dear-life.

Whoever had done that terrible thing had tried to

get rid of the Dark Mark.

“Did he do it to himself?” Lily asked, voicing out the

thought Anne’s brain made up.

She shook her head, hoping that she was right. She
liked to think that Severus would’ve called for her if
things were too bad.

“Lock the Floo,” Sirius said.

Euphemia and Fleatmont weren’t home yet from

their date-night of the month, but they could get
through the wards by Apparation if they needed to,
the people that might have thrown Severus through
the fireplace couldn’t.

James jumped forward with his wands, quickly

using the correct enchantments to lock the
passage. Remus looked at Sirius, barking orders for
his boyfriend to help him to move Severus away
from the ashes and dirt that the floo came with.

“Anne, what else do I do?” Remus asked, turning to

the girl.

Anne was still on her knees on the ground, still

looking at the blood at her hands and on the
carpet. So much blood. Too much blood. Her hands
were shaking, anyone could see it. She felt like her
blood-pressure was dropping, as if she was about
to faint.

That man was Severus.

He was the one that was the witness to her

wedding. He was her best friend. He was the one
that hugged her in happiness, but never as
consolation, because his presence was enough. He
hugged her when she asked him to, even if it was a
horrible experience to him. He was the man that
she wanted her children to call ‘Uncle Sev’. He
couldn’t die… not there, in her house and safe-
space… not in her arms… not again.

“Anne?” Remus called again.

“Annie?” Sirius called out.

Someone touched the shoulders, but she ignored,

not even daring to flinch away.

How could she ever explain to Regulus that his best

friend had died and she couldn’t stop it from
happening?

She couldn’t breathe.

“Anne!” Sirius called out once more, this time

firmly.

“Annie, come on,” Remus said, almost pleadingly.

“Anne, please,” James tried.

She wanted to scream. Would she loose someone

else? Would she loose him again? Another one of
her friends; dead.

“Anne,” Lily sobbed. “Please! Please”

James had been holding onto her shoulders, but let

go of them and walked to the front of her, kneeling
down, not caring that it would get blood on his
trousers. He was frowning. He needed Anne to
listen to him. He didn’t seem scared. He didn’t care
for Severus, Anne though bitterly, but he cared for
her and she cared for the man dying – so he
wanted him to live.

“I know you’re scared and I know you don’t want to

do this, but you need to help him. We don’t know
what to do,” James said. “Severus needs you now.
Help him.”

It was like someone had pushed her.

Severus needed her. Now.

He helped her up. Anne clung to her dad’s shoulder

as if he wouldn’t let her drown as she tried to keep
her balance, he led her towards her friend.

Severus’ face was relaxed, lips slightly parted and

his skin looked like wax by its greyish pale
constitution. There was a thin coat of sweat over
his skin and he was cold to the touch.

“He lost too much blood, he’s entered into shock,”

Anne said. James hummed, encouraging her to
keep going. “I… He… Lily? My medicine and potions
boxes are in my bedroom, under my bed. Get it for
me. Sirius, tell Marlene that I’m sick and it’s
contagious so the meeting is cancelled and get her
to warn the others about it as well, say that you’re
sick as well. Remus, warn Monty and Mia about the
situation we’re in. Now! Come on!”

Everyone moved at once.

Lily sprinted up the stairs while still sobbing. Remus

ran outside to perform the Patronus Charm for
communication. Sirius ran into the private study to
make a floo-call to Marlene and her half-blood
household.

Anne looked down at her friend and touched his

shoulder, going down his arm slowly to see if the
bone was set in the right place and was whole. She
found a few fractures, all too close to the opening
to dare touch too much.

And that was when she felt it.

Dark Magic coming straight from Tom Riddle found

in the wound Severus presented, emanating from
her friend. The wound was curse with something
that she didn’t recognize at all. This amount of Dark
Magic used against someone that usually wielded it
meant only one thing: his cover had been blown
and they had done all those terrible things to him
as in payback for his betrayal. The curse was slowly
taking a hold of his magical core, muffling it to
death.

She needed to be fast.

“There’s a curse that I don’t know. We need

Madame Pomfrey here, and fast!” she said, turning
to James. “I can’t do this alone.”

“I’ll call for her… Try to keep him stable,” James

said, nodding.

Anne took a hold of her shirt and ripped it as James

ran outside as well, to be beside Remus. It was
Sunday, so Madame might not take too long to get
there, it was usually the days they had been using
for her to train Anne, but in that day, they had
cancelled the session for the wedding planning.

She tied it a few inches above the wound, reaching

for the Tower piece of the chess set, which was
long enough, to use it on the torniquet. She turned
it, garrotting it tightly enough and slowly the blood
off.

“Here!” Lily exclaimed, running into the room once

more, giving the two boxes to Anne and opening it
on the ground.

Severus woke up at once as Anne twirled the

Tower, tightening the torniquet. He screamed so
loud that Anne almost jumped away from him, it
was blood-curling to hear such familiar voice in
such pain. The screams seemed to tear out his
throat by the way that he coughed, sobbed and
wailed.

“Sev –” tried Lily.

“GET AWAY! GET AWAY FROM ME!” he continued to

yell.

His eyes were wide open, bouncing around the

place he was, but he didn’t seem to be actually able
to see anything of reality, only his mind’s tricks. He
used his good arm to try to push Anne away from
him, almost making her lose grip of the wound she
was trying to stop him losing blood from.

“Severus, it’s me. It’s Anne,” she said.

“REG! Reg!” he said, voice not as loud because of

the sobs. “He has Anne! They got Anne. ANNE!” he
wailed her name.

Lily sobbed harder.

“The movement is making him bleed more, he

needs to stop it now!” Lily said. “We need to knock
him out. He’s in pain, Anne!” she shook her head,
not wanting to see her friend like that.

“He needs to be awake to swallow the Potion,”

Anne answered. “Hold his head. Blood-Stopping
Potion first. Blood-Replenishing later.”

Lily was quick to find the marked bottles and take

the corks off its tops, giving them to Anne before
going to hold Severus’ head, tilting it back just
enough to Anne to drop the potions down his throat
quickly, not letting him breathe. He coughed,
spluttered and gagged, but swallowed enough at
the end.

And stopped moving, unconscious once more.

Anne sighed, half in relief and half in worry, and

looked at his arm again. All to hold her breath
again, all relief disappearing.

Contrary to what she believed, the blood didn’t slow

down and there was no colour returning to the
healthy parts of the arm or his cheeks. Severus was
paler and, even with the torniquet, was bleeding
more, the liquid rushing out of the wound.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong? Why isn’t it

stopping?” Lily asked, thinking Anne had the
answerers. She didn’t.

James ran back in, announcing that Madame was

on her way already in the same moment Sirius ran
back in, stopping at the door once he saw the
amount of blood Anne had on her face and hand.

“How’s he?” James asked.

“Alive, for now,” Anne answered.

“Something’s wrong,” Lily whimpered.

“The wound is cursed. The potions made it worse,”

Anne added as an answer. “Dad, I don’t know what
to do. What if I make it worse? What if I make him
die by some type of mistake?”

It was a possibility, of course; it always was a

possibility in Healing, and one that people needed
to keep in mind while working, but – either this
thought it selfish or not – one does not want to
even think about it when it’s someone they love
under their hands. It was selfish, but it was human
and human nature is selfish enough in its natural
manner.

“You will not,” James lied.

Remus ran in.

“What –” he started to ask.

“Wound’s cursed,” Sirius answered. “Magic’s

making it worse.”

Though Anne had said that it had been the potions

that made it worse, what Sirius had said made
sense enough. It was the magic. That was the
curse! A fitting one for the betrayer of the ‘magical
cause’.

Remus took a deep breath.

“Treat it Muggle style,” he suggested it.

“I never treated anything Muggle style,” Anne said

bitterly. “I never saw this type of curse before.
What if it doesn’t work? I don’t know!”

“What would a Muggle do, Anne?” Remus asked.

THINK! THINK!, Anne screamed to herself in her

mind. Her best friend’s life depended on her ability
to think.

The bone was broken in two places, just under the

the elbow, an inch or so under where the torniquet
was. The flesh and skin was red and hot, clearly
inflamed and already with too much dirt under it,
able to be seen even through the ruddy state
Severus was found to be in.

“Stop the bleeding?” Lily guessed.

“Clean the wound,” Anne answered. “I need

alcohol. I need to clean this. We stop the bleeding
after that.”

Even after throwing the whiskey Sirius brought to

her down Severus’ arm, and made the boys hold
him back when he tried to kick until he passed out
once more, she knew one thing for sure.

“The wound is too infected,” she mumbled to

herself, but in the dead-silence, people heard her.

“What do you mean ‘too infected’?” Lily asked.

“It means that she thinks we can’t save his arm,”

answered a voice. It was Madame Pomfrey. Mia,
Monty and Madame Pomfrey were walking from the
Private Study to the parlour side by side. Madame
ran to them, looking down at his arm. “And I think
she is correct, unfortunately.”

“We can’t use magic,” Anne said. “The wound is

cursed.”

Madame Pomfrey took a deep breath.

“Muggle style it is,” she grumbled. “We need to cut

it off.”

It was suddenly hard to breathe again.

To lose a hand or arm was a potion master’s worst

nightmare. He had just graduated; his degree and
level at that age were impressive. To lose an arm
was to make themselves need to learn it all again,
for it messed up the balance of the original body
that the wizard learnt to brew and perform magic
with.

But what she was supposed to do? What would

Severus want her to do?

Severus would beg her to let him die instead of

running his life forever. But she knew Regulus
would beg her to keep him alive and offer himself
to teach him everything he ever knew again.
Severus was logical, Regulus was human.

Regulus whispered a whimpered ‘please’ in her ear.

Would Severus ever forgive her? Would Severus

ever learn to be alive again? Would Severus ever
want to be alive again?

“Tell me what to do,” Anne said, firmly.

Chapter 115: Chapter One

Hundred and Fourteen -
Summary:
Regulus is there to pick up the
pieces.

Notes:
Wholesome, a bit, at least.

(See the end of the chapter for more

notes.)

PICKING UP THE PIECES

“You need to eat, shower and sleep, Anne,” said

James from the doorway of the guest room she was
sitting in, watching Severus’ sleeping form. “I can
stay with him for a few hours.”

She didn’t say anything, not wanting to hurt her

dad by admitting that she didn’t trust Severus with
him. He didn’t like the unconscious man and,
though she knew James would never do anything to
hurt someone already hurting, she didn’t want her
friend to wake up and see James’ face as first thing
after a very traumatic situation. She wanted
Severus to wake up and see her, so she could
explain everything to him – perhaps she could
make him see reason and not hate himself… not
hate her either, if she dared to hope so much from
Severus. He meant so much to her that perhaps
even him didn’t know how much. It felt sloppy to
leave him with someone else.

She had no idea how much time had passed when

the door opened once more and someone stood
quietly at the doorway.

“Anne, I think we can leave Coco with him while

you at least eat,” said Sirius. Anne was somewhat
grateful that he didn’t pretend that he cared
enough to offer to stay with Severus. “Or maybe I
can bring food up here, and you can eat while you
watch him.” She heard someone hiss, clearly not
liking the second part of his offer; it was Lily.

“Anne, perhaps I could stay with him? Do you trust

me to stay with him?” Lily had asked, jumping into
the conversation.

She shrugged. She did trust her mother, of course,

but she wasn’t sure Severus trusted her again. He
had been the one to break their relationship and he
had no reason or right to be upset with Lily, but
Anne wouldn’t dare to go against his wishes… not
again, not when it was going against his wishes
that had left him with just one arm.

At the second day, Anne was quite happy to take a

peek at the bandages while she changed them and
saw nothing but the normal of an amputated arm.
It was a clean cut, 4 centimetres under the elbow
bone. The wound had been sealed with stiches that,
although not the prettiest – after all, neither
Madame Pomfrey nor Anne were graduated in
Muggle medicine – and the small tube had stopped
draining excess fluid. He had been kept under
anaesthesia and painkillers for the time being.

“Anne, you gave enough blood,” James said. “It’s

my turn now.”

And, though Madame Pomfrey forced her to sit and

allow James to give blood to Severus on the third
day, especially after she found out she had been
barely eating, she wasn’t happy at all, even after
the small tube was taken out on the fourth day.
And on the fifth, Madame turned to her and
watched her sitting there for a moment.

“You need to live for him, because he won’t feel

alive for a while, Anne,” she admitted. “And you
can’t blame yourself for that.”

She shook her head.

“I went against his wishes. He’s a Potion’s Master,

his hands are his biggest pride and I took one of
them away from him while he screamed and cried
in pain. I made this decision for him,” she
answered. Her voice was hoarse and tired, she had
been talking little in the last few days and drinking
so little water that she almost coughed when she
opened her mouth. “He won’t forgive me.”

“Maybe not at first. He might be angry at you, but

not really at you – he’ll be angry at the world
around him,” Madame Pomfrey said. “But it’ll be
easier for him to blame you when you’re already
feeling guilty for this.”

“Then let him have his fun.”

“I do like Mister Snape, do understand that, Anne,

but we both know how harsh he can be when he’s
angry, embarrassed or in pain. And, here, he will
be all three at once,” Madame answered. “Are you
sure you can take that right now? It’s no shame to
take a step back while you recover; he’s your
friend, he will understand that you were scared and
did what you had to once the time is right.”

“I couldn’t lose him.”

“I know.”

“But he would’ve rather died.”

“You don’t know that,” Madame said, shaking her

head lightly.

“The worst part is that I do, and I took the decision

to take him arm away and leave him with his life
anyway,” she admitted. “But you brought up this
conversation because you want to wake him up
soon.”

“The compression garments are making him heal

faster, the magic is so insignificant that is helping
now that the Curse part was taken out. It had
gotten into his bloodstream, but it seems to be
recessive at the moment,” Madame explained. “He
has the good colouring on his skin and around his
stitches and we need to start making him do a few
exercises to keep the muscle alive.”

Anne looked down.

The last thing she wanted was for him to lose all
the strength in the remaining limb, but she also
didn’t want to deal with an awake and angry
Severus Snape, who was bitter in common days, let
alone in the ones he had reason to be. He needed
exercise; he needed to be sure there were no
blood-clots and no death around the muscle tissue
or atrophy.

That was the only reason she left that bedroom on

the sixth day.

With all the Potters and company sitting on the

dinner table, Madame Pomfrey started a very long
explanation to why she was waking Severus up and
the psychological effects an emergency amputation
might bring him, especially after such long torture
(she had gotten to the conclusion he had been
under duress for a day and night before he
managed to get away).

“Young Severus always had a lot of trouble with his

image in general, and an amputation might make it
worse, at least I expect so. Do understand that I’m
not a seer, I cannot tell you how Severus will feel
or what he’ll think, I’m not him,” Madame Pomfrey
said. “But I can say that it will affect his sensation,
his function and the way he sees himself. But
expect something similar to grief.”

“Severus never felt grief before,” Lily said.

“His mother died,” Petunia said. “I remember that.”

“He hated his mother,” Lily said.

“He didn’t,” Anne said. All eyes turned to her after

so long of her silence. “He never hated his mother;
he was just angry that she couldn’t protect him.
She couldn’t even protect herself, and left him
behind with his bloody father. He was angry that
she failed time and time again.”

She looked down.

As she had failed him now. She had said she would
protect him, and she had failed him.

“His father is dead, as well,” Petunia said. “The

house burnt down.”

“It didn’t. He just hid it. And his father isn’t dead,
he’s just… away,” Anne answered.

There was a muffled pride inside her chest,

screaming of how Severus had stood up for himself
in the moment he was allowed to use magic by
himself without a trace from the Ministry on his
back. It hurt even more. Madame Pomfrey had
mumbled before, even if she hadn’t noticed she had
said so out-loud, that she wasn’t sure Severus
would be able to perform magic too well at first
since his leading hand had been taken away.

“Mister Snape might not want help, but he may

need it,” Madame Pomfrey said, taking a hold of the
conversation once more and making everybody
look at her. “His balance might be off for a while
until he gets used to it once more, so he might
need help with simple things such as showers and
walking.”

“I can help him,” James said. “I’m sure he would be

more comfortable with me in there than with a
woman.”

Sirius seemed to want to make a joke, but held

himself back when Anne shook her head.

Severus would never allow James Potter to help

him shower.

“I’ll help him,” she answered.

“Anne, you cannot even stay in a bathroom with a

man for too long,” Remus said, sounding
exhausted.

They both knew what memory came to mind. They

both knew he was right. After a training session
after a very long night of sleep depravation, Remus
tried to get her into the bathroom, tried to help her
into the bathtub, but she kicked him away and Mia
had to take over. What he didn’t know was that,
during her honeymoon, Anne had been taking a
bath when Regulus walked in, they talked for a
while and he brushed his teeth and helped her with
brushing her hair, but in the moment his finger
brushed against the back of her neck, she had
flinched and all the goodness and calmness of that
moment evaporated.

He was right. Anne wouldn’t be able to help

Severus without killing parts of her.

“Have you heard from Reggie?” Sirius asked. “I’m

quite sure he would allow Reggie to help him, if
there needs to be someone.”

She shook her head.

“No. Complete silence in the past five days, just

that note asking if we were alright. I replied with
‘yes’, and then nothing,” she admitted. “I fear he
might be the next one sent through out floo. I fear
he was found out.”

“If he had been found out, we would’ve known,”

Sirius said, rolling his eyes. “He would’ve found a
way to come here and our family would’ve said
something. You’re Mistress of the House of Black
now, Anne, you would know if your husband was
dead.”

And that was what she had been telling herself as

she sat beside Severus, brushing his hair away
from his face and cleaning the pale skin of his face.
It didn’t seem enough this time around though, her
heart was still was tight and small inside her chest
and her stomach still reached her throat whenever
she even thought of eating.

“You should try to get in contact with Mister Black,

then, Anne,” said Madame Pomfrey, not looking all
that surprised about the implicit wedding
announcement in the conversation. “Even if he is
being watched, he might be able to answer and… I
believe it’s time we get in contact with
Dumbledore.”

“No.”

Everybody looked at Mia.

“Perhaps he can help?” James said.

“No,” Mia insisted. “I will not have him meddling

with the traumatic and terrible situation of that
poor child, I will not have him make the recovering
boy another pawn.”

“He’s already a pawn, Mama,” said Sirius. “He’s

been Anne’s spy for years at this point.”

“And that’s why he nearly died,” Anne said.

“Because of me. Because I used him and didn’t
protect him… I said I would protect him.”

James glared at Sirius, but he noticed the mistake

at the same time as he started stuttering the real
meaning of what he had wanted to say. It wasn’t
enough, Anne was back to silently crying and
watching the meeting with only half her mind.

Madame Pomfrey sighed, disappointed with the

situation her apprentice found herself in.

“Mister Potter, do try to write to Mister Black,

perhaps you can explain the situation in few
words… Mister Lupin should be good enough help,”
Madame said. “Miss Evans, keep an eye on Anne,
will you? She’s going to need it.”

Soon enough, without any word of explanation or

peacefulness, Anne got up and walked up the stairs
once again; her half-eaten plate of food still on the
table, growing cold by the second.

Lily watched, worried as her hands shook and

twisted on her silent lap. That was her daughter
wasting away, and she could do nothing to help or
stop it. Day after day, Anne looked more like the
girl she came as and less like the woman she had
become and that scared Lily above anything else.
She was slipping away from their reality, finding
herself more and more inside her own mind and, to
someone like Anne, her mind wasn’t safe at all.

“Slip this into her drink,” Madame said once they

weren’t being heard by Anne. “Bathe her, clothe
her, and feed her some soup. Otherwise, we might
need to take of two patients, instead of one,” she
took a deep breath, glancing where Anne had been
sitting before. “And do try getting in contact with
Regulus Black as soon as possible… And let’s hope
he can save both of them.”

Chris Evans bit the inside part of his cheek. He had

just gotten a granddaughter, and he wasn’t about
to lose her.

Dear Regulus Black,

I expect you to recognize my handwriting in the

moment you see it, but I might be hoping too much
since we never exchanged letters before, so I say
only one thing; I am the father of the woman
you’ve been seeing. I hope only one comes to
mind, otherwise we might have some trouble.

I write to you in the hopes that you are free

tomorrow for a meeting where we will decide how
to follow through with the plans that we have
discussed the last time you were in the house for
lunch. Just at the start of the year you, too, sent
me a present that I would like to thank you for –
quite the ancient book, we are glad we managed to
salvage most of it, though a bit of the cover was
lost in the process. I would send you a present in
return, but I fear that the one I had in mind seems
a bit off; it was a flower, of course, but she seems
to be dying quickly, withering away in the corner of
the room, refusing all water and supplements we
give, so I’ll just purchase another to send you, but I
would like for you to know that this was the only
reason why the return of the present was so
delayed.

In the hopes I can see you tomorrow,

J.

Regulus Black’s hand shook as he held the letter in

his hand, reading it several times in his own
bedroom, fearing how to answer and fearing
bringing more trouble to his family and Anne’s if he
followed the instructions to go to the Manor. But he
knew James wouldn’t have risked anything to write
to him if it wasn’t important.

He tried to guess, lying in bed that night, the coded

messages in the letter. “Ancient Book” was
probably Severus, most likely James had not even
noticed how mean the nickname could’ve sound,
but the meaning that they salvaged ‘most’ of it
made him worry more than he could bear, that
meant Severus was alive, but not well at all. The
“Flower”, however, took him another moment to
understand; until everything made sense at once in
his mind and the Flower had Anne’s face, that made
him so nauseated that he sat on the bathroom floor
for a couple of hours, because that meant Anne
was alone and lonely and scared, and he knew
what it looked like – the image of her body cringing
away from him in despair when he first saw her
having a flashback came to mind, her whole body
shook and eyes were empty even when she looked
straight at him. He hated that might be going
through something similar.

That was why, in the very early morning, he walked

down to the kitchen, expecting it to be empty.

He almost walked back out when he saw Cygnus

resting against the counter, sipping his tea as he
read the newspaper.

“Uncle,” he greeted, coldly.

“Regulus, already awake?” Cygnus said, surprised,

looking up from the newspaper. “You usually wake
up at eight, not six.”

“I didn’t sleep,” he dismissed. “May I drink some of

your tea?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, nodding towards the

teacups on the counter’s cabinet. “Perhaps it’ll help
you go back to bed. It’s Saturday.”

“I have plans,” Regulus dismissed, taking a cup and

putting it over the counter before filling it with tea.
Lavender, he noticed by the smell straight away. It
would help him with his nerves, but he doubted it
would help him to actually fall asleep. “I’m going to
be out the whole day, I expect. If Mother asks, just
tells her you saw me get out and that you don’t
know where I am or how long I’m going to be away
for.”

“Your wife, I presume, asks for your presence,”

Cygnus said.

“On the contraire, she told me to stay away, so I’m

going to her,” Regulus admitted.

His uncle feared his position enough to keep quiet,

especially after he announced to his family that he
had gotten married to Anne. He wouldn’t say
anything to his mother or to his cousins and he
feared Regulus as a person enough to not speak of
Anne at all in any bad shape. So, all he did was
give a little smile.

“Ah, marriage,” he sighed in nostalgia. “Do this

means ‘don’t’ and don’t do that means ‘right now’.”

Regulus frowned. That’s not how things happened

in his marriage; he respected Anne’s words and
Regulus had his wishes respected as well, the only
moment of slight difference in that dynamic was
when Anne was sick.

Anne had no idea how to ask for help, even when

she desperately needed it. She had been so used
on doing everything herself for so long in her life
that now that she had support, she didn’t know
what do with it. It felt embarrassing, he knew, to
ask for help when one thinks they don’t need.

“She’s sick, she doesn’t like to be seen sick, that’s

why she asked me to stay away,” he half-lied. “Her
dad wrote to me, asking me to come see her. She’s
been isolated through illness and doesn’t want
anyone near her. She’ll make an exception for me,
I hope,” he admitted.

“Pregnant?” Cygnus guessed.

Regulus almost rolled his eyes.

“No.”

Why did everybody always think of ‘pregnancy’

straight away?

“A pity,” his uncle said.

That took the Head by surprise, raising his

eyebrows.

“And why is that?”

“Heirs in times like this are always valuable,” he

said, looking at Regulus. “If something happens to
you, your mother becomes temporary Regent Head
of the House, which in her mental state could only
mean damnation to us. You could put your ward as
Regent, of course, but he, too, is an Heir and once
he’s old enough and his father is gone, he’ll have
his own House to care for. If you had a child, an
Heir, then he would be able to get a hold of the
House, of course, he would be young and I could
bring him under my wing, as long as he didn’t stay
under your mother’s wing.”

And there it was.

Cygnus wanted Regulus and Anne to have a child

because, if Regulus insisted so, the child would
become his ward, especially now that Severus
Snape was no longer in the picture for their
knowledge. If the child was his ward, then Cygnus
was become Regent until the child completed 17
years of age. Though not the best of situations, it
was a lot better than the first option he had
presented to him – his mother as Regent and
raising his child. He shivered at the idea alone and
at the thought of his mother (even more mentally
despaired than she was at the moment) screaming
at his child, a half-blood.

He shook his head.

“Between you and my mother, you certainly are a

best option, though I doubt we’ll be trying for a
child for a while still,” Regulus said. “There’s a war
happening, Uncle, and we are trying to get through
this.”

“With your wife on the other side of it, I’m sure you
are,” Cygnus said. “Bellatrix spoke to me.”

“Of course, she did,” he said bitterly.

“Listen,” Cygnus said, a lot more serious this time

around. He put his teacup down at the counter once
more. “What side of the war are we on?”

Regulus blinked once more, caught in surprise.

“We?”

“You are Head of the House, where you go, we go,”

Cygnus said. “Either we like it or not. Though, I
doubt Bellatrix will accept it, with or without family
magic. She’s too far gone in Lestrange family magic
to actually deal with implicit information of this
part; she needs direct orders to follow, and that’s
the only reason Anne’s safe. But Narcissa and I
already talked and agreed of aiding you in any way
that we can.”

“What in it for you? There’s more than just

supporting me,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

“You’re publicly supporting the Dark Lord, but

working under the cloth to help the Light side. If we
support you, no matter who wins, we are seen in
good eyes,” Cygnus explained.

Once more, standing in the middle and accepting

neutrality appeared on pureblood’s guide of
survival. Regulus wasn’t surprised this time around,
after all, his uncle has always been a man of…
neutral politics.

“If anything happens and a child is born, Uncle, I

believe you’d be a tutor to him,” Regulus admitted.
“On matters of state and work ethic, but in
morals…”

“Well, I’m sure Anne and the other Potters will do a

fine job on that part of the child’s life,” he
answered, finishing Regulus’ thought for him. “If
anything happens to you and there’s a child on the
way, I promise by family’s magic that I will keep in
constant touch with the Potters for the child’s
sake.”

Regulus nodded once, feeling the magic tying the

promise tightly around them. It was enough.

He felt surprisingly light after twenty minutes of

that conversation and tea, pleasantries and
promises. So, he made his way towards the
parlour, walked into the fireplace and whispered
‘Potter Manor’ with a handful of floo.

Because of the marriage, he no longer set off the

alarms and wards when he entered the house, but
the fireplace noise, the house-elf walked into the
parlour, eyes wide and towel around his body in a
dress.

“Coco is happy to see Mister Regulus,” she said as

soon as she saw Regulus walked out of the
fireplace. “Miss Anne has been very, very sick. Miss
Lily had to slip something on her drink to get her
clean and fed, Madame Pomfrey had to put water
on her veins.”

Regulus frowned.

“Water?” he asked, confused.

“Liquid,” Coco said, shaking her head as if

agreeing.

He had never heard of anyone doing those things,

but nodded as well.

“And Severus?”

“Mister Snape is… crying again. Madame Pomfrey is

helping him to move around the room, but he don’t
want to let her help him to take a shower.”

He sighed.

“I’d bet.”

There were enough scars on his body that he felt

somewhat embarrassed or ashamed of other people
seeing it. Regulus had first seen them as an
accident, but things got worse as time went by and
he finally asked, showing in return his own scars.
That was the only reason he had been comfortable
enough to use less clothing around Regulus – his
wrists were scarred, his back, his chest, but he had
gone as far as wearing a wife-beater in front of
Regulus last summer. Severus was probably
already ashamed that Madame Pomfrey had seen it
after so long of hiding it from her, though Regulus
couldn’t see why he would be ashamed of it
because of Anne. Until he understood at once,
though Anne had seen most of his scars, she had
not seen him so out of control of his own body and
Severus had never wanted anything besides her
approval; he admired her as a child admired a
protector, and he wanted her to admire him just as
much as she had done in her first life.

Now, that dynamic was ruined.

“Do warn Lady and Lord Potter that I am here,” he

said, taking a few steps forward. “And warn them
I’m to see Severus first. Ask them if I’m allowed to
spend the night.”

“Mistress said that Mister Regulus is always allowed

to spend the night,” Coco said. “And Master and
Mistress already know you are here. Coco warned
them before coming to greet you.”

He nodded.

It wasn’t that he thought Anne didn’t need him or

that she was less important, it was just that
Severus was most likely to answer his questions
and he had a lot more to apologise to him than to
Anne.

He walked behind Coco as she led him towards the

guest bedroom Severus was in and stopped at the
door as Coco popped away, having her chores to
do. Outside the door, he tried to imagine how the
conversation would go, but it was stopped when the
door opened and Madame Pomfrey walked out.

She said nothing as she looked at him, just closed

the door behind her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said in a low voice. “He

needs you.”

“I know,” he answered.

“Physically, he’ll be alright,” she said. “Anne took

care of the infection that grew; she’s quite talented,
a lot more than I was at her age.”

“I never doubted her,” he said.

“She did. She doubted herself every step of the

way and she’s in clear need of support that
apparently no one here can give her, except
Severus himself, but in he’s in no state of being…
kind,” it sounded like a warning.

Regulus had not expected kindness. A normal

Severus was almost never kind, he could barely
imagine how a hurt one would sound… especially to
someone that had taken a limb out of him.

“Did he… hurt her?” he asked. She nodded.

“Physically?”

She nodded once more.

“Though I doubt it was on purpose.”

“Mentally?”

“A lot more,” she admitted. “That one on purpose.”

Regulus sighed.

He needed to swallow his anger and understand his

friend’s side as well.

“Can you stay with her for a bit? Tell her that I am
here, but that I’m with Severus. I’ll be there soon,”
he said.

Madame Pomfrey smiled sadly as she nodded,

almost as if she pitied the man in front of her, but
said nothing else as she turned and walked away
from him, towards the stairs to the next floor.

He knocked on the door. No answer came, but he

walked in anyways to be greeted only with the
worst of his friend’s glare towards him, but it
softened once he recognised the person walking
into the room.

“Reg,” he breathed out.

Severus was sitting on the edge of the bed,

wearing a white shirt of long sleeves and black
sleep-trousers that clearly didn’t belong to him
since they were a bit short, probably they belonged
to Remus. The left sleeve had been folded several
times and only the end of the stump of where the
limb had been was on sight. It was covered by
bandages.

“Hey, Sev,” he said, sounding relaxed. “I came as

soon as I could.”

“Thank for trying,” he managed to choke out.

The memories slipped into his mind once more.

Regulus rambling about other types of torture and
insisting on keeping the Crucio, but Bellatrix
laughed, deciding on a new spell that she had
created for blood-traitors and mud-bloods; one that
would make magic hurt, after all they were not
deserving of it – after that, Regulus remembered
trying to keep his dinner into his stomach as
Severus screamed and fought against Bellatrix as
she used her dagger to carve into his arm, pulling
out the pieces of skin and flesh with the tattoo.

“I’m sorry I didn’t manage to stop her,” he

answered.

“Anne or Bellatrix? Because both…” he stopped

himself, looking up at Regulus. “I look pathetic. I’m
lame.”

Regulus looked down at his feet.

“Bellatrix was cruel, Anne was saving your life.”

Severus shook his head, lips curling in disgust.

“You can’t be serious right now,” Severus

grumbled. “Saving my life? I’m lame now. I can’t
brew any longer, I can barely stand on my own and
I have not taken a shower standing in almost a
week, on… bed-washings, which is so shameful.
Lying there, unable to clean yourself.”

“This was never what Anne wanted for you,

Severus? She was trying to save your life?”

“And ruined it in the process! I’d have rather died

than be here,” he said firmly. He fought hard to
raise his stump to show it off, but his remaining
arm fell to his side once more. His scoffed, holding
back his tears. “I can still feel the pain.”

“It’s only in your mind,” Regulus said.

“I know. And I wake up looking for my arm, and I

find these… thing in its place and it falls on me once
more. It’s like waking up without it for the first time
all the time; at night, I dream, at day, my
nightmares come true,” he looked around the
room. “And I can’t even leave the room. Not like
this.”

Though Regulus would never say anything, he knew

what ‘this’ meant in that sentence. Severus was
clean of blood and dirt, but he didn’t smell very
good, his skin was lifeless and his hair oily.

“That’s one of the reasons I came to you. I came to

help you on the shower or a bath,” Regulus said.
“Come on, let’s get you out of those clothes.”

It wasn’t hard. Severus didn’t fight him off as he

had done with Madame Pomfrey or even Remus
Lupin. He tried his best to raised his arms to get
the shirt out and held onto Regulus tightly as he
pushed his trousers and underwear down. He held
onto him as he helped him step into the empty
bathtub and let go only when he was sat down,
dizzy and vision already dark with effort.

Silence as Regulus opened the faucets of hot water.

The bathtub slowly started filling.

“Anne said I might walk well enough on my own

next week, but I still can’t wet the wound for
another,” Severus said. “I told her to fuck off.”

“I imagined so,” Regulus admitted.

He reached for the shampoo and put it beside

himself and then reached for the soap. He could
feel Severus’ dark eyes watching him.

“Aren’t you angry at me? I screamed at her, and

you’re very protective of her,” Severus said.

“I am furious at you, but I understand that you’re

grieving and I will only forgive you or show my
anger at you if Anne wants me to,” Regulus said. “I
wasn’t here to see the process; I wasn’t here to see
your state when you woke up… But I want to ask
you because I heard that you hurt her, physically.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Severus answered. “She tried to

take off my shirt, it was… reflex, really. When I saw
it, I had already slapped her across the face. She
walked away from it. Came back silent. I felt like I
was becoming my father.”

“Did you apologise?” Regulus asked, reaching for

the small metal cup at the corner of the bathtub
and closing the faucets.

Silence.

He had not.

Regulus had to bite his own lip.

“If I was here, I fear you’d be angry at me as well,”

Regulus admitted, letting of his lip. “I would’ve
begged her to save your life, even if that meant
take your arm off again. I want so much more with
you, Sev. I have so much to do and I want you by
my side, even if it’s selfish of me to do. There’s so
much we don’t know…”

“There’s so much I will not know because I can’t do

it anymore,” Severus said. “This… accident simply
destroyed everything, Reg. I wanted so much and I
have so little now. The big picture looks so small
now.”

“Remember when were younger and we would talk

of what we wanted?” Regulus asked.

“Yeah, you said you want to see the universe

growing.”

“And I did,” Regulus said. “I’m seeing it day after

day, after I learnt to search for it. The universe
expends in several ways, and I thought that I
needed to break it down and understand every
single piece of it before understanding the bigger
picture when it was all together again. I was wrong,
you taught me that I was wrong. I shouldn’t have
focused on details so much,” he took a deep
breath. “You said you wanted to be happy more
than anything, away from… home.”

“I’m away.”

“And unhappy for something you cannot control.

This is not like you, Severus. You were always a
man to see the bigger picture more than the details
and this, this accident, was a detail. Nothing needs
to change. You can learn again,” Regulus said.
“What is stopping you?”

“I was a left-handed.”

“And you learnt to write and do magic with that

hand when you were a kid, now you can learn with
the other as an adult. I don’t see the problem,” he
insisted. “If it hurts, there’s medicine for that. If
you’re sad, you can talk to someone about it. There
are things we can do to help you, Sev, but you
need to want that help. You were always so…
factual and logical that it’s hard to see you hurting
like this and not knowing what to do.”

Severus looked down at the water.

Regulus took the small cup and filled it, slowly he

was on his knees beside the bathtub and helped
Severus to wet his hair to wash it.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Severus said. “That

was what I was my whole life. I don’t wan it again.
Not here… at Potter Manor. Lupin came to try and
help me shower, but I couldn’t let him.”

He didn’t want to be vulnerable, not in front of

those people who had hurt him.

“He has scars as well, and a lot more than you,”

Regulus said.

“But everybody knows where they came from. They

don’t know about mine,” Severus said. “They would
ask questions.”

“No, they wouldn’t. They never asked Sirius about

his or Anne about hers,” Regulus said, putting some
shampoo on his hair. “They wait. Did you meet
Mia?” the other boy nodded. “She’s the one that
you want to go to if you want to talk. Mia’s…
amazing. She waits so well; she waits for you to
talk and for you to feel, she just sits there. Anne
loves her ever so much. But if you don’t want
someone of them, you can always talk to me.”

“I don’t need help,” Severus said.

“You do for now,” Regulus insisted. “You’ll be able

to be independent again, but once you recover and
you cannot rush that, and lying in bed swallowing
tears and wallowing in sadness won’t help you to
get any better any faster.”

Severus’ eyes filled with tears once more, but he

closed them as his hair was massaged by Regulus’
fingers. Regulus was quiet, taking in the way his
friend’s shoulders were shaking in silent sobs. He
seemed so much skinnier now.

“When…” Severus tried. His voice broke.

Regulus washed off the shampoo, giving him more

time to put his thoughts into words.

“I had a dream while I was drugged out here. I felt

like I was flying, but not like in a broom or
something like that, I was myself, but I was
floating around. Madame Pomfrey said it was
because my blood-pressure was so low, but I liked
it… the feeling of… lightness,” he said. Severus took
a deep breath. “And when I woke up, my mind was
so heavy again, thinking the worst of things time
and time again, and then I had the realisation of
why I was so light; because there was a piece of
me missing. And Madame and Anne kept asking me
to rest and I just… don’t know how.”

“How to rest?”

“Yeah. I used to rest by brewing, because it relaxed

me, but I can’t do that anymore. And I’m
exhausted and tired, and no matter how much I
sleep or just lie there, I just… am not rested. They
tell me to just read a book or not think at all, but I
can’t. They tell that I’m safe, but I don’t feel safe.”

“Because Potter’s here?” he asked, hesitant.

“Potter is the least of my problems, Regulus. It’s

embarrassing, yes, but nothing else,” he explained.
“It’s just that my mind tells me that I’m out of that
dark dungeon in the Malfoy Manor, but my body
doesn’t feel safe, it’s always so awake and so ready
for another fight that I don’t know how to just lie
there and rest and recover. I never had that
before.” He opened his eyes, already tearless once
more. “Father told me to do chores with broken
ribs, Mother just stared at the ceiling and I’m
terrified I’m becoming like her. I’m so scared all the
time, even when I don’t have a reason to be.”

Regulus put the cup down and sat down beside him
once more, on the floor, instead on being on his
knees.

“Anne has a name for that.”

“Of course, she has,” he said bitterly.

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Regulus

continued, ignoring what he had just said. “You’re
on alert, and you’re expected to be for some time
still, Severus. Nobody here is going to tell you
otherwise, but that doesn’t mean you get to be
mean. Look, Anne has it, too. You saw it.”

“I’m not like her, I don’t shake and see things that
are not there.”

“Because you’re not her. But that doesn’t mean you

don’t have that as well,” he said, frowning. “You’re
hyper-alert. But everybody here wants you to be
safe and are willing to make sure you are feeling
you are safe. You need to trust them, you know
that you can, but I can understand if you don’t feel
like you can.”

Another moment of silence.

“Do you think Anne can help me?”

“No.”

Severus looked at him.

“Did I hurt her that much?” he asked, eyes

begging.

“I don’t know. And that’s not the reason I’m saying

this, Sev, but Anne can’t be in a bathroom with any
man at all,” he answered.

Severus’ eyes made had a small moment of

recognition.

“The bathroom door…”

“The what?”

“The memories she blocked from me, the really bad

ones, she locked them inside a bathroom,” he
explained. “Her mind is shaped like the Dursley’s
house. I suppose that was the place she was most
familiar with since she started Occlumency so early
in life.” He looked at Regulus again. “Do you think I
should Occlude these memories as well? Because I
do want them far away from me.”

Regulus shook his head.

“This fear won’t go away, you do understand that,

don’t you?” he asked. Severus nodded. “But you
can live with it, you can call it other things and
make a space for it in your mind and heart, but you
cannot allow it to swallow you. Learn to look
around, ground yourself in your reality, make peace
with it.”

“How can I make peace with this?” he asked,

raising his stump just a bit.

“Allowing yourself to remember that you can learn

again,” Regulus answered.

It took another hour to Severus to finish cleaning

and dressing, another ten convincing him to eat
and to his little plan for the lunch plans. It took ten
minutes of Regulus standing outside of Anne’s door
for him to knock.

It felt odd walking into the bedroom, even if Anne’s

voice had called out to the person knocking to
come in; his mind was still half-stuck to Severus
and his condition and it felt like only his body was
walking into the next situation he needed to tackle
on.

“Hi,” he said.

She looked up from the Anatomy Muggle book she

had on her table.

“Hi,” she said. Her voice was cold, robotic.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come over,” he

said. “I had a lot to deal with and I was being
watched.”

“I imagined so, so I didn’t write,” she answered,

looking back at her book. “I’m studying how to deal
with the physicality of an amputation. I put the rest
of his arm in stasis with a spell, it worked once it
was out of his body – do you think Severus would
like a burial for it? Some people have burials.”

Regulus slowly closed the door, uncomfortable and

unsure of what to do and what to say. Anne was
hyperfocused and would surely feel offended if he
tried to pry her out of her book, she was like Lily at
that part.

“I was helping him bathe,” he said.

“Yes, I imagined so,” she repeated. “Otherwise, you

would’ve come straight to me. He’s more important
at the moment.”

“That’s not it at all, Anne,’ he tried to say.

“Yes, it is. I hope it is, at least, because otherwise I

would be saying that I need help, which I do not.
They are worried about me, I know, but I well. I
slept three whole hours tonight,” she sounded quite
proud of the fact. Regulus wasn’t as excited. “And I
learnt all about veins and arteries.”

Regulus’ eyes narrowed.

“Anne, have you eaten today?” he asked. She

shook her head, not looking at him. The sweater
she had on was of a pale tone of cream made of
wool, and the collar of it slipped away, going down
her shoulder and showing the bones already
appearing again. Regulus cringed – it looked like
Anne had just gotten back in time again. “Will you
eat today?”

“I’m not feeling hungry,” she dismissed.

He shook his head, leaning against the door.

“Perhaps if I get food for three and we sit at

Severus’ room, you will eat with us?” he asked.

It was an open question. She had the right to

refuse.

Silence.

Anne wasn’t one for silence, even when she didn’t

know what to say. In moment of speechlessness,
she would evade the question, rambling about
something else until the person forget the question
they had asked.

Her silence was too loud.

“Anne, you need to eat.”

“The problem is not the food,” she mumbled, her

voice wavered. “Does Severus even want me in the
room?”

Slowly, as if to not scare her, Regulus walked

towards her and crouched down beside her chair,
sitting on his heels. He put his hands on his thighs,
resting them a bit, fighting against the urge of
touching her legs.

“Severus has nothing against you. He has

everything against the world and the fact that he
lost a limb,” he explained. “He’s upset. He’s
grieving a part of himself, Anne. This has nothing to
do with you.”

“He hit me,” she said, voice small.

“I know, he told me,” he said in a voice almost as

small, but much more gentler. “He didn’t mean to
hit you. It was automatic.”

“He hit me,” she said, voice firmer. “I’m angry

about that. I don’t like being hit.”

She looked at him, the memories clear behind her

eyes. Her aunt on top of her, hand flying down to
hit wherever she could reach – head, face, neck,
torso. She felt, suddenly, that her house and safe
space wasn’t as safe anymore. She felt like a child
again, and she hated the childness that survived
inside of her, hidden inside the name of
‘vulnerability’.

“He hated hitting you, that much you can be sure,”

he answered. “He felt like his father.”

“He felt like Uncle Vernon,” she admitted. “He hit

me in the same way, across the face and with the
back of his hand. Only my uncle used to do that,
only when he wanted me to stop crying like a child
– do you think he realised I was a child?”

“I think he did,” Regulus admitted back. “But I

don’t think that was what Severus intended.”

She looked slightly guilty.

“I know,” she whispered. She cleaned her throat,

eyes suddenly allowing some emotion back in
them. “And I know that he doesn’t mean to be
cruel, but I really didn’t want to ruin his life, I
wanted to save it. I couldn’t let him die; even if it
meant I was being selfish, I chose his life when he
wanted death. I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”

“It’s not your place to say that,” she added. “I can’t

apologise to him. I don’t think I’ve done anything
truly wrong; I just feel bad that he’s hurt about it,
but I would’ve done it again.” Grateful, Regulus
nodded in silence, finally touching her knees
delicately. She looked down at him. He forced a
smile. “He hates me.”

“He doesn’t.”

“He does,” she insisted. “I cannot bear it. He used

to be what I thought a father was supposed to be
and now he hates me because I maimed him for life
and ruined his livelihood, and I knew what I was
doing when I held him down for Madame Pomfrey
to cut his arm off. And he hates me because he
knows I would do it again, if I needed to. I failed
him and I understand that he hates me because I
hate myself too.”

“No, Anne, nobody here hates you. This problem is

not you,” he said, almost sounding begging. “I
don’t like when you say that you hate yourself,
there’s nothing of you to hate.”

“There is, you don’t like some parts of me,” she

said.

He frowned.

“When did I ever say that?”

“You’re angry when I make plans and I don’t talk to

you about them, you hate my cruel actions and
what others call ruthlessness. You hate that I put
myself and others in danger if I think I can deal
with it,” she said.

“No, Anne, I don’t hate those things, it just…

worries me,” he explained. “I think that sometimes
you forget that you’re human and it makes me
worried and I don’t know how to show it
sometimes, so I scold you.”

That was how he knew his parents cared for him,

because they scolded him when he did something
wrong. They wouldn’t do that when Sirius was still
in the house.

“Will Severus scold me?”

“Why would he?” he said, confused.

“Because he thinks I’ve done wrong,” she said.

“No,” he said, shaking his head lightly. “He knows

I’ve invited you, and he knows he’s not allowed to
be angry at you. He can curse the world for I care,
but he won’t raise his hand or voice towards you
again.”

The promise weighted on her chest and it lifted

from his shoulders.

It took twenty minutes of slow pleasantries and

Regulus leading neutral conversations for Severus
to watch Anne throwing around her food in her
plate in silence, unable to look him in the eyes and
then he said:

“I’m sorry for hitting you,” he said. “I’m sorry for

screaming at you.”

She looked up at him.

“I’m sorry you don’t like the decision I took, but I

would take it again,” she admitted.

Regulus cringed, sipping his juice.

“I know,” Severus whispered. It wasn’t his way of

saying that he was grateful, but it was his way to
say that he was no longer angry at her for that. “I
survived,” he added, though he said nothing of
living.

Anne ate. Severus ate.

Regulus watched, proud of his own work.

Notes:
CONGRATULATIONS TO
BRAZILIAN FOR GETTING
BOLSONARO OUT YA'LL.

FORA BOLSONARO!!!!
VIVA A DEMOCRACIA!

Chapter 116: Chapter One

Hundred and Fifteen -
Summary:
Anne's biggest flaw

Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for
notes.)

HYPOCRISY

TW: ABORTION DISCUSSION AND SEXUAL

ASSAULT DISCUSSION

There was some awkwardness when Severus first

walked down the stairs to eat breakfast with
everybody in the house, no longer wanting to
confide himself in his room, waiting for visits from
Anne, Regulus and Madame Pomfrey. He had
walked down the stairs alone, much to Anne’s
worry, hand gripping the stairwell leading to the
right side.

James tried his best to smile at him, after all the

fact that Lily wasn’t there made things a bit easier.
Remus nodded in greeting, too busy chewing to say
anything to him. Sirius looked at him, grumbled his
usual humourless ‘good morning’ of someone that
was still getting used to waking up early and
shoved toast down his throat. Mia was quick to get
him a plate, trying not to make a big deal of his
appearance out of the bedroom they had given him
and Monty looked over his newspapers, smiled,
fixed his glasses and said a nice, pleasant ‘good
morning, son’.

Severus sat down quietly, ignoring the ‘son’ Monty

had used on the sentence and completely unable to
say anything other than a simple ‘morning’ of
neutral tone and hoping silently that Anne would
come down soon enough.

“Another attack,” Monty said, still finishing the

newspapers in his hands. “Barely ten days since
they killed that Muggle child in London and they
already attacked another, a muggle-born in Surrey,
not far from here.” Mia sighed. He folded the
newspaper and put it over the table. “It might be a
good idea to re-do the wards around the Manor and
add some blood-wards to the Cottage.”

“It might not be a good one, the blood-wards, I

mean,” James said, turning around. “At least, not
until the wedding.”

“We might need to hurry it up, then,” Mia said,

nodding in agreement with James. “The wards will
recognize Lily’s blood well enough to allow her
parents and sister some freedom inside the house,
though she might have to visit often to make sure
they are still erect.”

Severus watched the conversation, blinking before

taking a deep breath.

“I have… notebooks, in my house,” Severus

managed to say. Everybody at the table turned to
him. “I can’t do the magic anymore, but there are…
personal wards there. I created them myself. Lily
has access to my house’s wards, I made sure of it,
in case I died, so Anne might have access as well.
You are welcome to look through my creations. I
never shared them with… them.”

Them, Death Eaters, he meant, but his mouth

couldn’t make the correct sounds. He didn’t need
to, though, everybody at that table seemed to
know what he wanted to say. He was surprised
when Sirius Black didn’t refuse his help right away.

“I could go with Anne,” Sirius said. “Mount guard

outside. Lily could come with us.”

“I could go,” James said.

“You can’t, you’ll need to go to the Potter Vaults

with me,” Monty said. “Pick out the wedding ring.
Your mother is correct, we’ll have to move the
wedding.”

“Lily should come with, then,” James said. “It’ll be

on her finger, and we should check of the spells on
the rings, what which means and all that. She’s
interested enough in that, besides Petunia was
quite interested in seeing the inside of the bank;
we should take her with us, as well.”

Severus wanted to say that he would go with

Sirius, make sure Anne would be safe, but what
good would that do? He couldn’t even protect
himself, let alone someone else. He looked at his
stump bitterly and bit the inside of his own cheek,
trying to keep himself from saying something he
would regret after.

“Remus should go with you, Sirius,” Mia said.

“Perhaps it would be best to get there on the
Muggle way, walking around the neighbourhood
instead of just Apparating in front of the house.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Remus said, nodding.

Apparently, James was the first to feel it, looking

up in surprise even before the noise came. It was
like the world around him rattled for a second and,
then, he reached for his father at the same time
the floo made a loud roar, as it had done with
Severus.

Sirius was the first to get up, running towards the

parlour, but Monty got there first, pushing him to
stand behind his own body before opening the door
and standing there in surprise, blinking.

“You are?”

Severus got up, still unable to run, and walked

towards where most of the house was standing.

It was hard to see through so many people, but

with the fear of hitting his healing stump by
accident, Remus Lupin stepped aside and he saw
who was standing in the middle of the parlour.

Elizabeth Fawley-Lestrange was standing with the

most awful of faces and one of the most horrid of
states.

Her once beautiful blonde hair was no longer

contained and her curls weren’t any longer silky,
her hair was dry and cut shortly in an unpretty
way, there were a few spaces on her head that
there were chunks of hair missing. Her skin was
pale, her lip cracked and the bottom one split on
the corner; there was blood smeared on her chin
and on her philtrum under where her very now
crooked nose was and a yellowish bruise on her
cheekbone, it was at least two weeks old, for sure.

One of her own brown eyes was looking around in

worry and fear, looking for someone in specific, the
other was half-closed and barely moving, puffy and
so bruised and that it looked almost black, the
white part of the hurt eye decorated with red veins.
Severus was quite sure she couldn’t see through
the hurt one very well by the way that she
narrowed her good one.

She was wearing a silk nightgown that one day had

been pretty and expensive in light-pink, but now it
was torn around the legs, dirty with blood around
the top of her legs and on the back, and dirty with
actual filth. Severus feared that he knew where the
blood came from and why it was there.

When Regulus said her husband had to punish her

to save her life, he certainly hadn’t imagined he
would punish her so severely. He had thought a
Crucio or so would work out well, but he had never
imagined he would go physically violent towards
her, or even go as far as forcing himself on her, by
the blood on her legs and nightgown.

Her eyes stopped on Severus when he moved, but

she took a step back.

“You’re alive,” she managed to choke out.

“Well, I think we’re becoming a refugee camp,”

Sirius whispered to Remus.

“Yeah, and you’re one of the refugee, you

dumbearse,” Remus groaned back.

Severus stepped forward. She took two seps back.

He froze in place, fearing her reaction.

Her eyes went down, she looked at the stump.

“You’re alive,” she repeated, not commenting on

the missing limb. “Regulus sent me here. He said…
I could get help,” she took a deep breath, looking
around and finding Mia’s eyes. “I’m in need of
medical attention.”

“I do believe so, my dear,” Mia said, taking a step

forward.

Anne stood in front of a shaking Elizabeth as she

diagnosed her wounds quickly and the girl told the
story of her escape.

“I was locked in the bedroom for a long time, I

think a few days, but then I tried to smother him
with the pillow, so he locked my in the dungeons. I
was there for a longer time, I don’t know how
long,” she told Anne, she had insisted to be alone
with her and Mia in the room to strip to show her
wounds. “At first it was just screaming, but then he
got violent, that’s why I tried to smother him. I’m
not a killer,” she looked around, wanting to be
believed by the wide eyes.

“We understand, dear, don’t worry. We’re not

judging you,” Mia said, nodding to her and sitting
down on the empty, ready bed of the guest room
they had prepared for her. “Go on.”

“Narcissa came for a visit for Bellatrix and she was

shocked when she saw me when I was brought up
to greet her, she said it was inhumane,” she said,
blinking slowly. She was dizzy. Anne helped her sit.
“I said nothing to protect their decision and my
husband got angry, so he hit me again, this time a
lot harder because I embarrassed him in front of
family, not just the Dark Lord.”

“How did he hit you?” Anne asked. “Where?”

“He kicked me a lot, I threw up a bit a blood later,

but I might have just bit my tongue,” she said.
Anne listened with attention. “He ripped my hair
from my scalp and hit my face and my head on the
wall a few times, the back of it. He…” she looked a
bit embarrassed. “He liked blood, I think. It gets
him… hard. He didn’t perform the charm this time
around.”

“We’ll tend to it, don’t worry. We’ll see what we can

do to make this go away,” Mia dismissed. “Keep
going. We’re almost over.”

“He stepped on my fingers, the left hand, when I

reached for the key on his belt. He choked me and
I passed out after that, so I’m not sure what
happened later, but I was bleeding a lot down there
when I woke up.”

The story checked out. Blunt force.

“I already fixed your nose, so the bleeding is

supposed to stop,” Anne said, checking her nose
once more. “Any taste of blood?”

“Not anymore,” she answered.

“Good,” Anne took a step back. “You have a few

broken ribs, but I can fix that with a potion instead
of spell, so it’s not so sudden, it might hurt if it’s
too sudden. And it might hurt, but the broken
fingers need to be by spell, so I can make sure they
won’t heal too stiffly.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath, eyes watering again.

She thought healing was supposed to be fast and
unpainful. Hadn’t she gone through enough? She
nodded anyways, because she knew Anne – to
whom Regulus had send her to and clearly trusted
– wouldn’t hurt her on purpose.

Anne took her left hand in her hand, carefully

seeing the crooked fingers out of place and taking
her wand, mumbling the correct spells as Elizabeth
felt her fingers turn really hot to the point where
she tried to pull her hand away, in the next second,
she heard a ‘snap’ and her fingers were straight
again.

“Try moving it,” Anne told her. Slowly, she curled

her fingers before relaxing her hand again. “Do
they move without pain?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Good,” Anne said. “Now, we can move to the lip.”

“It’s not a deep cut,” Elizabeth answered, shaking

her head lightly.

“It’s best we don’t leave it open, it’ll only hurt and

sting and we don’t want any infection on it,” Anne
insisted. “It’s very easy spell, do not worry. It’s just
a wave of the wand,” she put her wand near her
face and made a small wave and mumbled a spell.
The lip made a small, wet noise, but then it was
back to its original state.

Elizabeth made a small facial expression, moving

her lips around to see if it hurt. Nothing followed.
Anne assumed it wasn’t hurting or stinging
anymore.

“Anything we can do about her concussion?” Mia

asked. “I can ask Monty to make his father’s potion
to make your hair grow again, Elizabeth, but only
when you’re completely healed; it takes it toll on a
woman’s body, after all it made by men for men.”

“Isn’t it always the story? Men only thinking of men

and all that, I mean,” dismissed Elizabeth.

Mia made a small chuckle, though she was laughing

it off for Elizabeth’s sake, not because she thought
it was funny. Her eyes seemed sad.

As they talked, Anne used the moment that

Elizabeth was so focused on Mia to make a
diagnostic-spell. For that, the wand needed to be
touching the patient’s body, which Elizabeth clearly
had no wanted, but with her so distracted, it quick
and painless – she startled, turning, but said
nothing.

Anne understood why Elizabeth had not wanted the

spell.

The very end of her belly was glowing a soft yellow,

warm light.

Pregnancy.

“Oh, Elizabeth,” lamented Mia.

“I didn’t want anyone to know. I wasn’t sure,” she

started saying, vomiting the words before she could
think twice about them coming out. “I thought that,
perhaps, if I didn’t say anything and the Healer
just… kept at it, I wouldn’t even have to know.
Some Potion could deal with it. I couldn’t know – if
I knew, I’d have to keep it.”

“That’s not how it works,” Anne said, shaking her

head. “Nobody has to know about this, Elizabeth. I
can deal with it, I can be discreet… I can make all
of this go away.”

Mia shook her head.

“Anne –” started Mia, she was frowning and very

pale in the face.

“No, I can’t,” said Elizabeth. “I can’t murder it.”

Anne shook her head at the outrageous notion. It

felt backwards to think like that. That pregnancy
wasn’t out of love or desire, it had been violent and
traumatic. Why would Elizabeth want a reminder of
those days, living, breathing and needing her so
much all the time? A baby was a responsibility
Elizabeth didn’t need in the mental state she found
herself; a foetus was nothing she could deal with.

“It wouldn’t be murder. It’s yellow, Elizabeth, it’s

just a few weeks, no more than a month.”

“I can’t be murder… I can’t be like him,” Elizabeth

whimpered.

That was what she was fearing? Becoming the thing

her husband, the monster was? What a terrible
thought, indeed, but a stupid one.

“It wouldn’t be like that –”

“Anne, enough!” Mia said firmly.

Anne stopped in shock. Mia had never been so firm

about anything when talking to her, it felt like being
scolded. For some reason, the child inside of her
flinched, wanting to run and hide.

She couldn’t understand why Elizabeth was thinking

like that. Though she had not been, when she was
younger and almost sure she was pregnant of her
own uncle, she had run to Severus in hopes he
would have a potion or two to make her problem go
away and not expose the wounds she had anymore
than her disgust for herself did.

“Why would you want to keep it?” Anne asked,

confused and angry for a reason she couldn’t name.

“Why wouldn’t I? That’s a baby, and I know it’s

there and it’s my responsibility.”

“It doesn’t need to be.”

Elizabeth looked into her eyes, looking almost like a

full woman again. She looked alive, fire in her eyes.

“It will be,” she insisted. “I will not kill it. Treat me
with it.”

“Anne, understand this to some extent!” Mia

insisted, shaking her head at her granddaughter’s
stubbornness. “This is her trauma. Not everybody
reacts the same way as you did.”

“She wants to keep the baby of her rapist, Mia –

no, I cannot understand it, not a little bit, not at
all!” Anne said, slapping her hands on her thighs in
exasperation. “It’ll make her mind suffer more than
already is. It’ll make her body suffer more than it
needs to in order to heal. Grandma, this could kill
her.”

“She made her decision. Respect it,” Mia said,

crossing her arms.

Mia was sitting in Monty’s study’s chair, sipping a

glass of brandy in clear exhaustion of a
conversation that had been going for at least an
hour as Anne paced back and forth across the room
in distress and anger. They had been at it ever
since Mia had almost dragged Anne out of the room
and ordered Coco to stay with Elizabeth and help
her with her every wish, but asking Elizabeth to lay
down and try to sleep for a few hours after Anne
gave the bone-potion that made her gag for a few
minutes of awkward, tense silence between the two
other women in the room.

With Monty’s study being one of the most private

places of the house and additional wards
accompanying it, Mia took her granddaughter there
and kicked her husband out for a good
conversation.

“Mia, this will ruin her!”

“You were raised muggle, you cannot understand

the way this girl was brought up to see the life
inside of her,” Mia said once more with firmness
that Anne had scarcely heard before in her life.
“That is a life as long as you know it’s there and
from that moment on, it’s your responsibility. If she
didn’t know, then she wouldn’t feel guilty about it…
she would pretend to be sad for the sake of
appearances, of course, but nothing else. Now she
knows, this is on her soul –”

“Purebloods aren’t religious. It’s not some type of

sacrilegious sacrifice to try and give her a good life,
Mia,” Anne said.

“This has nothing to do with religion! This is about

morals!”

“Morals are subjective,” Anne dismissed.

“Exactly! And this is her moral ground and she

doesn’t want to step over a line she was raised
with,” Mia said. “This is her life. This is her body.
Aren’t you always saying that consent is important?
Don’t be a hypocrite. You did the diagnostic spell
against her wishes and though I understand you did
this in the hopes of helping her and not making her
go through the traumas over and over again, you
must know you crossed her line.”

Anne froze in place.

How was she any different from Uncle Vernon?

Elizabeth had said she didn’t want any diagnosed
spells done on her and she had assumed if her used
his wand to hurt her, but she had went and done it
anyways – against her wishes. She had broken
Elizabeth’s consent.

The door to the study received a small knock and

opened just a few inches. From outside, Regulus
Black put his face on the opening with an awkward
expression.

“Lord Potter said you were here, Anne, hello,” he

said, gently. “Hello, Mia.”

The tension inside the room was certainly felt by

him as he looked around, confused and hesitant.

“Hi,” Mia said, looking away from him and finished

her glass of brandy. “I’ll give you some privacy. I
expect Anne will fill you up on Elizabeth’s condition
fully, then, Regulus.”

And without saying anything else she got up, fixed

her skirt and walked out of the room with a cold
face.

Anne stood there, feeling small and humiliated.

“Why is she angry?” Regulus asked. “What

happened to Elizabeth? She was in quite a state
when I helped her through the floo.”

“Elizabeth’s going to live,” Anne said, knowing that

was his biggest worry.

“Of course, I knew that. I had no doubts of that

when I sent her to you, you’re the person I trust
the most for it, Anne,” Regulus said. “But what’s
happening?”

Anne walked towards the desk and chair, sitting

where Mia had been sitting on and filling a glass of
her own with brandy. She sighed, guilt wearing her
down and eating her from inside out. She took a
long, deep sip.

“I crossed the line,” she put the cup back on the

table, making more noise than it needed. Regulus
froze. “I seem to do that a lot, but not people call
me out on it and, somehow, I’m always taken by
surprise.”

“What did you do?”

“Elizabeth’s pregnant,” Anne said. “I put a

diagnosing spell on her against her wishes. I took
her consent away.”

“You meant well.”

“She wants to keep the baby,” Anne added.

“I imagined so,” Regulus said, nodding to himself

and crossing his hands behind his back. His back
cracked, but he ignored it. “That sounds like
something Elizabeth would do.”

“You cannot be agreeing with her, certainly,” Anne

said, scandalised.

“Agreeing? No. Understanding? Yes,” Regulus said.

“And I’m sure that if you grew with a family such as
hers, you would as well. Though I would not,
particularly, keep the child had it been me, I can
understand if she wants to keep it.”

Anne sighed.

“Why must you and Mia make sense? It makes me

feel horrible,” Anne groaned.

Regulus sighed, walking towards her and taking her

cup from her, taking a sip from it himself.

“Is it her husband’s?” he asked.

“Yes,” Anne said.

“Then I feel bad for her, but some hope. She’s a

good, pretty girl. She’ll find someone else if she
wants once this is over, and she’ll have a chance of
raising the child to be good person, perhaps even
make the child a pretty one, if it takes after her,”
Regulus was honest. “If she keeps it, even without
her husband, though her reputation might be
ruined, still the child will be hers – not his… hers
and only hers. Keeping the child might be her own
second chance,” he shrugged. “You came back in
time for yours, and she’ll keep her own time for
hers. It’s only fair everybody can have one, don’t
you think so?”

She looked down at her feet, straightening her legs

alongside the table, but her heels still on the floor.

“If she hadn’t known –”

“Then it would’ve been an accident, or so she would

say and tell herself for years to come,” Regulus
said, cutting her off. “But, might I be honest, I do
not think she would’ve believed it. If she asked you
not to use the spell, it meant she already had a
suspicion and it would’ve been enough to keep her
awake at night if I know her well enough to say
such a thing. She’s a sensitive girl. Anything would
keep her wondering and fearing.”

“She’ll recover. Sensitive or not, we, women, are

known for being strong,” Anne said. “She would
recover from this.”

Regulus’ grin made her feel a bit better.

“No doubt,” he said. “If she’s half the woman you

are in recovery, she’ll be alright… in time. But I
don’t think she would want to be better if she ever
did that.”

“I can’t understand it,” she admitted.

“But you ought to respect, either you like it or not.

As a Healer, you’ll meet people with very different
ideas and very different views of the world and
you’ll heal them all the same, because that’s who
you are and that’s how the job is done,” Regulus
said. “I can see this… irks you. Is it because it’s so
personal?”

Anne took a moment to gather herself, pouring

more alcohol into her cup and then sipping her
brandy. She tried to find the correct words to
express her pain, anger and confusion.

“When it first happened and I went to Severus, I

had been so sure I was pregnant, you know?” she
admitted. “I thought of doing something drastic as
I went down to the dungeons. Perhaps a ‘fall’ could
be enough, but perhaps it would hurt me more
than… it. So I prayed.”

“You’re not religious,” Regulus said.

“No, I’m not. But I did. Not to God, but to my

parents. I wanted nothing more than for them to
make it go away, you know? And… now, look at
me, making this all about me again,” she laughed,
bitterly. “When I grew up, everything was about
Harry, and now I seem to make everything be
about me.”

“At least you know that this, specifically, is not

about you, though,” he said, sounding almost
hopeful.

“Yes, but –”

“Then, don’t make it about you,” Regulus said. “It’s

Elizabeth’s story and it’s her choice. As a Healer,
you need to respect it and follow it through.”

“It might kill her.”

“It’s her life to give,” Regulus insisted.

Anne nodded.

“You’re right,” she mumbled, finishing her brandy.

Regulus smiled sadly.

“I’m sorry if I did sound… firm.”

“You’re alright,” she said, getting up from her chair

and walking to him. He opened his arms, receiving
her into his arms, her arms hugging his waist.
“Spend the night?”

“I will. I want to talk to Elizabeth in the morning,”

he said.

Notes:
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Chapter 117: Chapter One

Hundred and Sixteen -
Summary:
Anne's flaw are shown once more:
Hypocrisy and Egoistical
Behaviour.

OPTIONS

Dearest Mister Black,

I have read your ‘urgent’ letter with the upmost

respect for your care of my niece, Elizabeth Fawley.
However, I cannot accept to receive a pregnant
woman running away from her husband; I have two
unwed daughters that certainly would have their
reputations ruined for forever, as I’m sure you are
aware. My daughters are young and Miss Elizabeth
is already past nineteen years of age, she should
stay and work on her relationship, no matter the
political intrigues inside the relationship, for after
all a woman should not speak of politics with her
husband.

Unless you find a way of keeping her married and

honoured, I cannot jeopardize my own children’s
safety and future for a woman I saw once in my life
when she was but a child, but that is now about to
have a child herself. If you understand what I mean
by my polite request, then do make sure you follow
the correct orders of things and make this child be
born inside a new wedlock. Or make her a
wonderful widow, young enough to marry again.

With all my regards,

Emre

“That horrid man!” Mia said, shocked, sitting on

Elizabeth’s beside. “There’s not a single drop of
compassion inside that man, I should’ve known.”

Anne looked up from the letter Regulus was holding

since she was standing behind him to read it over
his shoulder.

“Did you meet him before?” she asked, surprised.

“Not in person, but my late brother did and he had

not a kind word to say about that man,” Mia said.
“He was rude and short.”

“My cousins are wonderful people, but my Uncle

Emre is… conservative,” Elizabeth said, searching
for the word and settling at it. “He’s very concerned
in marrying them off well. The oldest one, Defne, is
barely fourteen yet, and then there’s Cemile, who’s
twelve, and little Oya, who’s just turned nine. I
can’t blame him.”

“Is there another way we can approach this, Mia?

Besides going into the next Death Eater meeting
and killing the bastard straight away?” Regulus
said, bitterly. “We need to get her out of the
country so she be safe.”

“I’m safe here,” Elizabeth said. “I’m… I can pay and

work around, earn my keep, Mistress Potter, really,
I can,” her hands had started shaking. “I will not
bother anyone at all, I’ll stay inside my bedroom.”

Anne resisted her wish to roll her eyes.

“You can’t, Elizabeth. You’re pregnant and, if you

want this child to be safe, you’ll need some
freedom or some extent of it,” Anne said. “The
Manor is safe for now, of course, and I would rather
keep you close for the first trimester, but you’ll
need fresh air and walks and sun! We can’t keep
you locked up here.”

“We have a garden,” Mia said.

“It’s certainly not enough, Mia,” Anne said. “The

Orders meetings are here and, even if we keep
them out of her way, she can’t have the stress and
the tension the meetings bring just by happening.
Besides, they can’t know Regulus’ involvement in
this; I have been so bloody careful to keep him
away, and her presence might just… expose this.”

“I won’t say anything,” Elizabeth said.

“He’s are very good Legimens, Dumbledore, I

mean,” Anne said. “Even when you’re silent, he
might be able to know.”

Regulus frowned, mind working fast.

“I have properties outside of the country she can

stay in until we change her family’s mind,” Regulus
said. “I can send another letter, explain the
situation in better words or something like that.
There’s has to be a way.”

“In most of the family properties under your name,

she would need to be added to the wards, which
would make at least your mother aware of her
whereabouts,” Anne said. “They are under no vow
to protect her. They would rattle her out, and find a
way to not tell everybody you were involved.
Besides, if they learn anything about it, they’ll be
sure Narcissa was involved. I can’t afford losing
her, Regulus, she is in great position for the
information that I need.”

Regulus held back on glaring to Anne. Once more,

she was thinking of winning the war and not about
Elizabeth. He knew Anne was jealous of Elizabeth to
some extent since she was always allowed to be in
public with him and –

“You could marry me,” Elizabeth said suddenly.

“You can order your mother to bless us.”

…And Elizabeth had just given her more reason.

“I cannot,” Regulus dismissed quickly. “And I will

not,” he added as an afterthought, looking straight
at Anne at that.

Anne raised a single eyebrow at him.

“I know you don’t like me like that, Regulus, I’m

not stupid, but this doesn’t have to be an actual
marriage. Just in name, I will not want your money,
I’ll sign a paper saying so,” Elizabeth said, almost
pleadingly. Her eyes were wide, begging for
attention, as they filled with tears.

“This isn’t about money or about my love for you,

Elizabeth,” Regulus said in a sigh.

“I don’t want either from you, then it should be

alright,” Elizabeth insisted.

Anne crossed her arms, begging herself to not be

childish. Elizabeth was traumatised and looking for
safety for herself and her child; the logical part of
her brain insisted that she would do the very same
for herself, if the cased begged for it. The thing is
that he didn’t like Regulus looking at Elizabeth that
way, so… caringly tender.

She knew that Regulus liked Elizabeth to some

extent, she had been a good friend for him in
school before she got married and the contact had
been cut for decency’s sake. He had always been
protective of her, she was naïve and almost child-
like in her actions and thoughts, always so obedient
and submissive; perhaps he was protective of her
because she couldn’t protect herself in the world
that they had been raised in. Such a feeling
would’ve grown with the knowledge of the child
growing inside of her, of course; Regulus was a
good person and he would certainly care for the
pregnant woman in the room – as long as the
pregnant lady wasn’t his cousin Bellatrix.

“This isn’t it, Elizabeth. The fact is that I am already

married,” he answered.

Anne looked down to not see Elizabeth’s

disappointed face.

She had known, as well, that Elizabeth cared for

Regulus perhaps more than Regulus cared for her.
Or at least, cared for him in another sense. The
reason she had been jealous because Regulus
didn’t seem to notice.

“Who?” Elizabeth asked.

“Me,” Anne sighed out. “I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth didn’t look disappointed anymore, she

looked like she had just had an epiphany.

“Actually, it does makes sense,” she admitted. “I

should’ve known… you do look at each other like
you’re in love.”

Mia shifted on the bed beside Elizabeth, sitting at

her feet. She looked uncomfortable and concerned.
Even she had noticed Elizabeth’s sudden happiness
when Regulus walked into the room, worried about
her condition and congratulating her upon the news
of her upcoming heir; it hadn’t been too difficult to
put her reaction besides Anne’s locked jaw to
understand that Anne had some reason behind her
exasperation with the girl.

“We are very much in love,” Regulus said,

validating Anne’s feeling without hurting
Elizabeth’s. “I’m sorry for the situation you find
yourself in and I’m sorry that I’m not able to help
more, Eliza. Really, I wish there was more I could
in my position.”

“You’re already doing a lot, Regulus,” Mia said,

jumping into the conversation. “You’re putting your
life in danger every single day. We cannot ask more
from you.”

Elizabeth seemed a bit embarrassed from her

reaction now, blush coming to her face.

Anne took over the conversation, trying to move

the subject along.

“And your ribs?” Anne asked.

“They seem to hurt a bit, especially when I’m lying

down, which is… almost all the time,” Elizabeth
said, sighing.

“The potions are supposed to be making effect

already,” Mia said, frowning in worry.

“They might be late because she hasn’t been eating

well, though,” Anne said. “We need to start finding
ways to keep her stomach in check.”

“I never had such difficulty, so Coco never really

learnt how to make those types of foods,” Mia
admitted.

Regulus blinked.

“Kreacher knows,” he said. All eyes turned to him.

“He’s been keeping Bellatrix fed and she threw up
pretty much everything in the first trimester. He
can work with Coco, or at least teach her what a
pregnant woman can and cannot eat.”

Kreacher wasn’t happy from being called away from

serving in his house and comfortable place, but he
was quite happy for having his first mission coming
from his new Mistress, listening attentively as she
described Elizabeth’s symptoms.

“A pregnant lady is not able to eat too much fish,

the smell makes her nauseous, and shrimp is
completely forbidden in this case, because she’s
allergic,” Anne said. “She needs a lot of calcium
and good, fruity sugar.”

“Kreacher will take care of Mistress,” Kreacher said

firmly. “Kreacher will teach Coco the right way to
care for expecting Mistress.”

Regulus chuckled, leaning back on Anne’s bed since

they were in her bedroom. Kreacher was standing
in the middle of the room while she sat on the foot
of the bed, legs resting on the seat at the foot of
the bed as well. Regulus was sitting with his back
on the headboard, legs stretched out on the bed;
he was holding Esme, the doll, on his lap, absently
playing with her delicate hands and the sleeves of
the red dress Mia had made for the doll.

“I’m sorry, I’m not expecting, Kreacher,” Anne said.

“It’s for me, it’s for a friend. She needs all she can
get because she’s recovering from an attack. Of
course, you cannot talk about this to anyone in
Grimmauld Place.”

Kreacher wide eyes made him look like he was

guilty of the worst crime possible as he stuttered
and staggered around to look for words for the
embarrassment he was feeling; he hated that his
Mistress looked somewhat uncomfortable as well.
He was about to cry when Anne sent him away with
kind words and an order to go to the kitchen and
start on dinner and help Coco.

Anne sat there, unmoving.

“What is it, Anne?” Regulus asked, looking up from

the doll. “I told you I don’t feel anything for
Elizabeth in the day we had our Promising, and
then I went and married you. I thought it would be
enough.”

“No. This isn’t about Elizabeth,” dismissed Anne.

“Or, well, I guess it is, just… not in the way you
think it is.”

Carefully putting Esme beside him on the bed and

crawling towards her until he was sitting behind
her, gently touching her arms in a careful embrace,
Regulus’ mind tried to work out what was the
problem Anne was alluding to.

“I don’t understand, then,” he admitted, chin

resting on her shoulder.

Gently, his hands touched her belly, not on

purpose, but brushing against it before his hands
met in front of her body in an actual hug.

“Do you want a child?” Anne asked.

Regulus almost let go of her, but held himself back

from doing so, but he couldn’t help but freeze for a
second longer than Anne cared for.

“I suppose so,” he admitted. “Not now. I mean,

now I do, but not right away. I mean… I didn’t
before you, but I do now,” he explained. “I was
going to be forced to marry a pureblood girl and
have Heirs that would never be mine or her, but
the family’s and the House’s, but never truly ours.
We’d have to teach them things I wouldn’t care for
doing in hopes that would keep our family name
alive. But with you it would be different. Most of the
illnesses in our family are only triggered by family
magic or too much inbreeding, so our children
would be safe and healthy.”

“That’s the thing,” Anne admitted. “I don’t know if I

can have children.”

“We would adopt then,” he dismissed. “Blood

matters little to me.”

“That’s not what I mean, Little Prince,” she sighed,

turning around a bit to look into his eyes. She
looked worried. “I mean, I don’t know if I could
possibly deal with a child. I don’t even know how
an actual child is supposed to act! What if I mess
them up? What if I hit them? What if I scream at
them? I mean, that’s all I know about how to raise
a child.”

Regulus closed his eyes for a moment.

He knew those thoughts. He had those thoughts

before Anne, but in the moment that he knew that
there was no way he could ever be purposefully
unkind or violent towards a piece of her. He would
parent the child, of course, but he would never
raise his wand towards them or would have them
kneel in front of him as he leaned down and
screamed insults at their face.

“If we do have a child, which I will not impose on

you, we won’t be perfect, Anne; nobody is,”
Regulus admitted. “But we would do a better job
than those who raised us and we would make
everything in our power work for the child to be
safe and happy. Do you agree with that much?
Happiness and safety?”

“Of course I do,” she said.

“Then I’m sure you’d be a good enough mother,”

Regulus said.

“But I saw you with that kid in the last ball and I
see you taking care of Barty,” Anne said. “Regulus,
you’re wonderful at this.”

“Then leave the heavy lift to me,” he dismissed.

“Anne, we don’t need to rush into anything. We
have time.”

“But do we?” she asked, eyes watering just a bit.

It broke Regulus’ heart.

“Isn’t that why we are fighting?” he asked, kissing

her forehead. “We’ll see about that when we need
to. It’s not worth thinking about it when are doing
all we can for a child to not come into a world such
as this one we are in right now. War first, we think
of children later. Deal?”

“Deal,” she admitted.

Regulus liked children and he liked being around

children as well, much to Anne’s confusion. He
wanted children, but he wanted her more – he
wanted children with her, but only when and if she
was ready for it.

He reached for her face, cleaning her tears and

kissing her cheeks. She blushed a bit. The
proximity of him was taking some toll on her ability
to think. She had missed him a lot, and she had
been lonely.

Careful, she pulled him by the white shirt he had

been using into a kiss.

At first, it had been chaste as one he would give

her in front of her mother (less chaste than the one
he would give in front of her father), but soon it
was something that teenagers do in dark corners of
Hogsmeade, hands wandering from the post of the
bed to her waist and soon her hips, slowly moving
to cup her backside as he lied down on the bed,
legs half out of the bed.

“I missed you,” she said.

“I noticed,” he answered, cheekily.

Pulling her flush against him, making her lie on top

of him, legs intertwined, Regulus could feel his own
excitement taking over his body; his erection was
already half awake. He pushed her hips up with his
and she got the message, parting her legs and
putting her legs on each side of his body, leaning
down for a deeper kiss – lips, tongues and saliva
met with enthusiasm as hands wandered once
more.

Her hands touched his chest and wandered down

his stomach, sliding down to his boner that was
resting in between her legs. His hands were
massaging her breasts, rolling her nipples once he
reached inside her shirt.

She moaned into his mouth.

“More,” she whimpered.

“More?”

“Yes, please,” she answered.

“I will –”

The door to the bedroom opened at once.

Anne yelped, sitting in surprise. Regulus got his

torso sustained by his elbows as he looked at the
door with wide eyes.

Much to their despair, it wasn’t a Death Eater

standing there; it was James Potter and Monty
Potter.

Anne rolled to the side, fixing her shirt and

trousers. Regulus rolled to the other side, keeping
his back turned to the Potters as he reached inside
his trousers, fixed himself to make the erection less
noticeable.

“I’m going to rip my eyes out,” James said.

“Don’t be dramatic, James,” Monty said, trying his

best to act nonchalant and light-hearted, but he too
was uncomfortable. “We came here to tell we have
an idea how to deal with Elizabeth’s situation. We
thought you were dealing with the feeding issue. I
suppose that’s done with.”

“Coco and Kreacher are in the kitchen right now,”

Anne said, blushing.

Regulus slowly turned around, willing his erection

to go away at once. It was embarrassing as he
turned around to look at the men, who were
looking at him. James made the very obvious effort
to not look anywhere close the still obvious
situation happening. Regulus sat on the bed,
angling his leg just right to hide it.

“Kreacher is going to teach Coco what to do in case

he cannot be in here all the time,” he explained.
“I’ve been through some of my more… private
location.”

“Hm,” made James, frowning.

“He means the ones he bought without his family’s

knowledge, you dirty mind,” Anne quickly cut him
off.

“You call me a dirty mind when he says that

sentence right after I caught you two… fornicating?”
James asked. Monty and Regulus cringed at the
word choice, but Anne just glared and crossed her
arms. “Look, we talked to the Evans’. They agreed
to take her in. The garden is bigger, she’ll be able
to actually go on walks and everything and she’ll
still be safe and close enough to us.”

She exchanged a look with Regulus. She had

assumed the Evans wouldn’t like the idea; they
were closed off to a lot of people for a reason.

“Misses Evans is more than happy to help as well.

She had two daughters, after all,” Monty added.
“She knows what is to be expected. And she’s
helped births before.”

“She’s a teacher, though. Elizabeth might need

more than someone that had two daughters before
and was emotional support in others,” Anne said,
her bitterness still showing.

“Her mother was not a teacher, though,” Monty

explained. “Her mother was a midwife. She lived
with her mother up until her marriage. She assisted
when needed, so she knows well enough what to
do.”

Anne nodded. She had never seen a birth before

and Rose’s knowledge was a good option in case
Madame Pomfrey couldn’t come and a good option
for when Harry came as well. Rose and Christian
would be alive for the birth this time around, since
they were stuck inside the Cottage and no longer
using cars, therefore no accidents were to happen.

“Why are you being so rude today? Did something

happen?” James asked.

Anne sighed.

“It’s not on purpose,” she said. “And it’s something

personal, don’t worry. I’m working on it.”

“Good,” Monty said. “That girl is going to need you,

Anne. You and Petunia are going to be needed
there.”

Anne wanted to cut him off and say that Severus

needed her to heal his very painful stump and
phantom pains, she wanted to say that Regulus
needed her in case anything wrong happened and
that she needed some time for herself because so
much had happened so fast and now there was a
girl she barely knew living inside her house and
having knowledge that even the Order didn’t have.

Her bitterness wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t pretty

either, but she knew exactly what she needed to
answer.

“I’ll be there.”

Even if she didn’t want to, Anne would always be

there and take the weight of heavy conversations
that would trigger her for the hopes of someone
else healing, even if she was still struggling herself.
She would heal Elizabeth the best she could, even if
that wasn’t something she knew how to, because
that’s what she wanted to do in the future.

She wanted to be a Healer, so she was to heal her.

Chapter 118: Chapter One

Hundred and Seventeen -
Summary:
FIFTH SEASON

Notes:
Leave a comment of what you
expect of this new season.
(See the end of the chapter for more
notes.)

FIFTHY SEASON

Lawrence

16th of January, 1978,

Dearest Love of my Life,

Now that my family is no longer a danger to us, I

write this with the confidence a man like with a wife
like you should write. It’s been two days since the
last time I saw you and yet I feel the need to write
this very explicitly: I miss you; I feel lonely without
you and I wish we had been able to finish what he
had started before your father walked in.

Now, however, I wish to share with you the news

that I find you would find extremely important.

Bellatrix Lestrange has given birth to a healthy

baby boy and will take a week or so before
announcing it as the purebloods do. He was given
to the world as Roddy’s son, for ‘safety’ reasons
and to not kill her reputation once and for all. She
has given him the name and title of the Honourable
Lawrence Cygnus Black-Lestrange, Lord of the
House Lestrange of Brighton. Quite the fancy and
long name for such a small child, I fear.

I think she insisted the child to take her name in

case he was ever stripped of the title, something
that I would not put past Roddy or Bash. I suppose
it’s for the best; if anything happens to her and
Roddy, as Head of the House (while Bash acts as
Heir until the child grows), the child comes to me.
She offered me the position of godfather, but I
have refused and the child has Cygnus as his
godfather, much to Rabastan’s dismay; Bash and
Uncle Cygnus never got along as splendidly as
Roddy and Cygnus.

Lawrence is living under the protection of the

House of Black, in Grimmauld Place, for now, since
the Dark Lord has taken residence in the newest
headquarters: Lestrange Manor. He used to be in
Malfoy Manor, after all Severus knew where the
headquarters were and, though he believes him to
be dead, he thought it to be safer either way.

Yours, forever,

R.A.B

PS: You asked me not too long about the House’s

titles, and I am surprised that you don’t know that.
The Potters are “The Most Courageous and Most
Faithful House of Potter”, while the Blacks are “The
Most Noble and Most Ancient House of Black”, and
our dearest cousins: Malfoys, “The Most Powerful
and Most Magnificent House of Malfoy” and, at the
end, Lestrange “The Most Lively and Most
Enchanting House of Lestrange”. Quite the
mouthful, isn’t it?

17th of January of 1978,

Dearest of Husbands,

I, too, wish our passion had not been interrupted,

but it was too embarrassing to be caught like that
by my family to even think of continuing such
activities. I wish nothing more than to be with you
as well.

I am happy that your little cousin is alive and well

and I’m glad that he lives with you, for the idea of
your cousin Bellatrix taking care of a child certainly
makes me anxious and fearful for one’s life – the
messed-up sleeping-schedule alone seems enough
to drive anyone mad, let alone one already half-
way there. If there’s someone that actually scares
me, is your cousin. How is little Lawrence, then?
What do you call him? I’m sure a child is not called
‘Lawrence’. What about ‘Laurie’?

Elizabeth has not been talking to me too much,

which is understandable. Still, I worry about her,
she has been every time more distant from us,
even from Severus, whom she had some
attachment left, and Mia, whom she seemed to get
along with. It’s much against my own feelings and
only agreeing with my own mind that I urge you to
write to her, Regulus, she has been very sad and
lost in her own thoughts – I could only guess what
goes on in her mind, and I could also guess that it’s
nothing goo.

Madame Pomfrey is to come and have a throughout

examination of Elizabeth and the child tomorrow.

James has been scarcely looking me in the eye.

Sirius asked what happened, but I don’t think
James told him. I think he’s too scared of reliving
the memory if he explains what he saw in my
bedroom. Mum is mad at him for being so
awkward, so I think he told her when she came to
visit this morning.

They have called me for dinner. I need to go.

Yours,

Annie.

January, 16th of 1978,

My dearest, Annie,

I find myself without words to explain to you how

embarrassed I am for what happened, but I wrote
to your father – against your better judgment as
well, I fear – in the hopes of getting back into his
good side. We are married after all and it is
expected that we do have our little moments when
we are alone, and I’m sure he’ll think the same
once he’s married to your mum. I have yet to
receive answer, but I feel confident of my word-
choosing, for you said I had talent on writing
before.

I have been playing piano for Lawrence a lot, it

helps him sleep. He sleeps well for a baby so
young, but he’s very fragile. He’s well, don’t eat a
lot of the milk, which is worrying Kreacher. Aunt
Druella gets him most of the time, but I manage to
get him a few hours a day, much to my mother’s
dismay – apparently, a man shouldn’t stay with the
baby at all. I’m quite happy with showing him
around the house, though.

Oh, Anne, I wish you could come. You should see

him. He’s adorable. So small, so fragile and so full
of a strength that I do not know or understand –
there’s wisdom I believe we lose once we grow in
those eyes.

I wouldn’t believe he’s Tom Riddle’s son, had I not

known where he came from.

He has such dark eyes, almost black. It’s nothing

like Bellatrix’s; it’s like he can see almost all that
happens around him, understand it and have an
opinion on it. If this child is raised right, he can go
so far.

In the hopes I can see you soon,

Your beloved husband.

January 17th, 1978,

Dear Reggie,

Every day, I seem to be understanding more and

more that the stories of those around me aren’t
mine. I feel selfish and pathetic for all I’ve done.

I made a scene when Sirius mentioned getting an

apartment to live alone with Remus. I try not to say
or think too much at the idea of my parents moving
away to live by themselves as well. I hate that
you’re not with me. I made a scene when Severus
was hurt because I had been scared. I made a
scene when Elizabeth took a decision about her
own life which I did not agree.

How childish and self-centred of me.

And for the longest time everybody enabled me, so

when they started cutting me off, it felt a lot worse
than it did before. I had been pitied for so long that
I stopped recognizing it as such and saw it as
nothing other than kindness – I shouldn’t have
dropped my guard. I made everyone feel bad
because of it.

And to add to my problems, I seem to be as

hypocritical as you mentioned that one moment
where he had a small argument.

There was a moment where I was somewhat

sobered up these last few days and it was like
hearing your voice whispering in my ear how I was
treating Elizabeth exactly like Dumbledore treated
me my whole life – like a pawn, like I was nothing
more than his fighter or soldier, I was never my
own person.

Perhaps, that was the reason I was interested in

making everything about me…

I’m proudful, I have always been, since my very

first life and it hurts me to even think of apologising
for something so personal as a flaw I have,
something that I’ll have to actively fight to change.
But I will, once I gather enough courage.

I will apologise.

But to you, and only to you, I’ll apologise right

away.

My love, nothing I could do in front of you would

make me embarrassed enough to feel angry. So
here it goes: I’m sorry for the senseless arguments
and intimate attacks that I sent your way with cruel
words and actions to follow. I love you. I’ll try to be
better, and I’m confident I’ll succeed. However, I
urge you to call me out whenever you catch me
lacking on my promise.

I miss you,

Yours, faithfully,

Annie.

Ps: Send more stories about Lawrence when you

can. I like to read about him. I wish I can meet him
soon enough.

January, 18th, year of 1978

Darling Anne-Girl,

I applaud you for the start on this battle that I

promise you to help fight. Dearest of Annes in this
world and the most amazing of wives, I applaud
myself for managing to get you by my side for
forever, ‘til death do us part. I accept your apology,
darling. No hesitation, no fear. All of this, for I
know you will succeed in whatever you set your
mind to.

I understand your side. I am at your side. Anne,

you grew so alone, it’s normal and expected that
you wish for attention once you actually have it –
especially if it’s a good one. Sure, you did cross the
line (something, as you said it yourself, you tend to
do), but you saw your mistakes. You err, you’re
human, after all. You ought to fix it, and I urge to,
but only because you seem willing on it; I promised
I would be beside you, no matter if you were right
or not, that’s what marriage it – the promise of
company and companionship, even in our worst
mistakes, but the promise of trying to get it all
right, for the companion’s sake, if not yourself. I’m
proud of you. You’re such a remarkable woman.

Now, for someone that claims to have no written

eloquence, you seem to be doing good for yourself.
As I read your letter to myself once more, out loud,
trying to imagine the sound of your voice echoing
with mine in my room it managed to calm a very
playful Lawrence – your words managed to make a
young baby sleep and stop whining for attention
even after I held him for two hours, an amazing
feat, especially if the baby is Lawrence Black, I
assure you.

Once more, on your next problem, I once more

understand you, for I have caught myself doing the
same. In a war, it's hard and damaging to see the
people fighting on both sides as human and as
people with their own lives and worries; I have
caught myself looking through the ranks of the
organization I find myself within with something
akin to surprise – I have imagined them in such
cartoonish manner that I find myself in shock when
they as much as mention a pet or their children,
always putting myself above their level in disgust.
But I’m no better; I kill and I torture all the same,
even if I do feel bad about it later, but as I do, I’m
sure there’s someone in there that feels bad, but
hides it as well as I do. Still, it’s hard sometimes to
not think of the people I kill as nothing more than
memories and admit to myself they are real. It’s
hard to kill people. Like it’s hard to put them in
danger knowingly – so I conclude: you are only just
protecting yourself.

I never actually meant to compare you to

Dumbledore, my love. I know your story with them
and I know the uncontrollable rage you must have
felt when I said that and I apologise, for I too
crossed that line.

I miss you too,

Reggie.

Notes:
What do we think of Lawrence???

Chapter 119: Chapter One

Hundred and Eighteen -
Summary:
Severus makes another great
sacrifice, which is certainly
appreaciated

SPINNER’S END

Severus Snape had taken a great hit on his pride

when he allowed himself to share his address to the
people that he had been forced to live with for the
time being. It wasn’t just the house or the fact that
they might guess a thing or two about his childhood
as they walked through the neighbourhood in
general, but that house had been his safe place
ever since he ran his father off – nobody but Lily
Evans and her Muggle family and Narcissa and
Regulus knew where he lived at and nobody but
Narcissa and Regulus would dare bother him in that
place. Now, however, the people he had hated
most of his life were standing in front of the wards
of his house, watching the almost abandoned
neighbourhood with some shock and he knew that
as he sat in his bed at the Potter Manor in anxiety.

In Spinner’s End, Remus looked around is a stance

a lot more relaxed than his boyfriend’s. He had
never been very rich and most of the money his
family had made as he grew up had been thrown
towards his monthly medical necessities. So, a
neighbourhood almost forgotten by Britain would’ve
been an amazing place for him to live at growing up
– if his father had known of this place, they
would’ve certainly moved there.

However, Sirius Black had been raised in monetary

privilege since he had been born. His family were
arseholes, certainly, but they had been rich
arseholes and the only moments he went hungry
were as punishment or by choice, not because
there was nothing but mint leaves on his
cupboards. These neighbourhoods had been the
ones his parents had said Muggles lived at, but that
he knew to be a lie as he grew… or at least, he had
thought so. As he walked, mud squashed under his
shoes, and he was almost sure the water in the dirt
had not been because of rain by the strong smell.

“This is disgusting,” Sirius complained. “It’s

freezing.”

“It’s an old, industrial and abandoned

neighbourhood in the poor part of town, Sirius,”
Remus dismissed as he crossed his arms. “I grew
up in very similar places, so I feel somewhat at
home. You can be sure there are squatters in some
of these houses, some druggies as well.”

“Do you think Lily and Anne are alright in there?”

Sirius asked, worried, as he looked at the empty
space near the riverbank at the back of the
property that he couldn’t see. “They’ve been gone
for almost half-an-hour and it’s cold. I hope they
don’t take too much more.”

“They’re probably looking for his journals,” Remus

answered. “They would’ve come outside if needed.
The floo has been locked according to the
paperwork Monty filled. He’s… deceased to the
world, officially.”

Sirius sighed, still worried, but holding himself back

from screaming for them.

Inside the house, Lily and Anne were quite alright

and a lot more comfortable than the couple outside.

While the neighbourhood had been abandoned, the

house was lived in and certainly a lot cosier than
the winter cold outside. The spell at the fireplace
made sure it was always safely burning once the
temperature dropped under 10 degrees and the
smoke was not invading the house. It wasn’t the
first time Anne was inside the house, so she had
ignored the small burn-marks on the wallpapers
and some of the furniture around the house as she
looked for the thick, leather covered journals
scattered around the house, but Lily just couldn’t
help herself.

“I have never been inside his house,” Lily admitted.

“Dad always said it would’ve been improper,
especially after Fourth Year, and his father was
always so angry that I just couldn’t bring myself to
be too curious. I was too afraid of Mister Snape.”

“Tobias Snape was always scary,” Anne agreed.

“You met him?” Lily asked, surprised.

“No. He was already dead when I met Severus. I

just know of him, and I’m scared of him enough
this way,” Anne answered. “He was a terrible
person, but a worse husband and the worst of
fathers. Severus is lucky he got out alive.”

“Severus told you in this time or on your time?” Lily

asked.

“A few things here and a few things there,” she

admitted, as vaguely as possible.

Lily seemed to want to ask, but didn’t right away.

As they walked up the stairs towards the bedrooms

with already one of the three journals found (it had
been on a cupboard at the kitchen), however, Lily
couldn’t hold herself back anymore.

“Were the burn marks… something Severus had to

deal with?” Lily asked.

“If you’re asking if Tobias has another way to

dispose of his lit cigarette buds besides the
furniture or wallpaper, then yes,” Anne said. She
sighed. “Mum, don’t ask me… please, I don’t feel
comfortable with betraying his trust any more than
I already did with this sentence. Don’t ask me.”

Lily sighed, knowing that even if she asked,

Severus wouldn’t answer about that part of his life
to her, she nodded. The secrets inside that house
weren’t for her to know, and she had to learn to
accept it. She had always been a curious child and
if she had noticed something off with Severus, she
had always nagged him until he told her what was
happening. She now knew it to have been lighter
versions of what he had really been going through
in the hopes it wouldn’t destroy her innocence: his
parents had been ‘arguing’ when he left, he had
‘walked in’ his parent’s alone time, he had been
‘spanked’ by his father. Whatever was happening in
that house, it was a lot worse. The childish part of
her felt guilty for not knowing, even if she had no
way to do so or what do for him as a child. The
grown part, tried to understand why an adult man
would tell things like this to a child.

As she walked into the master bedroom and Anne

into Severus’ single bedroom, they started
searching the other two.

“Found it!” Anne screamed a few seconds into the

search. “He’s confident on his warding abilities,
didn’t even hide the journals well in his house.”

Lily kneeled down, reaching under the bed, but

finding nothing. She sighed, getting up and seeing
Anne walking into the bedroom with the journal
open, reading through some of the spells in there.

“Severus has always been good in casting spells,

better than a lot of people in our year, just not
confident enough to be as good in public,” Lily said.
“Had he been more sure of himself, he would’ve
gotten a lot further in life.”

“He’s happy as a Potions –” Anne stopped herself

and sighed, taking a deep breath. “He was very
happy as Potions Master before I went and fucked
that up for him.”

Lily rolled his eyes.

“You were trying to save his life, and you did,” Lily
said. “He’ll know that soon enough when the
grieving process is over. Madame Pomfrey agreed
with your theory about the amputation and gave
you the order to cut it off, he cannot blame you for
saving his life.”

“He can, and he does, though he doesn’t hate me

as much,” Anne said. “He doesn’t hate me
anymore; he just wishes I hadn’t saved him at all. I
heard him talking to Regulus not too long ago; he
said he would’ve been better off dead than
suffering magicless and in the Manor.”

“Do you really think the Manor is worse than the

house he suffered so much in?” Lily asked, crossing
her arms. “I mean, I don’t know what happened,
but I know it wasn’t good.”

“He never got along with Dad,” Anne dismissed.

“School-yard rivalry,” Lily said. “It’s childish to hold

onto that.”

“James is rich. Severus is not. James has a family.

Severus has none,” Anne said. “They never got
along, but Severus is aware of what he’s lacking
when compared to him. I wouldn’t like to compare
myself to others and come under, even if I do it
myself, even if I do it without meaning to.”

Anne was sounding unusually wise. Lily was usually

the one to be so emotionally intelligent in the
conversation, however Anne seemed to be taking
the role for the subject of Severus Snape. Lily
understood that Severus didn’t just ‘hate’ James,
but that he was jealous of James – not because of
her, as the childish and selfish part of her would
like her to think, but because James was everything
he wanted to be as grew: loved.

It was in the moment that Lily finally caught onto

something: she had never understood Severus
Snape. She had befriended him because he had
been kind, because he had explained to her a world
she belonged into, but had never heard of; she had
never known the true extent of the abuse and fear
Severus went through and watched happening
every single day inside his own home, where a child
was supposed to feel comfortable and safe. She felt
herself lacking. Had the little friendship they had
even been real at all? Had she been a good friend
growing up?

While Severus had behaved in a jealous way

towards James, he has acted obsessively towards
her, both for the same reason: because he wanted
to be just like them. Jealousy was a hard feeling to
mistake – while in a man towards another man it
was seen as anger, towards a woman it’s seen as
possessive. He had mistaken it both times, reading
it wrong and misunderstanding it to a gross extent.
He had never loved her as he had claimed, it had
always been the wish to be like her.

“Found it,” Anne said.

Lily looked up at her once more.

Anne had reached up on the dresser in the corner

of the room and, under a pile of clothes, the journal
was hidden. That one was not filled yet, by the
white corners of the pages at the end of the
journal. She skimmed through the journal with
comfort.

“We have to go, then,” Lily said.

“Let’s go, before Sirius and Remus freeze their

noses off outside,” Anne agreed. She smiled, as if
the conversation before had not happened at all.
“It’s so fucking cold!”

Lily had to agree to much that she didn’t even cut

Anne’s vulgar vocabulary.

Besides the classic Fidelius added to the Manor

(quite a decision, after all the Manor had always
been a public place and a welcoming place for
many) and to the Cottage (unsurprisingly with
James Potter as Secret-Keeper and Mia as the
Manor’s Secret-Keeper), there were wards that not
even Anne knew about besides the classic ones that
she had seen in the Half-Blood Prince’s potion-
book. Apparently, Severus would write something
here or there on the corner of his books, but most
of his spells were described to the minimal of
details in his journals.

Severus had read the journals and torn he personal

pages of reminders and happenings of his own life,
but did give the rest of the journals – good and bad
content – to the Potters, sitting back and allowing
them to judge him if they wanted, but they did not.
Not even James Potter seemed to think too much of
what was written inside, just learnt the spells.

Muffliato, which Anne knew well enough at that

point, made the scene inside the ward silent. Cave
Inimicum, however, was new to Anne and it took
her a moment to learn it, but understood that
Hermione probably knew it since it made the things
inside the ward invisible. Salvio Hexia, too, was
well-known by the Golden Trio and Anne, protecting
the already invisible and silent scene inside the
ward safe from most hexes (but the Unforgivables).
Some smaller spells for smell-disguising and even
going as far as specific details of making the house
look like ruins. Protego Totalum was used, the
Disillusionment Charm and the famous Muggle
Repealing Charm were used as well.

The people living there finally felt some comfort

enough to go outside, in front of the Cottage for
some hot tea when it stopped snowing in January
20th.

Elizabeth sipped her tea.

“Don’t stay too long on the cold, alright?” Rose

said, looking at Elizabeth, who looked up at her in
surprise. “I’ll walk in soon enough as well; my
knees are starting to hurt. Might as well sit down
on the library to warm up by the fire.”

“Lily is about to come back from the Manor as well,

so she might join us there,” Petunia said. “And I
really want you to finish that book you were
reading to us, Lizzie.”

Elizabeth almost laughed because of the shock.

“The Bawduwin Bard?” Elizabeth asked. “That’s a

child’s book.”

“Well, I’m curious,” Petunia said. “And only in yours

or Lily’s hands that the pictures move and dance
pretty, they don’t like being in mine.”

It was a wizarding child’s book; it was quite

expected that the dancing pictures to help children
read would be uncomfortable in Muggle hands.
Though they did look more comfortable in Petunia’s
hands than in Rose’s.

“Anne said you’re coming along well,” Chris said,

putting his now empty teacup on the small table at
the front garden. “She said you had no bleeding
and – why are you blushing?”

“That’s not a conversation to have with a man,

Mister Evans,” she admitted. “People like me, at
least, said I shouldn’t talk about anything of
pregnancy with a man that wasn’t a Healer.”

“Not even your husband?” Petunia asked.

“Not unless it’s about to be born,” Elizabeth said,

sighing out and trying to get the colours away from
her cheeks.

“I had two children, both of them ended up being

women, I think I’m used enough to hear about
bleeding and pregnancy, even if I don’t want to,
and this time I do want to know,” Chris said. “Are
you feeling better? Anne passes information to me
and Rose to keep an eye on you in the Muggle
sense. She said your blood pressure stopped
dropping since the alimentary-potions, which
means your iron-deficiency is probably gone. Isn’t
that what it means, Rose?”

“It’s a strong possibility,” Rose agreed, nodding,

still watching the snow in the front-yard and
garden.

“The fresh air and calmness are working on you,”

Chris said. “Besides, now we have a reason to send
Lily away to deal with the wedding things – no
stress for you! This means, no stress for me
either.”

Elizabeth laughed once more, giggling.

Chapter 120: Chapter One

Hundred and Nineteen -

SEVERUS SNAPE’S MAGIC

Fluxweed. Knotgrass. Lacewing flies. Live leeches.

Full horn of bicorn. Powdered horn of bicorn.
Boomslang skin. The ingredients to the very
extensive and difficult potion that Anne was about
to start was in front of her in one of the free rooms
that Mia had turned into a potion’s lab with Coco’s
help for Anne’s healing.

Elizabeth’s potions, both daily ones and the ones

Anne was saving for pregnancy emergencies, were
already in the shelves on the wall, hidden away
from the sunlight and from the heat. However, the
potion she was to use in a little over a month was
about to start and she had never done it before,
not alone, at least.

Polyjuice Potion in itself was intimidating, doing

that without Hermione over her shoulder, barking
orders was a lot more intimidating. However, this
time around she had Severus Snape sitting in the
corner of the room in a comfortable chair and
glaring at her as she smelled the powdered horn of
bicorn with her nose too close to the glass to his
taste, according to his frown.

“The lacewings were pre-stewed twenty-one days

before today, so I must start today, so help me,”
Anne said. “Tell me what to do and I follow your
instructions to the very core, Professor.”

His eyes softened at the title she threw at him,

even if she was messing with him to keep him in a
good mood since Potions were still quite the sore
spot for him after he lost his arm. His magic had
yet to appear again, and it was already February
13th – it had been more than a month and Madame
Pomfrey couldn’t tell him if his magic was coming
back or not.

“The fluxweed?” he asked.

“Dad picked it when he went out with Remus last

full moon, I kept it alive with the stasis-charm,”
Anne explained.

“Good, then let’s start,” Severus said.

He got up from his comfortable chair and walked

near to the table Anne had in the middle of the
room, it was big enough to be a dinner table for
seven or so people. He was impressed that the
Potters had it just lying around, waiting for its use.

“Three measures of fluxweed and two bundles of

knotgrass, add the cold water slowly into the
cauldron,” he said. “That cauldron is…?”

“Copper,” Anne said.

“Then, stir it four times, clockwise,” Severus said.

She did and he watched. “Now, we wait sixty
minutes.”

“A whole hour of nothing, nice,” she groaned,

walking towards the other chair, near Severus’. She
sat down and he slowly followed, sitting beside her.
“I hate how much this potion takes, really, almost a
whole month to prepare it, let alone gather the
correct ingredients.” Anne pulled her legs into her
chest, feet resting on the chair. She closed her
eyes. “I love potions, but I barely slept last night.”

Severus knew she was trying to ramble to get him

distracted from where he was and what she wasn’t
allowed to do.

“And it gets worse,” he said. She looked up at him.

“After that, you’ll turn it off and you’ll not touch it
for twenty-four hours and a half.”

“That’s so shit,” she complained. “I was so fucking

lucky Hermione just told me what to do, but usually
said I wasn’t doing it right, took it away from me
and did herself. I was good in potions, but she
was… extraordinary is so many things,” she sighed.
“I miss her a lot, even though we weren’t that
close. I was closer to Ginny, she ended up marrying
Harry, she was my best friend for sure in the first
few years in school, but we drifted away around our
fifth-year. I had… opinions about trying to help
others in the House, but she was sure we were the
only two Slytherins that didn’t want to go to the
Dark side of the war.”

“I’m sure she had her reasons, as you had yours,”

he said. If he paid attention to her story, then he
wouldn’t pay attention to his own thoughts. “What
happened to her?”

“I’m not completely sure, if I’m honest,” Anne

admitted. “She was heavily pregnant when the
Battle started. She came to Hogwarts, against
everybody’s advice and ended up in more than one
duel. I didn’t see her again after Percy died.”

“Percy Weasley? Molly’s little boy?”

“Yeah. Dolohov sent a spell towards us, Percy

pushed me away, but he couldn’t move too far
away, so when the spell hit the wall behind us, it
fell apart. My leg was caught on it, but it was barely
a scratch. Percy was under the whole bloody wall
by the time I raised my head. He screamed so loud
that my ears ringed as I searched for him,” Anne
told him. “I was terrified; there were battles around
me and he was screaming, but the stones were so
heavy, I couldn’t take them apart by myself and my
wand was somewhere in the ground, but I didn’t
think of using it, I was just digging as fast as I
could. He stopped screaming at some point. I knew
he was dead. That was when I last saw Ginny,
looking at me from the end of the corridor, just
standing there pale as Death, her mother was right
behind her, Charlie, too,” she took a deep breath.
“I found Percy’s head soon after, and he was
already dead, of course. There was nothing I could
do and my friends were dying all around me, so I
made the stupid decision of walking away. I
should’ve stayed and protected Ginny and my niece
or nephew, but I didn’t – I suppose there was
always a part of me that wanted to be a hero.”

“You’re your dad’s daughter alright,” Severus said.

Surprisingly, it didn’t sound bitter, it was

amusement.

“That was a few moments before I found you,” she

admitted, continuing the story. The room seemed
to darken. “Harry found me and said he was going
to the Shrieking Shack to try to kill Nagini. We
failed, clearly. When we got there, you were having
a discussion with the Dark Lord; he was adamant
you were the master of Dumbledore’s wand, which
wasn’t true at all, but he was so sure of it that he
ordered the snake to attack you. I couldn’t stop
him, Harry held me back, but I tried to fight him
and go to you – you had said before that the
snake’s venom was potent and we should’ve made
some antidotes of it, but we never came around to
it besides the theory of how we would do such a
thing. When we got there, you were bleeding so
much.”

“I don’t like this story,” Severus said, cutting her

story off.

His own blood was a vision he was familiar with.

“What I meant to say is that there was a reason I

froze when you came here in January,” Anne said.
“It was like I was about to lose you all over again
and that terrified me beyond anything I’ve ever
felt. I don’t know how I simply didn’t pass out, but
James kept me together for long enough for me to
keep you alive until Madame Pomfrey got here.”

“Where are you trying to get?” Severus said, this

time sounding bitter and uncomfortable.

“I know we never talked about what happened that

night in detail, and I will not get too much into it,
but I want to apologise to you and explain my train
of thought. It’s not an excuse, alright? Just an
explanation,” she said. She waited for him to show
some reaction, but when he didn’t say anything,
just stared at her, she continued. “You were so pale
and so out of it for most of the time. There was no
way you would be able to answer us, you were in
too much pain and the infection was setting in
already – you had a fever and you had been
cursed. There was nothing I could do to keep you
alive without taking your arm off.”

“I understand that now. I’m not angry anymore,

I’m just…” he stopped.

Severus had never been one to talk about feeling,

let alone his own. He had barely managed to put
his thoughts and feelings into words in his own
mind, speaking it out loud only made it even more
difficult.

In the extended silence, Anne took her chance to

continue.

“I had you in my arms before Remus and Sirius

took you away and lied you down for treatment,
and I was shaking as all I thought was your last
words to me in my original timeline,” Anne said.

“You never told me what I said,” Severus said.

“That you loved me, and that you wished you had
done more,” Anne said. “To this day, I fear you
thought you failed me. You didn’t.”

Though those words were not meant for him, who

had not the same life or understanding of the
situation as her first Severus had, they had
comforted him enough. He wondered if there was a
part of her Severus inside of him, alive and
breathing, cheering her on.

“I do, you know?” he said.

His own eyes widened in surprise. His lips had

worked before his mind and, to worsen his
situation, he was about to cry.

“What?” she asked, big, brown eyes looking right

back at him.

“Like you --- I mean, like I said in your time,” he

said. Her eyes showed some amusement. “I mean,
that I do love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. She chuckled. “Believe

me, this was a lot easier to say to you than it was
to say to Regulus.”

That took a chuckle out of him.

“Don’t let him hear you say that.”

“I won’t, if you won’t,” she teased back. Silence for

one more moment; this time comfortable. “In
general, I meant to say that I’m sorry I panicked
and I’m sorry I pulled away after the incident. You
were angry at me, and I couldn’t bear it and I
couldn’t put the thought that I had failed to protect
you away from my mind; my mind played tricks on
me time and time again during those first few
nights, so I didn’t sleep or eat, and I’m sorry part
of me blamed you – it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know,” he dismissed. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Yes, and I’m glad you can see that so clearly,” she
said. “I’m sorry for taking some of the attention
that you needed to me because I was so out of it.”

In her mind, she couldn’t see the Severus she had

met, argued and teased in this new life; every time
she would think of him while he was in bed, the
image of the dead professor bleeding out as she
held onto him, trying to remember how his voice
saying soft things sounded for the first and last
time in forever sounded.

Her first Severus had made mistakes. He had taken

Harry’s appearance to the personal side and had
been mean to people without complete reason
(besides appearance) to the point of being the
biggest fear of a child, but to her he had been a
good enough person. He had taught her what she
needed to know and showed her more than the
necessary, not leaving her in the dark with her
curiosity, he had protected her and even managed
to love her near to the end of his life. Perhaps, he
had been the closest thing to a parent she had
managed to find in that life, for he was – for sure –
more than a tutor.

“I understand,” he said.

“But I do not,” she said.

“Regulus said it was called PTSD,” he said. “He said

it when he was helping me wash myself in that first
day he came here. I researched and Misses – I
mean, Mia helped me. You distanced yourself
because you knew the sight of me in that state
would lead you to a flashback and you’d be less
useful in a full flashback attack then just… distant.
You still checked on me, made sure I was trying to
eat and wasn’t two seconds away from dying every
day, even after I hit you.”

“I did my job.”

“And I’m sorry you had one to do at all,” he

answered. “And I’m sorry it was me.”

He understood that, although that situation had

been physically and emotionally traumatic to him, it
hadn’t been easy to her. Her PTSD had taken over
her and she was barely surviving, shaking from
head to toe as she did the best to keep him alive,
forgetting about herself in the way. Severus wasn’t
sure when or why, but he started crying. Really
crying. His shoulders were shaking, his mouth
opened just enough for him to breathe through it,
that was how his first sob escaped. Anne looked at
him in shock, clearly not having expected that, but
she didn’t move, not sure of what would be
appropriate at the moment.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“I don’t want to die,” he admitted.

Anne moved fast, touching his arm, even though

she wanted nothing else but to bring him into a
hug. She wouldn’t do that; Severus didn’t like that.
But he did want that.

He got up from his chair and hugged Anne with his

only arm, bringing her close enough to him so that
her chin was resting on his shoulder. She held him
tight, comforting him as much as she could without
being completely aware of what was happening.

“You’re not going to die, Severus. The arm thing is

done, it’s healing – you’re not going to die from it,”
she said, hoping that would be a good enough to
make him understand. “There’s no reason to be
afraid. We’re going to be just fine.”

“No, I don’t mean because of my arm, Anne, I

meant it because of my magic,” he explained mid-
sobs. “I can’t feel anything anymore. There’s no
magic inside of me and I hate it because I know
that was how my mother felt – that was how my
mother got sick!”

“I don’t think I understand it.”

Severus pulled away, cleaning his face and taking a

deep breath. Anne took a step back, putting her
hands behind her back and waiting for him to say
something, if he was going to say something.

“When I got my letter from Hogwarts, my mother

had her wand broken because my father was sure
she was teaching me how to do magic, which she
wasn’t, of course, she didn’t even want me to have
magic for my own safety,” he explained. “She got
sick after that, it took a long time for her to die, but
it did start there. She felt weak and sad all the
time, she felt so… helpless. I suppose that’s why
she allowed my father to do whatever he wanted
with her and with me, because nothing else was
important.”

“Depression? Melancholia?”

“No. It was physical, Anne,” he insisted. “The first it

attacked was her stomach and then her lungs.
Finally, it took over her heart and made it stop. I
was in my fifth-year. I’m terrified it’s going to
happen to me as well, I don’t want to shit in my
own bed because I’m too weak to move, Anne, it’s
humiliating. My mother was so terrified of my
father that she buried down her magic, because a
witch can survive without a wand, but… not without
magic. It’s part of one’s body.”

“Dumbledore is already looking into the curse,”

Anne said.

“What if he doesn’t find it?”

“He will. Monty’s looking, Mia’s looking and asking

for help from her Curse-Breaker friends in
Germany. You have the biggest support system you
could have in this situation,” Anne said, reaching
for his hand and holding it gently with both her
hands. “You’ll be fine. We’re all here to help you in
whatever you need. And did you hear what
Madame Pomfrey said last visit? Your stump is
almost completely healed and, perhaps, your magic
will start moving around again to make sure it’s
completely done once we start making more
exercises with it.”

“What if it doesn’t come back on its own?”

“Then we’ll deal with it, together. You, me and

Regulus. You’re our best friend, and we’ll help you
in whatever you need and want,” she said, voice so
firm that he couldn’t find any hesitation or lie there.

“We should put a stasis-charm and go upstairs to

get something to eat, we’ve been here for eighteen
hours,” Anne said, sitting in her chair, massaging
her feet in pain. She sighed in exhaustion, but
Severus seemed quite well enough.

“You can’t put an unready potion under stasis too

many times, otherwise the potence is lower,”
Severus answered. “If Elizabeth and I are going to
drink this, allow me to say that I want it to be the
best fucking Polyjuice potions I have ever drank.”
Anne chuckled as he put his hand on the table,
peeking into the caldron’s boiling contents.
“Besides, we’re almost done already. Where’s the
hair?”

“I have Inez Cruz’s hair with me for Elizabeth,”

Anne said, putting her hand into her dress’ pocket
and showing the small bag with a few dark, curly
hairs. “And for you, I managed to get Glenn
Thomas’.”

“Cruz is that one Ravenclaw girl in our year, isn’t

she?” he asked. She nodded. “And this… Thomas?”

“A Gryffindor, a year younger than us,” she

explained. “I knew him because he asked Regulus
out a bit before our graduation, Regulus said no, of
course, but he was so upset that he was crying
about it in our Common Room. I was so confused. I
thought nobody knew Regulus’ sexuality.”

Severus frowned.
“They don’t,” he said. “He never told anyone about
it before us and then your friends as well.”

“Do you think Rosier told someone?” Anne asked.

“I doubt it, he’s the oldest son and has a sister

before having a brother, who’s often too sick to do
anything at all,” Severus said. “His father passed
away when he was four, so he’s the responsible
man of the family ever since he was young enough
to remember. He knows going after a man won’t
help his family and certainly won’t help the fact that
he’s just married.”

Anne nodded. The pureblood expectation of heirs

and marriage certainly made people go mad, and
Evan Rosier wasn’t too different. He had always had
problems with anger, but the thought of having an
interest in men and not being able to pursue, but
being forced to go to women certainly made anyone
angry.

“Eighteen hours boiling, time to turn off the fire,

Anne,” Severus said.

Barefoot, Anne walked towards the table, much to

Severus’ dismay, who glared at her shoes under
the chair. He hated how unsafe it was to brew
without shoes, and to worsen his worry about her,
she was wearing a long dress without sleeves and
no gloves.

She took a scoop of lacewings after the fire was

turned off and put it into the cauldron, reaching for
the big wooden spoon and stirring the potion three
times counter-clockwise before peeking once more
at the contents, raising the spoon and letting the
liquid fall back into the caldron. The consistence
was good.

“Ready, then,” she said.

“Let’s separate it, then,” he said, reaching into his

pockets. He took two flasks of medium depth.
“Around this much could work for a bit over a night
and a half, just to be sure.”

He held the first flask, putting the other on the

table and opening it with his mouth, he presented it
to her and she took the spoon, filling it and guiding
it into the flask’s mouth; it was filled quickly and
the smoke made it hard to breathe without smelling
the dog-food smell of the potion without the hair.
The second flask was filled as well and the heat of
the potion went through the glass and heat up
Severus’ hand.

That was when he couldn’t hold back anymore.

Sucking in his teeth in pain, he put the flasks over

the table, hoping they wouldn’t topple over and
looked at his hand. His palm was red and burnt. He
frowned at the feeling and at the sight of his skin
starting to become leathery.

He had burnt himself quite badly.

“Shit,” he grumbled.

“I should’ve said something about the glass. I’m

sorry, I’m so stupid!” Anne said, clearly worried.

“Not your fault,” he dismissed, trying to

concentrate on the pain and keeping it in place.

It was pathetic how little he could think. He had felt

worse pains and yet he hated the feeling of
burning. It reminded him of feeling of receiving the
Dark Mark and, right there, he felt another moment
of phantom pain. He felt like he was being held
down as Tobias put another lit bud against his
back, he screamed and kicked back then, but at the
moment he couldn’t move at all.

Before he could say anything else, he was sitting in

his chair. Anne had waved her wand and the chair
had slipped across the floor of the room to stop
right behind him and he was led to sit down and
Anne was on her knees in front of him, quickly
looking to his hand – put that wasn’t what he
wanted. He wanted…far. He wanted far. He wanted
distance. He needed space. But he had Anne’s
hands touching his hand, her breathing touching his
skin as she tried to heal it.

Severus kicked her away before she could do

anything.

Unsafe. Danger. He needed out. He needed space.

He needed loneliness. He needed something…
something… something. Something was
happening… He felt it stirring inside of himself and
the whole world froze.

Magic. His magic was alive.

That stirring had made him feel alive as well as if

his blood finally felt warm enough to start moving
once more inside of him. There was a moment
where he felt energy and excitement take a hold of
him as he stood from his chair in a jump, hand
shaking and looking down at his stump as if his arm
was about to grow again.

Nothing grew physically, but the hope grew.

“Anne? Anne!”

“What? What’s happening? Severus!” she said,

voice wavering in fear.

“My magic is working again; I could feel it moving.

Moving!” he said, voice wavering in shock and fear.
“You did say it would, but I didn’t believe it, but
now I can feel it moving, I swear. I didn’t imagine
it.”

Anne’s hands shook and flew to her mouth through

her gasp. Her eyes were wide and her happiness
was clear as she squealed, jumping up and down in
complete ecstasy for him. She had never felt that
way, it was as if something she lost a long time ago
came back to her. To see Severus’ happiness was
something she missed so much that she couldn’t
help but mirror it with the most complete and
genuine devotion.

Chapter 121: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty -
Summary:
Welcome to the Potter's Wedding!

Notes:
THERE IS SMUT IN THIS
CHAPTER, SO DO BE AWARE AS
YOU READ ON

(See the end of the chapter for more

notes.)

THE CELEBRATION

There was no way to hide from anything or anyone

in the world how much James Potter and Lily Evans
loved each other. There was not a single person
that ever saw them in Hogwarts or walking and
flirting around Diagon Alley that didn’t know their
love with more detail that most people seemed to
show. Neither was good in discretion and neither
wanted to keep any secret from the world, unless
for the safety of someone they love.

The Potters managed to keep the celebration date

away from the newspapers, insisting on sharing the
good news only after the celebration and after they
were all safe and sound once more. The Evans were
more than happy with allowing Petunia to go with
the Potters to fix the whole backyard – since some
of it, the neighbour’s empty land, wasn’t inside the
Fidelius Charm – for the wedding ceremony.

Petunia and Mia made quite the team; Anne had to

admit that much. White, red, brown and gold were
making the empty land that was there, at the edge
of the wood, as pretty as it could be.

“Why white, red, brown and gold?” Petunia asked,

though complained not as she tied another ribbon
near a tree. “They make a pretty decoration, but is
there a reason behind it at all or are just making it
as we go?”

“They are the Potter House’s colours,” Mia

explained as she watched Anne tying another
ribbon near the small stage they had created for
the Official and the couple to stand on. “Since Lily’s
a Muggleborn, we only put our own House’s colour,
but in Anne’s case, for example, they would put the
Black’s colours and Potter’s.”

“That’s interesting,” Petunia said. “If we had

knowledge of our own House, of our colours and all
that, could we use if? Even if the House was
muggle? Some people do know it in our world, it’s
just rarer.”

“It’s rarer because there’s less Wizarding Houses,

for many of them died out from inbreeding or
because the only heirs were women,” Mia
explained. “Mine did.”

“What was your surname before marriage?” Petunia

asked.

“I was Euphemia Susanna of the House of

Bebbenberg-Fugger,” Mia said, chest filling with
pride with saying the name of the so long forgotten
by the world. “I had a younger brother and an older
sister. My sister married into the Black family, but
she never had children. My brother passed before
he was even married. I’m the only one left with the
surname; I insisted on keeping it, just adding my
husband’s instead of exchanging it.”

“It’s a smart decision,” Petunia said.

“A decision Anne seemed to follow,” Mia said, even

more proud. “One your sister insists on following as
well. One, I hope, you will follow when time comes;
Evans shall be a surname one must be proud of
having once this war is over.”

“My mum is a bit more… traditional,” Petunia said.

“She might have a lot of opinions, after all I fear I
might not marry a Lord.”

“Well, it’s your marriage, your mother won’t be able

to say much more, either you marry a Lord or not,”
Mia said. “I know that if you had been my
daughter, I would be ever so proud of your
strength and courage. I know, for sure, you
would’ve been a Gryffindor through and through.”

Petunia smiled, feeling her tears of emotion filling

her eyes. She had never thought someone would
talk to her that way, with such kindness and pride.
Her mother was quite cold and her father loved
telling stories, but they never took the time to stop
and tell her that they were proud of her or that she
was a strong person; they had talked about her
survival-skills after she told them all Vernon did to
her, but they stopped talking about it for ‘healing-
purposes’ the next day.

Elizabeth got out of the house, walking out of the

wards and showing the spall platter with cups of
lemonade.

“You’ve been working hard, ladies,” she said. “Coco

helped me make some lemonade. Who wants it?”

Anne made her way closer.

“Lemonade?” she asked. Elizabeth nodded. She

reached for a cup and took a sip. “Good lemonade,”
she added, walking away with the cup.

Mia watched the scene.

“She’s still angry at me,” Elizabeth said, sounding

quite disappointed.

Petunia raised her eyebrows, not completely

understanding, but Mia sighed as she watched Anne
sipping her lemonade and waving her wand to raise
the tent high enough and letting the stakes get to
its places.

“She isn’t angry at you, Lizzie,” Mia said. “She’s not

angry at all, really, she’s just focused somewhere
else. Anne has a problem with tunnel-vision. She’s
been so focused on the wedding that she forgot to
eat lunch yesterday, I had to make her sit down
and eat. She’s just getting her weight back from
Severus’ amputation.”

“He was the one amputated,” Elizabeth said,

sounding a bit better.

“She was too worried to eat,” Petunia answered. “I

remember that. We had a meeting to see if
someone could convince her to leave Severus in the
bedroom for a bit and come out for a shower or
food.”

Though the idea of not showering did make

Elizabeth very uncomfortable, she said nothing at
all. The idea of Anne being so terrified of losing
Severus that she didn’t want to leave him for a
single second made her emotional – she could only
see Anne as a someone with a temper that cared
for Regulus and the war, but nothing nor anyone
else; she didn’t look like someone that would get to
that point of… caring.

“Where is everyone else?” Elizabeth asked, trying

to move the subjects along.

“The boys are out in James’ stag night, Monty just

went after them to make sure they’ll be alive by the
time the wedding starts,” Mia said. “I have sober-
up potions prepared, don’t worry, Petunia, today is
going to be perfect. And Severus is asleep, he brew
the whole night last night under Anne’s supervision
and was quite tired from overusing his magic. He’s
too proud of say it, so we let him sleep it off; he’ll
need to be top shape for tonight, after all.”

He had talked to Dumbledore for a long time,

explaining how his magic was becoming more and
more noticeable as time went by. Dumbledore
found a curse that fit the symptoms, it had no
name and was treated by ‘Islandic Curse’, no more
than that; it usually resulted in death, so Severus
was more than happy that his magic came back
and pushed the curse away to a dormant state, as
it seemed to happen with less than 5% of the
cases. He didn’t know how long it would be like that
or why, but he was happy with the present; it was
gift enough for someone that didn’t think living was
good enough.

“Don’t you think it’s cruel? Making him live with the
man who’s going to marry the woman he loved and
making him be at the wedding?” Elizabeth asked.

“He never loved her, not in the way he shared to

the world he did,” Petunia said. “He was obsessed
with her, something that, apparently, he does
often. He obsesses over things and people all the
time. Potions. My sister. Regulus. Anne.”

In that, Elizabeth needed to agree. Severus had an

obsessive personality over anything he was
remotely interested in. She saw it happening more
than once in school and she had the feeling she
would see it happening more often.

“In general, he’ll be fine,” Mia finalised.

She watched Anne taking a step back and making

sure everything on her end of the bargain was
perfect. Mia said nothing, knowing Anne would do
anything for her parents to have the perfect like
they deserved and that her timeline had taken
away from them.

“Everything is ready, Lily, do not worry for a

second,” Marlene said, fixing the small wrinkle on
the back of Lily’s dress.

Much to Chris Evans’ happiness, his daughter’s

dress was nothing but white. The clivage was on
Queen Anne’s style with lace on the shoulders and
bust, disappearing right after the waist, where it
pooled at bit, as if it was some type of coat over
the thigh upper part of the dress. From the waist
down, the dress became an exaggerated A-line,
almost making it resemble a ball-gown comfortable
and elegant as one could have in the 70s, though a
bit too full to Anne’s taste – it did make her mother
remind her of a wedding cake.

Petunia fixed the wild flowers, petunias and lilies of

the valley on the bouquet in her sister’s hand.

“Are you ready? Can I call for Daddy?” Petunia

asked.

But she didn’t need to, Chris was already walking

into the small building they had magically built for
Lily to fix herself in the middle of the woods, hidden
from the view of the guests. He had been waiting
outside of the small hut for almost ten minutes at
that point, shaking at the idea of giving his
daughter away.

“Daddy,” Lily greeted, voice wavering.

“No, crying!” Mary said. “You’ll ruin your makeup,

darling.”

“You’re getting married, this is a happy occasion,

my love,” Dorcas said, fixing one of her many
braids back into the knot she had made at the back
of her head. “And we’re here to fix your makeup in
case you cry, but do avoid it.”

“Lils?” Anne said.

Lily turned to look at Anne.

“Yeah?”

“James is waiting for you. He’s made the whole

world knows he wants you beside him forevermore.
Isn’t that enough to make you… not as nervous?”
Anne asked, raising her eyebrows. She walked near
enough so only Lily could hear her. “Dad loves you
more anything in this world… and Harry is to come
soon enough.”

“Harry,” Lily whispered back.

There was determination in her eyes by the way

she nodded to herself. For a moment, Anne feared
she had made the celebration a duty, but it only
seemed to calm Lily down enough to make her
smile and reach for Chris’ arm, holding onto it with
great force, almost dragging him towards the door.

“Oh, we’re going?” Marlene asked.

“We’re going. I’m going to get married,” Lily said

firmly.

“And then to the honeymoon,” Dorcas laughed.

Dorcas, Marlene, Mary and Lily followed the joke

with a giggle.

Chris blushed in silence, allowing the girls to have

that small moment of false privacy in front of him
as if he didn’t understand the joke. He glanced at
Anne to find her just as uncomfortable as he felt,
looking at the stars outside, hating to exist at the
moment.

Talking about sex in a respectful and understanding

manner with her mother and her aunt in the
privacy of their bedroom was something else
entirely from hearing her mother’s friends joking
around with it (including the image of her father
implied on it) surely made her uncomfortable.

“Before we go, Mister Evans, close your eyes and

ears for a second,” Dorcas said. Chris did so
without hesitation. “Potion?”

“Which one?” Lily asked. “I’m taking quite a few

with me.”

“The contraceptive one, of course,” Marlene said,

half-rolling her eyes.

“Oh, Anne gave me some of hers,” Lily said,

nodding as hugging her father’s arm tighter. “She
made a new batch for herself and I took some,
enough for the two weeks of the honeymoon, of
course.”

Marlene glanced at Anne. “Good job,” she said,

voice a little less excited.

They had been civil to one another, but their

friendship had never been quite the same with each
other after that one argument. Anne was cold
towards her and Marlene was petty enough to be
somewhat annoyed all at the time.

Anne walked right of front with all the confidence a

maid-of-honour could have, Petunia and Mary
walked right behind her and Marlene and Dorcas
strutted behind them, hands intertwined. A few
steps behind them, there was the bride.

Dazzling creature of intertwined braids and curls of

copper-red, white dress and blood-red lipstick,
green eyes stuck on the form of her future
husband, who was so struck by her beauty that his
best-man had to hold him standing straight by the
back of his robes.

James Potter had always been a charming man;

sure, his glasses were often crooked on his face
and he had missed a few teeth he had to grow back
after fighting and full-moons, but there was nothing
in his life that seemed to make him as handsome
as the happiness only a married man could have.
Brown eyes wide like a deer in headlights as he
watched his future walking down the isle towards
him.

“Sirius,” mumbled James. He felt Sirius moving

behind him. “I think I’m about to faint.”

He could hear Monty chuckling from the seats.

“Hold on tight, mate. Otherwise, Lily will kill you,”

Sirius grumbled on his ear as he pretended to fix
his friend’s robes. “Moony, should we give him
some water? He looks pale.”

“Pale in comparison of Lily’s beauty!” Remus said.

“You’re fucked, James. I want to see you keeping
her by your side being the arsehole you were last
night – fucking running away drunk to come back
home, disgusting. Don’t know how to enjoy a stag
party.”

“Not the moment, Moony!” Sirius said.

Remus, still slightly tipsy, had no forgiven James

for crying because he wanted to go home and see
Anne, Mia and Lily – ‘the women of his life’ and all
that jazz.

But the wedding started as Dumbledore, dressed in

white and gold as an official for the wedding, and
Sirius and Remus had to go quiet, watching one of
the most important moments of their best mate’s
life started.

It was unavoidable to see the tears and watery

chuckles coming from the crowd as the vows
started to come out of their mouths. Surprisingly to
pureblood’s ritual, Lily started talking before James:

“With this ring, I give you all my heart and soul

from this day forward until the end of our earthly
career. Even in shadows, my darling boy, you shall
not ever walk alone and you’ll always have a home
go back to, even if there’s not a roof above our
heads, for it’ll be arms and my undying love for
you. When we met, you were annoying, obnoxious
and ever so loud, but now I see nothing more than
determination, strength and… well, you’re still loud
as hell,” there were chuckles. “But sometimes it
makes me think I was meant to be yours from the
moment we met. I wasn’t looking for love, but I
found you and I cannot tell both of them apart. You
have me.”

James sniffed, trying to hold of his tears. That

caused more chuckles from the crowd.

“With this ring, I give you my love and my joy for

both of us to share ‘til the end of our days here and
beyond, Lils. A ring is a circle, and I was taught by
a very especial person, that a circle is one of the
most powerful things in the universe, for it has no
end and I see no end for my life with you and my
love for you. I chose you to be wife a long time
before you chose me to be your friend and I knew
that would’ve been enough, I would’ve never been
satisfied, but I’d be happy to see you happy, even if
it was with someone else,” his throat was itching
and his voice was wavering, but he braved on,
making more people in the crowd tear up. “From
this day on, I shall spoil you, encourage you,
support you and love you – even if that means
tolerating your bad mood in the mornings and the
artsy socks. Lily, you have me from the moment we
met and you can keep me for as long as you may
wish; if we are allowed by destiny, it shall be
forever.”

Dumbledore nodded, glancing at the proud Anne at

the very corner of his eyes.

He wished she was making a good decision and

that she could deal with the consequences of
speeding up the timeline.

“You may, now, kiss your bride as I present to the

world, Mister and Misses Potter,” Dumbledore
announced.

With the help of Anne and Sirius the couple was

bound in the kiss for forever and ever and ever.

And through the cheers and happiness, there was

the eerie feeling of how this moment would change
everything.

Anne shivered, eyes glancing into the empty, dark

forest.

Sirius sobbed once more, trying his best to keep

everything inside of his stomach as he watched the
scene in front of his unfolding with disgust.

“When I said I was happy for him, I didn’t think

that son of a… no, I love Mia, but that bitch would
forget us, Moony,” he slurred through his several
glasses of champagne. “Look at them, dancing.”

“That’s what couples do in their wedding day,

Sirius,” laughed Remus, now a bit more sober than
at the ceremony.

The boy beside scoffed.

If anyone knew him, he would’ve been recognized

by the mannerisms, even if the red hair and
freckles accompanying good and wide recognisable
brown eyes. He was seen as a distant cousin of
James Potter quite a few years younger than James
himself. But that was Severus Snape in the skin of
Glenn Thomas, a boy from Gryffindor actually
younger than James.

“One would think you two would be dancing as well

soon enough,” he commented.

The surprising attempt of light conversation coming

in a civilised way made Remus look at the man
beside him in surprise.

However, neither of them completely understood

why such a simple sentence made Sirius turn his
discreet sobs in shoulder-shaking level of sobs.
Quickly, Remus put his hand on his boyfriend’s
back and petted it, hoping it would make him start
talking, but that only made him put his hand in
front of his mouth.

“Now, that’s awkward and uncomfortable,”

complained Severus, getting up from his chair. “I
see Anne. Good night for you two.”

Remus watched Severus walking surprisingly

graciously through the crowd to stand beside Anne,
who sipped her champagne and giggled as
something he said with a straight face as he
reached for a glass himself before taking another
sip of his own flask hidden inside his breast pocket.
He watched Severus’ eyes moving across the crowd
to stop at Petunia and a girl of the blondest of hairs
that could easily pass of as Petunia’s sister, if not
by the cold-icy grey eyes – Petunia and Elizabeth
under the disguise of a half-blood girl from
Ravenclaw with the surname Cruz that Remus knew
not the name.

“What’s happening, Sirius?” Remus asked, confused

and worried.

“We cannot marry,” he sobbed.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I want us to!” Sirius said, louder.

Remus was surprised at that revelation. Sirius had

always been someone to hate marriage and the
whole structure behind it.

“You want to get married?”

“Yes, but the Law hates us. Why can’t I just be a

woman? It would’ve been so much easier. I want
you. I just want you. I want you to be mine in the
way Lily is James’ and James is hers, because
there’s a war coming and I don’t want to die and I
don’t want to miss anything –”

Remus cradled his face with his hands gently, but

kissed him forcefully. There was no room for
mistake, that kiss was a proposal and that kiss was
acceptance of Sirius’ thoughts and fears, which
Remus wasn’t all that good in acknowledging in
general.

“When James leaves for the honeymoon, we’re

going to get on our way and buy our fucking flat
and we’ll be the happiest fucking couple in
England!” Remus announced. Sirius looked at him
in between his lust and surprise. “And nothing will
ever stop us. We’ll be kings, Sirius, KINGS!”

And they were so busy in their happiness in the

little world they had created that they didn’t notice
the figure coming out of the woods in its dark hood
and confident strides, but Anne did. Anne turned,
wand slipping from her sleeve into her hand and
ready for the epic battle she expected to be thrown
in soon enough, but smiled once she realised who
she was.

Regulus Black was under glamour for everybody in

that wedding but the ones he shared blood with,
therefore Anne and her family, too, could see his
original appearance as he stood between her and
Severus with a smirk on his lips and taking a glass
of champagne from the table that they were
standing beside, watching couples dancing a slow
song.

“Hello, dear friends,” he greeted.

“How is Laurie?” was Severus first question.

Severus wanted to meet the child. He wanted to

make sure the spell he managed to throw at
Bellatrix didn’t have any effect on the poor babe.

“Fine. Asleep with my aunt,” Regulus said, knowing

of Severus’ worries. “Though he does have a cough.
Mother says is common for the age, but Kreacher
says it’s not and it’s healing right as we speak. He
finally fell asleep when I walked out,” he smirked
even more, turning to Anne. “I heard screams the
whole morning; perhaps I’ll be as lucky as to hear
some tonight?”

“Aren’t you bold and drunk tonight?” Anne laughed.

Severus gagged.

“Oh, this is worse than the other couple over

there,” he complained.

“Just a joke, old friend, just a joke,” Regulus

dismissed.

His eyes managed to say that he did have hopes.

Anne laughed, knowing that Regulus could do

whatever he wanted to her if they had the chance
that night and she would let him, and do whatever
she wanted to him in return.

“You two, go dance, leave me be for a moment,”

Severus complained once more.

Anne laughed once more, but took Regulus’ hands

as he started to lead her away from Severus.

“I love you, mate, but it’s still weird to talk to you

with red-hair,” Anne said.

“As opposed to talking to me with both of my arms

again,” he teased back.

She threw her head back with the next laugh as her
knees even went as far as losing some strength as
Regulus took her away to the dance floor.

For hours, they spent dancing with their bodies

glued to one another in public, even in songs were
the closeness wasn’t necessary and certainly not
expected by the giggling some of the guests
seemed to have whenever they looked at the
couple slowly making their way farther away from
the dance floor and more towards the edge of the
wards, walking into it once people seemed too
distracted to pay attention to them.

Regulus and Anne made their way inside the house

from the backdoor, walking across the building until
walking out the front door and standing in between
two of the big windows, unseen by the world and
the guests.

Anne was put against the wall as they looked at

each other.

“What’s happened to you tonight?” she asked.

“You were mostly right, I’m slightly tipsy after a
few firewhiskeys shared with my uncle and, well, I
did find a book with… interesting composition in the
back of my library and it made me –” he couldn’t
find a good enough word.

“Horny?” she offered.

“Miss you,” he corrected.

Anne laughed of his naïve correction, but her laugh

was breathy as he started kissing her neck gently,
nuzzling against the small part of her neck where it
met her shoulder, nibbling right under her ear. She
sighed, holding onto him even tighter. She felt
herself become hot under her dress and it was like
she was burning – she liked the feeling, but she
liked the feeling of Regulus reaching down and
pulling her skirt up to let the fresh air of the night a
lot more, she had to admit. She had been wearing
a long dark-green dress with off the shoulder
sleeves of tulle resting on her shoulders. Very
seventies, she had to say.

It was barely a moment between Regulus sigh of

delight when he found her underwear and the
moment of his fingers hooking the corners of it to
get it out of the way as he reached inside of her
with his middle finger, the brush of his ring on the
bottom of it with her clit making her moan loudly.
Her clawed at his shoulder, gasping for breath and
looking around.

“Wait,” she said.

His finger was out of her in a second. His eyes were

worried as he searched for something.

“What’s wrong? What did I do?” he asked.

“Nothing. Nothing, just… the bench,” she said.

He looked at their left. There was a bench, indeed,

and it was the one where she told him the whole
truth of her life to him.

She walked towards him and propped one of her

legs up there, bunching up her skirt around her
waist to give him access and kicking off her
knicker, catching them on the air and shoving it
into his trouser pockets, pulling him by the hoops
for his belt towards her without any hesitation and
a smile on her lips.

Regulus sighed in relief once her hands reached

down at his trousers, undoing his belt in a hurry.

“We need to be quick, before someone comes this

way,” Anne whispered, even if there was no one
hear them anywhere near them.

“They’re at the party,” he complained.

“The happy couple is leaving for their honeymoon

soon, it’s passed two in the morning,” she
explained.

He chuckled at her ear as he felt his belt falling to

the floor beside them.

“It’s past four, darling,” he corrected. “I’m sure

we’re fine.”

She whimpered once the massage on her clit made

her nerves light up once more. She hit her head on
the wall behind her, her hand holding onto his
shoulder and the other grabbing at the outer-
windowsill.

“Like this! Yes!” she moaned.

She had never been that vocal that soon into their
passion, but Regulus was loving the tipsy state they
were both in. And never had she ever gotten to her
peak so quickly, either. Her whole weight was
thrown back at the wall, legs shaking as she let go
of the windowsill to hold onto both of her husband’s
shoulders, quite content with the night she was
having as she panted and gasped.

“Oh, there you go, love, there we go,” he

whispered on her ear as she came down from her
high. “Good girl, good girl,” he added.

She whimpered on his ear once more, hands no

longer holding onto him, but arms embracing his
neck and pulling him to her as she recovered from
one of the best orgasms she had ever felt in life,
still shaky from the rush of the feeling.

“I need you,” she whispered to him, leaning in for a

kiss. He gave her no more than a chaste kiss. She
groaned in clear distaste for the act; she wanted
more, she wanted all of him. “More. Now. More! I
want you! I need you!”

And Regulus gave it to her.

Reaching down to unbutton his trousers, he circled

his dick with his right hand as the left one rested on
her waist, pumping himself. He was already
completely hard and the feeling of the fresh night
air on his most private and hidden away part made
him even more lost in his own desire and fantasies.
He had his woman completely willing and leaking
for him, wanting nothing more than to be with him
and he had a whole house to themselves, away
from the party that they could hear happening –
the wards wouldn’t allow the ones in the party hear
them, however, for Anne was good at the Muffliato
ward.

He put himself on her entrance, pushing himself

inside of her slowly as she moaned and mewed at
his ear, nibbling at his ear as well. He held her
waist with both of his hands once he was inside of
her enough to not need leading. He sighed in
pleasure.

“So tight,” he groaned.

Anne wished to know if that meant a good thing to

not, but by the way her walls tightened even more
around him and it made him groan louder, that was
most likely a compliment.

Regulus’ hips starting moving as soon as she threw

her legs around his waist, back completely against
the wall. Though through his thrusts her back was
scratched by the walls, she didn’t mind at all; the
feeling was amazing – Regulus was deep inside of
her, her legs were tight around him and her feet
were bouncing whenever she was thrown up and
down. His hands reached upper on her body,
squeezing her breasts as he moaned on her ear.

“I’m close,” she announced.

“Come on. Come on me,” he said.

“Almost, almost!”

“I’m right there!” he announced.

At the end, she came first with a scream – giving

him his request for the night – and exploding
around him as her walls tightened and fluttered,
not wanting him to leave her insides. He came not
three thrusts after with a loud moan and stilling
inside of her as he spilled everything that he had
inside of himself, thrusting a few more times to
come back from his high. Panting and gasping for
air, they kissed, sharing their experience.

“My beautiful girl,” he whispered at her ear, kissing

her hair.

He was still inside of her, but she didn’t mind it at

all.

His trousers had fallen to his knees, she realised as

she looked down, slowly putting one of her feet at
the bench, slowly coming back from her
dreamworld to reality as she blushed, fearing
someone had heard her – very – loud moans.

Slowly, he pulled out of her.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he answered.

The front door opened.

“OH FUCKING HELL!” screamed someone.

Severus Snape’s frown was recognisable even when

he wasn’t in his own body as he stared at the
couple, accompanied by Remus Lupin, who was
now very interested in staring at the sky like some
astronomer.

Regulus was quick to pull down the fabric of her

skirt to cover her and bending down to get his
trousers up, fumbling with the button as he turned
his back to their friend and her godfather. He did
have to take a second to look for his belt.

“Holy shit, mate,” Anne complained.

“You have a bedroom for that, Annie,” Remus said,

though his voice was a lot more comforting than
Severus’ scream and clear disgust, he looked
bothered but nothing above it. “We thought you
two were talking back here. Everybody saw you
dragging him away from the party, we assumed
some… alone time would happen, but not in the
front garden.”

“Well, there was no one at the house,” Regulus

said. “We thought we were safe.”

Severus scoffed and walked back inside, too

disgusted to say anything else. Remus watched him
walking back inside and looked at Regulus and
Anne as Regulus fixed his belt.

“Fix your hair and come when you can. James and
Lily are leaving in twenty minutes,” Remus said.
“Anne, Lily has been looking for you. Said she
needed something from you before going and…
well, you’re maid-of-honour.”

Anne nodded, though she blushed a bit.

“Tell her that I’m on my way, I’m going to get what

she wants,” Anne said.

Regulus fixed his hair quickly on the window while

Anne walked up the stairs. Regulus and Remus
walked out of the house together.

“You smell like sex,” Remus complained. “And the

smell of my goddaughter’s sex isn’t what I want to
have on my nose in such a day.”

“I’m sorry,” he answered in a low voice.

“I know you two are married and all that, but do

avoid being caught in this house. It’s disrespectful
to Anne,” Remus added.

Regulus frowned.

“Hey, it wasn’t only my idea, mate. Anne is an

adult, she’s my wife, and she knows what she’s
doing,” he answered. “What we are doing isn’t
wrong or ugly; we were alone in a party where we
are both tipsy, I don’t see why you’re so…
disappointed in her… and me. You shouldn’t even
have expectations of me.”

Remus almost laughed.

“Not disappointed, just trying to ignore the imagine

in my mind. Comparing your arse with your
brother’s isn’t as funny as I thought it would be,”
he said. “Besides, I already caught Anne on her
knees, I thought one scene I didn’t want in my
mind would be enough, but apparently destiny
thinks otherwise.” Now he smiled openly. “Now, let
me add that I have no expectations besides you not
hurting Anne; I hope that isn’t too high for you,”
Regulus glared at him. “James won’t say shit
because he’s trying to get Anne to love him as
much as he loves her, which isn’t hard, but he
hasn’t noticed it yet. So he’s playing cool dad. But I
don’t care. You need to hear this from someone:
don’t hurt her, or I’ll hurt you.”

Regulus didn’t doubt he would do so in a single

moment, but yet he smiled with confidence.

“If there’s one thing that I don’t plan on is hurting

Anne on purpose,” he answered. “And I’m glad to
see James is just as stupid as he was as just Sirius’
best friend; at least somethings just don’t change.”

He walked away from Sirius, waiting for Anne near

Severus, who ignored his presence completely.

They waved away the couple after the goodbyes

and the small gifts from best-man and maid-of-
honour as they mounted their brooms, going
towards the International Floo Department in the
Ministry with one destiny in mind: Barcelona,
Spain, in specific the ‘small’ property the Potters
had there, with mind to only getting back in two
weeks.

Sometimes, thigs just don’t go as planned.

Notes:
My surgery is marked for the 8th
of December, guys, so if I stop
posting for a bit that's the reason.
I'm supposed to do all my
recovery at home and will be able
to make my debut in my company
in February normally, so I'm quite
excited about it. Let's see what I
can do.

Chapter 122: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-One -
Summary:
Anne goes to Diagon Alley. An
attack happens.

Notes:
TW: VIOLENCE AND DEATH -
EXPLICIT

THIS CHAPTER DOES NOT DESERVE A NAME

The first week without James and Lily at the house

was as weird as it was expected to be. James had
always been a loud presence in the Potter Manor’s
daily life and even Severus managed to find himself
finding the missing Potter odd; Lily’s presence
wasn’t hard to be noticed either, they lived in less
people and she was the one often using magic
amongst Muggles – especially since Elizabeth had
to avoid using too much magic, even in daily life.

But life goes-on.

Though odd, Mia and Monty did their daily rituals,

Anne slept in and Remus took a day off to recover
from his hungover as he seriously contemplated
finding a way to get sacked – for the benefits and
all that – while Sirius went to training even without
James to keep him company. Anne spent most of
the time with Severus in the lab under the house,
but once the ingredients ran low, someone had to
go to Diagon’s Alley to buy more.

“You most certainly won’t go alone,” Severus said

firmly. “I can’t go with you, but you should, at
least, take Black with you. Anne, you’re a target,
and a really big one.”

“I know, Evan and his stupid revenge,” Anne

dismissed, rolling her eyes. “I can deal with him. I
dealt with him before.”

“Yes, before he was taught all the types of bloody

dark magic. It isn’t the same anymore, he’s no
longer a teenager. He will kill you if he has the
chance, do you understand that much? Do you
understand that you’re a target for him, in specific,
but not only because of him?” he said. Anne
frowned. “Anne, they think I passed on information
to you. You’re a target from the Dark Lord himself.”

There was a moment of silence.

He remembered he didn’t need to fear saying his

name anymore. His arm didn’t hurt when he called
him by his name anymore and he no longer was
marked by him as if he was some type of property.
He was a free man now. He could fill his lungs and
say with his whole chest ‘Voldermort’, but he didn’t
manage to say that. He didn’t think he would be
ever able to say that. Perhaps ‘Tom Riddle’ would
be enough for now.

“I understand,” Anne said. “Don’t worry, Monty is

going with me.”

Severus almost sighed in relief. Monty was the

Head of Department of Aurors and Law
Enforcement after all; he would be the safest option
to accompany such a big target such as Anne, after
all some of the other people in the house were
bigger targets – Sirius, for example, being one of
the biggest ones.

By the morning of March 30th, Monty and Anne

were ready to leave the house. He wore discreet
black and white robes while she used her best
yellow robes.

“Aren’t you a little attention-caller,” teased Monty.

“Aren’t you a boring old man,” teased Anne back.

Monty laughed at her. “If I’m going to be a target,
might as well be the biggest and easiest target to
find. At least, I’ll bring some people down with me.”

“Don’t play with that, Anne,” Monty complained.

Though Anne knew very well what a real war like

the one they were at entailed, she seemed to be
taking things too lightly at the moment. She was
becoming more and more erratic and, perhaps,
reckless. Anne seemed to disregard the weight her
own life seemed to have on other people; it was
like she hadn’t released how her life mattered to
others in its full potential.

As they apparated right outside of the wards

directly into the Diagon Alley, Anne barely flinched,
though her stomach churned several times in her
first few steps into the British wizarding world’s
shopping centre. Monty held onto her arm tightly to
not let her fall down in public.

“I hate this,” she complained in a moan.

“I do, too, but it’s certainly worse for the Side-

Along,” Monty said, a small smile on his face. He
was amused by her nausea.

“Nice,” she groaned in annoyance.

“You’ve never done it before? Side-Along, I mean,”

he said.

“I did, it’s just I’ll never get used to it,” she said.
“Professor Dumbledore used to take Harry and I
around like that. Safer, you know? Less people
involved and all that.”

Monty nodded to himself.

“Either you like it or not, Professor Dumbledore is

quite the smart man. We should listen to him ever
now and again,” he said. “There’s a reason he was
chosen to be Hogwarts’ headmaster half-a-century
ago; there are tests those people need to go
through to get that position.”

Anne frowned, but said nothing as they started

walking towards the public streets. She, of course,
knew that Dumbledore was a good wizard – no, he
was a great wizard. Everybody knew that he was
an amazing wizard of scary strength of his magic in
many surprising situations, he even got as far as
helping Aurors when they needed for some big
case. There was a reason for the respect people
had for him, but Anne just couldn’t find within
herself to respect him.

If completely honest, Anne somewhat feared

Dumbledore. He was a strong wizard that had an
accident with magic against her that left her quite
hurt; it had been her fault, for her poked his
wound, but she still feared he would do it again.

“Let’s go to the apothecary straight away,” Monty

said. Anne had wished to walk around, but she
knew he was being cautious. And with reason;
things were getting worse. She nodded. “Do you
have your list with you?”

“Yes,” she said, hand going into her robes’ pocket.

The small paper was there. “Do we need to pass by
Gringotts before we go there?”

“No, I have money with me,” he answered in a low

voice.

Monty led her through the people with great ease

and people seemed to almost open way to him as
he greeted and smiled to the people that greeted
him; he had always been a popular man, but Anne
had never seen that popularity in action before.
Fleatmont Potter was respected and feared as well
by the way people were parting to let him and Anne
pass by as she presented her with just ‘my
daughter’ whenever someone asked who she was,
but he kept walking and pushing Anne – who was in
front of him – and not stopping to talk to anyone
until they were at the door Marcus Pereira’s
Apothecary.

Inside of the dark store, Anne shivered. Because of

some of the plants in there, the temperature
needed to be very well controlled and somewhat
chilly for the survival of the potion ingredients in
there.

Marcus Pereira, the original owner of the

Apothecary was a half-blood wizard, had passed a
couple of years before that one and now his eldest
son, Noah, had taken over; he and his family lived
mostly away of the masses of the British Wizarding
World; according to Mia, they went to the
synagogue near the end of the Muggle street
nearby and worked at the Diagon Alley, but spent
most of their time in their own home and caring for
their two children’s education. Mia knew Noah
because she had taught him piano when he was a
child and she was newly-retired. Anne had never
met them for the store had closed in the 80s in her
own timeline, but Mia had been quite content when
she said she would go to that store because things
seemed to be of good quality, according to Severus’
request.

“Mister Potter, sir!” a voice greeted as soon as the

door closed behind them.

“Little Caleb!” Monty said. “Oh, are you eleven

already?!”

“I am! I am!”

A little boy of curly, dark hair came bouncing

towards them. Noah’s son.

“Going to Hogwarts this year, then?” Monty asked.

“Yes, sir. I’m in Hufflepuff,” Caleb answered. “I’m

home because I was sick. I’m going back tomorrow
already.”

Soon another noise of a door opening and closing

made Anne look away from the boy that was too
focused on Monty to even notice her presence. A
man came out from a door in the very corner of the
store and smiled at her kindly.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” she answered.

The kid looked at her, but said nothing.

“Noah,” Monty greeted.

“Oh, Mister Potter, hello. It’s been a long time,” he

said, looking at the man. “Your daughter-in-law?”

“My daughter,” Monty corrected.

Noah did try not to take a facial expression, but his

eyebrows did twitch. To his credit, he said nothing,
even though he knew very well how James Potter
looked and how Mia couldn’t have any more
children after him.

“I’m Anne,” she said.

“Noah, Miss Anne,” he greeted. “And what can I do

for you two today?”

Anne reached into her pocket and quickly put the

list in the paper on the counter with a smile.

“Refiling our home supply,” Monty explained.

Most of those ingredients were clearly used for

Healing potions and anyone that was good in
potions would know that and, if Noah had
permission to run an Apothecary (family business
or not), he had gotten at least an ‘E’ in Potions.
Some were common ingredients that could go
unnoticed, but some were strong enough to raise
questions.

“Well, with an Auror and two more Aurors on the

way in that house, I’m sure you run out of Healing
potions quickly,” Noah said. He knew it had nothing
to do with it; Aurors were healed by the Ministry or
St. Mungus, but he was offering an excuse in case
someone asked about their shopping. “Besides, in
times like this, it’s best to be stocked up in case
anything ever happens.”

He knew they were involved in the war, for sure.

“Best be safe than be sorry,” Monty agreed. “How’s

Naomi?”

“Good! Just turned thirteen yesterday,” Noah said

as he started filling up the flasks and pots with
ingredients. “She’s the apple of my eye, sir; I never
thought I could understand the way you looked at
your children when I was young, but now I do with
those two. Our Caleb, here, is our kindness and
understanding. Our Naomi is… so smart, she puts
me to shame!”

“Well, you were a Gryffindor, Noah. She’s a

Ravenclaw, according to your letter,” Monty said,
watching him. He worked quickly, but well. “I’m
glad she’s the smart type of Ravenclaw, not the
useless facts type of them.”

“Oh, she’s both, for sure,” Caleb said. “She goes on

and on about penguins, but still has time to get the
best grades of her year.”

Before anyone could answer them, the door of the

store opened again, the small bell chiming with the
movement. Anne glanced, but was surprised and
actually looked at the second time her eyes moved
to meet the person walking – it was Albus
Dumbledore in common lavender robes.

“Oh, there you are,” said Dumbledore in a sigh, it

almost sounded like relief. “I received an
anonymous message of someone that said –”

A loud scream outside was followed by an

explosion.

Anne yelped, holding onto the counter as her knees

gave up and she fell to the ground, hands shaking
as she tried to keep herself in the moment. It was
easy to slip away. Explosion of the bombs of the
muggles usually made a whistle before falling, but
the explosion did sound the same. She felt her
knees wobbly as she stood up-straight once more.

“Anne!” Monty called out, reaching his hand out.

She ran to him.

Caleb ran to his dad, who got him quickly into the
door he had come from.

“Here! Come on!” Noah said. “They probably threw

up an Anti-Apparition Ward. If someone tries to
Apparate away, they’ll know. We need to run.”

Monty dragged Anne with him and Dumbledore

followed quite quickly behind through the door. It
led into a sitting room where the workers would
wait for the clients in and, in the very middle, the
rug was being pulled by Caleb, showing a trap-
door.

“It leads to a tunnel, it’ll lead you to an alleyway

near Gringotts,” Noah said. “If you take the left,
however, it’ll lead you to our house. Once we go in,
I will destroy the entryway, do you understand?”

“You’re telling us to choose,” Anne answered. “Run

away or go back.”

“You’re the resistance. What else would I expect

from you?” Noah asked.

As they climbed down the stairs, Caleb first with

Noah and Anne following with Monty and
Dumbledore right behind. Inside the dark, moist
tunnel, the air was heavy and hot; it was hard to
breathe, especially under the scary situations. They
walked through the tunnel for a few metres, until it
started the ceiling started becoming lower and
lower, until they were mostly hunched to walk
through the situation.

“We part here,” Noah announced.

In front of him, there were two tunnels were the

original parted.

Anne felt her stomach heavy as she tried to keep

the bile inside of her and tried to breathe the humid
air. She was nervous and terrified. She knew that
she should turn away from the way back to Diagon
Alley and go home, go to safety where everything
would be alright. But she couldn’t. That wasn’t what
she was fighting for – she had promised herself in
the first time in the new timeline that she would
save as many people as she could, no matter the
cost; as long as they won and as long Harry would
be happy.

So she went to right.

“I can’t go home,” Anne said. “Go home, Monty;

call for backup.”

“You can’t go alone,” Monty said.

Dumbledore looked between them.

“I’ll go with her.”

“No!” Monty said. “You should go, Headmaster, I’ll

go back with her.”

“Fleatmont, you’re an Auror. Go home, call for

backup by the Order and the Aurors as fast as you
can. I’ll go with her,” Dumbledore insisted.

Auror and Head of Department or not, Dumbledore

was still the Head of the Wizergamot. The respect
that man had for him would suppress most things,
but not his worry for his granddaughter. Fleatmont
frowned and hesitated.

“Make a decision, now. We need to go and I will

destroy the passage that leads out of here once I
go through,” Noah said.

“Papa, we need to go!” Caleb insisted.

Anne looked at the scared little boy. She tried to

remind herself that she was fighting for people like
him; innocents.

“FUCK!” Monty screamed as he nodded to

Dumbledore and moved to the left.

Dumbledore pushed Anne forward, making her start

walking hunched once more, but no more than a
few steps, the whole tunnel shook at the ceiling of
the entrance of the tunnels fell and left both groups
separated.

“Go, Anne! Go!” Dumbledore insisted.

Through the pain on her neck and lower-back, she

continued to walk hunched over, wondering how a
man as old as Dumbledore was managing to keep
up with her so well.

They walked for almost ten minutes before the

walls around them started to become tighter and
finally end. Anne reached up, searching for a way
out, but found nothing. Becoming even more
claustrophobic, Anne pushed the stone right over
her head, grunting in her despair.

It was like she could hear Ginny’s laugh over her

shoulder for a moment as her lips moved, copying
what Ginny would’ve said to her in that moment if
she could really see her losing her mind.

“Are you a witch or not?” Anne mumbled.

Dumbledore’s eyes glistened in interest as Anne

pulled him close enough, erected a ward around
them and pointed her wand up at the stone.

“Bombarda,” she said.

The explosion was so strong that, even with the

ward, he felt the ground shaking beneath his feet
and grabbed Anne to keep her standing up-right
through the small earthquake she seemed to have
provoked. Once the stones stopped falling and
hitting the ward before falling to the ground, the
ward fell and Anne climbed up some before jumping
and pulling herself up, looking around as she
noticed she was just two streets away from
Gringotts – she could hear screams, wails and cries
in the streets, but she turned away from them to
help Dumbledore climb up.

“Where do we go?” she asked.

“The main street, if there’s anyone in trouble,

they’re there,” Dumbledore said.

Anne nodded.

Together, they quickly moved through the alleyway

towards the main street without running so they
wouldn’t get too much attention. But as they
walked towards the main-street, they saw people
running away from it. Men, women and children
holding onto each other in small groups as they ran
or limped away from a battle that they didn’t sing
up to join – Anne couldn’t help but look twice when
a girl, not even old enough to be there o buy a
wand for her first year, was carried away,
unconscious, by her crying father, who called to a
‘Maura!’; probably the wife, but nobody seemed to
answer him.

She gulped down.

“Almost there,” Dumbledore said. “Get your wand

ready.”

And she did.

24 centimetres of chestnut were gripped by her

hand in anger and fear, the dragon heartstrings
within her magic wand seemed to vibrate her whole
body. Her anger grew as she knew there was very
little she could do alone – this wasn’t some great
battle in a neutral ground; this was a cowardly
attack on children and people that wished no harm
on anyone, for all these people were simply living
their inconsequential lives when they were attacked
without even completely knowing why. These
people weren’t in resistance-groups, they were
surviving… until they weren’t.

In the actual main street, two streets away from

Gringotts and barely half a street away from the
Caldron, there was chaos and pandemonium, but
Anne’s eyes were stuck on the masked figure with
the wand pointed at the three-year-old girl wailing
in front of her unconscious mother.

“Hey, you cunt!” Anne screamed.

The Death Eater did look over their shoulder to her,

stumbling back at the sight of Dumbledore standing
right behind her. He moved quickly, to his credit,
and threw a curse towards him, but Anne was
faster, erecting a shield and stepping in front of
Dumbledore, who quickly slashed his wand across
the air with an Expulso. The Death Eater flew back,
hitting the wall behind them and falling, struggling
to move after that.

“Good one!” Dumbledore said, voice light.

But she didn’t have time to answer, because he was

already moving away, waving his wand over his
head in a big circle. The effect was immediate; time
slowed-down to the fighting Death Eaters in his
eye-sight, giving their victims the chance to run
away. Most started moving as soon as they realised
what was happening, but the little girl crying made
no move.

Anne moved quickly, running to the little girl.

“MAMA! MAMA!” the little girl wailed.

“You need to go! Run!” Anne said.

She knew she would have difficulty fighting even

without a child to protect. The little girl was a
complete liability in a battle.

“MAMA. WAKE UP! UP, MAMA! UP!”

“You –”

Movement in the corner of her eye made her slash

the air with her wand, a good Stuppefy hitting the
Death Eater raising his wand at her. She pulled the
little girl closer to her, ready to scoop her up and
run in the moment she needed to.

The Death Eater recovered surprisingly fast,

throwing a Crucio towards her, but Anne moved
away while she carried the girl in one of her arms
while the little girl embraced her, allowing the spell
to hit the ground where she had been standing
right before. She jumped over the unconscious
woman on the ground and threw a Bombarda at the
ground nearby him. He screamed, falling back at
the explosion of the stones of the ground and
hitting his head harshly, not moving again.

Anne looked down at the woman.

“Rennevarte!” she exclaimed, pointing her wand

down.

The woman quickly gasped, eyes opening in panic

as she looked around, but the blue eyes stopped on
the little girl in her arms.

“Penelope!” the woman exclaimed.

“She’s alright,” Anne dismissed, watching the

woman getting up. “Get her and run away! Get her
and run! Run!”

“MAMA, MAMA!” the girl wailed directly on Anne’s

ear.

She cringed as she passed the girl to the woman,

who started crying silently as she nodded at Anne’s
orders.

“Thank you. Thank you, ma’am,” she said.

Anne didn’t notice the girl she had just held on her
arms had been Penelope Clearwater, the girl that
had once tutored her in Charms in fourth-year. But
she watched the mother running away from the
fight by the corner of her eyes to make sure she
made it out of the main area of the battle until she
could apparate away from there, throwing a Cutting
Hex on a Death Eater’s face.

The scream came before the pain mostly out of the

surprise than of the unbearable pain that came with
Crucio. Her knees buckled as she fell face first on
the ground, more pain coming when her nose
started to bleed straight away.

The crackling laugh made her completely aware

that, although Bellatrix couldn’t directly harm her,
she could enjoy it. Once the spell was over, she
looked up – Bellatrix stood beside a masked man
who had his wand up, clearly her husband.

“With hubby for today?” Anne managed to choke

out. “Your paramour will be upset, dear Bella.”

“You little filthy blood-traitor, half-breed bitch,” she

snapped.

Anne managed to push herself up to her knees.

“At least my parents aren’t bloody third-degree

cousins,” she snapped back. “Just because they
didn’t share the same surname, it doesn’t mean it
isn’t fucking weird.”

Bellatrix’s anger was clear, and her husband’s

confusion to why the wand in her hand hadn’t been
used against the girl struggling to get up while her
muscles shook with the strain was palpable. She
couldn’t hurt Anne on purpose; she wouldn’t dare
risk Regulus’ wrath turning against her. Either she
liked it or not, she was still a Black and had rules to
follow for her survival in her family, besides her son
was with Regulus and the family that followed him
most of the time.

Roddy moved quickly.

“AVADA –”

“SILENCIO!” Anne was faster. “STUPPEFY!

EXPULSO! STUPEFY!”

Bellatrix turned to her.

“Stu—”

“CRUCIO!” Anne screamed.

The screams were familiar. She had been in that

situation, on top of Bellatrix’s pain, before and she
had felt that same rush of adrenaline and odd
happiness before. It wasn’t that torture made her
feel that way; it was torturing Bellatrix in specific
that made her feel like that, in such ecstasy.

She was sure she had the control of the situation,

until she heard the hoarse scream.

“ANNE!”

Dumbledore was a few steps away from her,

waving his wand to try to stop Rabastan Lestrange
from getting to her before he did, which worked,
but he couldn’t protect himself.

Ever so lost in her revenge and anger, Anne had

lost sight of the true battle occurring around her
and the fact that Rabastan had just thrown a Death
Curse towards her and it was flying fast through
the air straight at her chest, but Dumbledore stood
in front of her with his arms out to cover her as
much as possible.

Anne screamed in shock as Dumbledore fell back,

stiff and completely dead.

No shield can block the Death Curse.

Albus Dumbledore, the leader of the Light and

Order of the Phoenix, was dead and it was her
fault.

She was dead.

She would rather be dead.

She needed Dumbledore.

Dumbledore was Voldemort’s biggest fear, he was

the only thing that seemed to be keeping the man
in check to some extent. His death could only bring
the chaos the wizarding world could not take at the
moment.

She had just lost the battle.

She had just lost the whole war.

But it wasn’t her fear or anger that brought her

back to the present, it was her own laughter of
shock as she struggled to think through her feelings
and find a way out of the situation – she had
everything she wanted: Dumbledore out of her life
and she would die like a martyr. So she looked up
at Bellatrix struggling to get up.

“Laurie certainly will have a bed-time story tonight,

how mummy killed the only person that advocated
for her life,” Anne said. “Know now that
Dumbledore insisted that I killed no one.”

“You cannot kill fly!” Robby laughed.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” Anne yelled.

Roddy jumped out of the way and Rabastan threw

himself out of the way, both with wide eyes.

Anne needed time.

She needed to wait.

She needed the Order.

Her feelings were odd. She didn’t care for the old
man at her feet, but she did care for what he
represented. He was everything people imagined
out of a good person; he was powerful, strong and
presented himself a kind, altruistic and kind.
Nobody knew of the darkness within and behind
him, but it was perhaps the fact that she did know
him that made her feel so heavy inside, or perhaps
it was the fact that his death was forever on her
hands.

Before she could say or do something else,

Rabastan threw a spell she didn’t recognize silently.
She erected a shield and took a step back, feeling
the warmth penetrate her protection and warm up
her whole arm, like she had touched something so
warm that it was burning.

With a scream, she let go of her wand, letting it

drop to the ground.

She watched in shock and she fell to the floor on

her knees, scrambling to see what was happening.
Her wand was smoking and the whole wood had
been cracked; her wand was broken again and this
time out of magical damage, not human – there
was no way to fix it again. She was wandless. She
was useless. She was alone against three Death
Eaters.

No.

Four.

Someone else had just gotten there by the way the

other three seemed to start behaving, taking steps
back as if she was someone else’s target. Mentally,
Anne prayed it was Regulus; he would be quick and
kind with her Death, but she knew it wasn’t and
that Regulus wouldn’t hurt her even at the cost of
his own life. By the reverence the three showed,
she knew very well that Voldemort was walking
towards her through the dead bodies in the street
and the smoke of the burning buildings around
them and Anne had nowhere to run or hide from
him – she was dead.

Voldemort’s crooked smile made Anne body grow

cold as she stood across from her. It was more
than someone thrilled by the violence. This time, he
knew something that she didn’t and had something
on her. He thought he had already won. Anne
started thinking that he had already won as well.

Quickly, she put her mental shields up, trying to

find any weak links, but there was nothing.

“Time to give up, girl,” he said, velvet on his voice.

“Your spy is dead and maimed. Dumbledore is dead
and it wasn’t even by own wand. It’s proof we’re
more powerful. Haven’t you had enough?”

Time. She needed time. Until Monty got there.

“Call me greedy, but I never had enough of

anything. Ambitious of a Gryffindor, I know, but I
always want more,” she joked.

His smile didn’t twitch. Whatever he had on her was

big enough for his confidence to be unmoving.

“Are you sure?” he asked, grin finally growing. His

wand rolled on his fingers. The Death Eaters around
him took a few steps back. “Even if you father is
begging for it to stop, you’ll continue thinking you’ll
want more?”

The loud ‘pop’ of someone apparating made Anne

realise that Tom had not rolled his wand out of
habit, but it had been his non-verbal and discreet
call for backup. Why he needed backup from an
eighteen-year-old girl was mystery.

Now, she had nothing but Dumbledore’s body with

her and nothing else against the powerful dark
wizard in front of her – her wand had been broken
and she couldn’t get backup herself. She trusted
Monty would come back as the silence reigned in
front of her. She knew she was vulnerable.

And she knew she was dead the next second.

Two dark-clothed Death Eaters had appeared and

moved to stand on each side of their master. One,
she recognized by the hair, was Abraxas Malfoy
who had not taken his mask off, but the other
wasn’t as careful about his identity because Evan
Rosier was standing, throwing his mask to the
ground. Evan dragged someone with him –
Fleatmont had been captured.

Fleatmont Potter was filthy from head to doe from

the tunnel’s dust and of blood, but Anne couldn’t be
sure it was his own blood, because the Pereira’s
weren’t anywhere to be seen. His shoulder-length
hair had been cut grotesquely to his ear and there
was vomit on his shirt. They had tortured him
already, enough to make him vomit himself. Anne
felt like she would be the next to throw up.

“No,” her lips made the noise before she could stop
herself.

“Oh, so you are human after all,” Voldemort

answered, amused. “I almost doubted it for a
second, they said you had no reaction but shock to
your leader’s fall.”

“I cared little for the old man,” she dismissed as if

she wasn’t trembling. Time couldn’t help her
anymore, there was no one coming to help them. “I
care for my father, however, and I ask to let him
go. Which you will answer that will do no such
thing, of course; to which I will respond with a good
warning.”

“A threat!” he said even more excited. “How

delightfully fresh from the ‘Light’ side,” his grin
diminished. “An empty one, I fear.”

“Fear not. Take it not as a threat, but as a promise,

if you wish so,” she answered.

A similar conversation had happened between Anne

and Dumbledore before. This time, this
conversation wasn’t out of anger and bitter
resentment, but fear. Crippling horror of the idea of
losing her grandfather. He wasn’t only her
grandfather or her dad’s father; he was the second-
hand of Dumbledore and the second face of the
revolution, he was the anchor of goodness inside
the rotting Ministry. They couldn’t lose him, too.
They had just lost the King of the game of chess,
Dumbledore – she had her checkmate.

Though she felt like she had lost that game, in the
real world, the Queen doesn’t stop fighting about
the King’s death; for her own dignity and for the
survival of her people, she would lead the army
herself. A Queen takes the Crown.

“Send him on his way, Tom.”

“Dare not call me that filthy name. And why would I

do that?”

“Because you want to survive.”

Tom’s laugh was loud and offensive to the ears,

especially because the Death Eaters chuckled with
him and Bellatrix’s loud crackle made Anne glare at
her through the corner of her eyes.

“You’re powerful, child, but you’re no Dumbledore.”

“No,” she agreed. She bent down slowly, his

curious eyes following her in her odd curtsy. “I’m
much worse.”

And as her hands grabbed and held onto

Dumbledore’s wand tightly, the battle restarted.

Dumbledore had a code that he made himself

follow after Ariana’s death. No killing unless
necessary even in battles, no Dark Magic
whatsoever, no secrets would be kept from him.
Anne didn’t care for her soul, her place in ‘heaven’
and reputation nearly as much as he did.

That’s why she moved first.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

The Dark spell hit Evan Rosier, who had been

holding onto Monty, straight to the chest, making
him fall back stiffly and hit the floor without reflex.
He let go of Monty in the process.

Two curses flew towards her and Anne jumped out

of the way, hearing Fleatmont’s scream as a Death
Curse almost brushed against her. She hid on the
deep doorway of one of the stores nearby, throwing
a barely there Stinging-Hex towards Tom; there
was still the Snake left and she needed to be
careful about it – making him lose his physical form
was a variable which she didn’t need to deal with at
the moment, especially without the knowledge
Dumbledore possessed.

“The stupidity is clearly a Gryffindor trait!” Tom

laughed.

A Crucio hit the wall right behind her head. She

yelped as she bend her body down to be away from
aim.

“Trait that costed you a stupid Death Eater!” she

screamed back.

An amused laugh made her peek.

She froze, hiding away again.

Tom had Monty in his own arms now. She had

assumed Monty would follow the Auror protocol of
leaving to call for backup, but he was too hurt and
too tired – he had been caught before he could get
too far away from there.

“Trait that costed you your own father,” Tom

corrected.

Her stomach dropped.

“NO!”

“Diffindo,” he made sure his voice boomed through

the streets as if it was an answer.

Anne wailed.

Tom wanted him to suffer, clearly, that’s why he

went for a cut on the throat instead of just killing
him at once. But more than that, he wanted Anne
to suffer by watching him suffer and be able to do
nothing fast enough.

And just like that, as quickly as he had ruined

Anne’s first life, Tom ruined her second and with a
single second he disappeared, dropping the
apparating wards from place. Tom Riddle – no…
Voldemort, because Anne refused to believe that
someone as truly cruel as him deserved a normal,
human name – was gone, slipping away through
her fingers once more. The Death Eaters followed
and she heard, once more, Bellatrix’s bark of laugh
before she was gone as well.

Anne ran as fast as she could with a scream tearing

through her throat.

Monty was pale as he lied on the ground, eyes wide

and scared as he choked on his own blood. He
knew what came next before Anne could even
accept it. His hand reached for her, wanting to
make sure she was there and alive.

“No, I can fix this. I’m going to fix this!” she said
through her sobs, tears running down her face.
“Regulus will be here soon and I can get his ring
and patch you up. Oh, God. No! No! Monty, come
on, stay with me!”

Her hands trembled as they went to his neck, trying

to keep him from losing any more blood. She
couldn’t patch him up; she had no training with
patching up organs, just skin and he wouldn’t
survive it long enough.

Monty tried to hold on for her sake. She sobbed,

still, because she knew there was nothing she could
do as he slipped away as well.

“Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me!” she cried.

Fleatmont did not die alone, he held his

granddaughter’s hand as he went with his last
breath. When his breathing, heart and brain
stopped, Anne did not let go. Fleatmont’s worst fear
didn’t come true. He didn’t need to watch anyone
he loved dying again. He did not die alone and he
did not die in vain.

Anne stayed there even after the Aurors showed

up.

Chapter 123: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Two -
Summary:
Grieving

THE CHANGE

The 30th of March of 1978 was the worst day of

Anne’s new life.

Though she finally saw Moody’s kindness towards

victims finally turned to her for the first time, she
couldn’t find in herself to find it funny or amusing;
all she could do was be dragged around and look
down at herself, seeing the blood seeping through
her clothes and tainting her hidden skin, but she
couldn’t look at her hands. She knew they were red
and filthy with blood that did not belong to her, but
looking at it would make it real, so she just didn’t.

She allowed Moody to drag her and touch her

without a single flinch, too exhausted and confused
to even have a reaction to the Side-Along
Apparition he did once the wards were broken
down. She listened well as he tried to talk to her,
trying to get information, but she couldn’t find in
herself to care to help him catch those people. All
she wanted was home; and that was where he got
her to.

Potter Manor seemed bigger, colder and lonelier as

soon as she walked in. She avoided looking around
as he closed the front door behind them, helping
her through the mudroom and into the house.

“Monty? Thank Merlin, you’re back. We just –” Mia

started.

Anne didn’t look at her. She couldn’t see the

realisation as she watched her walk in without her
husband behind her, she couldn’t see the pain, but
she could hear the gasp and the stumbling
footsteps and she reached for a hallway table and
hit the vase in it by accident, letting it fall to the
ground.

Anne watched the shards of porcelain on the

wooden floor with attention. She had never noticed
how white the inside of the vase was or how small
the shards could be when broken into millions.

“Mama?” called out Sirius.

“Mia?” another voice called out. It was Severus.

More footsteps, but Mia didn’t pay attention.

“No,” she said, voice begging, as if Moody would be

the one to decide if Monty would survive or not.
“Tell me he’s in St. Mungus or something. Please,
don’t –”

“I’m sorry, Mia,” Moody said. “When we got there,

it was already too late. Anne tried to help him.
There was nothing anyone could’ve done.”

The logical part in her mind agreed with him. The

severity of the cut had been such that not even
Madame Pomfrey would be able to do much to help
him, especially not fast enough to close the wound.
If she had managed to close him up, the blood-loss
would have already caused such a strong shock
that he would’ve passed away anyways, but that
didn’t mean Anne’s emotional side didn’t try to find
ways to get someone to listen to her inner screams.

In her mind, all she could think was of reasons to

why everything was her fault. If she had not teased
Voldemort; if she had not sent Monty away; if she
had not insisted of going back to help everyone
when she could barely save herself.

“MAMA!”

“Hold her!” Remus yelled.

Anne finally looked up at Sirius’ scream.

The man had been quick to hold Mia once her knees
failed. She held onto her son’s shoulder and
allowed her mouth to open, a deep, gut-wrenching
wail coming out of it as she sobbed her pain out
while the people that loved her just watched,
helpless and broken as well.

The family was led to the sitting room in the

parlour and Mia was sat down as she continued
sobbing loudly, Remus and Sirius fussing over her,
putting her legs up and trying to calm her down.
Severus, however, went straight to Anne, sitting
her down and kneeling down in front of her.

“Annie?” he called out. She was looking straight

through him. “Annie, can you tell us what
happened?”

“She’s barely talked since we found her,” Moody

said. “I think she’s in shock, but she seemed eager
to come home; walked away every time people
took their eyes away from her, so I thought it was
best to accompany her.”

“Is this normal to her?” Severus asked, turning to

Sirius.

“I don’t know,” Sirius admitted.

Anne wanted to say something, she wanted to tell

them everything, but she feared that in the
moment she opened her mouth everything would
fall apart, because things would be real then.

“Annie,” Remus said from the other sofa, holding

Mia’s hand. “Who did that to Monty?”

She looked up at Remus.

“How did it happen? Who did that? Where is he?”

Mia asked in a single breath.

Anne just stared at her now, unable to allow her

grief to come out just yet.

Severus seemed to want to say something, but

looked at Moody and said nothing, looking back at
Anne.

“Do you want us to call… someone?” Severus said.

He was worried of outing Regulus to Moody. That

worry seemed silly to Anne at the moment, but she
was glad Severus could be logical in that moment
where Mia and Sirius were crying, Remus was
trying to hold himself together and even Moody
seemed out of it.

She shook her head, not wanting Regulus near her

when she was in that state. Her pain was his pain
as well, and she knew that. He wouldn’t forgive
himself if he knew his warning had been too late.

Severus got up.

“Wait… James… he doesn’t – he doesn’t know!” Mia

cried.

Remus’ exhausted eye clench said everything Anne

felt. That was a task she didn’t want to have, but
one that someone needed to do and quickly, before
the media got hold of the information.

“Sirius –” Moody stated.

“No, not me! I can’t. I can’t do that.” Sirius said,

head shaking side to side in complete denial. “I
couldn’t do that.”

“It needs to be you. He needs to hear it from you,”

Remus agreed. He frowned. “It was your dad as
well.”

Sirius’ sobs made Anne look away. She tried to

keep herself present, no longer in the limbo state
she had been in the Diagon Alley’s ruins until the
Aurors got there and she had been checked by a
Healer. She needed to be there, awake. Her family
needed her to talk and explain, but it would so easy
to slip away.

Anne had been taught to slip away at fourteen.

When Vernon was too close, smelling her hair,
pinching her skin, taking pictures of her naked
body, it would be terrible to really be there, so her
mind created that one space she floated towards
whenever she just didn’t want to exist. There, she
wasn’t physical or a body, she didn’t feel pain or
hurt – she was nothing and she felt nothing, she
barely existed there. It was big, just a space. She
wanted to be there more than anywhere else in the
world at the moment, because there her body and
her soul wouldn’t hurt like that.

“Anne, stay here,” Severus said firmly. She was

slipping through their fingers as Severus tried to
hold her back. She was disappearing. She was
becoming nothing and just allowing it to happen. It
would be just… so easy. “Anne, please, we need
you to talk.”

“She won’t help us,” Moody dismissed.

“We need to tell Dumbledore,” said Sirius. “He

might talk to James.”

“Dumbledore is dead,” Moody said.

Heavy silence. No sobs this time, just the dread

that Anne, too, felt.

She felt it then. The presence in her mind.

Anne, desperately, tried to raise her defences and

push the presence away from her, but it held their
ground firmly and she recognised the smoky-
presence. Severus was trying to keep her there,
with them. The mental exercise of startlement had
brought her back to the present state she found
herself in.

He looked at her as she blinked, hopeful.

“He died protecting me,” she blurted out. All eyes

turned to her. “Dumbledore. I was occupied with
Bellatrix when someone attacked me by the back, I
don’t remember who it was. He just… fell the next
second. He got in the way.”

Moody frowned, not understanding why

Dumbledore would do that for someone like Anne.
Not that Anne wasn’t a good asset to the Order;
she was. She had great information and a new-view
to the world, but that didn’t mean she was more
important than Dumbledore, who would not just
sacrifice his own life for nothing.

Severus wanted to find something understanding to

say, something kind, but all he could find was:
say, something kind, but all he could find was:

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said.

Anne nodded.

“Monty was captured,” Anne continued. “We split

up. He was supposed to call for help once he was
away from the wards, but he never got that far. He
was already hurt when they got him, he had
already been tortured when I saw him again. I tried
to keep His attention to me, but he found my weak
spot… he killed him in front of me,” Mia’s sob made
a return. “I tried to help him, Mia, I really did, I’m
sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Anne’s eyes filled with tears.

Everything inside of her fell apart and her mental

shields came tumbling down. Severus’ mind was
bombarded by the vision of Monty’s throat being
cut and Bellatrix’s terrible crackle in loop in head.
He jumped up and away from her by startlement as
she started crying so much that she felt dizzy, her
head hurt and her stomach hurt as she sobbed and
screamed.

“It was my fault!” she admitted.

“No, Anne, no!” Sirius whined. “Don’t do that to

yourself.”

And as she cried, the exhaustion of magic usage hit

her as the adrenaline went down. She felt herself
slipping away once more, but this time it was
through a more natural manner: sleep.

Anne wasn’t sure how long she was out, but

probably not much because when she woke up,
Moody was still there. She didn’t move or open her
eyes, body resting almost completely against
someone else’s body, head resting on their
shoulder – it took her a moment to listen the
rambling around her as words and to recognize the
scent of the man beside her as Severus.

“Sirius and Remus aren’t back yet,” was saying Mia.

“They’ll be soon,” Moody said. “They flooed directly

to the house.”

There was silence. Apparently, someone must’ve

showed some emotion or asked something without
sound, because what came after seemed more like
an answer than a simple comment.

“She seems physically well. I tried to check her out

as well as I could without touching her too much, I
mean, I know her reaction to touch and she was…
in quite a state. I wasn’t sure whose blood it was
on her,” Moody said.

“When do the bodies get here?” Severus asked.

One more second of uncomfortable silence.

“By the afternoon of tomorrow, I believe,” Moody

said. “I put my two very best people to take care of
them, but I needed to be the one to bring her
home.”

“I want to see him,” Mia said.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea, Mia,” Moody

said.

“It’s my husband. I deserve to see him,” she

insisted.

“And I don’t want to take that right away from you,

but I believe it would be best to wait until we
cleaned him up and patched him up. It’s not a
pretty sight for anyone to see, let alone someone
that loved him,” Moody said.

The fact that Anne had been the one who had seen
him and watched it all hung over the room.

“She has given enough already, and destiny seems

to want to keep taking more and more away from
her,” Severus said. “It’s not fair.”

The unfairness of it all was terribly ironic. She knew

she had gone back in time for a war again, but she
had never imagined she would be taken by surprise
by any deaths, especially of those she had thought
to be protected already. She took the hit as well as
she could, but she was starting to fall apart again.

In her silence and stillness, she listened.

There was talk of a burial and the details they

needed to take care of as fast as they could.

Anne said nothing.

There was talk of asking for medical assistance for

her to make sure there was no internal bleeding
after Moody said of explosions and fallen buildings
he feared she might have been nearby. She said
nothing as Madame Pomfrey was called and named
the state she had gotten there ‘emotional shock’,
but examined her by magic as she ‘slept’ and said
she was indeed healthy with nothing but a few
scratches and the after-effects of Cruciatus.

Severus woke her up, his eyes telling her that he

knew she had been awake for so long.

Madame Pomfrey insisted of bathing her.

She was led up the stairs and into her bedroom,

refusing to as much as look away from her straight
line. She was put in the bathroom, undressed and –
surprisingly not flinching – put in the bathtub. She
was grateful it had not been the shower; she wasn’t
sure her knees would be able to hold her up for too
long.

Silently, she watched the bathtub water turn pink

with blood that did not belong to her. She felt
herself slipping away and disappearing once more –
it was a lot easier to do that in the bathroom; it
seemed a place a lot more familiar to do so. She
didn’t even feel Pomona’s hands washing her back
and scrubbing her hands. She knew she was there
for a long time because the water was becoming
colder, but she held no interest in getting out and
Madame Pomfrey didn’t seem happy with her hair,
still scrubbing caked-blood and dirt out of it.

“… and then I fell off the tree, and it was so tall

that I thought I was going to die! Can you believe
it?” Poppy was saying, trying to get rid of a
particularly difficult knot. “My older brother was so
angry; he screamed at me for years after that,
every time I’d say I’d play outside again. My sister
and I thought it to be funny, of course, we were so
young. Menaces, we were, I admit.”

Anne blinked in the bathtub, trying to focus on her

voice or in the cooling water. She wanted to say
something; scream and shout until everything
stopped hurting, but nothing seemed to come off of
it.

Someone knocked at the door of the bathroom and

it was opened just enough for the person to poke
their head in.

“Hello, Madame. I’m sorry. James passed out, we

might need your help,” said Lily Potter walking into
the bathroom. “You can leave her to me. You’ve
been with her for a long time already.”

More than two hours, Anne’s logical part seemed to

want to say.

It seemed quick, but Anne was grateful to know

that Madame Pomfrey hesitated leaving her. With
whispered goodbyes and a chaste kiss on top of her
almost-cleaned hair, Poppy got up from the ground
she had been sitting to leave Anne with Lily,
sniffling on her way. Anne felt bad for noticing that
she, too, had been crying as she told stories with
great excitement to get Anne to come back to them
– poor Poppy had lost a good friend that day as
well; even if Anne didn’t care much for
Dumbledore, she cared enough for Poppy to know
that she was grieving a terrible loss of her youth.

“James is going to be fine, don’t worry,

sweetheart,” was the first thing Lily said as she
took Madame’s place on the ground to finish
untangling her hair and cleaning her up. “He has
his mother and his brother with him. And I thought
you might need your mother as well, so I’m here.”

Anne wanted to thank her and explain to her what

had happened, but her throat was hurting. So all
she managed to do was ask:

“Mia?”

“She’s sad.” That was the understatement of the

century, they both knew that. “She’s angry. Not at
you, of course, you did nothing wrong,” Anne
seemed to disagree, but said nothing. “She just
never really thought of life without Fleatmont. She
was older than him, she thought she would die
first; she never prepared herself for any other
scenario, especially not one where you’d come back
so… hurt. And not one where nobody would let her
see his body.”

Anne wanted to say that it was good. Mia shouldn’t

see Monty in that way, because he wouldn’t have
wanted any of it to happen the way it did and he
certainly wouldn’t want to traumatise his wife
further than his death would have naturally.

Anne said nothing.

Her anger grew, making the water around her

warm enough to make her skin red again. There
was only one answer to the riddle the universe
seemed to want to throw her way: “What does one
lose when they have nothing?”, and the answer was
“themselves”.

Monty will not have died in vain, she told herself,

and that was her only comfort as she heard her
father’s sobs from a distance. For Monty she killed…
and for him, she would kill again, and fuck her soul
shattering in pieces. For Monty, she would be a
shattered mirror with pride and vengeance.

And everything changed, the whole universe

shifting under her will.

When focused, Anne had amounted to

extraordinary things with the help of what people
called ‘tunnel-vision’.

She had studied for all her exams in a single night.

She had managed to learn all Severus’ basic spells
in a week. She learnt Occlumency in a fortnight.
She learned Legimency in another fortnight. She
had concocted a plan to bring down a Dark Wizard
in a few nights in her first life, and though it failed,
it almost worked. The consequences of her focus
were mostly disastrous and anyone around her
knew that. After the exams, she had fainted while
going down the stairs and got a concussion. She
exhausted her magic and Severus had written a
note forbidding her from practicing magic for a
week. She had splitting headaches for weeks after
the mental shields and attacks were in place. She
had gone back in time and almost died when her
plan failed.

Grief makes odd people make odd things and

normal people make scandalous things; Anne was
lucky she was already off-her-head before Monty
was taken away from her.

While Mia seemed to be throwing herself in her

kitchen and making sure all the children were
alright, James refused to stop crying and get up
from the bed and Sirius seemed to be taken his
place in Monty’s study, stealing his liquor more
often than not, controlled only by Remus’ despaired
efforts. Anne, however, had spent three night and
days awake with her whole room filled with plans
written down, torn down and thrown to the ground.

Severus called for Regulus when Anne walked

straight into a wall after coming out of the kitchen
with a half-eaten biscuit (she called the biscuit and
half cup of tea lunch) and a notebook filled with
notes and watched, in horror, as Anne almost went
face-first into the door of her bedroom right after
almost breaking her nose with the wall near the
doorway.

“It’s like when Severus lost his arm all over again,
but instead of bloody anatomy books, she’s just…
gone all over the place,” Remus said once Severus
asked him to back him up while telling Regulus
what was happening. “There’s no line of thought in
her notes, there’s no theme. Some are just random
words. I don’t think she slept.”

“Three nights, at least,” Severus added.

Regulus stood in the parlour with a worried face.

“Lily was worried and tried to slip her a Muggle

sleeping pill, but Anne noticed and got really mad,”
Remus added.

“It was horrible, she locked herself into the

bedroom and wouldn’t answer when anyone
knocked. But she needs to come and she needs to
sleep. Tomorrow the burial for both of them; she’ll
never forgive herself if she doesn’t go,” Severus
said. “Once she comes to normal, of course.”

Regulus listened everything they had to say before

they led him up the stairs and left him in front of
her bedroom door. Anxious and scared of what he
was going to see, Regulus knocked on the door,
testing the doorhandle without waiting for a
response. It was locked. She didn’t answer or called
out as she usually did.

“Anne? It’s Regulus, can you open the door?”

There was a small noise inside, which certainly

made him slightly more relieved. At least she was
alive and hadn’t done something stupid.

“They called you?” she asked from inside. He heard

the door unlocking and put his hands on his front
pockets. “Of course, that they did. Mum has been
going mad.”

Regulus would beg to differ from Anne’s sentence in

the moment he saw her face. Pale skin and deep,
dark bags under her eyes, but she seemed to
weight the same she weighted the last time he saw
her because – though March – she wore a tank top
and short, barefoot on the floor.

“Your mum was worried, that’s all,” he answered.

“Severus said you two had an argument and that
you weren’t talking to anyone else, so I came here
to see if you would talk to me instead.”

She took a step back, opening the door further to

allow him into her bedroom. He did and he almost
gasped. The walls had parchment and papers glued
and stuck to the wall, all scribbled and with
drawings attached; there were notebooks without
pages on the ground, all the paper having been
torn out and thrown around the room in little balls
or stuck to the wall. It was a mess. There were ink
spots on the bed’s blankets and sheets, on the
walls and on floor that Anne didn’t bother cleaning.

“Annie, my dearest Princess, I am so sorry,” he

said.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Mia and James and Sirius… all
of them are just falling apart. Fair enough, they
loved him very much, but they lost sight of what
truly is important. If we had all the Horcrux dead
already, I’d have had the opportunity of killing the
Tom Riddle that day, but I had to hold back.”

“They talked about Evan.”

“Oh, yeah… him,” she said, rolling her eyes. She

stumbled towards the window, opening it, letting a
cold breeze inside, but she didn’t seem to mind. “I
feel like I’m burning in this room, honestly,” she
commented.

She had been eating well by the plates of food in

the corner of the room, but he doubted she was
stopping to eat it like a normal, so she was just
probably pacing around the room the whole day
and the whole night while she ate to make her head
think well, but the sleep-depravation wasn’t helping
much. She seemed frustrated.

“Anne, I truly think –”

“Do you think that we will get Tom to move more

Horcruxes around? I have heard nothing of the
amulet yet. I need it to be gone soon, so I can kill
the snake at once,” she said, cutting him off.

“I heard nothing,” he admitted going to sit on her

bed and took off his shoes. “But there’s no reason
for us to be awake and waiting for it to happen. We
could just… sleep for a little while. You seem
exhausted.”

She barely glanced at him.

“The good thing is that Tom truly thinks he’s won

now, he’ll drop his guard. He thinks he broke me!”
she said, sounding positively giddy. Regulus held
back the wish of saying that Tom did seem to break
her. “And he thinks Severus is dead. We can use
that information for good, we can haunt him
without actually putting Severus in danger; we can
put out a rumour that someone saw him alive and
well, walking around his old house. If I can get the
Order’s support, we can make a good trap out of it,
taking some of those Death Eaters out in the
process. I think it's a good idea.”

“It would be a good idea if you could put those

words together without looking like you’re about to
pass out. Sleep-depravation will not help your case,
if you don’t want to sound bonkers in front of the
Order,” Regulus said, kindness slipping for a
moment. “It’s like you don’t realise the complete
mess you were in.”

“I do realise it.”

“It doesn’t seem like it!” he said, getting up and

crossing his arms. He squinted his eyes, upset.
“Anne, you don’t understand that people are not
just upset because Lord Potter and Dumbledore
died. They’re upset because they almost lost you,
too. Lupin and Severus are still terrified, and those
are the ones I talk about because those are the
ones I talked to.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re falling apart, you’re not ‘fine’!” he said. “Tell

me how I can help!”

Anne put all the parchments and papers she had in

hand down, frowning as she turned to him.

“I feel like I don’t have the right the grief because I

met him so much after everybody else. That man
was her husband, their father; he’s my grandfather.
They’re suffering a lot more than me,” she said. “If
I’m kept inside of my little space and they’re out
there, I can prove them I can get revenge. They’ll
never know what hit them, and when I’m done with
the motherfuckers that took him away from, they
won’t even be able to know where the hurricane
came from.”

“Tell me.”

“You’ll know.”

He scoffed.

“You said you’d start sharing things, you said you’d

get better from this… secret-keeping habit of
yours,” he complained. “You said you’d ask for help
if you needed it, and you’re right back to where you
started, Anne. I will love you, but I will not put
anymore hope in you if you keep falling back down
when you promised to reach out. Stop pulling
away.”

“I can’t share because I don’t know!” she

exclaimed. “Three days, three nights, and I still
don’t know! But I know I’ll shake this world with all
that I have, Regulus, and they will know my name.
I don’t want anybody living the life I had to live
with, and I don’t want my dad…” her voice wavered
as her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want my dad
crying himself to sleep or falling because his legs
don’t work because of how exhausted he is
anymore. I will show up in the frontlines with
fucking purpose and nothing will stop me. I want
them to give me their pain, because I can deal with
it.”

“You cannot.”

“I shall!” she answered. “I’ll find a way. I’ll give all

that I have in me for that; my blood, my sweat and
my tears. Anything for… them.”

“Them?”

Her legs started moving and he watched as she

almost ran to the other side of the room where a
list of names was stuck.

“For Harry, for Hermione and Ron, and Ginny and

Luna. For Fred and George, Percy, Charlie. For
Tonks! For Teddy!” she looked away from the list
and back at him, tears running down her face
through her wide eyes. “For Laurie! For you… for
the children we might have one day.”

He didn’t know what to say. He knew what it felt to

feel responsible for someone, but that was taking
to a whole new level and he worried for her sanity
as her hands shook, but he understood – he would
do anything for Laurie and for the children they
might have if time and destiny allowed after
everything was done. He would do anything for
Anne, as well.

“Can we not fight for ourselves for tonight?” he

asked. “You need to sleep and rest. You’re
exhausted. Tomorrow is the burial and Mia, James
and Sirius need you there. I won’t be there, but I
want you to know I’m with you.”

He opened his arms and watched as she hesitated,

but in the end moved towards him, almost falling in
the process and holding onto his arms to manage
to get close enough for a hug. He embraced her
tight enough to make her react, hugging him back
and sighing in delight for the comfort he brought
her.

The attention was nice. Everybody was so worried

about Mia and James had Sirius and Lily, while
Sirius had James and Remus. Anne tried to pull
away because seeing their sadness was
devastating, so Severus, who was emotionally
awkward, tried to do his best on worrying about
her, but he couldn’t do much. So having Regulus
was comforting and it felt like drinking cocoa in a
cold night.

The loud ‘pop’ of Kreacher showing up in the room

made them jump and Anne scramble back, once
more almost falling.

The loud wailing made her cringe as she watched

Kreacher bouncing at the balls of his feet, trying to
calm down the small baby in his arms, who was
screaming his lungs out for something that no one
seemed to be able to give him.

“Master! Master!” Kreacher said.

“Is he hurt? What happened, Kreacher?” Regulus

asked, going to them and taking Laurie into his
arms. Kreacher didn’t answer, just let Regulus deal
with the child, looking over his body to search for
any bleeding wound or bruise, but there was
nothing; it looked like a lonely child. “Did my family
go out?”

“Master’s family went to Lestrange Manor, they did,

refused to take Young Master Lawrence when
Kreacher reminded them Master Regulus asked
them to not leave Young Master alone at the
house,” Kreacher said. “Ironed Kreacher’s ears
because of that.”

“I’ll have a talk with them,” Regulus grumbled.

Anne watched in horror the bright, angry red on the

elf’s ears.

“I have some dittany for that,” she said, walking to

her table for the small tube. “Come on here, sit. Let
me heal you.”

“Kreacher is fine Mistress. Mistress is a really good

and kind Mistress,” the elf answered.

Anne still forced him to sit down for treatment. He

didn’t complain, but did look at Regulus with wide
eyes of worry, but when Regulus noticed, the
treatment was already done and Laurie was
stopping to cry as he paced around the room.

Regulus was upset that their talk had been

interrupted, since he thought he was about to make
some break-through with Anne and feared she
would pull away once more now that he had
another thing happening to keep him busy. But
once Kreacher insisted to go back to finish dinner
before Walburga and the rest came back, Anne still
didn’t seem as upset and vulnerable as before.

“Why is crying? Is he hurt? Is he hungry?” she

asked, peeking at the baby.

He understood at once that Anne had never seen

Laurie before. He smiled, walking closer to her and
lowering his arms to show her. She watched the
baby looking around the unknown room in
curiosity, not fear.

“No, he just hates loneliness,” he answered.

Anne frowned.

“A baby this young? You’d think they don’t even

notice they’re alone,” she said.

“They’re quite smart,” Regulus answered.

Those dark eyes looked right at her, curious and

innocent – the nativity of the ingenue made her feel
dizzy. He was divine. He was perfect in every way
there was and he was the son of the cruellest and
most disgusting being there was on Earth, and yet…
the child was nothing but a child. Perfect, small,
fragile and genuine.

“We both hate being alone, then,” she said.

“Why don’t you two make company to each other,

then,” he offered. “We can spend the night. I’ll just
send word to Kreacher and he’ll pass the message
over.”

Anne hesitated in her thoughts. She had barely

known babies in her own timeline, it was odd to see
one from so close, too – and one that seemed to
eager to get to know her, as well.

“Alright,” she answered.

It took minutes for Regulus to convince Anne to get

Laurie from his arms so he could get her some
more food and then he would fix her bed so they all
could take a good nap before dinner and then going
back to sleep. In less than ten minutes, Anne was
left alone in the bedroom, sitting on the chair near
the table with the surprisingly heavy baby in her
arms who stared at her as she stared right back in
frozen stiffness. Laurie, however, seemed to find
her arms comfortable enough to rest easily in,
looking into her eyes without restriction.

She looked around her room.

“There are a lot of pictures and drawings that a

baby shouldn’t look at,” she admitted. “But I
suppose you won’t remember anything about it
either way. Dismembered bodies and pretty flowers
will have the same effect on you, won’t they?”

“Ah!” he cooed in response and happily stretched

his face in something similar to a smile without
teeth.

“Well, aren’t you a beauty,” she mumbled.

His arms moved around now that the small cocoon

of blankets were looser since she hadn’t been
holding it correctly, but he seemed happy with the
freedom she had given him as he legs started to try
to move as well.

The door opened once more and Regulus walked in

with a plate of fruits in his hand, taking one look at
them and going straight to the window, closing it.

“Hey, it’s hot!” she said.

“You think it’s hot because of the sleep-

depravation. It’s cold, especially for a baby,” he
answered. “If you’re taking the blankets off of him,
then the window needs to be closed for the
moment.”

She nodded, understanding. Babies had a lot less of

an immune system then they did; something that
would give her and Regulus nothing but a sneeze
could easily kill Laurie in a few days.

“Come to bed,” he said, waving his wand and the

bed cleaned itself of papers, making itself at once.
“Let’s eat.”

She held the child tighter in her arms and slowly

got up, fearing she would drop him.

“How old is he?” she asked as she walked towards

Regulus. He hummed an answer she didn’t hear
since she was focused on walking without hurting
Laurie. She sat beside Regulus, gently putting
Laurie on the bed, where he happily lied. “What did
you say?”

“A bit over two months, but the little bugger is

quite the smart one. He’s holding his head up quite
well, not for long, but without help,” Regulus
answered.

Anne smiled a bit.

“I wish I could remember when I was that small,”

she said. “I was still with Mum and Dad when I was
two months,” she added.

Regulus looked at Laurie.

“What happened to you won’t happen to him, Anne;

we’re fighting to make sure he’ll be alright,” he
said. “With Barty almost being seventeen, I’ll be
able to choose another ward. That doesn’t mean I’ll
stop supporting Barty through his journey, of
course, he can still support himself on my name,
but that means I’ll have another spot under my
name as Heir of the House. If I don’t have any
children, I can put his name under mine.”

Anne watched Laurie as well now, knowing that the

child in her bed as most likely the next Heir of the
House.

“I think I can remember the moment I stopped

being a kid,” she admitted. Sleep-depravation
making her tongue loose. “Everything changed at
once; it was like I suddenly understood something
everybody around me knew, but didn’t tell me. And
it was so long ago,” she sounded bitter even to her
own ears. “I was fifteen.”

Regulus frowned. He had been urging her to open-

up to him for a long time now, and though she
made a lot of things about her in some way, she
never really verbalised a lot of what she felt to him
in other than simple words. An explanation coming
from her was a lot, so he sat there, quiet,
swallowing his questions.

“Perhaps I was still a bit like Laurie,” she turned to

the child, poking his little kicking leg. “Small,
fragile, weak and so… trusting, but then I was like I
am now; a mess,” she looked at Regulus again. “I
know you don’t like my lack of communication
where it truly matters, but it’s hard for me to put
these things into words. All I know is my anger and
bitterness, and you deserve to hear so much more
than those ugly parts of my life.”

“I’m glad to listen to anything about you, Anne,” he

answered. “I love you. This means I won’t leave.”

“I have so much to lose, Reggie, and I lost so much

already, and my mind still tells me it was because I
was trying to protect everything I gained after I
came here,” she explained. “I can’t afford to lose
anything or anyone else.”

“We’ll do our best, but that’s all we can give this

war,” he said. “There’s no reason to give ourselves
whole if we cannot go back home at the end of this.
We have so much waiting for us at the end of it
all.”

Silence reigned in the room as she took a bite of

the apple in her hand. It tasted like nothing at all,
but the crunch was satisfying enough to make her
chew on it instead of swallowing as soon as she
could.

“Do you think this will make this better?” she asked
suddenly.

He raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“This pain,” she answered. “It’ll make me stronger,

won’t it? That’s why destiny threw this my way,
otherwise I lost him for nothing. If I take my losses
just the right way, it’ll make my cause survive and
when the smoke comes down, I’ll feel alive again.
That’s what happens in movies and that’s what
happened when I came here and found a reason to
be alive again – you. I don’t mean to rely on you
completely, but –”

“You can. You’re married to me, that’s what it

means. It means I’m here through whatever comes
your way and I will support you and comfort you
through the darkest of times,” he said to her,
putting his own apple down on the plate, holding
her free hand once he reached for it. “Anne, I’m
here.”

“Everybody’s saying that I need time, but time

makes things worse. I need more than just time,”
she said through her teeth. He nodded,
understanding. “But then I see someone like Caleb
– (he didn’t ask who that was) – and Laurie, I see
the helplessness in them and I feel so…
responsible. I was like them one day, and now I’m
broken and I don’t want that to happen to them.
I’m always saying I want to save everyone or help
everyone, but I can’t… I just can’t save everyone.”

Anne was finally seeing the situation a real leader.

One has to make the choice. She had been doing
that subconsciously for a long time up to that point,
but now she knew and the weight felt a lot heavier
on her shoulders.

“It angers me I was caught so out of surprise… so

blind-sided,” she admitted.

“I sent the warning as soon as I could,” he said,

guilt choking him.

“This has nothing to do with you, Regulus; I’d

never blame you for this, never!” she said, shaking
his head to him, holding his hand tighter. “I’m
angry because we were so distracted that I didn’t
feel the wards as I passed them. I’m angry because
I insisted on going back when I should’ve waited for
backup. I was reckless and I got them both killed
because of that – you were right.”

“Anne –”

“I feel like I’m falling apart and there’s nothing

anyone can do about it,” she added.

Regulus looked away. There was nothing he could

do but listen to her.

“Tell me. I’ll listen. Trust me.”

“I want nothing more,” she said. She didn’t need to

say it was hard, he could feel it. “I want to put my
guard down and just… be. I want you to know that
I’m here and that you can ask me anything and I’ll
be able to answer because I trust you, but I cannot
trust myself to not break again.”

“Broken or not, you’re the strongest person I

know,” he said.

He kissed her head.

And as they finished eating, took a nap, they didn’t

awake for dinner and Lily didn’t dare disturb them.

But Anne woke up in the early hours of the next

morning with the whines of Laurie and quickly
moved to hold him, still half-asleep, but now aware
of how to hold a child. Regulus woke no more than
a few seconds later, but didn’t dare move to not
startle Anne, who held onto Laurie as if he was her
life-line, tears streaming down her face as she
whispered sweet nothings to the air; he wasn’t sure
they were for Laurie or for herself.

He told himself she was going to be fine. He told

himself that she was alive.

He just hoped he was correct.

Chapter 124: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Three -
Summary:
Revenge

THE PREPARATION

TW: SUCIDICE IDEALISATION

Anne stared at the letter in her hands and the small

boxes of different colours in front of her on the
dinner table right after breakfast while everybody
else was getting ready for the burial-service,
Regulus sitting beside her with Laurie on his arms
as she frowned, uncomfortable with what she read.

“Do you mind reading it out-loud?” Regulus asked,

his curiosity winning from his respect this time
around.

“It’s just… Dumbledore and Monty left things to me

in their testament wishes,” she explained, still
frowning. “It’s odd. I mean, I expected something
from Monty, of course, but Dumbledore’s testament
certainly took me by surprise.”

“What did they leave you?”

Anne put the letter down, getting up from her seat

and fixing the long, dark skirt of her black dress
and sighed.

“More than I expected,” she admitted. “Dumbledore

left me his wand,” she admitted.

To leave someone a wand was… intimate. It was

something done between father-child or, perhaps,
lovers and since they had neither dynamic in their
relationship, the present certainly was an odd one.
She blinked at the letter in silence as she finished
reading it

“Did he say why?”

“They said there’s a ring and a letter inside his

box,” she added, not answering Regulus’ question.

Slowly, he reached for the box of silver colour,

adorned with silk ribbons tying it together. He put it
right in front of her so she could open it once she
was ready for that. It didn’t take long, as he
thought it would. Anne reached for the box and
pulled the ribbon almost straight away with a
concentrated frown on her face.

She took the letter almost straight away, not even

looking at the other contents inside.

“Will you read it to me?” Regulus asked. “You don’t

need to, if you think it’s too personal.”

“There’s nothing personal between Dumbledore and

I,” she answered. “Whatever he has to say, it’s
probably bullshit anyways. I’ll read.”

“Alright,” he said in a mumble.

Anne opened the letter, taking a deep breath as her

eyes travelled through the page of small
calligraphy. She had to squint her eyes to
understand it completely, but she managed to start
reading.

“Dear Miss Anne Potter, if you received this letter,

this means my adventures on mortal earth are
done and I began a new one in somewhere far
away and new. This also means that the war isn’t
over and I died in action and I have failed you and
left you to deal with the consequences of my
actions once more and, for that, I apologise,” she
read. Regulus nodded along in support. “My death
will mean a lot to the world either we like how it
sounds or not. My death will make Tom believe he’s
won, but you need to make sure he knows he’s
wrong soon enough. He’s already gathered all the
support he could and nobody will sway sides in
other countries anymore, our main worry is our
dear Kingdom and Ireland,” she stopped once
more, to signify a change of paragraph. “My dear
child, I know of the stone and cloak you have in
your possession and, therefore, I believe you know
the significance I believe my wand to have, and I
leave that for you, hoping that you know the
instructions of those who have it in their possession
– do not be selfish with that, Anne. Be careful and
leave your recklessness to other parts of your life,
but not to the Hallows. Make sure you don’t have
all of them together and on you,” she took a deep
breath, ignoring Regulus’ confused look. “With you
I leave my sister’s ring as well. That one has no
magical significance, but only sentimental. In old
times, many soldiers would adorn their armour with
ruby for it was believed it would affect its protection
of the body and some even went as far as putting it
inside their skin, though I have the faith you’ll be
smarter than that. With that ring I promise you
that, in life, I was completely committed to our
cause.”

Regulus put the wand and the ring outside. The

ring was small and made of gold. She had seen it in
Dumbledore’s pinky-finger.

“I apologise once more, Anne, for my failings that I

managed not to commit this time around, but that
hurt you so deeply in your own lifetime. Every story
you would tell me and every anecdote I seem to
have gathered made me feel worse and worse
about my priorities and how I sorted them. You told
me that you came to me for help when you were
younger and that I looked away from one of the
worst kinds of violence a person can go through; do
know and take some comfort that I do understand
how terrible it was and that I don’t think I could do
it again – because of that, I left most of my money
in the process of opening a Magical Child Security
Program, which is falling into the hands of Mary
MacDonald. And I believe that MCSP might save
other Annes and Harrys. I hope to repent for my
mistakes in my death as I tried in my life. It’s with
tearful goodbyes I end this letter, however, and say
my last goodbyes. PS: Do take care of them.”

Regulus stared at Anne in shock.

“Did he --?”

“Yes,” she answered, sounding almost as shocked

at him.

“You’re in control now,” he said, surprised.

Anne blinked unsure of how the Order would react

to that information as her mind insisted on making
the next steps on her head already, even if she had
yet to host the next meeting. She shook her head,
pushing away the thoughts and plots so she could
focus on other things.

“He wants me to be Lady of Death,” she mumbled

more to herself than to him. “He knew the stone
was with you.”

“With me?” he asked, confused, raising his

eyebrows. “What stone are you talking about,
Anne?”

She took his hand, caressing it and touching the

ring she had given him as a wedding gift.

“That’s the Resurrection Stone,” she answered.

“WHAT?!” he exclaimed, looking at the ring in

complete astonishment. “The one from the stories?
Anne! How could you not tell me something like
this? You should be the one using it –”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” she answered. “You

would’ve wanted me to use it, but you’re in so
much more constant danger than me and I needed
you alive and well. Sure, if I had it with me, I
would’ve saved Monty, but if I’m honest… I thought
you were going to die first, so I made sure you’d
come back to me.”

Regulus just stared at her, not even being able to

digest what she was saying to him. She knew her
to be ruthless and perhaps even a bit reckless for
relying on luck and hope in the plans she managed
to make, but the fact that she was able to put
herself in danger so much without even caring that
the stone that could secure her safety was with him
was beyond worrisome. He didn’t know what to say
to her, so he just continued staring at her until she
started blinking a few times, uncomfortable by his
stillness.

“Have you gone absolutely mad?” he asked.

“Reggie –”

“Don’t you even start. Anne, this could be the

difference between life and death to someone like
you, someone good – and you give it to me? I’m a
Death Eater,” he said.

“Only because I asked you to,” she answered.

“If you believe I had a way out, you’re very wrong,

Princess,” he answered between teeth. She cringed
and his expression softened. “Anne, this should be
on your finger. Please, for my sanity –”

“I can’t. I won’t. This needs to be yours, otherwise

I…” she took a deep breath. “If I leave this house
not knowing if I will have someone to go back to, I
don’t think I’ll try to come back at all right now.”

Anne didn’t want to die, or at least she wouldn’t

actively look for death’s embrace, but if it
happened, things would certainly feel a lot lighter in
her chest and stomach. If death would mean relief,
then not being able to find relief and comfort
somewhere else might leave her to give up on the
fight. She needed to make sure there was
something and someone important waiting and
needing her. Perhaps it was co-dependency, but
Anne needed to be needed by Regulus and the
Order at the moment.

With her eyes filling with tears, she felt weak.

Regulus was quick to wipe them with his thumb as

he caressed her face and kissed the corner of her
lips.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. I understand,” he said.

“We’ll talk about it later, I swear, my love.
Everything is going to be alright.”

“I need to do Monty’s box,” she whined.

“We can leave that for later, it’s not going

anywhere,” he dismissed, caressing her back now
as well.

“I need to, or I don’t think I can see him.”

Regulus looked away, but nodded. Letting go of her

hand and pulling the maroon box near to them so
Anne could reach it better without having to move
too much as her hands and knees shook. He untied
the ribbon for her and put it aside, waiting for her
to take the lid of the box off.

This time, she took a second to breathe and

another one looking at him for approval and
reassurance. He reached for her hand again and
held it as the other pushed the lid off and to the
side before her hand reached inside. Inside there
isn’t anything but papers, so she pulls them all out
at once.

“What are those?” she asked.

He looked as well. Green paper with black ink.

“Those are passages; complete access to a dead

person’s vault,” he answered. “I was given one of
these when Father passed away. You have two of
them.”

“The Potters have two vaults,” she dismissed

quickly.

“The envelope?” he asked.

She reached for the simple white envelope, feeling

its heavy weight and opening it quickly and gasped.
She turned its contents on the table, mouth still
open and tears already filling her eyes once more
as she took in the sight of a key and a small piece
of paper.

‘Vault for Lady Anne (nee Potter) Black, opened by

Lord Fleatmont Potter, August 15st of 1976’.

Her sobs made Regulus look back at her and get up

from his chair, hugging her sitting form tightly. She
held him by his waist, hiding her face into his shirt
as her whole body shook against him.

“He opened it on my first birthday with them,” she

sobbed. He barely could understand her, but he
listened and frowned in pain for seeing her in pain.
“He opened in my name as if I was his daughter.
He did all this for me and I killed him.”

Fleatmont Potter was buried at three in the

afternoon in Godric Hollow’s Cemetery beside his
family on the plot that Mia had saved for her own
body as she held onto her dead husband’s wand
tight enough for her knuckles to be white; she shed
to tears as she held one of James’ arms to keep
him standing as he hugged Sirius, who openly
sobbed on his friend’s shoulder. Only the Order was
invited.

Albus Dumbledore was buried beside his little sister

on the same cemetery at four in the afternoon. Mia
didn’t stay for this one, going home straight after
Monty was put on the ground and his coffin could
no longer be seen through the dirt. Most of
Hogwarts’ Staff was there and many of the older
students. Minerva McGonagall made sure to keep
her composure, but Poppy had to be guided into
the church to lie down once her knees gave out as
she watched her friend’s coffin be lowered into a
hole on the ground.

Anne was quiet on the back in both services,

Regulus’ form under the Invisibility Cloak making
her feel warmer. She didn’t have any tears left to
cry, but she did have anger to make her blood boil.

She plotted in silence. It worried Regulus.

Her most dangerous plans were the ones she didn’t

share with anyone.

The next day, she went to Olivander’s and bought

another wand. A wand that once had belonged to
her brother, who now called to her as her master
and companion on adventures. She went back
home with a half-plan formed and the clear
memory of people working on rebuilding Diagon
Alley as if there hadn’t been dead bodies on the
streets.

Anne bought a bag home filled with essentials that

she didn’t comment on with her family. They, too
lost in their grief and worry, none of them asked
anything about how coldly she ignored them and
walked back into her bedroom.

That was when April 13th came. One quick warning

from Regulus of why he wouldn’t be able to sneak
to meet Anne in her house made her heart pound
as she watched midnight strike and her family go to
bed, tired. There was a Death Eater meeting on
Grimmauld Place, she knew without him having to
say it. And as she sat silently in the parlour, book
on her lap until almost midnight-thirty came along.
Once she was sure everybody in the house was
asleep, she took her new wand and watched it twirl
on her fingers.

Holly wood and phoenix feather core. It felt good

and powerful on her hands. She felt untouchable as
she prepared herself for certain death. Her hands
had stopped shaking at least twenty minutes before
and now the adrenaline pumped into her veins so
hard that it was starting to become hard to
breathe.

She was to attack.

Alone.

Anne would be against Death Eaters alone once

more, but this time there was no way she was
going to lose someone, after all, if she was
attacking alone, there was no one for her to
protect.

In the silence of late night, she was quite quick to

fill her bag with the small round containers she had
created. She put her bag over her shoulder and left
the opening around her waist so she could reach for
it in quick recession. Her wand was in her right
hand when she walked out of the house, closing the
front door slowly behind her back and she walked
straight out of the wards, not even caring if
someone would wake up with that, because if they
did, they wouldn’t know where she went to.

She stepped out and turned straight away,

disappearing on the spot.

Regulus tried not to show how he was shaking as

Narcissa came into the room and taking Laurie
away from his arms, gliding through the Death
Eaters in his music room (his bloody safe-space
being invaded). Roddy, Rabastan, Lucius and
Voldemort himself was standing right in front of
him in his own house, but this wasn’t some family
meeting, this was a Death Eater rally waiting to be
formed.

“My Lord,” Regulus said once the baby was out of

his arms, taking a bow. “What a surprise, I was not
expecting company. I would’ve prepared something
more comfortable than the music room,” he added.

Voldemort looked at him. He had been expecting to

catch Regulus doing something wrong for the
cause, but he only walked in to Regulus balancing
Laurie in his leg so he could play the melancholic
melody in the piano and the boy could watch and
slowly fall asleep as they did almost every night
when he woke up in the middle of the night, crying
– no other adult would go console the child, so
Regulus took upon himself to go; now, if he ever
spent the night out, he would take Laurie with him.

Narcissa took the child of the Dark Lord to its room,

letting it sleep. She stayed in the room, watching
the baby sleep and shaking in silence, not wanting
to go back downstairs and see the rally that was
happening.

“Why don’t we go to the parlour, then?” the Dark

Lord offered, as if the house was his own.

Regulus swallowed down his annoyance and gave

him a small smile without showing his teeth.

“Of course, you only have the best of ideas, my

Lord,” he answered.

The ground quickly went through the house

towards the parlour and Regulus opened the double
doors, leaving them open. He wanted the other
adults in the house to hear the commotion and
walk down to see what was happening. And he was
right to do so, because Uncle Cygnus appeared to
the doors of the parlour with a content smile,
completely dressed as if he had been expecting
guests.

“My Lord! Good to see you again, I’m so glad you

came to visit. Though it does worry me. Did you
have a reason for that?” Cygnus asked.

Regulus watched his uncle walking into the room

and comfortably sitting beside him, across the Dark
Lord. He seemed a lot less tense – most would give
it off as experience of age, the ability of appearing
comfortable and content under the worst of
stresses, but one would know the truth if they can
pay attention enough to Regulus’ eyes and mind:
Cygnus, by asking the Dark Lord’s reason for a visit
had made two crucial statements. First) he had
shown support to Regulus, because all of them
seemed to know the real reason behind the visit,
but if even the uncle of the Head of the House, who
lived in company of the Head, pretended to be
confused, certainly there was nothing that Regulus
could be doing wrong. Second) that body-language
only screamed one thing; ‘this is my house and
you’re here as guest’. Cygnus was doing Regulus’
job so his position could be safe.

“Cygnus,” greeted the Dark Lord, clearly annoyed

by his presence. “I hope is no bother, but I invited
some of our friends to come here tonight. I have a
lot to talk about.”

“Not a bother, though I’m sure my wife and my

sister would’ve been quite happy to know in
advance so the house-elf could’ve prepared the
good wine and some food for everyone,” Cygnus
said.

Regulus got up.

“Where are you going, boy?” the Dark Lord asked

straight away.

“To drop the wards for everyone to come in, My

Lord,” Regulus said.

As he left the room, wand in hand and slashing it

across the air to make sure there was no ward left
standing, he sent a quick note with ‘CAN’T COME
TONIGHT. HAVE COMPANY’ to Anne, who had been
expecting him and Laurie once more; she seemed
to have grown used to the baby’s company and
found even some comfort in his weight in her arms
now that she learnt how to carry a child around,
even daring to walk up and down the stairs with
Laurie.

Narcissa took the note from him.

“I’ll send it, go,” she said.

And he went back to the parlour as soon as the

people started to come through the fireplace. First
Mister Nott, Alecto Carrow and Amycus, Yaxley,
Augustus Rookwood, Bellatrix Lestrange and the
Lestrange brothers and Mister Crabbe. Just the
Inner-Circle, clearly something was very wrong and
the Dark Lord had a statement to make.

Nott and the Carrows stood near the fireplace.

Rookwood made sure to sit down near Lucius, who
glared at the man forcing some type of
acquaintanceship between the two of them.
Bellatrix and her two family members sat down on
the sofa with Cygnus, leaving Regulus to stand near
the doors. Mister Crabbe stood at the other side of
the doors, allowing the door on his side to rest
behind his back, Yaxley followed his friend, greeting
him with a charming smile on his lips. The Dark
Lord stood up once the fireplace stopped lightening
up in green.

“You have all been called here because Albus

Dumbledore was buried not a fortnight ago, and I
have received information that there are plans for
someone else to take over the silly Order that he
built against us,” Voldemort said, voice loud.

Regulus felt his stomach fall. The only ones who

knew that were the people in the Order itself. This
meant Anne had a spy in her midst and, since this
time Peter Pettigrew had been excluded, it was
someone new.

“Any idea of who it is, My Lord?” Cygnus asked,

raising his eyebrows.

“It would be Anne Potter,” he answered. He looked

straight at Regulus. “How is it to know you’ve been
inside of a traitor?”

Yaxley laughed. He had not known up to that point

about the involvement between the two, but he had
been suspicious ever since they had seen them
interacting, even with the girl’s ‘sweetheart’ beside
her – when Severus had been killed, he had been
even more suspicious since Regulus didn’t seem to
care too much; he knew that he had been happy
his colleague was dead since he now was allowed to
take his woman, if he wanted to. But now that she
was a public threat, Regulus seemed a bit green in
the face.

“The knowledge I managed to be on top of her is

good, the knowledge I allowed her to leave the
encounter alive is certainly disgusting,” Regulus lied
quickly and smoothly.

Cygnus’ shoulders were a bit more tense when the

bitter smile on his daughter’s lips appeared. She
wouldn’t say anything, she wasn’t allowed, but that
didn’t mean she didn’t want to say something.

“Bitch,” Bellatrix spat to no one in particular.

Voldemort heard her and smiled at her enthusiasm.

“My dear friend did also give me some of the

names of the people involved in that stupid
organization,” he said. “Alastor Moody, Euphemia
Potter, James Potter and his mudblood wife, Lily
Potter. I want them dead, if you bring them to me
alive, however, they’ll certainly be a good fun.”

Regulus took a small breath, trying to calm down

his speeding heart. Those were Anne’s parents and
her grandmother, all under the threat of death or
worse just right after her grandfather had been
killed in front of her. If she lost any of them, he
feared what she would do. Her silence the way it
was already was scary, if she lost someone else,
however, it would certainly lead her to do
something stupid. Or so he thought… As if she
needed another push to do something stupid.

“However, I have three names I insist on receiving

alive,” Voldemort continued, once more looking
straight at Regulus and slowly walking towards him.
Regulus bit the inside of his cheek, straightening
his mind and its shields. “I want Anne Potter alive
in my hands, I want the half-breed Remus Lupin
and his disgusting blood-traitor of a lover, Sirius
Black. I want them alive, because the pleasure of
taking their life will be yours, Regulus.”

He could feel the shields in his mind taking the

thrusts of the man in front of him. He needed to
show something.

He showed the kiss in Malfoy Manor at once, as if

he had let it escape, as if his shields weren’t as
good as she thought. He allowed Voldemort to
invade their privacy to see an intimate moment
between the lovers, he allowed him to feel the
nervousness and fear of being caught. He allowed
Voldemort to feel what it was to be a normal
teenager for once in his life. He then allowed him to
see another memory; he was on top of Sirius when
he was seven or eight, throwing the hardest punch
he could in his brother’s face.

He pulled the memories back and looked down,

bowing his whole body to hide his pale face.

“This is too good for me, my Lord,” he said.

“I think it’s exactly what you deserve,” Voldemort

answered back. “Your brother-in-law, if you dare
call that creature that, is a werewolf and certainly
can make the werewolves that denied us know
what they have coming if they don’t follow us. Your
brother is a blood-traitor and shall serve as an
example for the others. Your… last paramour… is
important to the other side, and I want to know
why a child could get such a power. Whatever she
has, I want and I shall get.”

“As all the other things in this world, my Lord,” he

answered.

It sounded bitter in his mind, but out-loud it

sounded like a praise.

Whatever Voldemort wanted, he would take either

the others wanted it or not, either they fought
against him or not. Regulus hated that, but
Voldemort knew nothing of his thoughts or feelings.

A loud noise at the front door made all the people

inside of the parlour jump.

Before anyone could do anything, a small ball of

glass and metal rolled into the room, stopping right
in front of Bellatrix Lestrange, who opened her
mouth to say something about the odd occurrence.

Regulus took a confused and scared step back right

in the moment everything exploded in light and
shards of glass.

Chapter 125: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Four -
Summary:
The revenge and the aftermath

THE REVENGE

TW: VIOLENCE

A homemade bomb with glass shards and gun-

powder wasn’t hard to build, especially when one
had revenge and anger as a fuel for the very
attention-demanding job. So, it really was no
surprise that Anne, who had seen Hermione and
Ron building it under Nymphadora Tonk’s
instructions before, had managed to build it as well.
She had used it before and had been caught in the
middle of an explosion as well. The feeling of
blindness was certainly disorienting at first and the
noise made ear-drums ring for minutes, the glass
rarely caused anything other than annoying cuts,
but it had blinded Amycus Carrow in her own
timeline, so she threw it on the meeting with
confidence that Regulus would be smart enough to
step back from the new object just rolling into his
parlour in the middle of a meeting.

The noise had made her cringe as she walked into

the parlour.

The sight was chaos.

The sofa the Lestranges and Cygnus had been

sitting had been turned over and Cygnus was
slowly getting up from the ground, intending to
move to the corner of the room and leave the
fighting for those who actually believed in their
cause. Roddy was on his knees, face bleeding from
the glass and Rabastan whimpered on the ground,
but Bellatrix was already standing, wand up and
pointed at the door, but still blind through the light.
Regulus and Mister Crabbe had their backs against
the wall, with Yaxley with his hands in front of his
eyes in clear pain and distress. Lucius Malfoy had
fallen to the ground, chair following him and was
scrambling to get back up. Augustus Rookwood was
trying to make his forehead stop bleeding as he
blinked strongly and Mister Nott was helping Tom
Riddle get up from the ground. It was, however,
the sight of Amycus Carrow screaming and trying to
take a shard of glass from his eye that made Anne
laugh as his sister, Alecto, screamed for help.

“Hello,” she greeted with a smirk.

“It seems we don’t have to hunt for you wherever

you are hiding, you came to us,” Voldemort said,
standing on his own now. His nose had a cut, but
he seemed quite unharmed.

“Hunt me? Hiding?” Anne said, she scoffed. “I’m

right here. I’ve never hid from you before, Tom. I
was always right under your nose,” her smirk grew
into a grin. “And you never saw me.”

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” Alecto screamed.

She jumped out of the way, clicking her tongue in

annoyance.

“I NEED HER ALIVE, YOU STUPID WOMAN!” Tom

screamed.

“Yes, he needs me alive, you hysterical bitch!” she

said in return, falsely offended.

Stuppefies and other hexes came flying towards her

and her shield held, though she did stumble back at
the strength of the attacks. Either she liked it or
not, the Inner Circle was mostly powerful wizards
and witches that knew how to duel and how to kill.
Attacking alone was reckless, but revenge is
reckless and she care little of the consequence this
would bring – she was blinded by anger, like they
were blinded by the bomb.

She attacked back, a Stupefy hitting Yaxley straight

in the back of his neck, making him fall face first to
the ground already unconscious. Mister Crabbe held
the man by the coat, but allowed him to fall once
she tried to attack him as well, raising his shield
just in time. Tom’s Crucio hit the wall right behind
her, a few centimetres above her head. She
ducked, throwing another one at him, but he
reflected it with a shield.

They needed her alive, but she didn’t need any of

them alive.

“Avada Kedrava!” she said, throwing it towards the

Lestranges.

Regulus was far away enough to not be in danger

by her reckless behaviour.

“Come on, Tom,” she said. “I thought you came

here to visit your son, and you’re here for a
meeting. You’re a terrible dad.”

“CRUCIO!”

She smiled as she hid behind the door now free to

move around with the air the spells created. She
held the door in place before poking her head out
and sending another hex towards the people there;
it was harmless and it hit Regulus right on the
chest, making him fall sit on the ground with a
groan. She had aimed it at him to not let it become
suspicious and he had let her hit him to not make it
suspicious.

“You’re just like your dad, Tom!” she screamed.

“Just like him!”

“SHUT UP, HALF-BREED!”

She threw another bomb into the room, this time

she head before scrambling to run away from it.

“BOMBARDA!” she screamed, pointing right at

Bellatrix.

Bellatrix jumped away, but this time it hit Roddy

the ground near Roddy’s feet, making him hit the
wall behind him and fall, screaming in pain by the
broken ribs that got him. Anne laughed.

“CRUCIO!”

“IMPERIO!”

“CRUCIO!”

The Death Eaters lack of creativity made her

annoyed.

“Come on!” she screamed back. “Something else!

Like, ‘Expulso’!” she pointing at Rabastan. She hit
his shield, but that spell hardly was able to be
stopped. It was her best spell, after all. He flew
back, hitting the wall as well and the noise was
satisfying as she raised her wand once more.
“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

And with that Rabastan’s breath stopped and his

wiggling in pain became stillness.

Part of Regulus smiled at the sight. Elizabeth was

free and everything that Rabastan had on his name
was now hers and her child’s, and he knew Anne
had aimed it at him exactly because of that.

She appeared by the door again and this time the

spell almost hit her. She raised her shield, so
Regulus was quick to throw his strongest Stupefy –
Anne stumbled back, falling on her behind,
defenceless for a second, but she was protected
because of something else.

Regulus’ spell had created air enough as it flew

towards her to made the other door close, creating
a barrier for her. His spell ricocheted against her
shield and hit the chandelier on the ceiling of the
parlour, and it fell freely without anyone having
time to stop it on the air – it fell right on top of Tom
Riddle and crushed Bellatrix’ foot by the way she
wailed in pain.

Anne got up quickly before anyone could come to

the door and ran to the kitchen of the Black
Household.

There, she found Kreacher with tearful eyes and

with Narcissa Malfoy and a crying Lawrence in her
arms. Her mind worked quickly as she found a way
to get away from that place without being too
obvious.

“You never saw me,” she warned Narcissa. “Thanks

for the note, by the way.” Narcissa nodded, pale
and holding onto the child firmly. “Once I’m gone,
scream,” with a silent spell, she cut Narcissa’s arm.
“Say that I tried to attack Laurie, said you
protected him with your body. He'll praise you and
Lucius will be safe.” She nodded again. “Take me
away, Kreacher.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

He took her hand and popped away.

Narcissa took a deep breath, held Laurie tighter in

her arms, sat on the ground, curled herself into a
ball as the milk boiled on the stove next to her and
filled her lungs with air.

Gathering all the feeling that made her want to

scream, she opened her mouth and yelled as loud
as she could.

Alone in her bedroom when Kreacher left, Anne sat

down on her bed and noted she was dirty. The dust
of the destruction she left of Grimmauld Place,
number 12, had made her hair almost white and
her clothes were a mess. But her mind seemed a
lot more organised now and her heart a lot lighter.

She had hurt three Death Eaters and killed another

all by herself without backup. She had killed
Rabastan Lestrange all by herself, much like she
had killed Evan Rosier.

Two people.

She had killed two people, and her soul could feel
the difference, because she would never regret it
and her soul would never become a single piece
again. She would never feel any remorse for the
lives she took. Actually, she felt good – she felt
lighter and her anger had subsided to some extent.
She wanted more revenge and she wanted Tom
Riddle dead, his head at Mia’s feet so she would
feel some sense of relief.

It was silent. Nobody had woken up. Nobody had

come to check on her that night. Her revenge had
been untainted.

For the next hour or so, she walked to the

bathroom, took her clothes off, took a shower
before resting for another hour or so in the bathtub
and washing her hair. She felt completed for a
second. And then the adrenaline dropped.

Things started to become real when she realised

that she was bleeding. Her hand had been cut in
one of the explosions and she hadn’t noticed before
– why hadn’t she noticed that before? Was she hurt
somewhere else? Slowly she raised her hands to
look at her arms, noticing her hands were
trembling. There were a few cuts and bruises, but
what did worry her was how her left side hurt. The
first rain of spells had caused her left side to have
at least a broken rib and she hadn’t even noticed
throughout the whole battle.

She took a deep breath. It hurt, but it wasn’t like

something had punctured her lung, so she tried to
reach for her wand, only then noticing that the
middle finger of her wand-hand (the right one) was
crooked.

“Okay,” she mumbled to herself, throwing her

weight forward to get on her knees. She reached
for it better through the pain of her side. “Alright.
It’s alright,” she continued mumbling to herself.

“Anne?” someone called out.

She froze.

“Yes?”

“What the hell is happening?” it was Mia opening

the door of her bathroom without as much as
knocking. She tried to hide her hand and her
bruising side, but Mia had seen it already, eyes
trained to see the smallest of details in crime-
scenes. “What did you do? An owl just woke me up
at four in the morning. Narcissa Malfoy just wrote
to me to ask me if you were alright. Why did she
write to me? And why aren’t you alright? What did
you do?”

“What I needed to do,” she dismissed, reaching her

for her wand again. Mia took the wand before she
could get it. Anne looked at her in shock. “I’m
trying to heal myself, not attack you. Please, give
me my wand.”

Mia’s eyes narrowed at her.

“What did you do?”

“Really? Are you going to make me talk to you

while I’m naked and messed up?” Anne said in
shock.

That was nothing like she had imagined Mia’s

parenting to be like, but the clear fear in Mia’s face
made her hesitate on whatever she wanted to say
to hurt her, so she bit her tongue and tried to
breathe through the pain. She rested against the
back of the bathtub again.

“What. Did. You. Do?” Mia asked again.

“I attacked a Death Eater meeting,” she answered.

“Alone?” Mia asked.

“Yes,” Anne answered.

Mia schooled her facial expression to blankness.

Her stillness and nothingness were a lot scarier
than her anger or her loud and constant sadness.
Anne was used to anger being screaming and
hitting, but that coldness in her grandmother’s eyes
made her start shaking even more.

“Did you think this through?” Mia asked, voice low

and pointed.

“Yes,” she answered. “I thought it through. I

thought about it every single day and every single
night ever since Monty was killed in front of me. I
thought it through enough that I lived it in my
dreams when I wasn’t having nightmares. Yes, Mia,
I did think this through.”

Mia took a deep breath, lips creating a line.

However, before she could say anything, a loud

bang down the stairs made them jump.

“Oh, did you, now?” Mia said, scared as she threw

the wand towards Anne, turning around and
jumping to run to the corridor, thinking it was an
attacked.

Anne didn’t move fast, healing herself. She knew

exactly who it was as she got dressed by the
screams of complete fury downstairs. She could
hear people moving around and running around to
see what was happening. Anne put on a shirt and
trousers, but no shoes before she moved to open
the door.

All the bedroom doors were open and the bedrooms

were empty.

She walked through the corridor, now hearing

Regulus’ voice very well.

“… you don’t understand, Sev, she could’ve died!”

he was saying.

“What’s happening? What did you do?” James

asked.

“I’ve done nothing!” Regulus said. “She’s done it.

She’s just put the biggest target there is on her
own fucking head!”

Anne cringed as she walked down the stairs.

Regulus only ever used a curse-word to describe
their honeymoon love-making, now he was angry
at her and using those words that had such a
weight to him.

She stepped into the dining room.

Regulus turned to her straight away, letting go of

Severus’ shoulder to go to her.

“Hey, hey, HEY!” James screamed.

James jumped in front of her, holding Regulus back

when Anne took a step back. Though Regulus
would never hurt her, not even Sirius had ever
seen him that angry before. He was shaking as he
stared at his wife.

“What were you thinking? You could’ve gotten

yourself killed!” Regulus said to her. She took
another step back. Lily walked to Anne, hugging
her on the side and leading her away from him.
“Anne, do you have any idea what you’ve done?!”

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” she answered.

“What you’ve done is that you took any chance of

me getting the name or a hint of who is your spy
away,” he answered. “He admitted he had someone
on the inside of the Order. I was thinking of finding
a way of gathering more information when you just
walked into my house, with my NEPHEW INSIDE
and destroyed everything.”

He yelled ‘nephew inside’, making Anne flinch away

from him.

“Careful there, mate!” James screamed back.

“Laurie was inside the house, Anne, I was holding

him not too long before you walked in throwing a
bomb into my parlour. It was reckless. It was
dangerous. You could have died, you could have
killed me, or worse, you could have killed Laurie.”

“He was in the kitchen,” she answered.

“Wait, a bomb?!” Lily asked.

Mia sighed, shaking her head side to side as she

started to tear up. James could barely find words to
say as he just watched Anne; she seemed to
change from an innocent little girl to the real witch
she was.

“But what if he wasn’t?” he asked. “What if he was

with me? I can take the idea that you threw and
I’m hoping you thought I wasn’t near it, but you
didn’t even look inside it before you threw it.”

“I knew he wasn’t inside,” she answered.

“Oh, did you?”

“Narcissa said he was with her; she added to your

note,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears. “Do you
really think that I would’ve attacked if I knew
Laurie was in the room? You think I’d just jump into
this plan without knowing if he was safe? This is
what you think of me?”

Regulus was too angry to think of answer. His eyes

burned when he towered over her and answered
without thinking it through:

“Yes,” he spat towards her.

She turned around, shrugging off Lily’s hands and

sat down on the dining room’s chair, staring at
Regulus with tears rolling down her cheeks. The
back of her hand was put against her lips as she
swallowed down her sobs, the bitter taste on her
tongue making her nauseated as she watched her
family looking at her.

James looked so shocked in the corner of the room,

now stepping away from Regulus to recover from
the information he received. Sirius just sat on
another chair and put his face on his hands, Remus
standing right beside Sirius. Anne just noticed Mia
had left the room, but Lily was beside her – Anne
understood one thing at that moment; no matter
what she did, no matter how wrong it was, Lily
would be beside her, putting her hand on her
shoulder and ready to fight it all with her, even if
she didn’t deserve. Anne wanted to deserve Lily’s
attention and love. Severus moved to stand beside
Regulus and put a hand on his back.

“Regulus, please, calm down, you’re scaring her,”

Severus whispered, not wanting Anne to hear it.

“She needs to be scared, Severus,” he answered.

“She killed Rabastan Lestrange. Do you know what
Roddy will do to get his hands on her?”

James looked green on the face.

“Anne –” James started.

“I can’t kill Tom yet,” was all she answered.

“Otherwise, he would’ve been my first target.”

Mia walked back into the dining room, a glass of

water in her hand. She gave it to Anne, who sipped
on it, gratefully.

“I want revenge, too, Anne,” Mia said. “I think

about it a lot as well. I can’t imagine how it was for
you to watch it all happening to both of them, but
that doesn’t mean you get to put yourself in danger
for something we should be looking for together.”

“Revenge isn’t the answer,” James said.

Oh, good of a heart James Potter had no idea how

anger and revenge-seeking could be powerful. He
wanted goodness in the world, he wanted peace so
nobody needed to go through what he went
through. It was logical. It was why he wanted to
join the Auror Force to begin with – for peace, to
catch the bad guys.

“Revenge gave me all the answers I needed,” Anne

said. “I came here seeking revenge.”

“You came here seeking a second-chance,” James

answered.

“It’s not all that different,” Anne said, shaking her

head.

“Yes, it is!” he insisted.

Regulus scoffed, turning away from her as he

started rolling his eyes. His hands shook beside his
body.

“Do you know how much information you made me

lose?” he asked.

Anne looked at his back.

“What did you get?” she asked, exhaustedly.

“This is about what I didn’t get.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“Him gathering people in the middle of the night

isn’t a normal occurrence, Anne. He did because he
had important and urgent information about
something big coming up. Want to know what it
was? It was that you’re taking over the Order of the
Phoenix. Almost no one knows that, Anne, this
means he has a spy inside the Order and I couldn’t
get a single hint of who it was because you
interrupted everything—” he was saying. She
opened her mouth. “Do. Not. Speak. I’m not done.”

“Regulus, calm that tone!” Sirius snapped at him.

“You’re not yourself right now.”

“It gets worse,” Regulus said in a laughing tone.

“He has a list of names. Names of what he called
the ‘Inner-Circle’ as well. He gave us seven names,
and only three of them are ordered to be brough to
him alive.”

A chill went through the body of everyone on that

room.

“Who?” she asked, looking down at the glass of

water on her hands.

“You are looked for alive, with the reward of eternal

glory. Sirius and Remus are expected alive as well,
the honour of torturing my brother will be mine, of
course, and that’s the only reason he’s wanted
alive. However, Remus has a use; he’ll be the
reason that the werewolves will come to be our
allies, according to Voldemort’s words,” he looked
around the room. “However, Mia, James, Lily and
Alastor Moody are wanted dead or alive. They have
no use for them.”

“This means he knows I plan of bringing Moody to

be my right-hand-man,” Anne mumbled.

“Whatever he does know, it’s already too much,”

Regulus said.

Anne felt her stomach churning inside of her and

her nausea seemed to get worse as she put the
glass on the table and folded forward, hoping the
position would help her breathe better through her
tears. Lily petted her back, hoping that would bring
her some comfort and by the way Anne leaned
towards her hand, curling her back, it seemed to be
working.

There was a moment of silence between Anne’s

ragged breathing and Regulus’ struggle to breathe.

“How hurt are you?” Regulus asked.

“I’m not,” she answered. Not a lie.

“How hurt were you?” he corrected his question.

Anne looked up. He knew her too well.

“A couple broken ribs, a few cuts and bruises, a bit

of a concussion and… well, a broken finger,” she
answered. “Nothing much. What about you?”

His eyes narrowed at her.

“A few cuts and bruises, and a sore arse,” he added

the second part with a lighter tone. She tried for a
smile, but when he didn’t smile back at her, her
smile dropped. “You can’t do that anymore, Anne.
You can’t just go and attack because you feel like
it.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

“But you could not have been,” he said. “What if

you had gotten hurt enough that you couldn’t
manage to get away? What if I wasn’t there to
protect you this time around? What if I had been
found out helping you? What if there were innocent
people in that place, like Narcissa or someone like
Elizabeth, maybe Barty? What if a… Anne, I – What
if? Merlin, Anne, you were alone. You went to a
difficult attack alone, no one here knew where you
were! Look around! Look around you. What if they
woke up and you weren’t in your bed in the
morning? What if they went out looking for you and
they got attacked because they didn’t know they
were targets? Think with me, go through the steps
of this plan with me. If you changed something,
could you have died?”

Regulus couldn’t breathe, his chest was rising and

falling in quick succession, but he couldn’t breathe.
His whole body was shaking, his face was pale and
his lips were blue. His eyes were wide and tears
were starting to pool as he walked towards her and
kneeled down in front of her.

He reached for her hand, squeezing it so tight that

she cringed in pain, but said nothing. Regulus
needed to make sure she was alright; after all,
Regulus was making sure she was real at all at that
moment.

“I’m alright. I’m alive,” she whispered to him. “I’m

so sorry, Regulus. I’m so sorry.”

She caressed his head, fingers running through his

hair to comfort him. That was when the sobbing
started. Regulus lied his head on her legs and
sobbed as loud as he could, not caring that there
were other people watching that exchange as she
hugged waist, trying to become one with her; he
would do anything for the fear to subside – he had
been so scared and he had been so sure he would
have to watch her die and there would be nothing
he could do but stand there, he had even gone as
far as imagining how he would fight back against
those people just so he could die with her.

“Never do that again. Never. Promise me!” he

sobbed.

“I’m so sorry. I’m not going to do that again, Little

Prince, I promise,” she whispered as he leaned
down, kissing the back of his head over his hair.
“My good husband, I don’t deserve you. I’m so
sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Mia gently led James and Sirius out of the room,

Remus and Lily following soon after without
needing any prompting. Severus stood at the
doorway for a moment, but walked out as well.

Severus walked away without ever exchanging any

glanced between the rest of the family waiting at
the living room, for all he could notice was how
much it would hurt to lose Anne or Regulus. That
was the first time Severus really noticed what love
was, and he was terrified of how deep it felt without
him even trying.

Lily watched Severus walk up the stairs back to his

own bedroom in worry, but said nothing as she
hugged James, who was now crying again – they
had just lost Monty, the idea of losing Anne was
well was devasting for both of them. Sirius hugged
James as well and Remus put a hand on Lily’s back
as her eyes filled with tears.

Lonely, Mia sat on the sofa, putting her face in her

hands in silence.

Chapter 126: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Five-

ALASTOR MOODY’S TRUTH

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Anne?” Lily

wondered, watching as Anne paced in the parlour,
looking through the window every now and again,
also looking at the fireplace. “He doesn’t need to
know everything.”

“He barely trusts me as it is, Lily. If I want him as

my right-hand-man, which I do, very much,
because I need him to be right-hand-man, then he
needs to know everything and I wouldn’t be
surprised or mad if he asks for sordid details to
make sure I’m not lying. He might even insist on
me taking Veritusserum. That’s why I asked the
boys to go away and Mia is still in her bedroom;
they would get angry if he asked anything
untoward, but he will. I know he will. Moody is one
of those sceptics,” Anne explained. “You were the
only one I could rely on to not scare him away and
yet keep me calm.”

There was a moment of silence. It had been just

that. James had still been feeling a bit off about
Anne having killed two people; the first one he
could understand, it was a battle that she was
losing, but the second one she had gone after the
fight and that took him off guard. Sirius had never
seen Regulus so out of himself before and was still
awkward between the two of them, so he was
avoiding anywhere Anne or Regulus were. Remus
was just giving support to both of his best-friends,
while simultaneously trying his best to give distant
support to Anne as she got over a broken soul.

The dynamics between Severus and Anne had

changed as well, he was pulling away from her
again, but this time she had no idea what it was
about. The truth was that he had no idea how to
deal with how important she had become to him
and how hard it was to accept that he loved her
enough to cry at the simple thought of losing her –
he had never had a sister before, but he thought
that was what it would feel like; she was annoying,
loud and had a dirty mouth, but the idea of anyone
but him being remotely mean to her made him so
angry. When Regulus had started screaming at her,
he had felt the need to jump in as well, but she had
so many people around her already that it made
him awkward.

The worst one of all of them, however, had been

the dynamics between Anne and Mia. Mia wasn’t
actually avoiding Anne; she was avoiding everyone.
She was completely remote from her reality at the
moment and lost in her deep grief and depression.
She wouldn’t answer anyone at the door and would
eat almost every meal in her bedroom with Coco as
her only company. The elf was trying her best, but
even the small creature would cry at the state of
her Mistress. The Mind Healer Lily had gotten into
contact with had said that in times like this, all they
could do was try to talk to her and open the
conversation up in case she ever wanted, but
mostly wait it out; Anne thought his sayings were
bullshit.

“Regulus is still at Severus’ room?” Lily asked.

Regulus had been hiding in there for almost an

hour. Moody was late for almost an hour. She was
going to present Regulus to him.

“He’ll come out when I call for him,” Anne

answered.

Anne had been sad most of the time as well, Lily

had noticed that much, but she was a lot better at
functioning through it than Mia. Perhaps, she
thought, was just that she was a lot more used to
its weight on her chest and back than her mother-
in-law was, but still Lily admired her daughter’s
strength and determination. While Mia took most of
her time to suffer and wait for the pain to go away,
Anne was ignoring all the pain and focusing on
trying to make something useful to make her anger
go away as it had done after her attack. Lily wasn’t
sure which one of them were more dangerous; both
of them were bombs, ticking away, waiting for the
moment to explode.

Though Regulus and Anne were dealing well with

the mess that she had made, there was still some
awkwardness between them. Regulus didn’t seem
interested in touching Anne, even though he had
spent the night two nights ago. She had tried
initiating something, eager to feel something, but
he had pulled back, refusing to be used for
something like that and insisted on going to sleep.
Anne wouldn’t dare share that with anyone at all,
not even Lily, but she certainly was hurt over it.

The fireplace roared green as Moody stepped into

the parlour, shaking away the floo powder on his
robes to look around, not smiling, but greeting both
of the girl with polite nods and his new, shining
fake rolling eye watching the room.

“Where’s Mia?” he asked, without greeting them

orally.

“Probably sleeping,” Anne said. “I was the one who

called you here.”

“I imagined so, but she’s quite protective over

you,” Moody answered. “I’d have imagined she
would’ve been here for this conversation.”

She thought it odd the way Moody had presented

the start of the meeting. Her eyes narrowed as he
looked between her and Lily.

“What do you think this conversation is going to be

about?” Anne asked, frowning.

“About how you want to start as the leader of the

Order, I’m older and know those people better, so
you’re probably going to ask me what to do,” he
answered. “Dumbledore left me a letter, telling me
you’d probably ask for my help at the start,” there
was a small moment of silence as he took a deep
breath. “And Fleatmont left me a letter as well,
asking me to take care of you if you ever needed
someone and if you ever asked for help. He said
that if you asked for help, it was because you were
at a loss, because… well, you never really ask for
help at all.”

Anne sad smile made Lily look away. It was sweet

that Fleatmont had gone to so far into his thoughts
to leave someone to take care of Anne.

“Did he say anything else?” Anne asked.

“Asked me to be a friend to Mia and tutor James

and Sirius if they were ever failing anything at the
training, but those things were things he needed to
ask; I had already planned on doing both, even if
he was alive,” Alastor Moody. “I don’t know you
well, girl, but I know you’re a lot more than what
you show everybody and I’m willing to learn.”

“That’s why I called you over, I want to tell you

everything,” Anne said.

“Your plans?”

“My past and my plans,” she answered. “Moody, I

ask you to keep your head and try to trust me. I
know everything I’m about to say sounds
absolutely impossible and disgustingly like a lie, but
I can drink Truth-Serum if you want me to and I
will answer any question you have for me, but I
also ask you to give me a few moments so I can
breathe between everything I have to tell you.”

His eye narrowed at her and his fake-eye rolled to

the back of his head before focusing on her again.

“Well, then, I believe you should order some tea,”

Alastor said. “Chamomile, for both of us, yes,
dear?” he added to Lily.

Lily got up.

“I’ll find Coco,” Lily said.

Alastor Moody was an Auror. He worked by

listening to Dark Wizards lie their arses off to try
and get away with the horrible things they did,
finding excuses for their actions and manipulating
the people around them as best as they could. He
had heard the most outrageous of things in Court
trying to be passed off as true, but he had never in
his life heard so many things that he would cry
‘bullshit’ being said with such honesty. The terrible
and excruciating details of abuse he asked to see if
she would take a step back on her story, but she
didn’t, she just said what he needed to hear.

He didn’t like Anne; he thought her to be a spoiled

brat with a big sense of self-importance that didn’t
correlate with her actual reality. Delusional had
been a word that had passed by his mind once or
twice during the meetings as she went on
monologues about information that she didn’t want
to share how she got. Though he still saw some
self-importance in her, he understood why she was
so eerie to him – he doubted Anne was ever truly
and completely a child; her behaviour was ‘off’
because she was acting like he had expected an
adult to act, but sometimes would act like a
teenager. It was the swinging between the two
spots that left him confused and suspicious of her.

All that he could do was watch Anne’s fingers

twirling in her own lap in nervousness as Lily sat
uncharacteristically quiet beside her… well,
according to the story, her own daughter.

“So that’s why that when you came here and the
Potters took you in, Monty put you under his name
as his daughter,” Moody said. “I thought you two
didn’t look alike enough, even asked him to do
blood-relation-testing, but he refused. I understand
now.”

“I tried to do everything in my power to change

things,” she insisted. “Monty was supposed to die
from Dragon-Pox last year, I didn’t think he was in
danger of dying in Diagon Alley with me.
Dumbledore was supposed to die in 1996, I never
thought he would just… fall dead in front of me like
that. If I knew, I would’ve taken a step back and
waited for backup.”

“You couldn’t have known, Anne; that’s the whole

point. Nobody could’ve known,” Lily said, looking to
her daughter, taking her hands into hers. “Please,
don’t blame yourself for something you had no fault
of. You-Know-Who was the one that took the wand
and raised it; you just tried to survive.”

“And I failed to help them,” she said, shaking her

head.

“But you came back to me. You came back home,”

Lily insisted. “If something had happened to you
that day or… that night, I don’t think I could deal
with everything.”

“That night?” Moody asked.

Anne took a deep breath, blinking away the tears

that gathered on her eyes as she nodded to herself,
leaving her emotions and the conversation she was
having with her mother for later. She needed to
finish her story for Moody first, it was a lot more
important at the moment, even if it didn’t feel like
it.

“That’s the other reason I asked you here,” Anne

said. “Not only you deserve my truth if you’re going
to be my right-hand-man and, well, tutor, but you
deserve the truth about my present as well. I have
a spy.”

“Severus Snape, yes, I know. I remember

Dumbledore told me he was alive, we kept it a
secret as you asked us to,” he said.

“There’s a bit more to that. I have another spy,”

she admitted. “This spy is my husband.”

If he hadn’t already finished his tea, Moody might

have spit it out in surprise and shock. Such a young
girl already involved with the war and now telling
him that she was already married, especially to a
spy.

“Who?” he asked, frowning.

She turned to Lily.

“Would you call him for me, Mum, please?” she

said.

Lily nodded, pretending not to notice Moody clearly

cringing at the use of the word ‘Mum’ in that simple
request. She moved quickly, getting up from the
sofa she had been sharing with Anne and moving
out of the parlour, running up the stairs by the
sound of her quick footsteps.

“Who?” he insisted.

“I beg of you to keep an open mind as you kept

when you found out about Severus’ involvement
with the cases,” she said. “This man has been by
my side pretty much for the same amount of time
as Severus, is not more. He’s willing to fight and
die for this cause as much as we are.”

Footsteps came down the stairs and Lily quickly

entered the room once more, but this time there
was someone else with her.

His wand was on his hand at once when he noticed

the man walking behind Lily – it was Regulus Black
in all his glory. No matter how much Anne had
insisted that her husband was loyal to her, the fear
still took him by the gut as he prepared for a battle
to come, but Regulus barely hesitated at the door,
even if the Auror had his wand in hand and raised
at the height of his chest.

“Hello,” he greeted calmly.

“Black,” Alastor greeted between teeth.

“I’m not here for a fight,” Regulus said.

But that boy had been the one to kill one of the
aurors right in front of Alastor’s eyes.

“He’s been helping me since before we finished

school, Alastor,” said Anne. “You can trust him.
He’s my spy, the inside-man in the Inner Circle. We
really need him.”

“You say that because he’s your husband,” Alastor

answered.

“That too, but I truly love him and the work he’s
done up until this point, let’s give him the
opportunity of keep on it, alright? Besides, he has
brought privileged information from their last
meeting,” Anne said. “We have a spy amongst us
and I need your help finding it.”

In the next meeting of the Order, there were new

people amongst them besides the ones that they
already had. Even the non-fighting members
accepted to appear on this meeting, even Madame
Pomfrey and Minerva McGonagall were sitting on
the Dumbledore dining table. After all, the Potters
thought it to be unsafe to bring all the people in the
Order into their protected house, so they used the
Dumbledore House for the hopes the lack of
protection wards and under the watchful eyes of
Aberfoth, Albus’ brother.

The new line-up brought hope to the people.

Euphemia Potter, an experienced retired auror,

wanted revenge would fight anything and anyone to
get it. Alastor Moody not only wanted revenge for
his mentor’s death, but he also wanted peace to
fulfil his job as, now, Head of Department of Aurors
and would fight to get it. Though Minerva wasn’t a
fighting member, she agreed to keep an eye out for
potential talents in the last year of Hogwarts as
newest Headmaster, Madame Pomfrey, too,
accepted to be a recruiter and scouter. James and
Lily Potter wanted revenge for their father (in-law,
in Lily’s case) death and would not hesitate to take
it. Sirius wanted nothing more than revenge and
would kill anyone and anything to get it, which
made him one of the strongest fighters in the line-
up, Remus would help him with all his might, which
made the couple uncontrollably strong. Sure, Frank
and Alice were strong fighters as well, but now
were starting to take a few more steps of
protection, especially for Augusta’s sake (Frank’s
mother), which made them slightly useless for the
moment because of their fear. Emmeline, alone in
the world and as Moody’s favourite auror, had a lot
to prove, which made her one of the favourites to
go to the frontlines of the war. Caradoc was a
potioneer and was mostly their provider, but too
old to want to fight (his own words), which left him
and Edgar, who mostly passed information and
scouted, on the same boat. However, the much
older Elphias, a writer, still insisted on fighting
beside the younger people, much to Aberforth’s
happiness, who was one of Elphia’s best of friends.
Mundungus was another fighter, who was mostly
useless because he was too scared as well after the
death of their strongest member, Dumbledore.
Dedalus was responsible to make sure the safe-
houses were there in numbers and in safety.
Fabian, Gideon, Arthur and Molly were fighters, but
were mostly taking care of the Weasley’s children
that had already been born at that point (Bill,
Charlie, Percy and the newly-born twins, Fred and
George).

The added people at the already strong Order made

the people more confident, bringing Alice and Frank
back into the fight. Mary MacDonald was studying
law and was already opening MCPS with the money
Dumbledore left her, which caused her to get a lot
of insight and information into the life of powerful,
rich pure-bloods and insisted on fighting when the
time was right. Marlene was a teacher of jiu-jitsu
for Muggle Children in her father’s academy, and
was ready to fight when called, surprisingly
appearing on the meeting when called. Dorcas was
a law student with Mary and was more than willing
to fight once she was called for it. And though
Severus was still not a public member, he was
slowly going back to potions and providing the
Order and Anne with healing potions. Arabella,
Aberfoth’s cousin, was a squib and wished to pass
information and even went as far as moving into
Islington, near Grimmauld Place to keep an eye on
the movement near the house.

The older people didn’t seem to like the idea of

Anne in power inside the Order, but said nothing as
Alastor seemed to approve it completely.

April, 20th, finally brought forth one small detail.

They had a traitor and they didn’t know who it was.

Severus, Euphemia, James, Lily, Mia, Sirius,

Remus, Regulus, Alastor and Anne were cut off the
list, of course, and Aberforth, Minerva, Poppy,
Mary, Arabella, Dorcas and Marlene didn’t have any
information of what was happening to pass it
through to someone else. But outside of the small
group, nobody was safe.

This left Frank, Alice, Emmeline, Caradoc, Edgar,

Elphias, Mundungus, Dedalus, Fabian, Gideon,
Molly and Arthur.

“Frank and Alice are loyal, completely,” Moody

insisted after they were all gone. “And Emmeline
would never betray us for her life; we’re the only
family she has at this point.”

“Fabian and Gideon put themselves in danger more

than once for the Order,” insisted Mia once they
were gone.

“Molly just had two babies and Arthur can barely

sleep at night because of the crying, they don’t
have time to go on gossiping,” Lily laughed, rolling
her eyes at Anne’s worry.

And even if Anne believed them, which she didn’t,

that still left Caradoc, Edgar, Elphia, Mundungus
and Dedalus; all powerful wizards that came under
Dumbledore’s request into the Order. She was blind
to their use. She was blind to their danger, so she
did what she knew what to do best.

Anne lied.

Before they were gone, she pulled Caradoc to the

side and told him one thing. Told Edgar another.
Told Elphias other. Mundungus another and
Dedalus received another information.

Then she sat and waited.

The information she lied about was too good to not

be delivered. Once it slipped, however, she would
know which of them had let it go.

Chapter 127: One Hundred and

Twenty-Six
Summary:
Kreacher's chapter

Drink of Despair

Kreacher had his whole-body trembling. All he

could think was of his newest Mistress whispering
one thing: ‘when things get really ugly, you call for
Coco, and she’ll bring you home to me or Regulus’.
He wanted to call for his friend Coco, he wanted to
call for his Mistress and Master. Kreacher wanted to
do anything besides following the Dark Lord
wherever the man asked him to, but that had been
the mission his Master Regulus had given him
earlier that night, and that was the mission he was
supposed to follow; he needed to listen everything,
remember everything to tell Master Regulus later,
when he would see him once again.

His skinny arms were by his sides when everything

stopped turning and the man beside him let go of
him violently, almost making him fall down to the
side, but he managed to keep standing, much to
his delight, because everything around him would
make him fall down the stone they were standing
and into the agitated sea. He could smell the sea,
or at least in the way he thought the sea must
smell because it was the first time that he could see
it and feel its cold water splashing against his face
– it was hard to see through the drizzle amongst
the water splashing as well, making it quite difficult
to see the cave, but he did. And he did his best to
find out where he was, feeling the connection
between him and his Master. It was far, but not far
enough that he felt compelled to run away. They
were still in England, that much was clear. If he
needed to Apparate away, he would be able,
though he would use more of his energy going to
Mistress Anne than to Master Regulus, which meant
that they were closer to London than Surrey.

“You’ll Apparate us inside,” Tom Riddle ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Kreacher answered.

He reached for the man’s hand and held it tight

before making them pop out of the stone they had
been standing on and directly inside the cave,
though perhaps a bit too behind because when they
landed, their feet hit the edge of the water. Tom
Riddle hit him behind the head, clearly annoyed
that his trousers had gotten wet.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Kreacher said.

“You useless piece of trash of an elf,” Tom Riddle

said.

It was summer, but the water was cold and made

Kreacher’s old bones hurt. Mid of June and there
Kreacher was, entering a cold, wet cave with the
company of the wizard he hated the most. They
said that house-elves can feel energies, like pets on
the house. Kreacher had grown up listening that, if
he didn’t like someone of the house, he needs to
tell the Master of the house to make sure nobody in
that place would get hurt. He had told Master Orion
and then Master Regulus about the cold, dark and
eerie feeling of the wizard’s aura and they had both
acknowledge his feelings and worries, but both had
also said that he needed to hold on for a little bit
more – unfortunately, that ‘little bit more’ always
seemed to have been prorogued.

He wanted Mistress and her sharp tongue to get

him away from that man.

Tom Riddle stopped in front of a stone wall, looking

down at his wand before making a small slashing
motion to make a small cut on his left finger and
pushing some of the blood into the wall, which
trembled before opening as if double doors. They
walked in together and the doors closed behind
their backs.

Kreacher looked back, startled.

“Apparate us to the middle,” the wizard ordered.

Kreacher looked back to the front, understanding

where the ‘middle’ was. It was a small space of
land in the middle of the lake with a basin on the
centre. He took the man’s hand once more and
apparated into the small island in the middle of the
lake, standing and waiting, letting go of the man’s
hand as he took a step towards the basin to look
inside.

“Come closer, elf,” he ordered. Kreacher did. “I’ll

give it you and you will drink it until the end. You
will tell me what you feel as you drink it.”

Kreacher nodded.

He was given the first spoonful of the bright-green

potion one second later. As soon as he swallowed,
his eyes filled with tears as his insides burned; he
coughed and tried to spit everything out, but he
had to swallow the liquid down to manage to
breathe, so he cried like a baby. He cried out in
pain, but the wizard holding him didn’t seem to
care. He was given another spoonful, and another,
and another, and all he could do was cry and cry.

His mother was dying in his arms again. His sister

was bought by another family and taken away from
him. He was watching Master Orion coughing and
coughing, unable to breathe as Mistress Walburga
stood on the other side of the door, pretending not
to cry. Master Sirius was almost dead at the end of
the stairs, blood and odd angles on his members
after Miss Bellatrix pushed him. Master Regulus was
yelling and yelling, Tom Riddle torturing him and
laughing. Mistress Anne was crying in her own
bedroom in the night Master Regulus sent him over
to check on her after her grandfather passed away.
He was burning his hands on the fire because
Mistress Walburga told him to. He was burning his
ears on the hot-water pipes because Master Orion
told him to. All the most terrible moments of his life
came back to his life. All the most terrible moments
of his life were haunting him at once and bringing
all the pain to him at once.

He yelled, kicked and cried, and yet it wasn’t

enough.

“Master Regulus! Master! Save me!” he sobbed as

he tried to kick the laughing man away from him.

“Quiet!”

“Mistress! Mistress!” he cried. He coughed up some

of the liquid.

He was burning. He was on fire. He was burning

and wasting away and nobody would do anything.
He was about to die there, with only that horrible
man watching him slipping through that world.

He didn’t want to die there, in a cave and in the

middle of nowhere. He wanted to die at home, like
his mother had and he wanted to be completely
surrounded by his Master and Mistress since he no
longer had a family. That wasn’t the right way for a
house-elf of good conduct and so well-loved to go.

“Master Regulus, please, save me! I’ll be a good

elf!” he continued to cry.

And there he went, eyes rolling back to his head as

he struggled to keep awake, even if the wizard
ordered him to do so. He swallowed down more and
more of that horrible potion as he cried, choked
and sobbed always asking for help and water. Once
he was done, however, the wizard did not reward
him with water, he just took a medallion from
inside his pocket and dropped inside the basin,
making a movement with his wand and filling the
basin with more of the bright-green shining potion.

Kreacher cried once more, wondering if he would

have to drink any more of that horrible thing, but
the man just turned around to him and grabbed
him by the pillowcase he was using as clothing to
put him to his feet, but he couldn’t stand by
himself. His tongue was dry in his mouth and his
knees buckled under him as soon as he was let go
by the wizard. He fell to his knees, hands on sandy
earth of the small island.

“Apparate us to the other side, elf,” the man

ordered.

Kreacher shook his head.

“I can’t – water. Kreacher… needs… water,” he

struggled to say.

“Now, elf!” ordered the man.

“Not… my… Master,” the elf groaned.

The kick in his stomach made him almost fly to the

other side of the small island, only not falling into
the dark lake around them because an invisible
barrier sabed him, and clearly the wizard had been
the one to put them there. He was forced to stand
up again by a hand on his pillowcase once more.

Tom Riddle leaned down, face to face with the elf

once more.

“Apparate us out of the island. No mistakes, elf,” he

ordered once more.

Kreacher used most of his energy to show up with

the man holding onto him to the other side of the
cave, near the wall that had been used as doors.
Once his feet touched the ground, however, he was
let go and he fell down face first on the dirt once
more, unable to even soften the blow of the fall.

Tom Riddle looked at him over his shoulder and

walked away, using the blood of his already cut
finger and walking through the doors created by his
blood, leaving Kreacher to die on the cave.

“I’ll tell your Master that your life was well used for
our cause, don’t worry,” he said before the doors
closed.

Alone, in a cave only illuminated by the greenish

potion inside the basin on the middle island,
Kreacher wondered if that was really what Death
had in plan for him, because it was nothing like he
had imagined.

So he frowned and made one single movement as

his energy started fading away and his vision
started to get darker.

“Coco?” he called out.

And his eyes closed.

Regulus Black had received several terrible news by

letters or by odd looks before someone of his family
started saying something, so when Uncle Cygnus
appeared on his bedroom door with frowned
expression and a hesitant opening of his mouth as
he tried to think of a better way to pass on the
information.

“What happened?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“I just got back home from the Ministry. What did I
miss? Where’s Laurie?”

He got up from the chair he had been sitting on and

quickly slipped through the door and from his
uncle’s tentative grasp as he made his way to the
nursery only to find Laurie calmly sleeping there,
hugging the small snake-plushie that Anne had
gotten him after a few nights spent on the Potter
Manor.

“Regulus –”

“Mother?!” he called out. “Mother!”

“Your mother is out with your Aunt Druella, they

are shopping,” Cygnus said, shaking his head
lightly. “The family is well. The thing is that…
Kreacher didn’t come back.”

“He’s on a mission with the Dark Lord,” Regulus

answered.

“The Dark Lord is already back, but Kreacher isn’t.

He said he didn’t survive the mission,” Cygnus
explained. "I asked to tell you this information
because I knew you’d become emotional. We can’t
allow the Dark Lord to see that side of you,
especially with him thinking there’s a spy inside the
Inner Circle. We can’t give him any more reasons
to believe you are against him.”

Regulus felt like he had been punched in the

stomach. No – there was no way Kreacher hadn’t
gone back to him. He had ordered him to get back
to the house as soon as everything was over…
Unless… No, he couldn’t be dead. He shook his
head, dismissing everything what his uncle had just
said to him.

“Where’s the body?” he asked.

“Do you really think the Dark Lord would dignify

himself to bring back the body of a house-elf?
Please, Regulus, be intelligent about this,” insisted
Cygnus. “Kreacher is gone. We need to accept it as
quickly as possible and you need to get over it. The
Dark Lord is bound to come here to see you sooner
or later to thank you for your house-elf’s use,
maybe even getting you a new one as payment.
You know what you need to do, then.”

“No. Kreacher was… Kreacher is family.”

“You know that’s not how everybody thinks, and if

you do, the Dark Lord won’t like it at all. You know
he asked him in the mission as punishment for
taking down the wards around the house and not
just the floo when Anne attacked. He already has
an eye out for you, Reggie, don’t be stupid,”
Cygnus said.

He had been close to Severus and Anne, one ‘died’

as a traitor and the other lived as a target. He was
in the middle of both sides and one single step out
of line could mean his death. It hurt, but he needed
to get over a death of someone he cared for as if
family – there wasn’t a word to describe his feelings
towards Kreacher; he had been parent, brother and
protector when nobody was there for him, he was a
listener and someone that accepted Anne before
anyone else. And he had just lost his best friend for
a mission that he was supposed to come back from
in Anne’s timeline.

He held onto the door of the nursery as his knees

buckled and he struggled to breathe.

“Kreacher,” he cried the name. The name sounded

wrong his mouth when the elf didn’t pop out of
nowhere to attend to his needs. “No!”

“I’m sorry, Regulus. I really am,” Cygnus said.

“No. You’re not. You didn’t even like him!” he cried.

“I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad

that my nephew is in pain,” the uncle answered.
“Please, you need to understand that you need to
swallow it down. I don’t know when he’s coming to
see you. I think it’ll be tonight.”

“My friend is dead,” Regulus said.

Couldn’t he understand? He was suffering. He didn’t

want to hear about war and efforts. He wanted to
suffer in peace. He wanted to cry everything he
was feeling out until everything stopped hurting.

“Regulus, I know, I’m sorry,” Cygnus insisted. “I

know, I know. I’m sorry, dear nephew.”

He tried to put his hand on Regulus’ back, but he

shrugged it off, still kneeling on the doorway of the
nursery and holding onto the doorhandle, hoping
there would be some comfort somewhere in the
world, but nothing seemed to be running to him as
in Anne’s novels and Sirius pirate romances. He
was suffering, but he was suffering alone – the sun
outside was still shining and the world was still
turning. His suffering was insignificant and he felt
like nothing in the world could ever be correct
again.

His chest hurt from his sobs and Laurie was now
crying because of the noise. Cygnus had to almost
jump over Regulus to get to the baby and hold it
hesitantly since Regulus was always the one
cradling it. Regulus could feel his head starting to
hurt and the pressure behind his eyes pushing
more and more tears out of his eyes. He felt
useless and selfish for having allowed such a thing
to happen when he could’ve very well have done
that mission himself, even if Voldemort thought it
to be odd.

It took him almost an hour of kneeling there, crying

his heart contents and stealing Laurie from his
uncle’s arms for him to finally swallow down his
grief enough to put his battle face back on.

“When is the Dark Lord coming?” he finally

managed to ask, voice wavering and weak. His
throat hurt.

“I don’t know. Any moment now, I think,” Cygnus

admitted.

Regulus nodded, looking down at Laurie, who too

had stopped crying and was staring back at him
with wide, curious and scared eyes.

“Take the baby. I’ll go get ready,” he announced.

Uncle Cygnus obeyed his orders quickly enough,

taking the baby away from his arms and quickly
making his way back into the nursery as Regulus
took another moment sitting down on the ground
before getting up and walking back into his
bedroom. He did what he had to do to look normal
– he washed his face with cold water and massaged
his face, wore dark clothes in mourning and sat
down on his bed in shock for the information he
had received. He heard his mother and aunt coming
into the house with laughter and happiness, but
ignored it for his own sake. He only moved when he
heard the rumbling of his uncle’s loud voice down
the stairs.

Voldemort was there.

He took a deep breath, fixed his waistcoat as if he

hadn’t been waiting visitors and walked out of the
room, hoping his anger wouldn’t change anything
of the conversation he was about to have with the
man.

In the parlour, comfortable and very clearly happy

with the results, Voldemort was sitting in a sofa,
looking smug. Regulus had to take a deep breath
and swallow dry to make sure he wouldn’t do or
say anything he would regret.

“Oh, Regulus, hello!” he said.

“Hello, my Lord,” he answered, bowing just enough

to show respect. “I must apologise for my outfit, I
have been working.”

“Something great to hear from one so young,” the

man answered. Cygnus chuckled, as if he was
agreeing. “Seventeen and already so determinate
with his tasks and goals. A Seat already and Head
of the House, supporter of our Cause and clear
power on his hands. Regulus is one of my most
promising poster-children.”

“I’m not longer a child, I’m sure, My Lord,” he said

in gentle correction.

“Of course, of course, so you must understand

business quite well now that you’re a grown-up,”
Voldemort said. Regulus just stared at him,
knowing he didn’t want an answer for that
commentary. “Then, you also understand that your
house-elf didn’t manage to survive the simple task
I gave him. I wasn’t expecting anything less, of
course, after all the potion I made with Severus’
help certainly was fatal for one so small. I suppose
your dear friend had some use before his demise.”

Regulus wanted to ask which one of his friends,

after all both had died or almost died by
Voldemort’s hands.

“I’m sure he was, My Lord.”

“I brought you something, then, to make up for the

service you have lost,” Voldemort said. “Noel!” A
female house-elf appeared. It was odd for a female
to be named Noel, but certainly it was female by
the shape of the ears and the tearful eyes. “She’s
untied. Her last owner passed without any heirs left
behind, so I bought her from the market and
brought her here for her new Master to tie her in.”

Regulus didn’t believe Voldemort for one moment.

That elf was his and would pass information to him
if she could have access to it.

“Good. Something needs to look after the baby,”

Regulus said.

“You were doing a good job at that last time I was

here,” Voldemort said, raising his eyebrows. He did
not react in exchange. “Besides, good redecoration
on the parlour, I can barely notice how it was
destroyed a few months ago.”

“That night I was on the piano and Laurie was still

awake, we barely made company to one another. I
have a lot to do, my Lord, other than take care of
children,” Regulus answered, dismissing the veiled
accusation of the man sitting in front of him. “And
hello, Noel. We’ll do the ritual in just a moment.
And thank, my Lord, for the present. I certainly
appreciate it very deeply.”

“I’m sure you do,” Voldemort answered with a

smile on his thin lips, making the skin look almost
white on it. Regulus looked away, uncomfortable.
“I’ll be at the Lestrange’s tonight, if need to reach
me.”

“I doubt it, my Lord,” he answered quickly.

Kreacher was dead. Or so he thought.

If death was this painful, then he would’ve fought

to survive a bit more, because his mouth, nose and
stomach were burning while he couldn’t move. He
was floating at the same time, as if he had been
floating on water for a long time, his back and neck
hurting already. His mouth was dry and
uncomfortable and he felt nausea hitting him on the
empty stomach so many times that he sat down.
He understood suddenly that he was alive as his
body was flung forward by his nausea and he
coughed and gagged, but nothing came out. He
hadn’t eaten at all for a long time, he had been too
nervous before the mission and he had been too
sick after it for the person taking care of him to
force him to swallow anything.

He looked around him, confused and scared to

where he was, but he recognised the room enough
to make him freeze.

This was Mistress Anne’s room.

“Mistress?” he called out.

The front door opened and Anne walked into the

room, clearly having run towards it in the moment
he started coughing. She stumbled into the room,
leaving the door open behind her.

“Kreacher, oh, you’re awake!” she seemed to

celebrate. “How are you feeling? Are you alright?
What happened?”

Kreacher shook his head.

“Mistress told Kreacher this would happen,” he

answered. “Kreacher shouldn’t have gone with the
Wizard.”

“You did what you had to do, Kreacher, no, don’t

worry,” she said, sitting down beside him.

He was in her bed, he noticed at once while his

eyes pooled with tears once more. He was being
treated with such kindness by someone he
respected so much; it was like seeing that he was
respected back. It was such a nice feeling that he
started crying quietly, allowing himself to feel the
present as real.

“Kreacher, what are you feeling? Are you in pain?”

Anne asked.

“Kreacher’s stomach burns, Mistress,” Kreacher

answered.

Anne knew what to do with it. She reached to the

small beside-table and inside the drawer, from
there she took the small vial of bright blue potion
and uncorked it with a single pull, giving the small
vial in Kreacher’s hands.

“Drink it,” she told him.

Kreacher did. Kreacher swallowed it down with a

single gulp. It didn’t taste good; it was bitter and
the consistency was certainly not one he would
drink by his own will. But it made his inside as cold
as ice – it made him sigh in relief and delight once
it made his insides stop burning. He took a deep
breath, feeling some freshness in throat and lungs.

“Master Regulus?”

“I can’t contact him yet, Tom Riddle is there still,”

she answered. “He doesn’t know you’re with me
yet, so you need to hold on for a little while longer,
Kreacher.”

“Day? What day is it?”

“Is the next day. It’s June 14th,” she answered.

“You’ve been unconscious for almost a whole day.”

He blinked a few times. Almost a whole day away

from his Master, who didn’t even know where he
was. It made him feel like a terrible elf, but at least
he was with his Mistress, who certainly would take
care of him and he would take care of her in
exchange. She would make him feel like a good
house-elf was supposed to feel: useful. So when
she asked him about what had happened, he told
her every single thing; from where the cave
seemed to be and what he had been forced to do.

But it was only the next day, the 15th, that Mistress
Anne gave him any good news at all.

“I wrote to Regulus this morning,” Anne said. “He’ll

be here this afternoon if nothing goes wrong.”

But it wasn’t even noon when Regulus Black ran

through the corridor and into Anne’s bedroom, eyes
filled with happy tears and a face as pale as wax. It
didn’t matter that Anne had told him that Kreacher
was alive, seeing him alive and sitting on the bed
was certainly disconcerting – the happiness had
been so much that Regulus cried and cried on the
doorway, having to be brought into the bedroom by
Anne herself and led towards the bed, where he
carefully hugged Kreacher.

“Master Regulus, Kreacher tried calling you,”

Kreacher said, crying once more. “The Wizard
laughed and laughed and Kreacher drank and
drank. Kreacher wanted to go home. Kreacher tried
to go home.”

Regulus and Anne let him cry and babble through

his tears and sobs about how horrifying his
experience has been.

“I gave him the order of calling for Coco if anything

ever went wrong,” Anne explained once Kreacher’s
cries were not as loud and he finally fallen asleep,
body still trembling and sniffs still coming. “He
couldn’t go back to Grimmauld Place. He knows too
much and Tom already has an eye on you, we
couldn’t put your neck even more on the line. I
waited for the confirmation it was safe before
sending you word.”

“How do you have the confirmation?” Regulus

asked, still with a hand wrapped around Kreacher’s
shaking shoulders.

“Arabella Figg, she lives across the street and since

she’s a squib she can see inside the house,” Anne
answered. “She’s seen as a crazy old woman, so
don’t worry if you see her nearby just talking to
pigeons and whatnot.”

Regulus nodded.

“Good to know,” he answered.

He looked down at the house-elf half-sitting, half-

lying down on the bed against him. He looked so
pale and so tired.

“What happened to him was terrible, Regulus, but

it’s good thing in the end,” Anne said.

“How can it be?” Regulus asked, shaking his head

slightly.

“Because Tom thinks he’s dead and he thinks

nobody knows where the next Horcrux is,” Anne
explained. “He’ll put not security besides the wards
that are already there. He has no idea we know
how to get there and how to get out of there.
Kreacher survived. We are one step closer to killing
that motherfucker. We all will have our revenge.”

We all will have our revenge. Regulus agreed with

that. He would have his revenge when a man hurt
his best friend and the creature that had raised
him, and he would have revenge for the people that
couldn’t take revenge themselves.

In the silence of Anne watched Kreacher sleeping

and Regulus watching Anne and Kreacher, Regulus
promised himself that that horcrux was his
responsibility alone and he would be the one to
take it and destroy it.

Chapter 128: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Seven -
Summary:
Regulus' chapter.

THE DRINK OF MEMORIES

Summer of 1978 brought forth the strongest part of

the war that no longer could be hidden.

Muggles were being killed and their names and

faces were plastered around both sides of the city
and both types of newspapers. Pureblood wizards
and witches were being outed as Death Eaters and
being stuck in jail or suddenly becoming ‘fugitives’,
though everybody knew where they were, but
nobody seemed to go after them to actually get
them stuck in Azkaban for the rest of their lives.
The Ministry was a mess, the very clear division
between the people working in there because they
wanted a better world and the people working in
there because that was what their families did for
generations, even before they were born into that
rotten world.

Nobody was safe anymore.

The number of students in Hogwarts dropped

almost by half, especially with Dumbledore’s violent
death being shoved every single newspaper at least
twice or thrice a month. Professor (and now
Headmaster) Minerva McGonagall was doing her
best to make sure everybody inside the school was
safe, no matter their blood-status, but there was
nothing she could do in July, summer break. Barty
Crouch Jr. would write to Regulus as often as he
could, telling him the good efforts of the new
headmaster on making sure his secret friends
(mostly muggleborns) were safe enough and how
she seemed to refuse to hire new professors who
didn’t have a squeak-clean history. Anything to
make sure the children would no be subjected to a
war none of them chose to enter, but he did say
she would take a few of the older students (mostly
of the older students of the last year or the ones
that had early birthdays on the sixth-year).

June had been quite the month, especially after

everything Kreacher had to go through, but July
promised a lot more.

Most of the month was left for Regulus to as guilty

as a person could be as he prepared to get his Seat
of Wizergamot officially. He was no longer there as
the Heir. Now that the paperwork had been
finalised (quite quickly, according to all the troubles
Dumbledore put in his way, by Voldemort’s own
words, though Regulus doubted and thought that it
was only him wanting to have Regulus under his
thumb for longer). However, once the 21st of July
came, there was no way to hide anymore and
Regulus climbed onto his Seat with the darkest
black robes and his hair pushed back and well-
brushed.

Men older than his father would’ve been gave him

strong pets on the back and called him by
nicknames, even after he corrected them on the
way they should address him by. The Ministry party
was becoming more and more like a chore and less
like a celebration of being the youngest Lord in the
Seats – just days away from being seventeen, and
one of the only people in the world to get his
tracker taken away from his wand a whole year
earlier because of the early-graduation. No matter
if those old people agreed with his political views or
if they thought him to be the stupidest person in
the world, they wouldn’t show him respect at all;
he didn’t have the age or the experience they
yearned for a Lord.

“Deep breaths and a smile, Regulus,” Cygnus said

under his breath from behind him.

“These people see me as a joke,” Regulus

complained.

“They don’t know you. Prove them wrong,” he

answered. “It’s a good thing. They won’t see you
coming for their throat when the time is right. Find
your allies and keep your head low until you need
to do otherwise.”

“You sound like Anne,” Regulus complained.

“Because Anne is right,” his uncle joked.

“The Dark Lord put me here and for what? It won’t

be as if these old men will sway their votes to me,”
Regulus said bitterly. “It’s like he’s putting me here
so I’ll fail, as if he wants to find any reason to
punish me.”

“Give him some credit, he won’t be this stupid,”

Cygnus said, rolling his eyes.

Regulus sipped his champagne quietly.

“For revenge or bitterness, perhaps he would,” he

answered, though he knew it wasn’t completely
true.

Tom Riddle’s confidence was through the roof. With

the knowledge that the only living thing besides
himself that knew where one of his last Horcruxes
is gone, dead and probably not buried inside his
cave, he became reckless. He was sure everything
was so safe. He was sure everything would survive
any curiosity – the blood wards, the lake, the
Inferni, the Drink of Despair that Severus had
created for him, the medallion fighting back. What
he didn’t know was that there were two teenagers
ready to climb through every single of those
obstacles to get what they wanted.

And it was that boundless confidence that brought

Tom Riddle himself to the Ministry.

The middle-aged man walked into the ballroom of

the Ministry with Lucius and Abraxas Malfoy beside
him, a great support statement on which side, both
financially as in position inside the politics. It was,
however, the way he turned and looked straight at
the paling Regulus and smiled that made
everything in the ballroom freeze for a second.

In between a heartbeat and the other, Regulus died

and came back to life.

“My Lord!” he said, sounding as surprised as he

felt, but forcing a smile to make it look like it was
some type of honour, when all he wanted was to
throw up on his own shoes. “To have you here –”

“Not today, dear Regulus, not today. Today, this is

all about you,” Tom said, smiling at him and
touching his face with too much care. Regulus felt
disgusted of his own skin. “The youngest politician
in England in more than a century, just sixteen.
How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m at the top of the world, as you usually

make me feel by allowing me to serve you, Lord,”
he answered.

Tom laughed of his flatteries. He was used to fake

words and flourishing promises, but Regulus’ were
certainly a lot more fun to watch and listen. He was
quick on his feet.

“Too kind, too kind,” he dismissed. He looked

around, watching how the people watched him in
no in between – it was either admiration or fear;
and he liked being the main-character at that
ballroom. “My support seemed to be right once
more. I put my faith and duty on young Regulus’
shoulders and look where it brought him and me, in
extent. Do not make me sound surprised, for I am
not, but I am admiring his talents greatly.”

Regulus felt his stomach drop as he looked around.

If he wanted to find allies on the other side of the
war, his chance was gone, dead and buried.
Voldemort’s public support was something that not
many spies would be able to get, especially
somewhere with so much in game. If he said he
was a spy, the chance of being believed was so
small that it was better that he didn’t even try it.
He needed to get word to Anne as fast as possible.
She would hate it, but she would have a better idea
than just let it roll.

But at the same time, now, the old men looked at

him with some glow in their eyes and he knew the
real hunt for his favour was just about to begin and
the first public appearance for his favour to be
shown would be his seventeenth birthday, just a
few days away.

He had received expensive flowers, invitations for

tea with the company of daughter, granddaughters
and nieces, he had received blinding stones in rings
and pocket-watches, first versions of no longer sold
books and several other birthday presents before
the 28th had even reached Regulus.

He sighed in bed, watching the white ceiling when

the door opened.

“Up and get dressed. Breakfast is at the table,”

Walburga said from the doorway.

“It’s my birthday, let me sleep in,” he groaned,

turning his back to her.

“You weren’t even sleeping. Get up,” she insisted.

He knew she was right. He had barely blinked the

night before. He was missing Severus, Anne and
Kreacher – all the people he loved and that the war
had made sure his relationship needed to be secret
or forbidden at once. The most important people in
his life weren’t allowed to go his birthday party that
would show he was an adult to the world around
him because, to the world, they weren’t meant to
be there.

He pushed himself out of the bed, dressing on the

outfit his mother had left to the side. It summer,
and he started sweating almost in the second he
got dressed. Cream-coloured blouse with a light-
salmon waistcoat, black trousers with black shoes.
Everything was well put in place in the parlour to
make sure everything was perfect.

Walburga was sure this birthday would change

everything, and she had no idea how right she was
and how wrong she was, at the same time.

In her mind, Regulus would realise how wrong he

was right about the side of the war that he had
shoved himself into and would ask for a divorce as
fast as possible to get rid of Anne when he could,
then he would be proud to be the owner of the
Black Seat and would, with confidence, be the best
soldier Voldemort had ever seen in his way-too-
long lifetime. Regulus, too, thought everything was
about to change for him, but not because of what
his mother had in mind, but because of the secret
plans he had in the back of his mind, ready to
make a move in the game Voldemort wasn’t ready
he was playing.

By the time the first guests were there, Regulus

was already presentable and smiley, champagne on
his flute-glass and clearly excited for what was
about to come as he greeted each and every one of
the guests walking into his house.

The older people – which now Regulus called co-

workers – were around the parlour and ballroom,
their daughters, nieces and granddaughters in their
best dresses, walking around the place in hopes
they would catch his eyes. Regulus tried his best
not to look at the pretty girls trying to show him
more than he had asked or the pretty boys trying
to get too comfortable with him too quick. He
wanted Anne. He wanted Severus. He wanted
Kreacher. He wanted to be anywhere but the place
he was at that moment. Everything tasted good
and the drink was strong enough and yet there was
nothing that made him feel well. It was his
birthday, and he was discomforted.

“Young Brigette Louis over there looks pretty,” said

Walburga suddenly, standing not too far behind
Regulus.

“I’m a committed man, Mother,” he dismissed.

“And young Miss Brigette Louis is thirteen.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“You could at least know my age on my own

birthday, Mother. I’m seventeen. I’ve been a legal
adult for a whole year now and I have been
committed for months,” he answered, rolling his
eyes. “I have a ring on my finger and I plan of
keeping it there.”

“You’re being stupid.”

“You always say that about me,” he dismissed once

more.

“Because you’re always being stupid,” his mother

insisted. “Listen, she’s just a girl. You’ll change
your mind soon. It’s pathetic to see the Head of
House of Black running after a girl like a puppy. For
the good of our family, I hope you will change your
mind before you put a child on her belly.”

He shook his head, exhausted already. There was

nothing he could do or say that would change his
mother’s mind, no matter how much he tried – and
younger him had tried very, very hard.

“If I ever have a child, you will never be allowed to

see them,” he said suddenly. She froze behind him,
looking at him in shock. “They’ll grow up to be a
good person and they won’t be poisoned by this
family’s prejudice, hatred and bigotry. There will
not be a day in my life where I will allow myself to
look back on my child’s raising and think that you
might have done a better job than I; I will be a
better parent than you were and I will be a better
leader than Father was.”

His father had never really been there or been a

father at all, so a leader to the family was all he
had managed to achieve. His mother had raised
him to be so much like her that he took so long to
find out who he was himself without needing to
mirror her image. He had taken so long to look in
the mirror and like what he saw that he could no
longer look at his mother and not hate who she
made him be.

“You shouldn’t talk to your mother like that,” she

said, bitterly.

“I won’t when I find my real mother,” he answered,

walking away.

He wasn’t alone for long as he walked around the

room, Cygnus being beside him in the moment that
he stopped.

“What happened?” Cygnus asked. “The

conversation seemed a little bit tense.” Regulus
shrugged, looking around. “Don’t worry, I don’t
think anyone but me noticed… maybe your aunt
Druella, by the way the two are talking near the
kitchen.”

“Let them talk themselves to death,” he sighed.

Cygnus took a deep breath as he cringed at the

reaction that he had gotten from the boy in front of
him.

“If you want to appease you mother, dance for

tonight. Fight with her tomorrow,” Cygnus said.
“What do you want to do tonight?”

“I want to go home to my wife, that’s what I want

for my birthday,” he answered, bitterly. “I want to
be with Anne and her family, talk to Severus and
take care of Laurie, away from all this loud music
and happy people.”

“I can understand.”

“You can’t, because you hate your wife,” Regulus

said.

He wasn’t completely wrong, Cygnus knew that,

but he did get defensive anyways.

And for the rest of the night, Regulus mopped

around the ballroom, dancing a few times with
people that wouldn’t leave him alone and made him
too annoyed to the point where he decided a silent
dance was better than hearing them talk. To make
his mother even angrier, he danced with a man,
too. He drank and he ate and he sat on the corner,
glaring at everything happening around him.

However, Regulus felt like everything really

happened after the three in the morning mark.

In the dark, Regulus lied in his bed and waited.

Everybody was asleep and most people had gone
home already, all drunk and full of good food, so he
felt like he was alone in the world. He knew the
next step and he knew what was about to happen
next. Regulus had heard Anne talking of the little
she knew of his death being repeated in a whisper
on his ear in the silence of the night, but he didn’t
care – the anger and thirst for revenge for what
had happened to Kreacher seemed to muffle the
words, making them sound nothing more than a
constant humming of warning.

That was when he got up, still completely dressed

from the party and cracked his neck.

“Kreacher!” he called out.

The loud pop wouldn’t be heard outside of his room

where the wards Anne had thrown up still stood, so
Kreacher’s confused and big eyes looked back at
him in admiration.

“Master Regulus looks handsome in his birthday, he

does!” Kreacher said, nodding to himself. “Kreacher
would have gotten the grey waistcoat, so Master
could eat more; that one is too tight. Master should
eat a lot on his birthday.”

Regulus looked down at the waistcoat, slowly

taking it off because he did agree. It marked his
waist too much and had made the eyes following
him uncomfortable; he had ignored it, but he knew
that it had been desire in their eyes, he had seen
Anne watching his waist before with those same
eyes.

“Kreacher, I need you to take me to the cave.”

Kreacher’s eyes widened as he shook his head side-

to-side, hands starting to shake in clear distress.

“Please, Master Regulus, Kreacher will be a good elf

and will come back home, if Master wishes,” he
answered quickly, falling to his knees in clear
begging. “Kreacher cannot go back there. Kreacher
doesn’t want to die there. Kreacher doesn’t want
to!”

“Kreacher, you won’t have to do anything besides

take me there,” Regulus said, he took a deep
breath. “I will deal with it myself.”

“Kreacher will not see Master Regulus get hurt,

even if Master punishes me for that!” he said firmly
through his tears, getting up from the ground. He
was irrebuttable, but Regulus narrowed his eyes at
him. “Kreacher will iron his hands and ears, but he
will not take Master Regulus there.”

“You will, if I order you to, and I do. I order you to

take me to the cave right now,” Regulus said. He
was startled by the strength in his voice as he
cringed. His own voice sounded a lot like his
father’s. He frowned, he didn’t want to be that
man, but he needed that cold-blooded strength and
determination at the moment. “You know I hate to
do this, Kreacher, you are a friend to me, but this is
a lot more important than myself.”

“Nothing is more important than you,” Kreacher

disagreed, but he said nothing else as he offered
his hand.

Regulus hated how he could feel the bones under

his fingers as he held his friend’s hand tight. He felt
the familiar tugging of apparating and felt the stone
under his shoes once they apparated inside the
cave directly.

He took a moment in silence, still holding onto

Kreacher’s hand to recognise the wards around him
with his eyes closed. He wouldn’t be able to
disapparate away without a house-elf’s help, for the
main ward would only allow Tom Riddle himself to
go inside. Regulus scoffed when he found nothing
similar to a warning ward – he wondered if Tom
Riddle had not been fooled enough as it was to not
have been more careful.

“Was it this wall?” Regulus asked.

Kreacher looked at the wall Regulus pointed.

“He put his blood there,” he confirmed.

“He wants to weaken his enemy before going in,”

Regulus guessed. “So obvious.”

Most people would’ve gone straight to the hand-

palm, but there was where most of the nerves
were; it was the most painful location for a cut.
Regulus wasn’t stupid. He cut his finger, a small cut
that he would need to redo on his way out, he knew
by what Kreacher had told him the day after he
woke up from the poison on the potion he would
have to drink. The walls rattled in the next second
before a few small rocks fell in his direction. He
took a step back in surprise and unsure of what
was coming next, looking and watching as the wall
opened to let him pass.

He slowly walked through the doors, trying to feel

any other wards activating, but nothing came of it.
Regulus could feel Kreacher hesitant as he followed
him closely behind in tiny little steps that barely
made any noise on the stones grinding under his
shoes – he wondered if Kreacher’s feet were
hurting by being poked by the stones, since he
didn’t ear any shoes. He didn’t dare look back, eyes
still forward and hyper-aware of his surroundings.

“The Wizard asked Kreacher to take him to the

island,” Kreacher said, voice echoing through the
cave.

Regulus’ eyes narrowed as he watched the lake

water barely moving, the only light coming from
the basin on top of a podium, in the middle of the
island. The light didn’t help a lot to see; it was
green and made the walls looks even wetter than
they were already, so Regulus slowly stepped
towards the water, but moving further to the side
of the cave at the same time, trying to find
anything that would help him cross.

Voldemort wasn’t one to only have one way in and

out, so if he needed Kreacher to get in and out,
then he must have a plan B. So he closed his eyes
and stopped walking, trying to feel the humid,
heavy air around him.
There was a connection.

He leaned down, fingers bushing the humid rocks

on the ground before he felt something similar to a
chain brushing through the tips of his finger. He
frowned, opening his eyes and tugging at it. Slowly,
a boat came towards him, becoming more visible
one it was closer to where they were located.
Regulus was the first to climb in.

“Kreacher, climb in, but be ready to jump out,”

Regulus said, voice low. Kreacher did what he was
asked. The boat moved and slowly started to
threaten to sink. “Jump!” Kreacher jumped out,
back into the rock bank. “I’ll go there through boat,
you’ll need to Apparate.”

“Let Kreacher Apparate Master as well,” Kreacher

said.

“We need a second way out in case you’re unable

to come back in the same way we went,” Regulus
explained.

And he took the two small paddles, grunting at the

physical effort as he made his way across the
water, towards the island in the middle of the cave.
He cringed and refused to look every time that his
paddle would hit something – he knew there were…
things of bloated and deformed limbs floating in the
water, hitting the small boat he was on and some
seemed to blink, but he didn’t dare look directly,
hoping it was just his fear.

When he heard the loud ‘pop’, he flinched, looking

at the island and seeing a trembling Kreacher
waiting for him in clear distress.

“Almost there, Kreacher,” he said, trying to sound

reassuring.

“Master, there are bodies floating,” Kreacher’s

shaky voice answered.

Regulus tried not to cringe.

“I know,” he dismissed. “Kreacher, is the basin full?

Do you reach to see inside?”

Kreacher gave his back to Regulus in the moment

the boat hit the sand bank, trying to see inside the
tall basin in the podium. Regulus climbed down of
the boat easily, his long legs allowing him to climb
to the top of the sand bank.

“I can’t see,” Kreacher complained.

“No problem,” Regulus said, now standing beside

him. “It’s really full.”

Kreacher cringed.

“Kreacher will drink it again,” he said bravely,

nodding to himself as reassurance.

Regulus frowned and shook his head.

“It pains me that you think I would allow it to

happen that way,” Regulus answered. “Somebody
needs to drink this, Kreacher, and you were half-
dead when you got to Anne’s. I won’t let that
happen again, especially under my hand.”

“Kreacher will drink it!” he insisted.

Regulus hated himself for doing so, but he shook

his head.

“I forbid it,” he said. He hated those words. “And I

order you to make me drink this,” he continued. He
hated those words even more.

Kreacher wide eyes filled with tears as he looked at

Regulus, waiting for him to change his mind, but
there was determination there. Kreacher and
Regulus both knew they weren’t going to change
his mind, but Kreacher now had orders to follow.

“A friend doesn’t order the other around, I know,

Kreacher, but this is the only way we will make it
through tonight,” Regulus said once he saw the
hurt on those eyes. “Listen, you really need to
listen to me. You will make me drink this; it will be
hard and it will be rough, and we both know I’ll beg
you to not stop – even if I order you to, you’re
forbidden to stop and this order is law.”

“A Master’s order is law,” Kreacher repeated the

motto his mother had whispered to him as he grew
up.

“Yes,” he added. “Now, when I’m done drinking,

you will get the medallion inside and go to Anne’s
again.”

“And Kreacher shall take Master?”

“Not right away,” Regulus said. “The medallion is

the main-focus here. You’ll come back and get me
when the medallion in safe. We can’t risk losing it
in the middle of the mess that it will be when this is
over. Tell Anne the medallion needs to be kept
safe.”

“Kreacher needs to take Master!” Kreacher said.

“Yous know how dangerous it is to be here.”

“Kreacher –”

“Regulus!” Kreacher cut his off.

Regulus’ eyes widened in surprise.

“I’m sorry –” started Kreacher.

“No, it’s alright. It’s okay. You’re allowed to call me

by my name when we’re alone or when there’s
Anne with us,” Regulus said. Kreacher nodded,
tearful once more. “One more thing, if something
goes wrong, call for Coco and get the hell out of
there in the blink of an eye,” he poked his wand on
his hand. “If it happens that I do not make it, my
wand needs to go to Laurie.”

He gave the wand to the elf, who held onto it for

dear-life.

“Young Master Lawrence is lucky to have Regulus

as his father,” Kreacher said.

Regulus got up and busied himself in summoning a

box so Kreacher could stand on to reach inside the
basin, anything to not let Kreacher see his own
eyes filling with tears this time around.

He didn’t plan on dying and he didn’t want to die as

he had before in his life; no, because now he had a
reason to go back home. He had dreams and plans
and people to that needed him. Laurie needed to be
raised and created to not hate, he had dreams of
having a family of his own with Anne, and he knew
Anne needed him – she had lost so many people
already and he feared what would happen if she
lost him as well. And he had Severus, who was
waiting for his assistance to finish some Healing
Potions because they would talk as they worked;
Kreacher was still healing and was terrified of his
own shadow and Regulus was the one that made
him feel safer. He wanted to meet Harry Potter. He
wanted to see Laurie going to Hogwarts and getting
into a House, sending a letter home with detailed
days.

He had so much to live for. He had so much to fight

for.

“Let’s start,” Regulus said.

He took the small spoon-like sea-shell and filled it

with the potion, taking the first sip. He groaned
with the bitter taste and took the second sip, this
time bigger to make it go faster. He regretted,
because this time everything burned.

His nose, his mouth, his tongue, his oesophagus –

everything burned.

He dropped the sea-shell, a yelp coming out of his

lips as his body leaned heavily against the basin as
his knees buckled. He groaned and grunted as he
tried to keep himself standing straight.

It had been only the first spoonful of it.

“Master! Master!” Kreacher said, scared.

“I’m alright,” he managed to get out.

He took the sea-shell floating on the potion and

filled it once more. He took the whole thing in a
single sip this time, swallowing it down like a bad,
too strong alcoholic drink, not giving himself
enough time to breathe before he took the next
one. He choked, spitting and spluttering
everywhere as his whole body started shaking
violently.

This time he couldn’t hold himself, falling to the

ground with a pained scream as Kreacher filled the
sea-shell once more, compelled to make his master
keep drinking it as he had told him to do.

“It hurts!” Regulus announced.

By the corner of his eye, he saw his father standing

in the shadows of his office, a woman that was not
his mother getting dressed, but his mother stood
by the door with pain and disgust in her eyes – it
was the first time his mother had attacked his
father with the spell she usually saved to use on
Sirius, Cruciatus. He could feel the despair of
finding Sirius half-dead with the aftershakes of a
long torture after he had brought a few
pornographic magazines home from school; he
really did think his brother would make the night.
He could feel the pain and betrayal of begging on
his knees for his brother to stay as he wailed, but
his brother left him anyway. He could feel the
disgust of his cousin, Bellatrix, when he said that,
perhaps the young muggle girl living a few houses
away running across the park they could see
through the library window didn’t deserve to die;
she pushed him down the stairs that same day, and
he had only been seven-years-old.

“You need to keep drinking.”

It was his mother, forcing him to drink something

that tasted horrible.

“I can’t! I can’t! I’m sorry, Mother, I can’t do this!”

Regulus sobbed.

“Not Mother, Master. Kreacher!”

He blinked.

It was Kreacher.

Betrayal filled him. Why was his friend making him

do something so awful?

“No! No! No!” he sobbed. “I don’t want to.”

“You need to.”

“It hurts so much, Kreacher, I don’t want to,” he

confided.

“Regulus, yous asked me to,” Kreacher said, clearly

hurting from doing that.

Like a child, he clamped his mouth shut, lips tight

against one another and shook his head from side
to side as he tried to keep his sobs in. But Kreacher
had experience with a stubborn child like Regulus
had been – he closed his nose with his fingers until
Regulus opened his mouth to breathe and shoved
the potion inside.

Gagging, Regulus needed to swallow. Spit was

hanging out on his chin and dripping on the ground
and on his clothes. He felt disgusting. He felt small
and powerless like he had been for so many years
under his mother’s rule.

He remembered catching Roddy with another

woman for the first time, the intimate situation
forever burned in his young twelve-year-old mind
and he remembered the death threat that followed;
he kept his silence and promise. He remembered
Anne crying in front of him, terrified of something
the Horcrux showed her, shaking for something
that wasn’t even there; he had felt helpless and
useless.

“One more!”

“I don’t to, Kreach,” Regulus whined.

The childhood nickname seemed to have some

effect, because Kreacher hesitated before making
Regulus drink it.

Regulus wailed in pain, back arching at the burning

and at the images that came one after the other,
threatening to drown him in terrible memories and
thoughts before he could even die as a hero.

“Last one, I swear. It’s the last one, Master. Yous is

doing good, Regulus,” Kreacher said.

In the last sip, Regulus had a good memory.

Kreacher had him in one of the chairs where his

mother usually tied him to do eat, but he wasn’t
tied and he wasn’t dressed properly. He was in his
diapers and only on that; Sirius was beside him still
in pyjamas and Kreacher was putting pancakes on
Sirius’ plate, filling them with way too much honey,
but to Regulus he gave porridge – Sirius laughed,
even though Regulus genuinely liked porridge,
especially because when Mother wasn’t home,
Kreacher would put some cinnamon on it and it
tasted really good. Kreacher gave it spoon by spoon
to Regulus. Sirius gave Regulus a piece of his
pancake, even when he said that he wouldn’t share
it anymore. It was the best meal he had even had
in his life.

He blinked slowly, trying his best to focus on the

present. The warm light still made him feel like the
burning could be reversable.

“Kreacher will take the medallion to Mistress. Don’t

move. Kreacher will be back,” Kreacher said.

Regulus tried to search for him, not realising the

‘pop’ meant he was already gone. His mouth was
dry and he wanted something to drink, something
that wasn’t bitter and nauseatingly painful.

He smacked his lips, dragging himself towards the

basin. His legs didn’t seem to collaborate with him
when he pulled himself to stand and looked at the
empty basin, complaining mentally as he tried to
walk towards the second body of water – the lake.
He crouched down before sitting, exhausted of the
small exercise. He reached, his back cracking, and
his fingers touched the water.

A hand grabbed his wrist.

With a hoarse scream, he threw his body back,

hitting it on the sand. He tried to kick with his weak
legs as the deformed, bloated and flesh-missing
body dragged itself out of the water towards him.
The thing wanted him and it wasn’t alone – several
others started to appear, head first of empty eyes
and clear hunger.

“Help! HELP ME!” he screamed.

Nobody came.

He reached to his side, trying to find his wand, but

it wasn’t there.

His wand was with Kreacher, and Kreacher was far

away in Surrey at the moment.

“HELP ME!” he yelled out.

It was the moment the first couple of sharp, talon-

like nails stabbed him on the chest and pulled,
dragging him further away from the sand and his
body hit the water. All he managed to do was hold
his breath.

His last thought was of Anne’s eyes, Laurie’s fingers

around his, Severus’ laugh, Kreacher’s kindness,
Mia’s care, Sirius’s loyalty and all the things that he
would miss.

Chapter 129: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Eight
Summary:
Regulus' chapter pt. 2

REGULUS BLACK’S HEALING

The weight on top of her made her jump in her bed,

pushing the figure that had fallen on top of her and
screaming bloody-murder as she reached for her
wand to open her door, the wards breaking so the
house could hear her scream and prepare to fight
as well.

The lights lightened up as soon as she was sitting

and her wand was pointing towards the invader in
her bedroom, ready for a kill. Until she heard the
soft crying of Kreacher as the elf forced himself to
stand through clear exhaustion; he was still healing
and any use of magic or physical exertion, he
ended up looking tired and shaking like a leaf, pale
on the face. Still, the face he had on was more than
exhaustion – it was clear and absolute panic, it was
the look of Death.

“What? What happened?” she asked. “Kreacher,

what’s happened?”

Struggling to raise his arm, Kreacher showed

something off to her.

She recognised the chain holding onto the

medallion immediately. It was the Horcrux. A
Horcrux that Kreacher couldn’t have gotten a hold
of alone.

“Where’s Regulus?” she asked.

“Keep it safe, Mistress. Master told yous to keep it

safe,” Kreacher answered.

“Where is he?” she asked, voice becoming louder.

“Keep it safe! Kreacher will bring him. Keep it safe.”

She took the medallion from him with too much

strength. The humming against her body started
right away as she put it around her neck, her hands
shaking in fear already for the lack of response
from Kreacher. This could mean only one thing:
Regulus was still in the cave.

“Go! Get him! Kreacher, get him home, now!” she

ordered in a scream.

By the time Kreacher nodded and, stumbling,

managed to get away, Sirius was already at the
doorway, half-asleep and with his wand in his
hands as he leaned heavily against the doorframe
to continue standing up.

She turned to look at Sirius, watching his shirtless

frame within her bedroom, his hair a complete
mess. He was stumbling towards her, just one sock
on his feet, probably having kicked the other on the
middle of the night.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Regulus,” she answered, a loud sob escaping her

lips. “I don’t know what’s happening, but he got the
Horcrux. He’s in the cave. He’s in the fucking cave!”

Sirius took a hold of her by her arms, trying to

make her calm down as he heard the footsteps of
someone else coming towards the room. He looked
over his shoulder to see James tying his sleeping
trousers around his waist – any other situation
would have called for Sirius teasing him for
knowing exactly what he had been doing before
Anne screaming, but now all he could do was watch
his best friend pale face and wide eyes.

“What’s happening?” James asked.

“Regulus got the Horcrux, but he didn’t come back

home,” Sirius answered.

James reached for Anne, helping her sit down on

the bed.

She had her eyes closed tight as she sobbed.

“He’s going to be alright,” James said, trying to

calm her down. “Who came to tell you?”

“Kreacher,” she answered.

“Do you really think Kreacher would let anything

happen to Regulus?” asked another voice.

James jumped, turning to the door. He sometimes

hated how silent Severus Snape was, almost
standing in the corners and making his way around
the house without a single noise of warning. He had
even threatened to hang a bell on his neck when he
went to get some water in the middle of the night
and turned to see him moving across the door,
pyjama’s swirling behind him like his school cape
usually did.

“Kreacher was scared. He’s weak,” Anne sobbed.

Severus made his way further into the room, sitting

down beside her on the bed and trying not to flinch
or cringe when she threw herself against, head
falling to rest on his thighs. He put his hesitant
hand on her head, pushing away some of the red
hair to let her breathe better through her crying.

“Kreacher would rather die than lose Regulus. They

are both coming home, I have no doubt,” Severus
said.

But Anne continued crying.

It was the second loud ‘pop’ that made James gasp

and step in front of Anne, blocking her line of vision
at least for one second more as everybody in the
room took in the image that appeared on Anne’s
bedroom floor.

Kreacher was holding onto Regulus as tight as he

could, making his skinny little arms shake with the
effort. Regulus wasn’t much help, completely
unconscious and spread out on the floor. There was
blood everywhere.

“Is he alive?” Anne’s shaky voice asked.

Sirius was on his knees in a second, searching for

any signs of life. His fingers found where the pulse
should be.

Silence.

There was not a single thump against his finger.

There was no pulse.

“CALL MADAME POMFREY! HELP!” he yelled out.

“DOING THAT!” Lily answered from the bedroom

she had been told to hide in.

Remus ran into the room.

“Fucking hell!” he exclaimed as soon as he walked

in. “I was drinking water. What the fuck did I
miss?”

Anne stumbled forward, falling to her knees and

checking Regulus. The wail of despair when she
didn’t find the pulse either made James take a step
back, watching his daughter dissolve back into lost
sobs.

James was at a loss. When Severus came through

the fireplace, he had managed to keep his head in
place to bring Anne back from her shock; it had
been her best friend lying on the floor, bleeding
out, but fighting for his life. However, that was her
daughter’s husband, already dead and gone lying
on her bedroom floor and painting her whole body
with his blood as she threw herself on top of him,
holding onto him. He didn’t know what to do, so he
just stood there, trying to breathe, wondering who
would need help. He couldn’t help Anne. Sirius was
just sitting on the corner, staring at his own bloody
hands, but Remus was already beside him. Severus
got up from the bed, knees buckling and falling
forward. James reached for his sleeping robes,
pulling him to the standing position once more.

“No! NO!” Anne sobbed.

Footsteps around the house once more as Lily and

Mia led Madame Pomfrey through the corridors as
they ran towards Anne’s bedroom.

Lily gasped and stopped at the corridor once she

took in the room.

“Please, don’t leave me! Please!” Anne was

screaming. “You said you wouldn’t leave me!”

Mia ran in first, running to Anne and pulling her

back to give Madame Pomfrey enough room to
work.

“Anne, my dear –”

“He’s fine. He can’t be dead!” Anne continued to

scream. “He can’t. He wouldn’t leave me.”

Madame Pomfrey didn’t have time for niceties and

sweet comforting words, she started searching for
his pulse, paling when she, too, didn’t find
anything. She looked at Mia, eyes wide when she
couldn’t find any words to say. Still, she opened the
shirt to find the deep wound of torn flesh and fat
across his chest to his upper stomach; it hadn’t
been what had killed him. He was cold, soaking wet
and his lips were blue – Regulus had drowned to
death.

Poppy made a movement with her wand, drying

Regulus. She put the tip of her wand against his
chest and mumbled the spell. His torso seemed to
jump, limbs convulsing at the electrical wave going
through his body. Mia held onto Anne tighter,
keeping her away from the boy as she tried to
throw herself forward once more.

“He’s seventeen. He’s just turned seventeen,” she

cried. “We were supposed to have at least another
year. This isn’t fair.”

Poppy tried again. And again. And again. The

procedure asked her to stop using the spell after
the fifth time; which she followed, once more
finding no pulse to keep her healing.

Regulus Black was dead.

Anne insisted on helping Sirius bathe Regulus’ body

as Kreacher lied on the floor of her bedroom,
refusing to move as he sobbed himself to
exhaustion and, finally, to sleep, but Coco moved
him to her own bedroom so they could share and
she could comfort him once he woke up. She
insisted on putting dittany on his wounds and some
silver to help the spell work faster as the wounds
closed. Sirius watched helplessly as she worked
through cleaning every bit of blood of his cold, pale
body, only jumping in and using his trembling
hands to do something that she asked him to, but
mostly only helping with the moving of the body.

Anne tried to use as little magic as she could. That

wasn’t anybody – that was her husband and he
deserved nothing but a personal care and love,
even after death. That was what was in their vows.
So, because of the silence outside and the
screaming in her head, she lied beside him after
she put the body on her bed.

Sirius stood beside her.

“Wouldn’t it be best if we put him in another

room?” he asked.

“He’s going to stay here, with me,” she answered

as her lips trembled, she tried to keep her voice
from wavering as she continued. “One last night
beside me, so I can pretend he’s asleep.”

Sirius bit his bottom lip from keeping himself from

crying as well. He looked up, hoping his tears would
go away like that. He had just lost his brother, but
he was watching his Annie slipping away as well
now. Without an answer, he turned on his heels
and walked out of the room, not looking at the
blood stain in the carpet, crying before he even
closed the door behind him.

Anne turned to Regulus once more.

He was so beautiful. Even in death, Regulus was

still astonishingly beautiful and ethereal. Plump lips
now blue, face paler than before, but skin looking
like marble of sculpted high cheekbones and an
angled nose, dark eyelashes against the skin
slightly curved and arched eyebrows with a few
hairs out of its natural drawing. His curled hair was
humid once more from the bath and looked
straight, but it was starting to get its natural waved
back slowly. How could one person look so out-of-
reality?

She brushed some hair away from his forehead.

“Why did you do that? You could have asked for

me; I would’ve gone with you,” she said to him. “I
would’ve done anything for you. I will do anything
for you. This will not go unpunished. But now I look
at that door and at that window and I can’t believe
there is still a world out there, turning as if nothing
has happened, because everything stopped for me.
I can’t do this without you.”

She wondered how he would have responded to her

as her bottom lip was pushed out and tears came
back to her eyes, streaming down her cheeks
constantly. It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t be real.

“I accepted everything about you like you accepted

everything about me; the good and the bad, but I
don’t think I was ready to accept Death, that wasn’t
what we compromised on,” she sobbed. “A happy
life together comes before that. What do I do now?
What about Laurie? And your mother and Narcissa?
What about me? How do I go on from this?”

She reached for his hand. His nails were so well

trimmed, better than hers. She scoffed bitterly in
playful manner.

“If this is what Mia feels, I don’t know how she can
do it,” Anne admitted. “Maybe because she has
children that she needs to be strong for; James and
Sirius lost their father, so I suppose they are
hurting a lot as well. But nobody needs me like you
did or like James and Sirius need her. I don’t know
my role here – there’s Harry, but after he’s born
and well… what do I do next? You were
everything.”

She had started to accept how her future would

look like and even began to hope for it, no longer
fearing it. She had been so long in love with a war
that she didn’t know what would come after it
ended – she had imagined everything after Laurie
first came to stay the night at Potter Manor. Her,
Regulus, Laurie and maybe even a child of their
own; all the steps that a family takes in a world
that she fought for, one that her children could be
proud of living in.

But without Regulus there wouldn’t be any of it.

“You were everything,” she repeated. “You were my

future and my present and everything I have ever
wanted in my past. I swore that I would love only
you for the rest of my life. I don’t think I can
survive from hatred and revenge anymore, Little
Prince. If I let go now, I can’t be strong enough
for… everything that it is to come.”

There was still a war to finish. A man to kill.

Both of their souls were in pieces before this; killing

someone had that effect, but Anne refused to
believe there was a way her soul could ever be
together again from what had happened in her
bedroom in July 29th of 1978.

She was supposed to have a whole year more.

“I thought I was going to die first,” she admitted.

The dark in the bedroom was her witness as she

looked up at him and gasped.

Regulus had frowned.

Anne threw herself back, letting go of his hand and

running to the door, opening it. She watched as the
hand she had been holding on twitched.

“HELP!” she screamed out. “HELP ME, PLEASE! HE’S

ALIVE. HE’S ALIVE!”

The door to Sirius and Remus’ room flew open, but

Anne didn’t wait by the doorway to see who was
coming, she just ran back into her bedroom and
towards the other side of the bed, sitting on the
edge of it and holding the other hand – Regulus
moaned as he frowned again.

Sirius sprinted into the room, jumping on the bed

and holding onto Regulus’ other hand as Remus
followed, curiously with his wand on his hand. Lily
ran into the bedroom soon after, announcing that
James had gone to call for Madame Pomfrey again
as Mia walked in, stopping at the door with her face
bloated for crying again.

“Come on, Little Prince, come on, open your pretty

eyes for me, please,” Anne mumbled to Regulus
and to herself.

“Sirius, Anne, maybe it’s better –” started Lily,

frowning as she took a step towards the bed.

“Please, come on, darling,” Anne continued

mumbling.

And that was exactly what Regulus did, as if

following Anne’s orders.

His eyes fluttered open and she was stared by

steel-grey eyes filled with confusion and fear as he
frowned, making a small whimper of pain.

“Anne?” he called out.

“I’m here, I’m right here,” she cried, holding his

hand tighter and bringing it up to her lips to kiss
the ring there.

She gasped once more as her lips brushed against

the wedding ring. The Resurrection Stone. She
laughed through her tears and sobbed as she lied
her head on his chest, feeling his smell through the
soap’s smell.

“Siri?”

“I’m right here, brother, right here, Reggie,” Sirius

answered. “You’ve done so good.”

“The medallion?” his voice was hoarse and weak,

but Anne understood him.

“With Kreacher. He insisted on taking care of it,”

Anne answered, pulling away so he could hear her
better. “At least until we could figure out…” he
looked confused. “what to do with your body.”

“What?!”

“Reggie, you were dead for almost three hours,”

Sirius answered.

Mia walked into the bedroom.

“Alright, slow down. Let’s have Madame Pomfrey

take a good look at him,” Mia said. “Let’s make
sure he’s alright before scolding him, Anne, so he
can be scolded throughout and fully.”

Regulus just lied there, unable to think too much

about why everybody seemed so angry at him. He
closed his eyes again as a rain of diagnostician
spells and healing spells covered his body.

He wasn’t sure when, but he fell asleep.

Regulus tried to get up as soon as his brain woke

up, before his body was completely aware of his
surroundings. He could still feel hands on him,
tearing him apart, dragging him deeper and deeper
into the water as his ears seemed ready to pop; he
was screaming, he knew by the sound and by
feeling of his throat.

“REGULUS! REGULUS, WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

somebody was screaming back.

Anne.

It was Anne’s voice.

In the darkness of the room, he tried to find her

and understanding that there were indeed hands on
his chest, pushing him down to the bed once more.
He stopped fighting and allowed himself to be
pushed back against the bed, eyes wide and
blinking rapidly to push away the tears.

It was Anne.

Anne was with him. If she was with him, then that
meant that he was safe. She would never allow him
to be that hurt.

“Anne? Annie?” he called out.

The bedroom lights lightened-up and he frowned at

the pain of the light burning his eyes, but then he
saw Anne.

Brown eyes wide like deer-in-the-lights, worried for

him, face and hair messed up because she had just
been woken up, confused and scared by his
screams.

“You need to stay in bed. You exhausted your

magical-core with the healing,” she answered.
“Don’t move. Madame Pomfrey told you not to
move and rest as much as you can.”

“I was in the cave –”

“Kreacher brought you back home,” she answered.

He blinked, finally remembering the small moment

of waking up with a crying Anne beside him, Sirius
holding his hand and the blinding pain that followed
as soon as his brain was awake as well. He cringed
at the memory alone and frowned when no pain
followed his movement. He peaked down at
himself, searching for the blood and wounds that he
knew himself to have, but found nothing but scars.

Regulus had always been one to worry about his

appearance and never though scars to be an
attractive trait, until he saw Anne’s body and the
myriad of scars and stories and was amazed at how
alluring she seemed to make things that he thought
be disgusting. Now, having scars himself made him
a bit insecure – sure, it was better than death, but
he hissed at the sight of them and the memories
they brought.

“Scars?” he asked.

“Dittany and silver couldn’t close up without leaving

a mark, but Madame Pomfrey did make them less…
raised,” Anne tried to explain.

Raised?

He reached his hand to touch his chest. The scar

was slightly raised from the rest of his skin, but it
was barely perceptible, mostly just a white-line
across his white skin.

“Do I have any on my face?” he asked.

She hesitated before getting up and going to her

bathroom, bringing a small mirror with her.

“A small one,” she said. “And you look as

handsome as ever.”

He took the mirror as she helped him sit down

against the headboard. He raised his arms,
surprised at how heavy the mirror seemed in his
hand and looked at his reflection. He held his
breath in fear, but there was almost nothing on his
face – a small scar near his hair-line that went from
his forehead until a point near his ear, but it was
mostly hidden by his hair since it was curled and
messed. However, it was another scar that took
him by surprise; he was shirtless, so it was easy to
see his neck.

His neck had been cut from ear to ear.

He looked at Anne.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows.

“You died and you ask me if I’m alright?” she

answered, clearly confused.

He blinked a few times. Maybe she hadn’t put

together that he too had his throat cut, like her
grandfather – maybe she had been so focused on
other things that she didn’t put both stances
together.

“I died?”

“For three hours,” she answered. “I was in quite a

state when you moved. I called for Sirius and
Madame Pomfrey again, even though she had
called the hour of your death not two hours ago.”

“I’m so sorry, Anne,” he said.

“Now that you’re awake and seem to be alright, I

will scold you,” she warned.

He nodded.

“Go on. I’m ready to listen,” he answered.

She took a deep breath and Regulus couldn’t help

but watch her and think of how happy he was to be
alive and not miss the force-to-be-reckoned with
that angry Anne was to him. Even in her
nightgown, curls a mess and clear exhaustion on
her face, she looked absolutely beautiful.

“What the fuck did you have in mind when you

went to find a Horcrux on your own?” she asked.
“Do you know how fucking dangerous that was? If
you didn’t have the ring and the stone, you
wouldn’t have come back for us. It was a good plan
–” she hesitated when he bit the inside of his
cheek. “Please, do tell me that you did all of this
with the memory of a Deathly Hallow in your finger
protecting you and not out of spite, Regulus Black.”

“I might have forgotten about that,” he admitted.

“But, let’s not be hypocrites here. You do things,
dangerous things out of spite as well, as you can be
reminded.”

She looked away, knowing his was right.

“Yes, but I didn’t die,” she said bitterly.

“Well, I came back, didn’t I?” he said.

“But you might have not,” she said. “Regulus, I’m

doing so much to make sure I won’t lose anyone
else and you go and you do this shit.”

“I did it for Kreacher,” he said.

She sighed, getting up from the bed and getting a

muggle notebook from her table, bringing it back to
show it to him.

“I was making a plan, I had a day chosen and you

would’ve gone with me, if you had wanted to,” she
said to him, walking to stand beside him and
showing the scribbles and drawings of her plan step
by step – a team of four people accompanied by
Coco and Kreacher, where she would be the one to
drink the potion and Regulus the one to destroy the
Horcrux. “I had everything planned to make sure
nothing like this would’ve have happened. Going
alone to find a Horcrux, especially that one, is a
death sentence and I told you that before. I told
you exactly how you died the first time around and
you almost made the same mistake – no, you did
make the same mistake, you were just brought
back from the dead.”

“I understand how you can be angry at me, Anne,

and I do agree that what I did was stupid, but I
needed to do that. Kreacher is family, he’s a good
friend of mine and he was almost killed by that
monster. It needed to be me,” he explained. “I will
be the one to destroy it, as well.”

“I know,” she sighed to him, sitting down to him,

caressing his knee over the blanket. “I can
understand that. Nobody but Kreacher and I have
even touched the medallion; it’s yours to destroy if
you want it, Reggie, but only once you get better.”

“I feel fine,” he dismissed.

“You won’t, once the potions’ effect run out,” she

answered.

And she had been correct, by the morning, a whole

before he was allowed to get another potion, he felt
weak and shaky, as if he had not eaten for days.
That was when he chose to sleep again so he
wouldn’t feel any of that terrible torture anymore,
because it was just like the feeling he had when he
took the first sip of the Drink Of Despair.

Head of House of Black Missing

Today, August 1st of 1978, Regulus Arcturus Black

was given as missing by his mother, Walburga
Black, and his aunt, Druella Rosier-Black, and
uncle, Cygnus Black, in the Auror Department at
eight in the morning.

Regulus had turned seventeen just a few days

before and disappeared on July 29th, however,
being a young politician, his mother waited until
she was sure nobody knew where he was before
going to law-enforcement. The Head of
Department, Alastor Moody, is the responsible for
the case, though Missus Walburga expressed
distaste for the appointed auror that would look for
her son.

Missus Walburga seemed distressed when she

walked out of the Ministry, being held by her sister-
in-law, Misses Druella Black, who also did seem
worried, by the amount of tears she shed as she
gave an interview in her sister’s stead, who was too
emotional to speak to the newspapers.

“Regulus isn’t one to disappear for fun,” Druella

expressed her feelings to us. “He’s responsible and
vey mature for his age. He isn’t out partying or with
any of his colleagues. Whatever happened to him,
he had no control over the situation, otherwise he
would’ve come back home. He knows we love him
very much and that we are waiting for him. The
Aurors are even going as far as thinking about the
possibility of kidnapping; so, if that’s true, we ask
for you to give our dear Regulus back – we are
willing to do and pay anything that is asked of us,
as long as he can come back home to us.”

Alastor Moody, however, expressed his concerned

for the young star of the Ministry by refusing to talk
to us and simply saying that the Auror Department
will work as hard in that case as they have worked
in any other missing person’s case. This is the first
big mission ever since he took over the new job
with the death of his friend and mentor, the late
Fleatmont Potter, in the attack of extremists in
Diagon Alley, the Death Eaters; extremist group
that Regulus Black is rumoured to make part of, so
it’s natural for one to doubt Mister Moody’s words
of working hard on the case.

Now, all we, from the Daily Prophet, can do is wish

for Regulus Black’s safe return and the law-
enforcement help.

“Now, that’s just pathetic,” Sirius said, reading the

newspapers with a curl on his lips as he looked over
the paper to see his brother sitting across from him
on the breakfast table, shirtless and using just
sleeping trousers. “And why are you naked?”

“I’m not naked, and Mother is just worried,” he

answered. “She probably knows I’m still alive, after
all I’m still in the tapestry.”

Sirius sighed.

“Aunt Druella is such a bitch, though.”

In that, Regulus didn’t fight him at all, just sipping

his juice quietly. Druella was taking her five
minutes of fame as his aunt a bit too seriously,
clearly acting a bit too emotional for someone that
she didn’t even like that much.

“Moody must be in a mood,” James said,

unintentionally making a pun that made Sirius
snort. He rolled his eyes. “And Sirius is right, you
should really put on a shirt, Regulus.”

Regulus made a small movement to try to get up

from his seat, but Anne, who was walking into the
dining room at that exact moment, just glared at
him and he stopped mid-movement, slowly melting
back on the chair.

“I was the one that told him to stay without a

shirt,” she said.

“We get that he’s your husband and you find him
hot, we really do –” James said.

“No, we do not understand that my brother is hot,

James, what the fuck?” Sirius interrupted him.

Lily giggled in her juice cup, choking a bit.

James blushed, rolling his eyes.

“That’s not what I meant,” he argued.

“I told him to be without a shirt because it’s really

hot and his magical-core is still recovering, he
barely has any temperature-control in his body
right now,” Anne said, sitting beside Regulus and
reaching for his cup of juice, taking a sip of it. “I
have been reading about recovering magical-cores
after exhaustion, they said that you need be
exaggerated in the care of the body temperature
wise. He’s already a lot better than most, already
walking on his own, but I won’t dare change that
just yet.”

Slowly the noises of the dining room stopped when

Mia walked into the room, Remus tried to act
naturally.

“Morning,” he greeted.

“Good morning,” she answered. “How are you

feeling, Regulus?”

“A lot better, Mia, thank you,” he answered, kindly.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m awake,” she answered. And that meant a

lot. “An owl was on my bedroom window this
morning, so I brought the letter down.”

She could’ve asked for Coco to bring it down, but

she didn’t. Mia wanted to get out of the room, and
she had been searching for excuses so her
appearance wouldn’t be such a big deal to anyone.

Anne took the letter that was given to her and

frowned as she quickly opened it.

“That’s Narcissa’s hand writing,” Sirius said.

“Probably wondering if I’m hiding here,” Regulus

said.

“No, she’s just congratulating me on my baby,”

Anne answered distracted.

James, who had been drinking his coffee, spit it all

over Sirius.

“WHAT BABY?”

“The one I told Mundungus Fletcher that I’m

having,” she explained. “Narcissa just told me who
is the spy inside the Order and offering herself to
be my spy, because she truly thinks Regulus is
missing,” she smiled and looked away from the
letter. “Everything is going according to plan.”

Chapter 130: Chapter One

Hundred and Twenty-Nine
Summary:
The reaction of the world to
Regulus' death

REGULUS’ NEW LIFE

Alastor Moody faked more than one of the

situations where they found ‘proof’ that Regulus
Black had been kidnapped and killed before being
thrown at sea, under Anne’s commands. Therefore,
when a young man’s body was found, unable to
make a match of magical-core or by appearance,
they asked for Walburga Black to come and
recognise the body herself. Surprisingly, without
any prompting or leading, she gave a positive
identification of the young-man’s body half-eaten
by sharks and other fishes.

Regulus Black was made of as dead in August 12th,

and on the same day the Daily Prophet published a
long note against extremists of the side that ‘killed’
Regulus Black for blind hatred and followed with all
the ‘good’ action that Regulus had done in his life –
charities that he donated to, ‘close-friends’,
younger people from school that he had helped as
Prefect and even colleagues of the work he had
barely met had gone on and on about how kind and
smart he was and how he was going to be the next
step for the next generation to take over. Nothing
of that had made an impact on Regulus, until he
saw Barty’s statement, however. He had refused to
read it after his younger friend’s crying face
appeared beside Walburga, who insisted that she
would make Barty her ward in respect for Regulus’
love for the boy.

In the same day, another letter from Narcissa

reached the Potter Household.

Dearest Anne,

I write you most of all to say that I am ever so

sorry for your loss. I’m truthfully sad over my
cousin’s death, but I cannot phantom what you are
going through as you lost your husband. I can’t
think of losing Lucius, even after everything I know
he’s done and everything I know he’ll have to do.

I warn you. He knows I’m sending this letter, but

he promised to keep his silence. Lucius wants out.
He hated everything that the cause has become; it
was never meant to be this violent or this mean-
spirited, he says, though I’m not completely sure I
believe him. He’s been passing me information,
even though he knew I would send word to you.
That’s how I found about the baby. I suppose you
can be happy that you will keep a small part of him
with you, even after his death – I’m truly happy for
you, about the new life that you will bring. I bring
this subject to the letter for Lucius shared the news
that the Dark Lord passed to him along at the Black
dinner table last night and Aunt Walburga didn’t
seem too angry, I suppose she was expecting it
sooner or later with the amount of night he had
been spending with you, according to her. My
mother hasn’t accepted it very well, but Papa even
smiled and nodded to himself.

Now, here’s the true reason for my letter. I know

that Regulus wasn’t kidnapped and killed by your
people, therefore he must have been taken by
someone else. I wondered if you had any
information at all that I can pass to my aunt, she is
going through a hard time – she has been talking
to herself a lot more now and has been refusing to
take her medication. I thought that perhaps
knowing the truth of what’s happening might hold
her back from falling off the deep-end in her mental
health.

Another reason for this letter is the burial.

We will bury his body tomorrow, it’ll be public,

however everything will closed so only family will
be allowed into the house as soon as the clock his
three. 15:00. We are expecting you, since Bellatrix
and the Lestranges won’t be able to come – I
haven’t told Lucius about the marriage, don’t
worry, and if you want to tell him, you can, if you
don’t, then we’ll find something to tell him to
explain it.

With my regrets feelings and regrets exposed in

this letter,

Your cousin,

Narcissa Black-Malfoy.

Anne read with some weight on her heart.

Though she did trust Narcissa, she wasn’t sure if

telling her that Regulus was alive was the best
course of action, for that information could perhaps
put her in danger and even worsen the danger of
everyone by accident. She didn’t know much about
her mental shields. She did like Narcissa as well,
she was kind and a lot more understanding than
the rest of her family – it had been her mother’s
love and fear that made her lie for Harry and save
his life enough to take him back to Hogwarts, even
if that didn’t keep him alive.

“Perhaps it’s for the best that I’m dead to the

world,” Regulus said, lying beside her on the carpet
of the music room where they were alone at. She
rolled to her side, putting her head on his extended
arm that served as a pillow to her. “Narcissa is a
great Occlumens, but if it’s between me and Lucius,
I don’t know each one she would choose.”

“I thought their marriage was arranged,” Anne

said.

“It was, at first,” Regulus said. “She did fall in love

with him for real after they were wed, though.
Marriage bliss, my father called it, and the
‘honeymoon phase’ was how my uncle called it.
Bellatrix called it desire, and I suppose I can
understand.”

“Lucius Malfoy is a handsome man, unfortunately,”

Anne agreed.

“Fortunately, because that means my nephews are

going to look cute,” Regulus corrected. “But now,
seriously Lucius is a really good-looking man and I
had been tempted on flirting with him when I was
younger, but he is so… straight.” Anne giggled,
closing her eyes in her laugh. “But he only had eyes
for her, really, from the moment he saw her. It was
respect at first; he was to marry her and he cut off
any other relationship or fling he had in school.
They were so cold to each other at first, so formal
and all that.”

“You were formal to me as well,” she reminded

him.

He smirked to himself.

“I saw it working with them, I thought I could test

it out,” he admitted. “I fell for you first, let’s be
honest.”

“But I fell harder,” she finished.

“I disagree, Lady Black,” he teased in response.

She pushed herself to her elbows, still leaning a bit

over him and gave him a peck on the lips. He put
his hand on her waist and smiled mid-kiss, blissfully
rested in the small haven they had created on the
room – well, on the whole manor. He had never felt
so comfortable. He would wear less clothes, he
would take naps on the library, he would walk out
of his bedroom to Anne’s without fear and nobody
forced him to eat a whole plate of food when he
couldn’t take any more.

The heat wave made the boys mostly walk around

shirtless, especially after Regulus started doing that
for health-reasons, but soon enough Sirius was
doing the same, convincing James and, finally
Remus. Severus continued dressed with long-
sleeves and trousers, moody and complaining all
the time until Anne’s cooling charms became a
common thing. Even Lily had stopped with the
tank-tops and went as far as walking around with a
training bra and Anne was on tank-tops and very
short shorts. Regulus planned on working with
Severus’ confidence soon enough for at least short
sleeves, for the sake of not getting a heatstroke.

So, there they were. Comfortable and together as if

the world wasn’t burning outside their small space.

“I love you,” he said, watching a piece of her hair

falling from behind her ear, hanging and tickling his
nose. He chuckled and pushed it away as she
laughed. “I love you so much, Anne. So much that I
don’t think I can love anyone more or remotely like
this.”

“Good, because you vowed to be with me for the

rest of our life,” she answered, kissing his lips and
the tip of his nose. “I love you as well.”

She sighed after another kiss and pushed herself up

to sit down, a small drop of sweat running from her
neck and into between her breasts, hidden by her
training-bra and tank-top, but she watched as he
watched it disappear.

“Where are you going?” he asked, frowning,

already missing her in his arms, even though the
heat was unbearable.

“To get ready,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to your funeral,” she answered,

getting up.

It was 15:15 when Anne took the floo directly to

the parlour of the Black House of Grimmauld Place,
Number 12, doing her best to look like a mourning
wife. She had on a black dress and Regulus spelled
one of the hats Lily had to look like a nice hat with
a veil – said it was a common piece of mourning in
pureblood families, besides it would cover her if
anyone was still there and shouldn’t recognise her
straight away, therefore she pinned her hair up and
under the veil as well.

Secured, she stepped into the empty parlour of the

house, slowly furthering the house and trying to
make her heels click as lowly as possible as she
opened one of the doors of the room.

“Hello, Lady Black,” said a voice.

With her stomach dropping to her feet in fear, she

turned to the ballroom, surprised to see only one
person there. She calmed down once she
recognised the woman sitting alone in front of the
casket.

Walburga Black looked normal, surprisingly. She

was wearing black with a small brooch of bright red
ruby. She had her veil pulled up and it showed her
face in full-makeup and red lipstick.

“Hello, Walburga,” Anne answered.

“I would get up and bow, but my knees have been

killing me lately,” Walburga answered.

That was very much a lie and they both knew,

because Walburga had purposely used her fakest
voice to say that. Not that Anne cared; titles
mattered very little to her and –

She froze.

A woman did not heir the title ‘Lady’ if her husband

died. That was how Walburga herself lost the title
‘Lady’, even if her son had not been married at the
time he took on the title of Head of House and Lord
Black.

Walburga knew Regulus was alive.

“I suppose you have questions,” Anne said.

“Is he safe?”

“He is now,” Anne answered.

“Is he hurt?”

“Not anymore. But he did die, and then came back.

He was very hurt when he got to me,” Anne said.

“Was is Him?” Walburga asked.

“Indirectly.”

Walburga watched her, eyes slowly travelling down

her body and staying in her belly. Uncomfortable
for knowing very well what Walburga was thinking
about, she put her hands in front of her belly as she
watched the closed casket, thinking of how bad the
body needed to be for a pureblood not to just put a
glamour over it. Though she wanted to disappear
under Walburga’s eyes, she couldn’t just outright
say that she wasn’t pregnant, everybody needed to
believe that she was out of the game for at least a
little while; then, perhaps, Voldemort would be
more reckless and give her a chance of killing the
fucking snake at once.

“You carry the Heir, now,” Walburga said suddenly.

“Regulus said that he would never allow me to see
his children and I was no longer his mother the last
time we saw each other,” she admitted. “He must
have already known about the baby to go so over
his head in disappearing so suddenly.”

Anne blinked several times in surprise. Regulus had

said nothing to her about that.

“I already told you before that I don’t want to be in

the middle of the relationship between you and
your son, but if that was his choice, I won’t fight
it,” Anne answered. “I respect my husband’s
decisions and he respects mine, because that’s how
marriage works.”

“It wasn’t like that with Orion,” she admitted. She

looked beside her, the chair was empty and
padded, contrary to the others on the room. “Why
don’t you take a seat beside me for a while, Anne?
You’re in heels, you shouldn’t stand for too long.”

Anne slowly walked to Walburga and sat down

beside her, uncomfortable with the proximity and
with the odd way the woman’s eyes travelled
around the room, stopping in a few corners before
frowning and turning to her.

“I told all of them to go home because I wanted to

talk to you alone,” Walburga said. “I don’t have
much time.”

“They’ll be back soon?”

“I mean that I won’t be alive for long,” Walburga

corrected her.

Anne frowned. Though she knew that schizophrenia

was a hard illness that took its toll on body and
mind, she hadn’t heard of it shortening the life-
span of a well-taken care person, like Walburga
was, so she had to have another reason.
“May I ask you why?” Anne asked.

“They’ll kill me.”

“Who?”

“Them,” was her answer, pointing at the corner of

the room. There was no one there. “The people that
are dead because of me. The people that I killed
when I was your age. The people that want
revenge.”

Anne didn’t know what to say to her; she never

knew what to say to Walburga Black.

“There is no one there, Walburga,” Anne said. “It’s

you mind playing tricks on you, as we talked about
before.”

Walburga shook her head.

“You don’t understand. It’s more than that. They

are here, but they can’t be seen,” Walburga
answered, eyes pleading for her to believe her.
“And there’s nothing anyone can do for me,
because they will kill me when the time is right.
They told me that I need to be good and make
rights where I was wrong.”

“That’s why you wanted to call for me?”

“Yes, and for the baby,” Walburga said, nodding to

herself. “If it’s a girl, make sure to check the back
of her neck, most of the women in the family has a
little birth-mark there,” she smiled to herself.
“Sirius has it, too. He’s the only man in generations
to be born with it. He was the cutest baby.”

“I bet he was,” Anne said gently.

“And, if it’s a boy, make sure to keep an eye on his

breathing in his first few days, because lung
problems lie in the family,” she explained. “And the
eyes. Grey eyes are very sensitive to light, so keep
the nursery away from direct sun in the afternoons,
the only good sun the morning sun.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Anne assured her.

Anne didn’t like Walburga, but her pity did make

her feel like the woman was certainly out of the
reality. She was doing that to try and save her soul
from the apparitions of her own mind, but she was
still being polite to Anne and she would return the
favour, even if for the concept of politeness itself.

Walburga’s eyes filled with tears for the first time in

that conversation.

“You’ll take care of them, won’t you? Sirius and

Regulus,” she asked.

“With my life,” Anne answered.

“Sirius is allergic to nuts and Regulus can’t stand

the noise of knifes against the plate. Sirius likes
blue, but he says that he likes red better to annoy
me. Regulus likes pink, but his father made him
scared of liking, so he uses a lot a black now,”
Walburga vomited the words. “Sirius used to smell
a bit like apples when he was a baby. Maybe yours
will, too?”

Anne watched as Walburga fell apart right in front

of her, her lip wobbling before the painful sobs tore
away from her throat and her body doubled forward
as she let out all the pain that she had been
keeping inside. Confused and unsure, Anne put a
hand on Walburga’s back, rubbing small circles of
comfort like she did when Regulus was sad or had a
nightmare – which he had been doing constantly.

“I lost them,” she cried. “I lost everyone that I ever

loved. I’m cursed.”

Anne bit the inside of her cheek.

Walburga wasn’t cursed, she just wasn’t a good

person and people usually step away from bad
people.

“I lost my little girl,” Walburga continued to cry.

That took Anne by surprise once more.

“Little girl?”

“Her name would have been Nova,” she said. “In

the year between Sirius and Regulus. She was a
stillborn. I don’t wish that on my worst enemy. I
don’t wish that for my son, either, so please, be
careful.”

“I will be,” Anne lied.

“My little Nova. She was blonde, like Narcissa, like

my brother Cygnus,” Walburga cried. “You could
barely see the hair or the eyelashes, but I could
against the sun. She was so light, so small.”

“She sounds beautiful,” Anne said.

“She was. She was the most beautiful girl I have

ever seen,” Walburga said. “And she was mine. And
I lost her; I had asked so much for a little girl to
Destiny, and it laughed at my face by giving her to
me and then taking her away before I could even
hold her in my arms. Orion blamed himself,
because I had found out about Isabella… I’m sure
Regulus told you.”

“He did. His mistress.”

“She had a child, a little girl,” Walburga said. “Her

name is Haley. She’s Regulus’ age and goes at
Ilvemorny and has no idea of what she has a right
to.”

“Do you want me to reach out for her when

everything is done?” Anne asked. “Is that why you
are telling me this? To bring her in when the war is
over, finally?”

“No, she’s happy there. I kept an eye on her to

make sure she was alright,” Walburga said, looking
at Anne. “I know you think me cruel.”

“You are cruel,” Anne cut her off firmly.

“I admit, I am. But I that’s my husband’s child. It’s

my duty to make sure she’s alive and not searching
too much about her English dad,” Walburga said.
There was a moment of silence. “She looks a lot
like Orion. Haley Santos-Crane, her mum married a
guy when she was two. Orion was… devastated.”

“He had no right to be,” Anne said. “His loyalties

and priorities should lie with you and the children.
You are the woman that he married and had two
sons with, you were important as well.”

“Important enough to make him stay,” Walburga

said. Anne frowned. “I know that doesn’t sound like
much, but coming from him, it was. It meant
everything to me at the time, but I was greedy and
I wanted more.” Anne didn’t say how that wasn’t
greediness. “He stepped away when I looked more.
He was the father of my children, but never was
the man that loved me… whatever he felt for me, it
wasn’t love.”

The conversation seemed to have ended.

Anne watched as Walburga cleaned her tears and

smeared makeup.

“Take care of my sons and of my grandchild,” she

told Anne.

“I will,” she answered.

Slowly, Anne got up.

Before she walked out of the room, she needed to

ask.

“How did you know he was alive?” Anne asked.

Walburga gave a little smile.

“The tapestry,” she answered. “I locked the door

and threw away the key. Nobody knows, but
myself. If this will protect my son, I’ll do what I
can.”

Walburga was a crooked and lost woman that did

love her children. The torture, the screams; that
had been how she had been raised and she truly
thought that it was the best for her children, but
her pride wouldn’t allow her to see the truth that
everybody tried to show her. Her pride refused to
let her learn, but Walburga did love her children
enough to look for forgiveness and knowing she
would not receive it – not for comfort, but for the
sake of apologising, even if not directly.

Regulus fixed the common shirt he had gotten from

James and the trousers that he had gotten from
Sirius, fixing the legs that were too long on him as
he sat down on the sofa of the parlour. He was
waiting impatiently for Narcissa, who was to find
out the whole truth now and was bringing some of
Regulus’ clothes, though she thought she was doing
that for Anne’s sake alone. Anne was sitting beside
him, looking a lot calmer than he was, and Severus
beside her, half-asleep after an all-nighter on the
lab testing a few original potions.

“Do you think she’ll hate me forever? She grieved

for me,” Regulus asked, insecure. “I didn’t tell her
that I was alive, and neither did my mother.”

Anne barely looked at him.

“We all grieved for you, Reggie. We don’t hate

you,” she answered, fixing the boots on her feet.
She hated wearing shoes inside the house, but she
wasn’t close enough to Narcissa to let her see her
bare feet. “You have no control over your own
death, Regulus, and we can understand that much.
I’m sure she’s smart enough to do the same.”

“She’s quite aware of how death works, and how

you wouldn’t have said you died without a reason,”
answered Severus. “The worst thing that could
happen is Narcissa asking way too many
questions.”

“Then we would answer it, why would it be the

worst-case scenario?” Anne asked, turning to
Severus.

“Because when Narcissa is curious, she asks way

too many questions,” Severus answered. He
seemed to blush with some memory that Anne
wasn’t brave enough to ask about, but that made
Regulus chucked to himself.

The shaking of the wards made Anne sit up

straighter and Regulus cringed at the familiar ward
around him shaking, ever since they had been
married, they could feel each other’s family-wards,
but that didn’t mean they liked the feeling of it. It
was the sound of ‘woosh’ coming from the fireplace
called Severus’ attention as the green fire roared
and the image of Narcissa came to view to all of
them. Anne gasped. Narcissa not only had a bag
over her shoulder, but two – one of Regulus’
clothes and the other of Laurie’s things, because
the baby was on her arms.

“Anne, I brought – oh, Merlin,” Narcissa said,

dropping the bags and walking out of the fireplace.

While Narcissa was distracted with the sight of the

two friends she thought dead, Anne went into the
fireplace, took the bags and locked the access so
they could talk without the possibility of Narcissa
running away in shock or anger. Severus seemed to
notice, because there was a small smirk on his lips
as he looked back at Narcissa, but Regulus was
getting up from his seat with a pale face and
pleading eyes.

“Hi, Cissy.”

“You little shit!” Narcissa exclaimed.

Severus raised his eyebrows and his amused smirk

grew.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus said.

Slowly, Anne walked towards them and took Laurie

from Narcissa’s arms. He was six months now,
heavier and certainly a lot harder to hold with a
single arm, so she used both of them as she walked
to stand beside Severus as the two cousins stared
at themselves.

“We thought you were dead. How could you do this

to us?” Narcissa said, eyes tearing up. “We buried
you, Regulus, in a closed fucking casket.”

Severus and Anne exchanged a look. Narcissa

wasn’t one to use curse-word lightly, but she was
so upset that nobody dared to comment on it.

“It was necessary, I’m truly sorry,” he said. “And I

did die. For three hours, before Anne managed to
bring me back, almost lost my magic in process,
though.”

Narcissa’s soft sniffles as she hid her face in her

hands made Anne’s heart break for her. She had
been sure she had lost her little cousin; her
favourite cousin that had been close enough to her
that she thought of him like a brother. She was a
woman and not of the principal branch of the
family; if Regulus was seen as the sun of the
family, Narcissa was the moon – always following
him, always loving him blindly. Even in her anger,
she would never hate him, not even for one
moment.

She jumped towards him, throwing herself. Regulus

held her, separating his feet for balance, but not
letting go, instead holding her closer to him and
closing his eyes, finding support and comfort in her.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated several timed.

“I thought you were dead,” she cried in response.

Laurie watched the scene and Anne who also

watched the scene, clearly not too interested in the
dramatics, but clearly wanting Anne’s attention. He
made a small noise, making Severus and Anne look
at him – he raised his hand, taking a fistful of
Anne’s hair and pulling.

“Ouch!” Anne exclaimed in surprise.

That caused the cousins to turn and look at her and

caused a genuine laugh come from Severus.

“That’s not funny, Severus, help me. Ouch! Ouch!

He’s a baby, but, holy shit, he’s strong!” she
complained.

“He’s been doing that,” Narcissa said, cleaning her

tears once more and stepping away from Regulus.
“He likes to grab and pull things, especially
colourful ones. He liked to pull mine as well.”

“I suppose the red would get his attention,”

Severus teased.

“Laurie, pull his nose,” Anne ordered through her

pain. The baby smiled at her in her arms and made
a sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh,
though Anne couldn’t be sure, still he made no
movement towards Severus. “You traitor,” she
teased back as the baby let go of her hair.

Regulus, also cleaning his tears, moved closer. And

that was when Laurie gave out all his attention on
Anne to pay complete attention to Regulus – he
had missed him, very clearly by the way he almost
threw himself towards Regulus. The man took the
boy and put him in a sitting position instead of lying
on his arm and hugged him, taking a deep breath
to smell him.

“He smells the same, he still smells a bit of pine

from the soap,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you. I’m
so sorry, darling boy. I’m so sorry.”

“You’ve been away from almost a month, Regulus,

not a year,” Narcissa said. “He won’t remember
this.”

“But I will, and I’ll never forgive myself,” he

answered. “Is He taking visits?”

“Barely any now, he stopped a week or so after

your funeral. It’s been almost ten days now from
when we buried you. He stopped yesterday, so
chances are Bellatrix will stop by to see his
‘milestones’ next week,” Narcissa said, rolling her
eyes.

They didn’t dare for him. They just wanted him to

grow up at once.

Anne didn’t want Laurie to grow up at all. She

wanted Laurie to be a baby forever, she wanted to
hold him in her arms forever, and Regulus seemed
to agree with her by the way that he sighed against
the boy’s head once more.

“Do you think he can spend the night?” Severus

asked.

Narcissa looked at him, remembering he was there

after all the overwhelming information that she had
received. Her eyes filled with tears once more, as
she nodded, dismissing Laurie as she looked at one
her best of friends, happy that he was alive.

“Oh, there you are,” she answered. “Safe and

sound.”

Though she did look at the missing arm in his long-

sleeved shirt, she said nothing about it and Severus
wasn’t sure that it was good. He wanted her to
acknowledge the change in him, but she had said
nothing.

“I lost my arm,” he said, then.

“I see that. I’m glad you’re managing on your own,

though,” Narcissa said.

“I need Regulus and Anne to help sometimes, but I

can walk on my own and all that,” Severus said.

Narcissa walked to the man sitting on the sofa and

kissed his forehead, holding the sides of his face
with great care. One single tear escaping her eye in
the process, dropped from her face and fell on his
lap, but he didn’t care.

“I’m so happy you’re alright,” Narcissa admitted.

Regulus expected Severus to cringe and perhaps

correct her that he was ‘alive’, not ‘alright’, but all
Severus did was nod, looking deep into Narcissa’s
eyes and raising his single hand to pull her hands
gently away from his face as he got up from the
sofa.

“Do you think Laurie can spend the night?” Regulus

asked.

Narcissa nodded before even turning to look at him.

“Yeah, totally. He was supposed the spend the

night at the Manor because he doesn’t stop crying
with anything in Grimmauld Place,” Narcissa said.
“Your mother even tried playing the piano, but
nothing seemed to calm him down. But he can’t
leave the Manor, for his safety.”

Anne got on her tip-toes to lean over Regulus’

shoulder, holding onto it to not lose her balance to
get Laurie’s attention, who was delighted he had
Anne and Regulus paying attention to him at the
moment.

“I’m hungry,” Regulus said.

“Coco has the day off,” Severus warned. “Kreacher

is asleep right now so he can take the night shift
since Coco wasn’t here.”

“When Kreacher wakes up, he will be delighted,

right, Laurie?” teased Anne, touching Laurie’s nose.
The baby cooed, reaching for Anne’s hand once
more, making Anne giggle. Regulus kissed Anne’s
forehead before passing the child to her arms once
more. “Where are you going?”

“To the kitchen. I’ll cook you all something,”

Regulus said.

“You know how to cook?” Severus asked, eyes

narrowing.

It was a valid question. Regulus grew up with

Kreacher ready to satisfy his every whim, the idea
of Regulus being able to cook certainly was a bit
surprising. However, Anne had seen Regulus cook
before – in her honeymoon, he made sure to show
her how to make good waffles, even though she
knew already and, goddamn, they were good.

Anne turned to Narcissa.

“Come on, let’s all go to the kitchen,” Anne said.

“Oh, I can’t. Lucius is waiting for me,” Narcissa

said. “We were supposed to go shopping today and
Dobby was to stay with Laurie, but Lucius doesn’t
need to know where he is. If he asks, I’ll just say
with he’s with his own aunt. He won’t ask any more
questions after that.”

“Already? It’s so early,” Anne complained.

“I really must go, Anne. Maybe I can come back

another day?” she asked. “I’ll have to pick up,
Laurie anyways. Maybe then we can have lunch
together before I leave?”

“I’d like that very much. When will you come?”

“The day after tomorrow, is that good?”

“It’s great!” Anne said.

That meant she would have that day and the next
wholly to stay with sweet Laurie, much to her
happiness and Regulus’ complete delight. Severus
took Narcissa to the fireplace once more, saying his
goodbyes to her before she left.

Anne walked to the kitchen with Regulus, who

preparing pans and taking ingredients out of its
places to use it.

“What do you intent to cook?” she asked him.

“What do you think of a lasagne for today’s lunch?

We have an hour until everybody comes down,” he
answered, looking over his shoulder to her, smiling
at the sight of her resting against the wall with the
baby in her arms. She still held him like the first
time he had ever held him. “You know, he’s old
enough to be side carried now. You don’t need to
hold him like that, he might think he’ll be fed
soon.”

She looked down at the baby lying in her arms.

“He lies like this when he’ll be fed?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Just put him sitting, his head against your

shoulder and his arms around your waist,” he
watched her do that. “Good, now you put him
slightly to the side, against your hip. Put a hand on
his behind to keep him in place. Good.”

It was certainly a lot more comfortable with the

weight he had gained, besides he looked a lot
happier and entertained now that he was sitting
and watching things happening around him,
especially when he saw Regulus moving around the
kitchen, messing around with things. As Regulus
moved around, Anne moved to watch him, fixing
the baby in her arms and walking closer to the fruit
basket.

“Are you hungry?” she asked Laurie. He looked at

her and made a sound. She took that as an
agreement, showing him the fruits. “Do you want
an apple or a pear?”

“He likes pears better,” Regulus answered from his

work-station, where he was putting the lasagne
together. “Cut it in small pieces and he’ll be
entertained and dirty.”

“We can clean him later,” she dismissed.

She made to walk out of the kitchen when she

gasped, surprised at the sight of Lily Potter walking
into the kitchen and gasping at the sight of Anne.
Both startled, they giggled to each other and Laurie
made a noise as he looked between people.

Though he would spend a few nights here and there

with Anne in the Manor, he barely ever left her
bedroom, only doing that when Kreacher couldn’t
pick them up in Anne’s bedroom so Regulus had to
walk around the house to the floo with him in her
arms. He had seen the people in the house, but
they barely ever paid attention to him.

“Is that Laurie?” Lily asked.

“Yeah. He grew, didn’t he?” asked Anne.

“So much!” Lily said.

“Regulus’ cooking. Do you think you can hold him

just for a moment so I can cut him some fruit?”
Anne asked.

Lily took him into her arms without a single

moment of hesitation, carrying him in the sitting
position that Regulus had just taught her to do.
Though Anne thought it was amazing that Lily knew
how to do that so easily, she said nothing, just
moving back further into the kitchen and having
Lily following her. Anne smiled at the sight,
chuckling to herself as she started cutting the pear
in small pieces.

“What is it?” Lily asked at the laugh.

“You’re a natural at that,” Anne explained. “Regulus

has to teach me.”

“I don’t have to teach you anything, you just never

had contact with babies for long time periods. It
comes naturally after a while,” Regulus joked. “But
your mother is certainly an amazing sight. Good
job, Lily.”

“Well, thank you,” she said blushing a bit.

Regulus smiled at her, going back to placing the

right ingredients in the right order.

“When are you two going to have a baby?” Lily

asked suddenly.

“FUCK!”

Anne had cut her finger with the knife in shock and
screamed at the pain, scaring Laurie in the process,
who looked at her with wide eyes and grabbed
Lily’s shit with a tight fist. Lily looked at the baby
and bounced at the balls of her feet to not even let
him start crying, calming him down by pacing
around the kitchen.

Regulus was standing beside her in a second,

taking a look at the cut on her finger. It wasn’t
long, but it was deep enough for the blood to drip
on the floor as he led her through the kitchen to
the sink, where he put her finger under the running
water with some concern in his face.

“You need to be more careful, Anne,” Regulus said,

watching the blood going down the drain with the
water. His eyes unfocused for a second before he
blinked several times as he realised that Anne was
trying to pull her hand away to heal it now that she
had reached for her wand. “Oh, sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she dismissed, healing herself.

“I’m sorry, too, it’s none of my business. I just

meant that you two are so sweet with Laurie that I
couldn’t help but think about it, it’s nothing,” Lily
said, shaking her head as they both turned to look
at her. “I really didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It’s alright, I was just taken by surprise,” Anne

dismissed.

Regulus hesitated, he seemed to want to say

something. He looked at Anne, unsure if she would
be comfortable, but she just nodded at him as she
started walking back to the pear that she had been
cutting. Regulus then turned to Lily and crossed his
arms.

“Anne’s eighteen. I’m seventeen. We’re a bit

young, don’t you think so? But we did talk about it.
For the future,” he told Lily, who nodded at him in
response. “After everything of this mess is done.”

“This war makes everyone fear for the future

generation,” Lily agreed. “Do you think it would be
hard to have a baby in the middle of a war?”

“Ask Elizabeth,” Anne answered.

Lily nodded, looking down at Laurie as she frowned

every so slightly.

“How is Elizabeth? I didn’t talk to her these last few

days,” Lily said.

“Good. I went to the Cottage yesterday for a check-

up. She’s alright; anxious and scared and she
already explored everything in the ground, so she’s
bored as well and the news of Regulus’ death took
her by surprise, even after I told her that he was
alive, she was still crying. Her blood-pressure has
been a mess, but they’re both healthy,” Anne said.
Both the mum and the baby were alright,
physically, and Petunia told her that she was trying
to take care of Elizabeth’s mental state, which Anne
couldn’t help with.

“She’s at the end of her second trimester, am I

correct?” Regulus asked. “I might be able to help a
little bit by talking to her. I’m alright enough to
travel through floo to the Cottage.”

Anne hated the idea.

Elizabeth wasn’t completely over the fact that she

fancied Regulus, whom had already announced that
he was a married man. Her jealousy had sense in
it, much to Regulus’ dismay. But Elizabeth was still
his friend and he cared for her, either Anne liked it
or not, and the fact that she was pregnant certainly
didn’t make it any easier for him – he felt some
sense of responsibility by knowing that it had been
his request that she was punished by her husband
and not by the Dark Lord that had led to the
unwanted child growing inside her.

Anne needed to accept either way.

“She would like that, for sure,” she said, trying her
best not to sound too bitter.

“Perhaps she would like to see Laurie?” he said.

“She’s never met him.”

“Laurie doesn’t leave this house unless is to go

back with Narcissa, Regulus,” Anne said.

He looked down, knowing she was correct.

“I fear she might not connect with her baby, so I

wanted to show her how good a baby can be,” he
explained.

“Though it would be a good idea, Narcissa is the

one responsible for him now. If something happens
to him, she’ll be killed,” Lily answered, agreeing
with Anne. “It might be safer for both of them if he
doesn’t leave the Fidelius Charm for a single
second.”

He nodded again.

“I know you don’t like Lizzie, Anne,” Regulus said,

watching as Anne cringed at the nickname, “but
she’s a friend.”

“And I told you that I’m alright with that. I’m telling
you to go to talk to her, am I not?” she said,
putting the pear pieces inside a small container and
turning to take Laurie from Lily, who quickly gave
the child back to Anne and found an excuse to
leave the kitchen. Anne took the container from the
counter and walked towards the dining room, but
didn’t walk in yet. “I don’t mind you going to her
and being her friend, I even support it, Regulus,
but that doesn’t mean she’s… trustworthy.”

“You’re certainly not accusing her of being a spy,”

Regulus laughed, putting the lasagne inside the
over and turning it on manually.

“No! No. Certainly not,” she said, shaking her head

and Regulus walked towards her, so she walked
into the dining room, sitting Laurie on her lap as
she sat and gave him a small piece of pear. He
shoved it inside his mouth and drool coated it.
Regulus sat beside her. “I mean that I trust you to
be with her, but I don’t trust her to be with you. Do
you understand?”

“I would never cheat,” he said, frowning. “I’m not

my father, Anne.”

“I’m not saying that you would, but I’m saying that
perhaps seeing her might hurt her. But not seeing
her might hurt her more. It’s more a… lose, lose
situation, you know?” she explained. “And maybe
you could wait until Laurie’s gone, so you can go
and tell her about him without missing anything.”

He knew that wasn’t the whole reason, but he

understood Anne’s situation.

He had been the one to die, but she had been the
one to clean his body through her grief and through
the feeling of failing him once Kreacher dropped
him in her bedroom floor, on the carpet that she
didn’t even try to wash, just threw away. While he
was ‘asleep’ in his death, she was grieving. Either
they liked it or not, Anne had an odd separation
anxiety now.

“I won’t leave, then,” he said, kissing her cheek

and putting a hand on Laurie’s head. “Right, young
man?”

Laurie wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was

happy he had his Dada right in front of him after so
happy he had his Dada right in front of him after so
long crying to see him again and he liked that he
was being fed pears after so long eating apples and
broccoli.

Chapter 131: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty -
Summary:
Elizabeth needs help.

Notes:
Sorry for taking so long. So much
happened.

MORGANA

TW: GRAPHIC BIRTH?

Grocery duty was certainly something odd to find

dangerous, but in times of war, even the smallest
hint of being exposed usually led to death of
someone. So, when all the food ended and the
wizarding markets were closed off to any creature,
it was decided that, perhaps it would be for the
best that Anne and Petunia went, both
knowledgeable with Muggle supermarkets enough
to get through without getting too much attention –
however, Lily insisted on going with and James
tried, but was denied. Euphemia Potter, however,
was a force-to-be-reckoned with and nobody would
sway her decision of going with.

In September, Laurie came to visit again, this time

staying two weeks and getting a lot more attention
from Mia, who would get out of her room more and
more in the hopes Regulus or Anne (perhaps even
Lily) needed any help with the baby as they did the
house-chores or just tried to relax. Sometimes they
would say that they did need help when they didn’t,
just to see her happy with a baby in her lap,
sometimes even going to the TV room and
watching the muggle thing that she usually didn’t
just to see Laurie happy and laughing. Mia was
getting better from her depression and he wish to
go on a mission to protect her family was a sign.

“He’s just ate pears with me while I took lunch, so

he’ll be fine for an hour or so,” Anne said, putting
Laurie in Regulus’ arms, even though he didn’t
need instructions. He had just gotten back from the
Cottage from meeting with Elizabeth, who was
about to have the child soon, so she was terrified
and her anxiety was worse than normal. “You know
what to do.”

“Maybe better than you, don’t worry,” he teased,

kissing her lips chastely sine her father stood
beside him. “Laurie will be as well as he can be
when you come back.”

Laurie, now that he was staying a lot of the time

with Anne and not just Regulus, he started to
become more and more attached to her. After all, if
she was always near her Dada, she was his Mama,
right?

“Alright, I love you,” she said, grabbing his face

now that he was holding the child and kissing one
more time, this time a bit deeper. She pulled away,
kissing the top of Laurie’s head. “I’ll be back soon,
okay? Stay with Reggie. Be a good boy.”

Lily, who had already said goodbye to James,

grabbed Anne’s hand and smiled at Regulus.

“Don’t worry. She’ll be fine,” she dismissed.

“I have no doubt of it. I fear for the Muggles,” he

teased back, smiling back at her. “Annie, be with
your mum, be a good girl for her, yeah?” he teased
Anne now.

“Fuck you,” she answered.

He laughed, holding his tongue with the answer

that he really wanted to use because, again, James
was standing beside him at the parlour.

Regulus was almost in pain for seeing Anne leaving

the house as he noticed that he, too, had
separation-anxiety since his incident in the cave
and that was the first time Anne would be leaving
the house to somewhere where she could be in
danger, somewhere public when there was a target
in her back after everybody thought him to be dead
– his words and his reputation wouldn’t be able to
protect him.

Petunia and Mia came through the floo after a

minute that Mia had gone through to pick up
Petunia, who was still insecure about going through
the floo (especially stepping on the flames) by
herself.

They quickly said their goodbyes and walked out

from the house through the front door together.

Regulus turned to James and fixed his grip on

Laurie.

“Want to play chess?” he asked.

“Hell yeah,” James agreed.

With Sirius and Remus taking a nap and Severus,

once more, in the lab, they were the only ones free
to do whatever they wanted.

Giving a really big piece of muggle chess for Laurie

to put on his mouth (big enough for him not to
choke) as he watched the game lying on his
stomach and rolling around the carpet that James
and Regulus were playing at.

“Regulus,” James called once they were in their

second round.

“Yeah?” he asked, trying to think where to move

his Knight to.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble I gave you and Anne
at the start of your relationship,” he said. “I can
see it now… why she likes you so much. She truly
loves you and I’m happy that you love her enough
to go through a wedding without talking to anyone
at all for her safety. It’s important to me that you
know that I know how important it was to marry
with your family present, but you didn’t because
you didn’t want her to feel bad.”

“Anne’s my priority at the moment, along with

Laurie,” he answered, pausing the game and
looking up from the pieces to James. “It drives me
mad that she’s out there and I can’t help with
anything because it’s for the better that nobody but
those here and the Cottage know that I’m alive.”

“Is she… well?”

“You see her every day,” laughed Regulus, but he

understood what he was trying to ask. “If you’re
asking about her mental state, however, I fear I
might not be as much of help as you think I am.
She hasn’t been talking about it a lot. Her
nightmares are bad, but so are mine, so we are
awake most nights just… lying in bed, talking,
thinking… hoping to make it through. Anne’s
scared.”

“We all are.”

“She can’t afford to lose anyone else, but this is

war and she has no control over it. It’s killing her,”
he explained to her dad.

“I can hear you two sometimes, moving around the

house in the middle of the night. I have nightmares
too,” James said. He cleaned his throat. “It’s odd
for me still though, to know my daughter got
married before me,” he changed subjects for a
lighter one.

“I’m sure it is,” laughed Regulus.

“Lily mentioned a little interaction in the kitchen

last month and I have been meaning to catch you
alone to ask you about it, because I don’t think
Anne would appreciate it, but now I can understand
Lily,” James said with a smile. “You’re very good
with Laurie. Do you plan on kids?”

“We talked about it. I love Laurie, completely, you

know? But Anne’s still getting used to it and the
stress with Elizabeth’s pregnancy sort of put her
off,” Regulus explained, looking back at the pieces
and whispering the Knight piece to move. “Besides,
with all the nightmares… there’s very little chance
of… anything happening.”

“Alright,” groaned James. “Got it.”

“Yeah,” Regulus answered, uncomfortable as well.

“Not just her, though. It’s so hard being touched by
anyone right now when those bloated fingers are
dragging me down the water every time that I close
my eyes.”

James shivered, not being able to as much as think

about the situation that Regulus had been through.

“Do you remember it?”

“The Infernis?” he asked, confused.

“Dying,” James specified.

There was a moment of silence as James moved his

pieces. Regulus moved his Queen and held the top
of it as James looked at the board, thinking about
what to do with his pieces – he was losing.

“A bit,” he admitted. “I remember my thoughts and

I remember fighting, but I don’t remember… what
happened after I lost consciousness. I think I
wasn’t somewhere, like, a place, you know? It was
more of a feeling. I remember it felt –” he stopped
himself. “You cannot tell this. Anne would… I don’t
think she can hear this.”

“This stays between us, then,” James said.

“It felt good, very good,” Regulus explained. “It felt

comfortable and tight, like being held in a nice
embrace in winter or… drinking liquid luck inside
Hogwarts’ hot-chocolate on autumn before a
Quidditch match. I think sometimes that it hurt a
lot more to wake up than it hurt to die.”

“Do you feel like going back?” James asked,

worried.

“No. I’d never leave Anne,” Regulus said.

James moved his King.

“Check,” he warned.

“Checkmate,” Regulus said, moving his Queen.

James’ King fell as Regulus’ Queen took over the

game.

With so many people living in the Manor and people

living in the Cottage, there were two different
supermarket carts with the small group of women,
both filled to the brim with ingredients, food and
snacks chosen by them and asked by the people
left in the house. Anne was pushing the cart, Lily
had a hand on the other end of it, helping her
control the very heavy thing around the aisles
towards the paying-area of the establishment. Mia
was helping Petunia, who was certainly struggling
more than Anne since she didn’t do as much
exercise as her niece did.

“Careful, darling,” Lily said gently to Anne. “There’s

people in front of her on the line.”

The couple in front of them smiled gratefully for not

letting Anne squeeze them between them and the
people in front of them. There was a very long line
in front of them, and Anne sighed, knowing that it
would take a long time before they were to move
again by the way there was a woman complaining
to one of the cashiers.

“Don’t you want to go sit down over there? I’ll

stand on the line, Emma,” said the man.

Anne looked at him, not sure why it was so

interesting to hear the conversation that had
nothing to do with her.

The man wasn’t too tall, perhaps even slightly taller

than her, though very much taller than Lily. He had
a vest on, much to his wife’s dismay and brown
trousers that did not get along well with the shade
of green of his vest over his shirt. His brown hair
was slicked back to try and tame his curls and his
glasses were balanced at the tip of his nose as he
read through the things in their cart.

“I’m pregnant, Jonnah, not invalid,” Emma

dismissed.

Emma was blonde and her hair was also curled,

though, clearly, she had a lot more control over it
than her husband. She was wearing a dress with a
coat over it, though it was quite warm inside the
market, certainly it had been insistence of her
husband by the way that she pulled up the sleeves.

She looked ever so familiar.

Petunia watched her niece frowning as she took in

the woman.

“How much longer?” Petunia asked, gently.

“A week, so he’s being a bit overprotective,”

explained Emma.

“Just a week?! You look great!” Mia said. “When I

was a week away, I wouldn’t get up from the bed
without help.”

“I did a lot of exercise, so I don’t think I lost of my

muscle strength,” Emma explained. “I’m so excited!
All three of them are yours?”

“Not one of them,” laughed Mia. “She’s my

granddaughter,” she said to Anne. “She’s my
daughter-in-law and she’s her sister, my daughter
by consideration,” she explained to Emma, pointing
at Lily and Petunia, who seemed a bit emotional.
“As good as.”

“A grandmother? You look too young to be a

grandmother!” Emma said.

“I’ll take that as a compliment. I’m a lot older than

I look,” Mia said. “Your first?”

“Yes, my little girl,” said Emma, caressing her belly.

“Oh, a girl! How wonderful! I always wanted to

have a girl!” said Mia. “What name are you thinking
about?”

Emma blushed.

“It’s a bit odd,” she admitted.

“Certainly not, my name is Euphemia. It can’t be

worse than that, I assure you, my dear,” Mia
laughed.

Emma seemed a bit more comfortable with that,

exchanging a look at Jonnah, who smiled and
nodded, urging her to say the name that they had
spent so much time choosing for the first baby;
their daughter.

“Hermione,” Emma said. “Hermione Granger.”

Anne felt her stomach drop.

Emma looked familiar because she was similar to

Hermione, though older than Hermione had ever
been and her hair shades lighter, perhaps a bit of a
difference on her nose, but it was clearly her. Anne
had caught a glimpse of her before – Hermione had
fallen down on the train and her knee was hurting,
so she helped her to take her bag down from the
train, helped her to drag it to her parents. Her
mother had started scolding Hermione as soon as
she saw the blood, but her father smiled and
laughed at her mother’s anxious manners, kissing
his daughter’s head with care. Anne remembered
being so jealous of having parents – she was
eleven and had just began being loved and,
greedily, she wanted everything a child could have.

“I’m sure she’ll be… amazing,” Anne said. “It’s a

wonderful name. A strong, beautiful name.”

Lily looked down at her feet. She recognised the

name and she recognised the tone of voice Anne’s
used – aloof and distant to try and not get hurt.

All because Hermione Granger was to be born a

whole year before the actual time.

Whatever Anne had done, messed up and sped up

the timeline.

“NEXT!” screamed the cashier.

The woman two people before the Granger couple

moved and walked to the cashier quickly, making
Emma look up startled.

“Are your feet not hurting? I remember my feet

were hurting terribly at this point,” Mia said. “The
weight on my back made me a pile of nerves. My
husband used to –” she stopped herself for a
second, blinking and taking a deep breath. “My
husband used to hold my belly for me sometimes.
I’m sorry if I’m a bit… off. I just became a widow.”

Anne couldn’t look at anything or anyone, the

memory of the cut and the sound of the body
hitting on the ground making her wince discreetly.

Petunia looked at the cashiers, watching one

finishing the next one.

“NEXT!” screamed the other cashier.

The man in front of the couple moved and they

moved just a little bit forward as he started passing
his belongings to the young cashier.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine how you

must feel,” Emma said, forehead frowning in
comprehension. “But my feet don’t hurt at all. I’ve
been cleaning the house against my husband’s
advice and my knees are the one that hurt me
quite a bit sometimes.”

“Some leg-up time helps,” Mia said. “But I’m sure

you already know that.”

“Figured it out by the sixth month,” Emma laughed.

“Leg-up and hot baths are the only things that ease
me up without medication at this point. My lower
back is surprisingly good, but my neck is hard as
rock right now.”

“NEXT!”

Jonnah, the socially awkward man, smiled at the

chance of escaping the social interaction at once.

“Thank you so much for the talk, ladies,” Jonnah

said. “We must get going, but have a good day!”

“You three, too,” Petunia said, smiling.

Mia and Lily echoed the good-wishes as the couple

walked away from them, but nobody said anything
when Anne was completely quiet the whole way
back as she carried more bags that she probably
should until the Apparition point nearby in complete
silence, not even complaining about the weight.

“That doesn’t have to mean anything, Annie,”

Regulus said, kissing the side of her head.

“But it could mean something terrible. It could

mean that Harry isn’t coming at all,” Anne
explained. “I haven’t heard anything from Molly
either, so either she’s keeping a whole pregnancy a
secret since July or Ron isn’t coming either. This
means that everything I’ve done was in vain.”

Regulus frowned.

“Harry will come,” he insisted. “Anne, I assure you

that you haven’t done all of this for nothing. Even if
it’s not the same thing that you thought it was
going to be, but wasn’t that what we were fighting
for? For the ability to change history?”

She sighed, lying her head on his chest, both lying

on her bed. He had walked in on her holding Esme
(her doll) because Laurie was, once more, with Mia,
who didn’t want to let him go just yet because he
would go back to Grimmauld Place the next day
and Anne and Regulus would have him the whole
night long. She was lying on Regulus’ chest now,
Esme on top of her as she hugged her and Regulus
thought it was adorable.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I thought that maybe they’d

be together. Have a nice childhood together, like
we all had hoped.”

“And I’m sure they will, but maybe a year apart,”

Regulus said. “But you can’t control everything.
Especially not when your friends and brother are
conceived, it’s a bit too much… even for the control
freak that you are.”

She chuckled.

“I am going overboard with the whole control thing,

aren’t I?” she laughed.

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But don’t worry, I think

it’s adorable to see you that frustrated when the
simplest of things don’t go your way and then,
when you think nobody noticed, you act as if that
had been the plan all along because your pride
can’t take the hit. But I notice. And so does
Severus and he thinks it’s hilarious.”

“Severus thinks that everything about me is

hilarious, because he loves,” she teased him.

Regulus looked down.

“You have no idea how right you are,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“What do you mean?” her eyes looked so big when

she looked up. He thought she looked far too young
at the moment, far too innocent.

Regulus bit his lip, taking a deep breath as he

thought of how to word everything correctly.

“He loves you, Anne, like he loves me,” he

explained. “He was terrified when he found out
about the attack on Grimmauld Place. He confessed
to me after I pried, perhaps, a bit too much. He
was terrified, not because of what you’ve done, but
of what it could’ve been. He didn’t want to lose
you.”

“He’s a friend. I was terrified of losing him too,” she

said.

“He’s more than a friend, or at least he feels like it;

a lot closer to me than Sirius ever felt,” he said to
her. “I think he’s a brother and he might see you as
a sister.”

“He thinks I’m annoying,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I think Sirius is annoying, but that doesn’t make

me love him any less and, believe me, I think
Severus can be annoying as well, especially when
he closes up because he doesn’t want to talk about
feelings, which I want to,” he said to her, smiling a
bit. “He was a bit scared.”

“I thought he was uncomfortable with the

screaming match, that was why he was pulling
away,” she admitted.

“He can’t stand the thought of losing you, and to

that I can relate,” Regulus said. “He pulled away
because he can’t stand loving you so much. He
hadn’t cared about someone like he cares about us
in a long time and he was scared of what it could
mean to himself and to us.” He smiled at her. “You
know, he admitted that he almost punched me
when I screamed at you that night.”

“I deserved it,” she dismissed.

“And that was the only reason he didn’t punch me,”

Regulus joked.

She pulled herself to her elbows and kissed him on

the lips, slowly and sensual, making him sigh when
she pulled away.

“I love you, and thank you for listening to me,” she

said.

“I love you, and I love listening to you, even when

you talk about plants that your grandmother taught
you about,” he said. “And I hate plants.”

She giggled.

“I’M NOT LOOKING, I’M NOT LOOKING!” Sirius

screamed as soon as he opened the door to the
bedroom in the middle of the night, waking up
Anne and Regulus with the screams, terrified of
catching them on the act, but finding both of them
asleep in their bed. “ANNE, ELIZABETH NEEDS
YOU.”

She was out of the bed in her nightgown in a

second, Regulus scrambling to get up as well and
put on trousers over his boxers and pulling on a
sweater as he ran to the door, taking Sirius’ hand
off of his eyes to see both of their sleepy-faces with
some relief.

It had been ten days since the market day.

“What’s happening?” Regulus asked.

“The baby is coming,” Sirius said. “Petunia came to

call us like two minutes ago. You two didn’t come
down with the noises, so I thought –”

“We were asleep,” Anne dismissed. “Did she say

anything? Did she call for Madame Pomfrey as well?
I’m just a student, I never really did birth by
myself.”

“Madame Pomfrey is at another birth and said she’ll

be there as soon as she can, but Mum will help you
and I’ll go with you,” Lily said, running up to them
also tying her robes around her nightgown. “Come
on!”

“I’m coming too!” Regulus said.

He grabbed Anne’s robes and gave it to her on the

way out of the bedroom. Regulus blinked harshly
trying to wake himself up.

Elizabeth was going to have her baby; it was going

to be traumatic to her and she needed emotional
support from someone she knew well enough.
Perhaps he could help, especially with Petunia –
whom Elizabeth grew quite attached – by his side
as well. With Anne (student healer), Rose
(midwife’s daughter) and Lily (a very eager and
powerful young witch who wished to help) to take
care of her, Elizabeth would be in great hands until
Madame Pomfrey got there.

“Oh, shit, fuck, bloody hell!” Anne mumbled under

her breath on the way down the stairs.

Petunia was impatiently waiting for them right in

front of the fireplace – which she had crossed alone
for the first time, she had just noticed by the
paleness of her skin – in the parlour, eager to go
back to her friend.

“And?” Lily asked.

“Water broken a couple of hours ago, but the

contractions are becoming more and more painful
and less space in between,” Petunia said. “We
warned Madame Pomfrey as soon as the water
broke and she said we didn’t need to worry about,
but the other birth is running late because it’s twins
and she told us to call for you, Anne.”

“Let’s go, then,” Anne said. “Your mum?”

“Is already with Elizabeth. Three minute is between

the contractions. There’s no blood and she said
she’s dilating well enough, but we can’t very well
give her an epidural.”

“A what?” Regulus asked.

“A needle on the back to ease the pain,” Lily

answered.

“How would that ease the pain?” he asked, in shock

as his eyes widened.

Anne ignored the conversation completely as

Severus appeared at the parlour door with a small,
blue box and walked to Anne.

“Pain-Potion. Blood-Replenishing. And a potion I

created for hurrying the dilating process,” he said.
“It works on other mammals. I hope it works on
humans.”

“We most certainly are not using it on her,” Petunia

said, cutting Severus off.

“We’ll see. With the pain she must be in, she might
ask for anything,” Anne said. “Let’s go. Don’t
worry, Petunia, it was a joke. We’ll only use it in
last resort and I trust Severus with my life. Thank
you, Sev.”

“Go, before Petunia tries to kill me with her nails,”

Severus said.

Sirius, standing at the doors, looked green at the

idea birth and Regulus thought he was lucky he was
dating a man, because he wondered if seeing a
birth first hand wound change his mind about
children at all.

“Lucky Elizabeth, having a child as a Libra,” Lily

said as they walked to the fireplace. “I’ll have a
Leo.”

“Hey! I’m a Leo!” Regulus said. “Anne’s a Leo.”

“Oh, right! I’ll have two Leos,” laughed Lily.

The floo was fast as Anne ignored the conversations

happening as she walked through the parlour and
ignored Chris completely as she ran up the stairs,
hearing the muffled grunt of another contraction
happening. She ran into the bedroom Elizabeth and
Petunia had been sharing and took a deep breath at
the sight.

Elizabeth was standing in the middle of the room,

holding onto both of Rose’s hand with her face red
and sweaty as she struggled to breathe through the
exercises Rose was trying to coach her into.

“Hey, Elizabeth, how are you feeling?” Anne asked.

“Terrible! Terrible!” she whined.

“I brought some people to help me, is that alright?”

Anne asked. “Petunia, Lily and Regulus came with
me. Can they come in?”

“Yeah,” Elizabeth said in a whimper.

Anne walked to the door and opened it again.

“She’s open 6 centimetres already, we tried to wait

as much as we could, but she’s in too much pain
and we have nothing for her here,” Rose said.
“She’s stopped throwing up, though. So it might be
for the best.”

Anne put the small box on the table near the door
as Regulus and Lily walked in, but Petunia took a
moment more, coming into the room with towels.

“Lizzie, hi,” Regulus said, going to her. “How are

you feeling?”

“I’m well,” she said.

Anne looked over her shoulder since she knew the

girl was lying her arse off to not let Regulus see the
worst of it. She looked back at the box, pulling a
whole vial of Pain-Potion and uncorking it at once;
the sweet smell made her frown, but she walked to
Elizabeth and, without words, just offered it to her,
who took it from her hand and downed it as once.

Regulus held back his smiled as she realised that

‘Lizzie’ wasn’t ‘well’, but having terrible pains.

“Try your best to keep that in your stomach,

alright?” Anne said. “And now we need to wait for a
little bit more, but at least you won’t feel as much
pain.”

Elizabeth groaned as her body leaned slightly

forward. Another contraction.

“That’s the second minute,” Rose said.

“Do you want to lie down, Elizabeth?” Anne asked.

“I think I need to sit down, but I can’t lie down on

my back,” she said. “Too my pressure lying down.”

“Then let’s sit,” Anne said. “Because it’s time to

start pushing right now, alright? Are you ready?”

“I’m ready for this to end,” she said, firmly.

That brought a chuckle to Anne’s lips.

“I can see that. Then let’s end this,” Anne said.

Elizabeth was led to sit down on the edge of the

bed; Petunia literally ran to sit down right behind
her so she would have someone to lean against as
she pushed through the contractions. It was
automatic; Elizabeth’s hand reached for hers.
“Tuney, I’m scared,” she admitted.

“We’re all right here, Lizzie, don’t worry,” Petunia

said.

Anne exchanged a look with Regulus.

Oh.

So that was why he wasn’t worried about spending

time with her. Anne wondered if Elizabeth and
Petunia had already noticed themselves, but by the
way Regulus was holding back his smiled in the
corner of the room, they hadn’t yet.

Rose and Lily moved fast to put Elizabeth’s legs up

before the real work started. She held onto the
bedpost and onto Petunia’s hand.

“Elizabeth, you’re only going to push when the

contraction comes, alright?” Anne said.

“How much?” Rose asked, taking a peek.

“She’s over nine, just a little bit under ten; I’ll spell
it to dilate completely, but I’m not going to make
her go through all this pain without getting the
child out. She’s already to little in between the
contractions,” Anne said, taking her wand and
mumbling the smell. The cervix relaxed, dilating
even more. Ten centimetres. “Here we go.”

“Another one!” Elizabeth said.

Regulus sat down beside her, avoiding looking in

between her legs and mostly looking at the very
pale and scared Elizabeth and at the very greenish
Petunia sitting down behind her. Elizabeth’s hand
grabbed Regulus’ shirt, pulling at him as she
squeezed Petunia’s hand. Elizabeth pushed with all
her might, almost cracking her teeth with how she
squeezed them together and groaned.

“You’re doing so good!” Rose said. “This is it. Come

on, Lizzie, come on!”

Anne’s eyes were in the opening. The child wasn’t

even crowning yet.

She reminded herself several thing as she sat down

on the small chair in the bedroom and washed her
hand and threw alcohol over them before she threw
a Anti-Septic-Potion over her hands as well. That
was Elizabeth’s first child, it was obvious it would
take some time for it to come out. Elizabeth was
hesitant and fearful; she was clenching every
muscle she had at the moment.

“You need to relax in between contractions,

Elizabeth, pushing now isn’t effective,” Anne
warned. “Don’t waste yourself out right now.”

“I’m tired already,” she said.

“You can hold on for a little more,” Petunia said in

support. “We’re all right here to support you. You
can take our strength.”

Elizabeth took in a shaky breath.

“I’ve been in pain for almost twenty-hours now,”

she cried. “My water just broke, like, three hours
ago and nothing happened.”

“These things take time,” Regulus was honest.

“Bellatrix was in labour for thirty-three hours.”

That made Elizabeth loudly whimper and let out a

little sob as her head rested against Petunia’s
shoulder, already exhausted in advance.

“The pain potion isn’t working?” Rose asked.

“It is, but the pressure is painful as well,” Elizabeth

answered.

“I can’t offer you another one, you need a thirty-

minute break in between the potions,” Anne said.
Elizabeth nodded, for she already knew that. “We
need to make do for now, but you will take another
one soon, alright?”

“ANOTHER ONE!” she announced, grabbing

Petunia’s hand once more.

“Come on, push, Elizabeth,” said Anne, leaning

down once more.

Regulus put a hand on Elizabeth’s small of the back

to support her as Petunia moved slightly to take a
glimpse of what was happening as the soon-to-be-
mother closed her eyes and grunted with the effort
of pushing as much as she could, the couple last
seconds coming out with a scream.

She panted as the contraction was over, leaning

against Petunia once more and whimpering again.

“I’m going to die,” Elizabeth said.

“No, you will not, dear. We are all here to take care
of you. Anne is working so hard to learn to save
people, you’re in good hands,” Rose said.

“I’m going to die and Rabastan, that bastard, is

going to be happy about it, I’m sure,” she groaned
as another contraction started. She held back a
scream this time. “Oh, Merlin, this hurts terribly!”

“Deep breaths, deep breaths,” Regulus advised.

“This child isn’t Rabastan’s, this is yours. This is

going to be your baby, Lizzie,” Petunia said. “Yours
and only yours.”

Elizabeth nodded, emotional as her tears started

rolling down her cheeks.

“You can do whatever you want right now,

Elizabeth, scream, shout and yell, whatever you
want and as much noise as you want, don’t worry
about it,” Anne said. “Whatever helps you get
through this.”

“Alright, alright,” Elizabeth said, nodding to herself.

And as the next contraction started, the screaming

started as well. She almost got to her feet as the
ball of her feet pushed into the mattress as she
pushed as hard as she could. As the contraction
ended, she insisted on going on her hands and
knees. Petunia fixed the pillows and Regulus sat
down on the corner of the bed, helping her steady
herself by her shoulders as Petunia got up, standing
beside the bed and petting her back as Anne and
Rose stood by the end of the bed, Lily holding her
own wand in Lumos to light up between Elizabeth’s
legs. As the next contraction started, the screaming
came back.

The new position seemed to work a lot better.

By the third push on the fourth contraction in that

position, the baby was crowning.

“Give her another potion, Lily,” Anne warned.

The Ring of Fire was coming soon. And it did as the

head pushed down a bit more and the tearing
began, and she had not drank the next potion yet.

Elizabeth screamed and yelped.

“OUCH, OUCH! IT HURTS! IT BURNS!” she sobbed.

“It’ll go away soon,” Lily said. “Here, drink this.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Elizabeth cried.

Regulus held the bucket near her chin as she did,

indeed, throw up the dinner and snacks she had
eaten before. He winced, but said nothing as a
frown formed in his face, just whispered supporting
things to her as she sobbed in shame and pain.

“Here, drink it now,” Lily insisted.

And Elizabeth did, wincing and moaning at the

taste, trying to keep it in her stomach. The pain did
go down a notch, which made it a lot easier to not
throw up again in that bloody bucket that she hated
so much – she had used it to throw up in before
and now the simple sight of it made her nauseous
again.

Anne was doing her best to clean off the blood,

looking at Rose and whispering for her to get more
gauze in the aiding kit they had near the door. Rose
did just that, helping Anne to clean it off for a
better view. Anne supported the start of the baby’s
head coming out.

“I can tell they’re not bald, Elizabeth,” Anne said in

good humour.

“He’s coming out?” she asked through the crying.

“Just a little bit more and you’re done, Lizzie,” said

Rose in response. “You’re doing so good, really. A
lot better than me, I admit.”

Anne frowned when the next contraction and the

baby moved faster down the birthing canal. She
supported almost the whole head now. Closed eyes
already out and a nose starting to appear. She took
a deep breath and before she could prepare to say
anything of support, another contraction came and
she had to hold the hold head in her hand.

Her jaw almost dropped. She had no idea why she

was surprised to see a real baby, but she had never
seen a birth before and it was magical to see an
actual person coming out of someone else.

“Good job! Good job, Elizabeth!” Anne said, smiling

at the girl who looked over her shoulder at her.
Elizabeth was surprised, Anne looked so genuinely
happy at that moment, and such happiness was
directed at her; it was odd. “You’re amazing,
Elizabeth. A few more. We’re almost done, I
promise.”

Another contraction. More screaming. Regulus

groaned when he felt his hand hurting a lot more
now that it was almost done and Elizabeth seemed
to have more strength in her arms to squeeze his
hand.

Shoulders almost passing and the whole neck

through. It was almost there.

Another contraction.

The shoulders passed and the chest was starting to

appear. Almost.

“There we go. There we go,” Rose said gently,

petting Elizabeth’s leg.

One more big push and the whole belly was out.
The child almost seemed to be slipping out at this
point.

“One more big push for me, Elizabeth,” Anne said.

And there they went. With one more big push and
some help from Anne, the child was out.

Rose gasped.

“You have a baby, Lizzie, a baby!” Rose announced.

Petunia sobbed with a smile on her face as Anne
carried the child and cleaned its face as fast as she
could. “Turn her around, Petunia and Regulus. Help
her lie down. Regulus you need to get out of the
room now.”

Regulus moved quickly to be in the way of a

mother and a child first bonding.

The buttoned dress Elizabeth had been using was

opened and the child was put on her naked chest
and she held onto her child with shaky hands.

“You have a daughter, Elizabeth,” Anne announced

as the baby moved, not crying.

“My Morgana,” she cried. “Hello, welcome. Hello,

Morgana.”

Rose smiled.

Anne was already back down at between Elizabeth’s

legs, trying to get through closing the tears and
preparing for the afterbirth expelling.

“Is that her name?” Rose asked.

“Morgana Petunia Fawley,” Elizabeth said. “And

she’s only my baby.”

Chapter 132: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty One -
Summary:
One moment of calm.

CHRISTMAS

(BASED OFF ON ‘YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN, KID’

FROM TAYLOR SWIFT)

Without anything particularly interesting happening

in October since the Potters couldn’t make a
Halloween Party under the Fidelius Charm and Anne
mostly keeping to herself during the whole day, the
biggest stars of the Manor were Morgana and
Laurie; everybody seemed to love when they came
by to visit, and Mia seemed delighted to have
babies in the house again, but nobody seemed
happier than Coco and Kreacher, who bent to every
and each one of the baby’s whims.

Anne had sent Moody over to the Granger’s house

to look into their life and Hermione Granger had
been born healthy and perhaps a bit too big for her
age, according to the medical records that he had
stolen from the Muggles before putting them back
and passing the information to Anne. Hermione was
born in her actual birthday, just a whole year
before – September 19th. She spent the whole
October worrying something would happen, but in
all the checks Frank and Alice did, the family
seemed happy and ordinary.

It was the start of November when Alice

Longbottom wrote her a lengthy letter of
explanation that, due to her newly-found out
pregnancy, she was still a member of the Order of
the Phoenix, but she was requesting some time off
the fighting, though she would partake in case of
an emergency. Of course, Anne wasn’t a monster
and wrote that her biggest worry at the moment
was taking care of her child and keeping an eye out
for the Granger family ever fortnight, to which Alice
was happy and grateful, though a bit surprised.

“I’m happy for them,” Lily said. “They have been

trying for a baby for a whole year now.”

And November seemed to be the month of the

babies, because Molly Weasley wrote to Anne
announcing a pregnancy that she had kept to
herself since July to make sure the baby would
hold.

And it followed by a third letter.

My dearest friend,

In this letter I bring the best news I can think of

about my own life. Your prophecy is coming true.
I’m pregnant with already two months and this
time I’m taking all the possible cares so not to lose
it again. I have the hope that your prophecy is
correct and it’s a boy; I have the feeling it’s a boy,
though Lucius isn’t sure yet, but, Anne, I have
never seen him this happy and this doting of me.

Perhaps Bellatrix wasn’t complexly wrong about

being pregnant, because I have received everything
from Lucius and Abraxas in the moment that I start
thinking about something that I want. Last night,
for example, I was lying in bed and dreamt of
watermelon, and I woke up with Dobby – one of
our house-elfs, and the one who’s responsible for
the Heir of the House – bringing me a huge plate of
watermelon.

It still scares me either way. We found a midwife

who is going to take over my child’s birth, but it
still scares me. A birth is something so terribly
dangerous for some women, Lucius’ mother herself
– who passed away not too long ago – almost lost
him and almost died in the process. Sure, I
shouldn’t be saying those things to you, who’ll one
day carry the Heir to the House as well, but I fear
that I have no other friend to confide my fears
who’ll not find me silly and terribly selfish for
thinking of myself and not the baby that I carry.
Don’t get me wrong, I want nothing more that my
child is safe and healthy, but I wish to see him
growing up before I die, no matter how poetic it
sounds to die in his stead.

I wait not for an answer to this letter, if you think

my worries are silly, dear Anne, but I hope you can
understand me to some extent.

Thank you for listening to me.

Your cousin,

Narcissa Black-Malfoy, a soon-to-be-mother.

PS: Any news?

Anne frowned to herself as she put the pieces

together in that one afternoon of September 30th
of the year of 1978, but said nothing at all as her
mother did nothing in the dining table but poke the
food around her plate, not eating.

Lily Evans-Potter was terrified in that one day of

September 15th, holding onto the small vial in both
of her hands, blocking her vision of it. The doubt
choked her as she tried to breathe through her
panic in the bathroom of her bedroom. She had just
put three drops of blood into the vial and now had
to wait for three minutes.

The signs were there. She could barely use bras

because her breasts were sore, but going around
without them hurt more. Her headaches were
longer than she usually had them. And she had
bled – at first, she thought was her period, but it
barely lasted and there was no pain following it.
Because of all that, she sat herself in the bathroom
and brewed the easy fifth-year level potion in
silence because she just had to check.

Her hands were shaking.

How would she tell Anne? How would she tell the
girl that fought so long for a second chance for her
brother that, perhaps, it wouldn’t be Harry because
there were things that were different, including the
whole bloody year? The first child of James and Lily
Potter was coming a whole year earlier, and she
was terrified of what that could mean to the world
and to Anne – sure, she was already terrified for
herself as well, but it was something that could be
included anyways.

Three minutes.

She took a deep breath.

She looked.

Pink.

Positive.

Lily Potter discovered she was pregnant in the third

week of her pregnancy as she shook in the
bathroom floor, trying her best not to throw up all
over herself and the floor as she tried to think of
what to do next. And what she thought of was to
keep it quiet, until she knew what to say and how
to say it. And through the rest of the month, Lily
said nothing to anyone, not even James Potter, the
father of the child.

It was only in December 1st that she gathered all

the Gryffindor courage in her insides and sat him
down as he was getting ready to go training, but as
he sat down, putting on his perfume, she took a
deep breath and threw up all over the bedroom
floor.

“Oh, Merlin, Lily!” James said, jumping away from

the vomit as it hit the carpet and wooden floor. He
got rid of it with a movement of his wand in a
second, but he seemed terribly worried.

“I’m sorry,” she whined. “The perfume is too

strong, you need to change it,” she complained.

“It’s alright. It’s alright. Are you sick?” he asked,

going around the bed to go to check her
temperature, but she was surprisingly cold. “Lily,
what’s wrong?”

“I have to tell you something,” she admitted,

pulling away from him and turning to look straight
at him. “James, something happened.”

James seemed to go pale at that, looking from one

of Lily’s eyes to the other, confused and already
scared about something that Lily had not even told
him yet.

“What is it?” he asked. “Lily, just tell me! What

happened?”

Lily frowned and took a deep breath.

“I’m pregnant,” she announced.

It was a mixture of emotions, for sure. James

couldn’t help but feel scared; his own mother had
lost babies and almost died in the process before,
and he couldn’t stop thinking about something
going wrong with Lily. But, Merlin, was he happy.
James Potter had never, in his life, felt such
euphoria as he simply sat there on the bed and
watched the woman that he loved looking at him in
expectancy – a baby! They were going to have a
baby! A whole human being that he and Lily made.

“With a baby?” he asked, stupidly.

“It’s going to be a pudding, James,” she snapped at

him.

“How long have you known?” he asked, blinking.

“A month or so,” she admitted. “Three weeks. I’m

on my sixth.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked.

“I was gathering courage. I didn’t know how to tell

you and I didn’t know what else to say, because
Anne is freaking out,” Lily said.

James sighed.

“This has nothing to do with Anne,” he said. “This is

about us, Lily. She doesn’t even know; how would
she be freaking out about it? It’s all in your head,”
he kissed the side of her face. She looked away,
not wanting the vomit’s smell to get in his face.
“Anne will be happy for us.”

“She did everything for Harry to be born in the

right moment, to be happy like he wasn’t in her
timeline. I saw her reaction when Alice said she
was pregnant, I saw her reaction in the store when
that Emma Granger said she was pregnant,” Lily
said. “You don’t understand the amount of pressure
Anne seems to be putting herself under right now,
James. These things are not her responsibility and
she was trying so hard to make sure everyone is
doing everything right.”

“Anne will have to get over this, then, because this

is a happy moment, and I won’t let you say
otherwise about our child,” James said firmly.
“Anne is grown enough to understand this much.
She’s a married woman and can understand that,
sometimes, the Charm doesn’t work.”

“I should’ve used the Potion,” she said, eyes

watering. “She did tell me she thought it to be
untrustworthy.”

James blinked.

“You talked about this with her?” he asked,

confused.

“Before we got married,” she admitted, tears now

rolling down her cheek. “I was a virgin and terrified
of what would come next, James, I needed
someone who would understand.”

James pushed away his awkwardness and confusion

to nod and calm Lily down by cleaning her tears
and whispering sweet nothings.

“I’ll tell Anne,” he said her.

And from that moment on, that responsibility was

his. Still, he started to understand Lily more and
more because it took ten days for him to gather his
courage and knock at her door at that very cold
morning of December 11th, after he saw Regulus
waking up and going down to help Severus in the
potion-room, leaving Anne in bed, asleep.

“Hm?” she said from inside the room.

“It’s me, can I come in?” he asked from the door.

“Yeah,” she answered, voice still sleepy.

As he opened the door, he saw Anne pulling herself

to sit down against the headboard of the bed. Even
though she had just woken up, she already looked
exhausted with the deep and dark bags under her
eyes, the covers of the bed pulled up to her
armpits. Lily had been right, there was something
in Anne’s mind for a long time at that point and it
was barely letting her sleep.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Sure, come in,” she answered, though he was

already inside the room. He sat near her feet on
her bed. Regulus’ side of the bed was already fixed,
he noticed, surprised at how much discipline he
seemed to have. “Did something bad happen?”

“Nothing bad, no!” he dismissed, looking away and

towards her as he shook his head. “Something
good.”

“Then why are you so nervous?” she asked, raising

her eyebrows.

He took a deep breath.

“Annie, sweetheart, your mum is pregnant,” he

said.

She blinked.

“I know,” she answered.

“What?!” he said, getting up from the bed.

Anne gave him a small smile.

“I know she’s pregnant. I was waiting for you or

her to tell me for a while now, I was getting worried
you didn’t trust me,” she admitted as she kicked
the covers away from her legs and got up from
bed. “Mia has her suspicions already as well,
though I didn’t confirm it, don’t worry.”

“Does anyone else knows?” he asked.

“I think Severus noticed her eating-habits change,

but I think he thinks she’s sick,” she admitted. He
frowned with some disgust in the back of his mind,
but he held his tongue. “She stopped asking for
monthly headache-potions, that’s what triggered
his interest in her eating-habits, stop giving me
that look.”

He sighed.

“I don’t know how I didn’t see that before if it was

so obvious,” he said.

“Gryffindor is the oblivious house,” she teased.

“Slytherins can be quite discreet when we want to.
Only the Slytherins here seem to know.”

“Regulus knows?” he asked.

“More like… asked me if I noticed somethings and I

didn’t lie, but said that I wasn’t sure,” she
answered. “He probably called my attention to
some of the things before I noticed it myself.”

James was starting to like the guy more and more,

because, damn, he was smart. Severus too, though
he wouldn’t say it out loud. He wasn’t surprised
that his mother knew, of course, but he was taken
aback that Anne did.

“She was scared to tell you, she thinks that she

messed up the timeline,” James told her. “Would
you, please, tell her that you’re alright with it and
not angry at us? Because you seem alright.”

“I think I quickened the timeline, a lot of things

happened before its actual time. The snake, the
cave, Regulus’ death,” she explained. “After
Hermione, if I’m honest, I was actually sort of
expecting something like that after Regulus calmed
me down and we saw some details of this timeline;
he helped me put things together, I suppose he’s
also waiting for the news, but he didn’t tell me
about it because he doesn’t want me to get too
excited.”

“Maybe you can get excited?” James offered.

“Not too excited, though,” she answered.

“Not too excited, yeah,” he agreed. He looked deep

into her eyes and took a deep breath before sighing
it out. “So, are we alright? You aren’t upset about
it, are you?” he asked. “Your mum scared.”

“I’m quite alright. I had time to get over the fact

that I did hear the day my brother was conceived,”
she joked.

James blushed.

Walking out of the little adventure he had with Lily

in the kitchen and seeing a frozen Anne standing
near the dining room with a pot of vanilla ice-cream
melting in her hand because had had been sitting
there, eating when they started. They had walked
by the dining room without as much as realising
there was someone eating ice-cream in the dark.
She had thought of walking away, but in the
moment her legs started to work again, it was
almost over and by the time she started walking
towards the stairs, James had walked out and met
eyes with her, still shirtless.

“Yeah, we don’t need to talk about that,” James

quickly answered, blushing even more. “I caught
you in the Tower –”

“We weren’t doing anything in the Tower, fuck off,”

she laughed.

“And that day in your bedroom. Now, you heard us

in the kitchen, it’s fair.”

“Oh, come on, Dad, it was traumatic! In the kitchen

of all places,” she said, dramatizing a shiver. He
glared at her. “I’m sure that if you heard Regulus
and I, you’d –”

“I don’t want to think about Regulus and you,” he

cut her off.

She ended up laughing at him.

The ninth week of her pregnancy brought Lily worse

symptoms. She was bloated and her nausea was
worse than ever. She wanted nothing more than to
disappear and she couldn’t help but wonder why in
the living hell she would even dare go through that
twice in Anne’s original timeline. She wanted
potions that were safe for pregnant women to,
maybe, get over this bloating that made her skin
hurt, but she wanted to keep it a secret to just one
more day, just until Christmas morning. She had
everything ready and the small present tied up in
red ribbon in a golden box – everything made clear
it was for Sirius, but she had yet to give it to him
and she wasn’t sure going to Severus was a good
idea, even if Anne told James that he was already
suspicious of it all.

“Do you need anything?” James asked, he had just

gotten back from training with Sirius in the Auror
Department and looked nothing short but
exhausted, but still looked at her with such love.

“Something to get the whole kilo I got away from

me,” she complained, though in good humour. She
had never been one to get too neurotic about her
weight.

“Anything that I can get you,” he specified, smiling

back at her.

She sighed, still lying in bed in her pyjamas.

“Something that doesn’t smell so I can eat?” she

said. “And water.”

“Not juice?” he asked.

“Water. Please, water,” she answered.

And as James walked away, she heard someone

talking to him and not a second later, Regulus
Black was standing on the doorway, smiling a little
at her through the open door with some pity in his
eyes.

“Morning sickness getting to you?” he asked, voice

low enough to not echo, but she looked around him
anyways.

“Come inside,” she said, bitterly. “Anne told you?”

“No. I wasn’t sure until now, I just wanted to ask

you if you wanted me to sneak crackers into the
next grocery shopping list. Anne is going with Mia
in two days,” he explained, chuckling as he walked
into the bedroom. He didn’t close the door all the
way, but he did close it slightly. “Elizabeth had real
bad morning sickness as well, according to what
she told me. I know it’s not a nice idea in your
head, but you do need to eat regularly – like, every
three hours.”

“I’d throw my guts up,” she complained.

“It feels like it, I suppose, but small meals,”

Regulus said. “I wouldn’t know, just passing along
information.”

“Why does it feel like you’re the one who’s part of

the circle of mothers and not me?” she asked.

“Because I am,” he answered with another smile.

“Oddly enough, the only man in the circle, I don’t
know how that could have happened,” he added in
clear irony. “But, well, I do like knitting.”

Lily smiled at him, feeling a bit better and pushing

herself to sit down. She had to admit, he was
charming; she could see why Anne was so in love
with him besides all the little details that she had
told her about the good moments they shared
before everything came about to war.

“You’re good for her,” Lily allowed to escape

between her lips.

“Thank you,” was all that he answered. “And you’re

good to him,” he glanced at the door. “He’s a very
different person now, a lot more… adult.”

“I don’t think that’s my doing, if I’m honest,” Lily

said with a sigh. “He grew up a lot when Anne
came along because she needed support.”

“There’s a difference between needing support and

a protector, and there’s needing support and a…
well, partner. He’s a good partner for you, you two
seem happy,” Regulus said. “Anne talked to me
about it just yesterday; she’s very happy to see
you two together and acting so sweet to one
another. No screaming involved.”

“It’s because now he knows I’m right,” she teased.

“I’m sure you are,” Regulus dismissed. “Now, I’ll let

you rest,” he said slapping his thighs and moving
towards the door once more. “Anne is taking a nap
and I’m trying to find someone to annoy until she
wakes up and Severus kicked me out of the lab
because I’m talking too much, apparently.”

“She hasn’t been sleeping well?” she asked.

“No. But with Laurie coming tomorrow morning,

she forced herself to sleep a bit,” he explained.

As he walked away and left her alone in the room,

waiting for James and the snacks, she took in the
information that he didn’t tell her: Anne was having
nightmares again, but the thing was that he clearly
hasn’t been sleeping well either, because he looked
terrible exhausted.

And Regulus continued looking exhausted in the

next morning as he carried Laurie as they all sat
down on the parlour near the Christmas tree, all of
them opening the presents that they had gathered.

“Thank you!” was the sentence mostly used in that

room as they all went through their boxes.

Even Severus got a present that wasn’t from Anne,

Regulus or Mia, but from James Potter himself and
it was a good, warm sweater with the left arm a lot
shorter. He said it was to not ‘get in the way’ while
he was brewing, which actually seemed sweet,
because Severus forced a small smiled and thanked
him out loud.

“Now, I have two announcements to make,” Sirius

said suddenly.

“Oh, here we go,” Regulus groaned.

Sirius glared at his brother.

“I’m giving up on becoming an Auror and have

already sent my letter to Moody, because I want to
dedicate myself to what I might actually be
passionate about,” Sirius said. “I think I went there
to make Monty proud and follow James, but I need
to think of myself and of my safety. So I got in
contact with Mary.”

“Mary?” James asked, confused.

“Yes, she’s opening MCPS with Dumbledore’s

money without being connected to the Ministry for
now and mostly as a private establishment, so I put
a lot of my money into it as well to fund it,” Sirius
continued explaining. “I’ll be working there once
the war is over, because the headquarters will also
become an orphanage for magical children. I’ll be
there as security and will go to the houses with the
social-workers to keep their security, but will
mostly fund it because Uncle Alphard left me way
too much money and now Da left me money as
well, and then my father did as well.”

“Da?” Regulus whispered his question.

“Monty,” Anne answered in another whisper.

“So… you’re a security guard?” Lily asked.

“More like a bodyguard,” Sirius answered. “It’ll pay

well and it sounds fun. And I know how those
children feel, I might be of help.”

And that was true. Sirius knew how it was to feel

unsafe inside his house, where it was supposed to
be a home and comfortable. Sirius knew how it felt
to be inside that ‘safe-place’ and think that he
might not survive the night. He knew how it feel to
be angry and hurt and humiliated. He would be able
to help.

“Sirius also wants to enrol in therapy-courses,”

Remus added when Sirius seemed to open his
mouth and then close, losing his confidence. “He
really wants to help those children in bad housing.”

“It’s for the better,” Regulus said. “You’ll make a

good Mind-Healer.”

“I don’t want to be a Mind-Healer, I just want to

help,” Sirius said.

Regulus rolled his eyes.

“That’s what Mind-Healers do,” was his response.

“You should go to one,” Sirius said as an offense.

“I would, if I wasn’t dead to the world,” Regulus

answered with confidence.

Still, Anne couldn’t understand why going to Mind-

Healers (therapists) were such a taboo to the
wizarding world. With such traumatic childhoods
coming from most of the pureblood people, she
would expect at least some of them would come
out to get some mental help after the terrible
traditions of raising a child, but apparently it was
such a terrible thing to do that one bloke from the
Lestrange family had been kicked out because of
that in the 1950s, which caused the rising numbers
to fall suddenly.

“Congratulations, Sirius!” Anne said. “You go and

save those children.”

Sirius nodded, as if that had been a mission that

she gave him.

“And the second announcement?” Mia asked,

smiling proudly at him.

“Remus and I bought an apartment,” he said. “We

don’t plan on moving out just yet, I don’t think it
would be safe now that the war is so much worse
than it was before. But we talked to Dedalus Diggle
and he made a good offer on this tiny little
apartment on Muggle London that I really liked and
Remus agreed, so we bought it. We want to go
there after all this is over; it’s near the
underground and it’s near the Ministry passage
from Muggle London and the near the plot of land
Mary is building the headquarters of MCPS, so it’s
convenient in case we can’t get floo working right
away.”

With another wave of congratulations, this one

came with a big hug from Mia and another one
from Lily. Anne even walked to them and kissed
their cheeks in congratulations, now a lot more
mature than she had been the first time Sirius had
discussed going away from the Manor.

“Well, my turn!” Lily said, getting up from the

couch and walking to the kitchen, coming back with
a small box. Regulus smiled at her, putting an arm
around Anne’s shoulders and letting Laurie’s whole
weight rest against him as he chewed at his new
dragon-figurine toy made for biting. “Sirius, this
one is for you.”

“You already gave me a Christmas gift,” he said,

pointing at the belt he had insisted on putting on
right away, throwing his old one to the side.

“This is special,” Lily insisted.

Sirius smirked and winked at her.

“Is it appropriate to open in front of everyone?” he

asked.

“It most certainly is,” James jumped into the

conversation and cutting the flirting off, not
because he was jealous, but because it would be
funny. “Now, go on, mate, open it, please.”

And Sirius did.

He torn the paper and got to the box, looking at the

white before taking the lead off and staring at the
content in shocked silence.

Mia yelped when she peaked inside and her

suspicions were confirmed at the sight of two tiny
little shoes inside and a letter addressed to Sirius.
She tried her best to hold on as Sirius took the
letter.

“What does it say?” Lily asked.

“Hello, Uncle Sirius, can you be my dog-father?”

Sirius read, narrowing his eyes before frowning and
turning to James. “Are you pregnant?”

“I’m not. Lily is,” James joked. “But we are going to

have a baby.”

Mia could no longer hold on and gave a little

scream as she ran to Lily, who was still standing,
giving her a big hug as her eyes watered. Remus
was on James the next second, hugging him and,
surprisingly, crying. Regulus got up to congratulate
them and Severus followed.

Anne and Sirius exchanged looks, both still sitting.

Him in shock, Anne just waiting.

“You alright?” she mouthed at him.

“Are you?” he answered the with the question. She

smiled and nodded. “Then, yes.”

Remus moved to kiss Anne’s head, whispering

about how happy he was that Harry was coming
along now. She smiled at him, but said nothing,
drowning her anxiety for the sake of a happy family
moment.

She took in the moment.

Happiness. Life. Hope.

She tasted it and, with some good time, she put

that one important and centre memory in the walls
of her mind, in a pretty frame, far away from the
bathroom door with flashes, creating a whole new
room for memories such as this.

Anne turned a page in her story.

Chapter 133: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Two -
Summary:
He had it coming and only had
himself to blame.

MUNDUNGUS’ MESSAGE

As the year started to change to 1979, Anne closed

her eyes as her family smiled and embraced one
another to welcome a new year and vowed as her
mother touched her belly to wish Harry a Happy
New Year that Harry would never see the war. She
would end it before Harry had to see the atrocities
that were committed in the name of a cause that
hated people him and his mother.

And though the war seemed to take a small break

so the people fighting could have one good memory
in their starved brains, January came with way too
much snow and way too much sadness when
Moody knocked on the door on the first of the year
at eight in the morning with a grave face. Anne had
Mia had been in the dining room, taking their
morning tea as the other people in the house (the
ones that drank) slept the alcohol away when the
wards moved and trembled as someone allowed
walked in, and then the door was pounded. Mia got
up to open it, Anne following with her hand in her
wand just in case.

Moody seemed exhausted.

“Alastor? What’s happened?” Mia asked, worried.

“There was an attack last night,” he told them from

the doorway. “The Death Eaters attacked Dedalus
Diggle in a safehouse, Mundungus had the
information – I didn’t know that he knew where
Dedalus was hiding.”

“Dedalus is dead?” Anne asked.

“Almost, he managed to survive. He’s in St.

Mungus right now,” Alastor said. “But in the
torture, he slipped information, he told me so.”

Anne felt her stomach dropping.

“Who?”

“The McKinnons are dead. Marlene was there and

so was Dorcas; they were all tortured and killed,”
Alastor told them. “We don’t know if any other
safehouse was compromised.”

Anne’s mind was working rapidly as Alastor was

invited in and he kicked his boots in the mudroom.

The Evans’ Cottage was certainly safe and so was

the Manor since the secret-keeper were James and
Mia, in order. Even during the wedding, the only
people allowed inside the wards were the ones that
lived there; though the Order had gone inside once
during a meeting – Mundungus had only ever gone
there through the floo, so he couldn’t pass the
information of exact location to give out of people,
but Marlene and Dorcas had. Perhaps the Manor
was in danger, so they had to add some wards and
–

“Lily is going to feel terrible,” Mia said.

Anne threw herself against the chair she had been

sitting before and sighed with her hands on her
face. She had forgotten about that for a second.
Lily, the pregnant and fragile, hormonal woman
sleeping upstairs, had just lost her two best friends
at once in an important date such the New-Years-
Eve and somebody needed to break the news once
she woke up.

Once more it was her logical, war-tactical side

ignoring the feelings of other people, so she
swallowed down her plans as she looked up,
promising herself to deal with them later that same
day.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to tell James first? He

might be able to tell Lily better than us,” Anne said.

Normal Lily already had a heavy sleep, but

pregnant Lily seemed to hibernate, so it wasn’t all
that difficult to send Coco upstairs to wake up
James – and only James – to tell him to go down
the stairs.

They all waited for no more than a few minutes

before a sleepy form of a young man walked down
and walked into the dining room to see Anne sitting
down on one side, his mother sitting on the other
and Alastor Moody standing near the door.

“Hello, Mister Moody,” he said politely to his boss.

“Annie? Mum? What’s happening? Why did you
wake me early?”

Anne took a deep breath and sighed it out before

answering.

“Marlene, her family and Dorcas were attacked,”

Anne said. “They’re dead.”

Alastor met Anne’s eyes across the room as they

both agreed on not telling James or Lily about
Dedalus’ slip under extreme torture that landed him
on the Intensive-Magical-Care in St. Mungus.
They’d be too emotional to connect the two attacks
at first, but once they understood that Dedalus –
the responsible for all the safehouses – had been
attacked hours before the McKinnon house, they’d
be calmer and more logical to make decisions,
though Anne wouldn’t stop them from getting angry
at the man, but she would ask them to wait for him
to leave the hospital so he would be in his whole
condition to hear screaming and receive a few slaps
without anyone getting in the middle of the fight.

“We think it might be best for you to tell Lily

instead of us,” Mia added once James’ face grew
pale. “You might be able to comfort her better than
us.”

Anne wasn’t sure that would be true.

She had a plan to comfort Lily.

“Do you know anything?” James asked, pulling a

chair to sit down beside Anne. He put a hand on her
knee, as if she needed comfort as well; she didn’t
need it, but she knew James needed to feel needed
at the moment, so she held his hand. “Do you know
what happened in there? She’ll want to know the
details.”

“That’s gruesome,” Alastor said, frowning. “But I

do.”

“Tell me,” James demanded under his breath.

“There was somebody they knew at the door, there

was no sign in the jambs that it was a forced
entrance, so we think somebody might have
knocked at the door and Marlene’s little brother
opened it,” Alastor said. “He was killed first. He was
eleven, it was his first year at Hogwarts.”

Anne looked down. Whoever had gone to the house

attacked the person right away, not caring it was a
child.

“Dylan first, and then?”

“Then the person walked in, walked right over his

body,” Alastor said. “Went to the kitchen first,
attacked Marlene’s mother by the back, she was
killed. There was burnt food when we got there,
she was baking a cake.”

“Misses Taylor second,” James mumbled.

“Marlene heard some commotion and came to help

out; I suppose she thought her mother had
dropped something. She didn’t have her wand on
her, but she fought anyways, there was signs of
physical altercation between her and someone
bigger than her, she had bruises on her face, but
she had skin on her teeth.”

Anne almost smiled. Of course that she had. Even if

she didn’t like Marlene, she knew she was fighter
and would go down swinging. With or without
wand, Marlene was a menace to anyone that was
against her and would make sure she could do the
biggest amount of damage on her way out of this
world.

“Dorcas probably heard Marlene telling her to run

and hid Marlene’s family, she was found upstairs, in
front of the youngest’s son’s closet, wand in hand,
there was as duel apparently. She was found
clutching the wand and trying to keep the closet
closed. But the youngest son and the father were
dead inside.”

Dylan, Misses Taylor, Marlene, Dorcas, Mister Lucas

and then Bryan. They had died in that order. One
protecting the other, because that’s what family
does.

Anne felt emotional as she swallowed down more

tea in her dry throat and tried to make sure there
was nothing that she could say to make James feel
better.

“Do you have any idea of who done that?” James

asked.

“Mundungus,” was Anne answer. “But he’s mine. I

have a message I need him to deliver for me.”

James opened his mouth, but Alastor cut him off.

“We believe Voldemort killed them personally,”

Moody said. “We don’t think he was accompanied
by any other fighter, but there were two sets of
footprints in the snow outside. We believe the
companion just watched.”

That was very Mundungus-like. And Anne knew

exactly what message she had to Voldemort and
how she wanted delivered.

James got up and sighed.

“I’ll wake Lily up,” he said. “Would you tell Sirius

and Remus, mum? They deserve to know; they
were their friends.”

“You can leave that to me, dear,” Mia said, nodding

to her very-grown son as he took a deep breath as
walked away, holding back his tears so he could be
strong for his vulnerable wife, as his father taught
him to be.

Mia took a few seconds to follow him up the stairs

to talk to Sirius and Remus.

“Severus and Regulus are going to wake up,” Anne

said, voice cold and firm enough to make Alastor
look at her and wait for the rest of her sentence.
“You need to stay here and tell them what
happened, but you cannot tell them where I am.”

Moody shrugged.

“I never even seen you get out,” was his answer.

“Besides, where would you go?”

She smiled at the conspiration she had managed to

get out of the chief of the aurors, but didn’t dwell
too long on what he would gain from keeping the
secret she wanted him to keep, all she did was get
up and, in her pyjamas, go to the mudroom, grab a
coat and leave the house.

Mundungus Fletcher wasn’t one to know how to use

money. He used to get a lot more money with his
‘under-the-table’ sells, but he never knew how to
keep it, so it was no surprise he living in a horrible
house of three rooms – one kitchen, one bedroom
and one bathroom; and he tried to convince his
mother while she was alive that he was happy
there, but he knew he wasn’t. Waking up every day
was a chore and going to sleep with his stomach
empty was a great challenge, still he never dared
tell anyone about that. He never told anyone at all
where he lived but Dedalus Diggle, whom he was
sure was dead, so there was the reason why he felt
his stomach drop to his feet when someone
knocked at his door in the afternoon.

“Who is it?” he asked, voice wavering in fear.

“It’s me. It’s Anne!” said the voice, worried and

shaky on the other side of the door. “Mundungus,
you’re the only one I can trust right now, please,
open the door.”

He took a step back, worried. He knew almost

nothing of the girl besides the fact that she
certainly was powerful and crazy enough to take
over the decaying Orders after Dumbledore died.

“I think it’s best you go, Anne,” he insisted.

“I can’t! Marlene is dead! I think Dedalus Diggle

was a spy,” she said. “I had to look everywhere for
you. I killed him after he told me where you were.”

He opened the door.

“What?!” he asked, shocked.

Dedalus had been alive?

“Yeah, I went to his house. We had agreed on

meeting today and when I walked in, he was
almost dead, said the Dark Lord attacked him, He
would never go in person, so I knew he was lying,”
Anne said, shivering with the cold and the fear.
“Please, I don’t know where else to go.”

He opened the door even more, letting her go in.

“You shouldn’t have come. It’s snowing outside.

You’re pregnant, Anne,” he said.

Still, he thought, there was no bump that he could

see.

“The glamour hides it well,” she responded quickly.

“Do you think I can sit down? I’m dizzy,” she said,
voice weak.

Mundungus moved quickly, taking one her arms as

her knees buckled in front of him. She let out a
small moan as he led her further into the house.

“Sure,” he said, running to the kitchen and

grabbing one chair of the two chairs in the house.
“Here, sit down. Please, sit down here.”

And she did.

Mundungus was scared. Anne could finish him if

she wanted to, but she seemed so scared and so
vulnerable, hands shaking as she pushed the red
hair away from her face, she seemed so… small. If
he kept her there for long enough, maybe he would
get a message to the Dark Lord, and then he would
get money, glory, power and, if he was lucky
enough, some happiness as well.

“Marlene, Dorcas and the family are dead. I can’t

believe Dedalus did that to us, Mundungus,” Anne
said.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” he announced.

He turned his back to Anne, filling the kettle with

water from the faucet before turning on the fire
with a wave of his wand and putting the kettle on
top of it. He turned to find Anne watching him.

“Did you know?”

“About what?” he asked.

“Dedalus’ betrayal,” she said.

He shook his head.

“No, but I’m not surprised. He’s terribly ambitious,”

he told her. “And not the good type of ambition,
either. He’s only interested in money, maybe he
sold information and when they realised it wasn’t
good information, they killed him.”

Anne’s eyes narrowed just a bit.

“He was tortured before he was killed. If this was

about money, he would’ve been well and alive
when Alastor found him,” she said. “It was more.
What would person get if he gave out information?
And why Marlene?”

“Maybe he thought you’d be there,” he offered.

That was what he had thought. “You two were
friends, weren’t you? One would think you two
would spend some time together.”

“We were not. We didn’t actually like each other,

but we did study together and… well, it’s odd
seeing someone my age dead,” she admitted. That
wasn’t a lie, he could taste it. “But Lily was her
friend, she’s devasted right now.”

“I can imagine,” Mundungus said, going back to the

small table and sitting on the other chair, across
from Anne. “Is Misses Potter alright?”

“She will be once I get her revenge for her,” she

answered.

He felt his stomach drop once more, the feeling of

being in terrible, mortal danger coming back to her
full force. He had missed something, he realised at
once as he stared at Anne, who stared right back
into his eyes – all her fear had disappeared and
now her eyes were cold and dead to him, every
move calculated as if she was a predator and he
was nothing but a prey to her.

“You already had your revenge, though,” he said.

“Dedalus is dead.”

His fingers brushed his jeans. He was reaching for

his wand, preparing himself for the duel.

“No, he’s not. I lied,” she answered. “And,

Mundungus, dear, your wand in my hand,” she
said, raising it. She had caught it when she
pretended to faint. “It’s actually quite offensive that
you think yourself capable of duelling with me, it
just shows me how much people actually take me
for granted.”

She was crazy, absolutely barking mad, he realised.

He had never thought himself to be in as much
danger as he was at that moment with a girl half
his age sitting across from him while the kettle was
on. He felt pathetic.

“Anne, I don’t know –”

“Lie to me and I’ll cut your tongue out, you

miserable fucking bastard,” she answered. There no
aggressiveness in her voice as she glared at him.
Perhaps it was the dead-pan delivery that made
him so scared. “You killed two members of the
Order last night, oh, forgive, you didn’t kill them,
you stood to the side and let someone kill them like
the coward you are. You just admitted to me that
you thought I was there, so you were trying to get
me… Voldemort wants me, don’t worry, I know that
already, he’s creepy like that, but… why did you
betray me? Why did you betray us and then you
allowed me into your house with the biggest
confidence in the world that I wouldn’t find out and
put the fucking kettle on as if you’re not sick in the
head?”

His hands started to tremble as he felt sweat

appearing near his hairline. He had no chance of
leaving that meeting alive.

“Look, I –”

“I need a reason, so I can try and understand it.

Make it a good one,” she demanded.

She twirled her new wand around her fingers as

she watched him. He now could see his own wand
shoved in her pyjama’s trousers’ back pocket, she
must have put it there when he had his back turned
to her.

“I was scared,” he said.

“Of what?”

“He found me. My address, he found my address on

a Ministry document when I was caught by an auror
working for him a few months ago in a raid, I had
illegal items on my possession. He was going to
arrest me,” Mundungus said. “I said I would do
anything to not go near Dementors.”

“So you gave information,” she guessed.

“I just didn’t want to die,” he said.

She looked him up and down in between disgust

and disappointment. He cringed when their eyes
met again as her eyebrows almost touched each
other in her frown, for she was ever so lost in
thought.

“It’s a pity, really,” she said.

“It is. I’m truly sorry for Marlene and Dorcas, it was
truly a pity,” he said. “He said he wanted you. He
said he wouldn’t hurt anyone else after he had
you.”

“But you gave him the wrong information. Most

people would expect you to die that night,” she
said. “Was it Him who went with you? Voldemort
himself?”

“Yes, but only because he thought you would be

there,” Mundungus explained.

“I feel important!” she chuckled. Anne got up from

her chair, standing beside it casually, but making
Mundungus feel weaker and smaller than he was
already feeling. There was a smile on her face now.
“But that wasn’t what I was talking about. I said it
was a pity that you didn’t want to die, because
you’re going to anyways.”

Mundungus jumped up his seat.

“Anne, look, please, I really –”

“Diffindo,” she said.

The cut on his throat was from ear to ear and his
eyes widened and his mouth continued open in
shock in a silent scream. He gurgled with the blood
getting to his mouth, spitting it out before he fell to
his knees and then to his face on the floor, blood
pooling around him. Anne, with her foot, turned
him belly up as she watched him shake and
convulse, fighting for life. Still, she just took a step
back and sighed, looking for what she did need for
the message she wanted to pass along.

The form of death was message of who had done it.

It was how Monty was killed by Voldemort, and now
how she killed the only source of information
Voldemort had inside of her group – and even with
the two death-eaters killed, she didn’t feel like their
lives, together, would somehow get to be as
important as Monty’s. But she wanted more. So
when she found parchment and a quill, she sat on
the chair she had been sitting on before and
scribbled a quick note to the death eater that would
mostly certainly come later that day when
Voldemort noticed how the wards were dropped
with the man’s death.

“A SPY FOR A SPY. AN EYE FOR AN EYE. – ANNE”

And left if over the table, signing a small heart

under her name and walking away.

1979 was promising and Anne couldn’t wait for

what else she would have.

Nothing could make her regret what she had just

done.

Still, she hesitated a little bit when she noticed that

Regulus was waiting by the front door when she
walked back into the Manor.

“Where were you?” he asked right away. “Is that

blood?!”

“Yes, but it’s not mine,” she answered. “I dealt with

Mundungus. I was waiting to use him and pass
along wrong information, but he made the mistake
of killing two of us; he won’t make the same
mistake again.” She turned to him. “Did someone
notice I got out?”

“No, I held out, lied,” he answered. “You need to

tell me when you’ll go do something stupid.”

“You would’ve wanted to come with me,” she said.

“Of course, I would,” he answered, frowning. “We

can be stupid together and protect each other.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, I’ll call you next time. We’ll
kill spies together, then.” He smiled back.

Chapter 134: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Three -
Summary:
Grief was always a horrible feeling
to go through. A confusing type of
grief makes everything worse.

WALBURGA’S END

TW: SUICIDE AND GRAPHIC DETAILS OF IT.

PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

AND CALL THE RESPONSIBLE NUMBER FROM
YOUR COUNTRY IF YOU EVER FEEL THE NEED
TO. YOU ARE ALL LOVED.

The End of Another Black

In the early morning of yesterday, January 29th,

the body of Walburga Euphemia Black was found
dead inside her house with the motive of suicide,
though Aurors are investigating further for no note
was found inside the house. Walburga had lost her
husband two years before and her youngest son
months before her death. It’s believed by family
members that she was mentally unwell due to her
grief for years since the death of her brother, at 14
years of age.

Her youngest niece, Misses Narcissa Malfoy (nee

Black) was seen buying several types of flowers, so
it’s expected that the funeral and burial might
happen sooner rather than later in an undisclosed
place and time; it’ll be a closed affair only for close
friends and family members.

We, of the Daily Prophet, send our regards to the

Black family and express our most genuine sadness
due to your loss.

“Are you alright?” asked the hesitant voice of

James Potter.

Regulus didn’t feel alright.

Sirius was quiet, not daring to laugh or say

anything as he watched his younger brother sit
across from him in the breakfast table, unmoving
and two tones paler than he had ever seen him
become. Regulus looked… ghostly.

“My mother is dead,” Regulus said.

“I know, I’m sorry, Little Prince,” Anne said, putting

her hand on his knee and petting it gently. “I wrote
to Narcissa asking about the funeral, if you want to
go when everybody else leaves. We can do that.”

“My mother committed suicide,” he added, still

confused about that fact. “I don’t understand. She
wouldn’t do that.”

Suicide was a taboo. It was the reason that

Walburga’s own brother, Alphard, hadn’t been
allowed to be buried with the rest of the family, but
staying with the Potters; seeing Walburga, the one
that burnt him off the family tree because of his
death, making the same mistake made everything
very odd. No, Walburga wouldn’t do that. But
Walburga had been lost a long time ago.

“Your mother was sick, Reggie,” Anne said. “Very,

very sick in the head. Her illness would make her
do things that she didn’t agree with when she still
had a part of herself inside of her, but she was
gone before she passed. She was refusing to take
the medication because it was Muggle, she was
refusing to take the magical medication as well and
she did tell me she was going to die soon. I thought
she meant that she thought the hallucinations
would kill her, if I had known –”

“You couldn’t have,” Sirius said, cutting her off and

giving a warning look to Regulus. He looked away
from his older brother, back to the newspapers.
“There was no way for you to know that she
would… off herself.”

“Off herself?” James repeated, finding the choice of

words odd.

Regulus looked up.

“Do you think she’ll be buried along with the rest of

the family?” Regulus asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

With what had happened with Alphard and the

ending of it, there was no reason for them to be
sure that she would be buried alongside her
husband. If not, then there would be a problem for
there was nowhere else for the body to go.

Euphemia loved Regulus, certainly, but she would

never allow the body of the woman that
traumatised so much of her children (Sirius,
Regulus himself, James, Anne) to sully the holy
ground the family of her husband had worked so
hard to buy once they got to England from Holland,
two generations before Fleatmont’s. Walburga
would not be allowed into the Potter land in Godric
Hollow’s Cemetery.

“Maybe Narcissa will know?” he wondered.

“Most likely,” Sirius agreed, nodding. “Narcissa

knows every gossip inside that bloody family. She’ll
know.”

Lily nodded as well, knowing that Narcissa was one

to know a lot about everyone ever since she was in
Hogwarts. It was somewhat sweet that even Sirius,
the aloof man that he was, knew that about his
cousin, whom he would announce to hate to
whoever would listen. Perhaps it was the hormones
growing and growing inside of her because of that
baby that made her eyes water, but maybe it was
how lost Regulus looked as he just sat there,
completely devastated with the death of the woman
that only ever hurt him. She couldn’t understand
how he could still love her.

But Regulus did love her, even if he hated her just

as much.

His mother had never been sweet or nurturing, she

had always been the image of ice and fire – never
somewhere in between. There were times where he
thought cold was best, but there are times where
he longed for the fire for her anger was the only
type of warmth that she would show to him.
Perhaps her fire was too hot sometimes, but it’s so
comfortable to be burnt when one froze near to
death.

But Narcissa did know.

Her letter came in two parts.

Dear friend,

As you probably already know, my aunt is dead. I

tried to keep the information inside the family until
I could get in touch with you or Regulus, but I
couldn’t; my mother went for outside help almost
as fast as a blink.

As you probably already know, suicide is not well

seen or pities amongst the pureblood people, but
we managed to open an exception to Aunt
Walburga due to her mental situation before it all
and due to the letters that she left behind. She
expressed to be under pressure of her
hallucinations before she killed herself.

Lucius was the one to find her.

Uncle Cygnus said that she had been quite violent

the night before and went to sleep after a while. In
the next night, he walked down to let my mother
sleep-in and made breakfast, for they refused to
take any more house-elves since Kreacher’s
disappearance, even after I offered them one of our
many here in Malfoy Manor. Lucius and I decided to
make a visit, give news of how the pregnancy was
going up until that point so we went up to greet
them – I went for my mother while he went for my
aunt. He made a noise and called my father, I tried
to go there, but he didn’t let me see anything.

He didn’t let me see her.

He said she was in a bad shape.

Aunt Walburga probably died in the very early

morning, perhaps late at night. She didn’t die right
away, she was asphyxiated to death; he neck didn’t
break. It often doesn’t when the place isn’t very
high. One of her eyes popped out – the noise was
Lucius jumping back because it scared him. He said
he’ll never forget the sight of it, that it’ll hunt his
nightmares.

I can’t imagine how it was for my father to help

Lucius to bring her down. That was his little sister.
He had to touch the dead body of his sister. Merlin,
I can’t imagine doing the same with Bellatrix or
Andromeda – I can’t imagine losing either one of
them, even if Bellatrix lost her mind so long ago.

There will be no ceremony. They said it’s for the

better for a closed casket.

They still haven’t let me see her.

Do pass along my regrets and feelings of

compassion to Regulus (and Sirius, if he’s willing to
accept it). Tell him that I’ll come by soon, maybe
tomorrow or the day after tomorrow with Laurie
and we can talk about it. I’m sorry for your loss,
Reggie, my dear, and I want nothing more than to
hug you right now and tell you exactly how much I
wish to take your pain away from you.

I did something for you though. I took your

mother’s letter addressed to you from her bedroom
before Lucius or my father could see it. They don’t
know you’re alive. I wanted to keep it that way for
your safety.

Your cousin,

Narcissa.

And along with the letter, there was another letter.

One that Regulus knew the handwriting quite well

when Anne gave it to him, unopened and
untouched.

Dear son,

I remember the first time that I held you and I

regret not loving you right away, for you were the
greatest decision of my life. I lost my baby-girl not
a year before and I had wanted you to be a girl, so
I could feel complete and stop hating myself,
because maybe I could make her to be a better
woman than I was. But you became a better person
than I ever thought someone could be.

Pure. Gracious. Intelligent. Trustworthy. Classy –

for so long in my life, these were the only things
that I could see about you, because you were ever
so quiet in your own world that I would forget you
were there sometimes. It was easy to deal with
you, a lot easier than to deal with Sirius, but you
were never interested in being the Heir; it wouldn’t
be a problem, but neither was Sirius and when he
ran away there was nothing that I could do but to
take you up to his promises.

You did your job.

Until she appeared in your life.

Anne Potter, she changed you. Or perhaps she

didn’t. Perhaps those things and thoughts were
already inside of you, but you had the courage and
the stupidity of believing that whatever you had in
your mind was the right thing. But she also showed
me who you really were.

Pure. Gracious. Intelligent. Trustworthy. Classy.

Loyal. Understanding. Determinate. Gentle. Loving.

Surprisingly kind.

You were ready to leave everything behind for her

and it made me question what I had done wrong
for you not to feel like you could do the same for
me. I was the one who raised you and did
everything in my power to make sure you would
survive only for you to go along with my ideas with
a terrible scowl in your face and smile at her very
dangerous plans as if she was the sun shining down
upon you and you honoured to be her spy inside
the most dangerous and most honourable
organization in the world – the Dark Lord was
supposed to take over and you made sure he would
never. I was disappointed.

I was even more disappointed at the idea of you

tainting your bloodline by taking her into your arms
and allowing a child to grow inside of her.

Until I saw her in your funeral and, after everything

I done, she said that you were happy. She said you
were safe and cared for and I noticed that was
everything I could ask for.

It pains me to say this, but if she’ll keep you like

that, I accept you for who you are. I accept her as
your wife.

Make sure the children you have are better than

you. Make sure she’s better me. Make sure you’re
better your father – those were the words my
mother said when I got married to your father,
though I did change it a bit for you. But the
message is the same.

Be good.

Your mother, who does love you,

Walburga Black.

There was very little Anne could do as she watched

Regulus sob with Laurie in his arms as Narcissa
whispered sweet things in his ears. She stood by
the doorway before stepping back and closing the
door. Her help would be very unwanted. She didn’t
like Walburga. She didn’t know her. But Narcissa
did by details; she knew what songs she liked and
what food she liked, and she knew Walburga loved
her children the best that she could, even if she
wasn’t a good mother.

Sirius was drinking alone in the kitchen when she

got there. He looked up at her feeling somewhat
caught as he forcefully used the hand he was
holding the cup of firewhiskey to clean a tear.

“Sirius, it was your mother, you’re allowed to be

sad,” Anne said. “Even if you hated her. You’re still
allowed to mourn.”

“I’m not sad,” he spat towards her. “I’m glad the

old bitch is dead.”

She looked down.

“Did you have any good moments with her?” she

asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

“There was… a time where she was somewhat

nice,” he admitted. “I was very young, six or seven.
I don’t know if Regulus remembers this. We were in
Verona, it was December and it was just starting to
really get cold and I ended up falling in the lake, it
was frozen and Regulus and I were skating… I
teaching him, actually. But the ice was very thin. I
got Regulus out when I heard it crack, but I didn’t
get out fast enough.”

“You fell through?” she asked.

He nodded, taking another sip of the drink.

“It was so quick. One moment, Regulus was crying

and screaming that I pushed him and then I was
underwater and I couldn’t find the hole in the ice to
go up and breathe again. There was water
everywhere; in my mouth, my eyes, my nose and it
burned so bad!” he told her. “I truly thought I was
going to die there.”

“How did you go up again?” she asked.

He watched her moving to get herself a glass and

then poured some firewhiskey for her before taking
a deep breath for the answer.

“Mother got me out,” he answered. “She heard

Regulus crying and came running out, she thought
I ran away from her because I had pushed him, but
then she saw the cracks in the ice and the hole I
fell through. She screamed so loud that I could
hear it underwater. She destroyed the whole ice to
get me out, pulled me by the arm and got me out.
She uses these long skirts – you saw that, didn’t
you? Her skirts. Very long, very heavy, very…
Edwardian of her.”

“They were beautiful, that much I have to admit,”

Anne said. “Especially that dark blue one.”

“I bought that for her,” he admitted, taking another

sip. “Anyways… she was drenched. Soaking wet,
really, and she swam to get me. I was so cold, but
conscious still. She was very quick, in less than a
minute she got me out. She was such a powerful
witch, either I like it or not. I fell on the other end
of her wand, but I knew that if I was behind her, I
was safe. She unfroze a lake in under a minute to
swim in freezing water to get me out of it and then
she spent the rest of the night sitting beside me.”

“You got sick?”

“Hypothermia, and then a cold when I got better

from the first one,” he admitted. “I wonder what
changed.”

“Your mother wasn’t a good person and she wasn’t

a good mother, but that doesn’t mean that she
didn’t love you, Sirius,” Anne said.

“Love isn’t like that. Love doesn’t torture and hurt

you. Love doesn’t diminish you in the dining table
for fun, Anne!” he cut her off. “Do you think your
aunt and uncle loved you?”

She gasped.

Sirius didn’t step back.

She looked down.

“They didn’t. But it was different,” she said, voice

shaky.

“How?” he demanded. “How were they any different

from my mother?

“Because if one of them killed themselves, they

wouldn’t leave me a note,” she answered. “They
don’t know my favourite colour, and they certainly
wouldn’t wear the clothes I bought for them to pick
my brother up from the platform to somehow try to
get my attention. They don’t know the marks of my
body –” she stopped herself. Vernon did know it; he
knew every mark on her and complained about
every single one. She shook herself. No, that
wasn’t the moment to think of him. “I’m not saying
that you have to love or forgive her, nobody
expects you to. I’m just saying that you don’t need
to cry yourself into a bottle in the kitchen. Nobody
will judge you for mourning your mother, Sirius.
You don’t need to do this to me.”

She drank the whole cup before slamming it back

on the counter. Sirius flinched as he watched Anne
hug herself slightly.

“Anne –”

“She told me to take care of you when I last saw

her,” Anne cut him off. “She said a whole lot of
things and not one of them made sense besides the
when she said that loved you two, maybe in
different words she told you that herself.”

“My mother was a terrible woman.”

“I agree.”

“She hurt me!” he added.

“Yes, she did.”

“She humiliated me. She hated me,” his eyes filled

with tears. “Then why the fuck does it hurt to lose
her?”

Anne shrugged as Sirius walked to her, hugging her

tight.

“Feelings don’t make sense,” she said. “They don’t

need to make sense, Sirius. You can just feel
them.”

And Sirius cried.

“I love you,” Anne mumbled into his ear.

“I love you, too,” he answered.

And Regulus watched from the doorway when he

walked to get water, proud of Sirius for
understanding his side for once in his life and
understanding why Regulus didn’t leave. Both
hated and loved Walburga with the same strength.

Chapter 135: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Four -
Summary:
Narcissa gets what she deserves:
gratitude.

NARCISSA’S WORK

Being a spy wasn’t as easy as Narcissa thought it

would be and it felt a lot more dangerous than she
expected. Listening, reading in between the lines
and pretending not to pay attention at the same
time was especially hard now that she was
pregnant and her hormones seemed to make her
actually distracted all the time; if she already had
the fame of being an ‘air-head’ between the Death
Eaters, it certainly got a lot more solid now.
However, the positions of being stupid and
distracted all the time made her job easier.

People would talk about everything nearby her,

because of course, she wasn’t listening after all, but
she was and she was trying to keep everything in
her mind so she could pass it along to Anne once
those people got out from near her. Still, because
of Dark Lord took residency in her own Manor, she
had to be a lot more careful now; though Lucius
was on her side and sometimes even passing more
information along to her, her father-in-law,
Abraxas, was not and would never be by her side
on this and Abraxas was a difficult and dangerous
man who had a lot of connections, enough to get to
disappear once her Heir of the House’s son was
born and nobody would ever question him,

Narcissa was terrified and she feared the stress

would somehow harm her baby, but she swallowed
her exhaustion, her fears and her painful moments
of doubt while she hid away in the Library of the
Manor, alone. She kept at it. She kept of listening
and reading in between the lines to write every
detail she could remember to Anne.

Still, she hated how nothing ever seemed important

enough. It was accountant’s details, people
complained they didn’t have enough allies in
England and had to look for them in Ireland and
Scotland and the Republic of Ireland as well, some
xenophobic comments against the Bulgarians that
joined the cause (that actually was important to
Anne, according to her answer) and maybe some
complaints about Voldemort never appearing in
person in meetings anymore.

It was already February when she heard something

important.

Import enough to make her eyes widen as she

knew it could everything.

Rookwood got information inside the Ministry.

Standing right behind the Library door as the

meeting went on the parlour beside it, she listened
closely. What caught her attention was the
celebration on the other room, that made her get
up and walk closer to the door, opening it ever so
slightly.

“Alright, alright. I know we are all happy, however,

we need to think this through,” Lord Voldemort’s
voice boomed through. “If this will be our last fight,
we need to get as much attention as possible. So
our wonderful poster-boy, here, Mister Rookwood,
found a way.”

More clapping, some whooping. Bellatrix laughed.

Narcissa held her breath.

“What will we do?” Abraxas asked.

“Rookwood found the wonderful information inside

the auror department with the help of a young and
eager auror who shall remain nameless who is
compassionate to our cause,” the Dark Lord
continued. “Now, we have the schedule of two
members of the Order. And one of them is… Alastor
Moody!”

“Down with him!”

“I’m tired of his bullshit!”

“Long time no see the old man!”

“He deserves death.”

She frowned. Those people always had death first

in their minds, and she was happy that she couldn’t
hear Lucius’ voice celebrating anything through the
wall and the slightly open door, otherwise she
would throw up.

“Tomorrow, we attack,” Lord Voldemort announced.

“Tomorrow at Hogsmeade at the right time, we will
attack. Emmeline Vance, your daughter, Mister
Vance, who ran away two years ago, will be there
and Moody will have an overlapping with her shift
for three hours. We have time enough to attack.”

“But in Hogsmeade, my Lord? Isn’t it dangerous?” a

voice asked.

Her eyebrows were almost touching each other at

that point as she listened with such attention. She
knew that voice, but she couldn’t seem to place it
anywhere under the names in her mind.

“Mister Yaxley, your youngest brother isn’t that

fearful,” said Voldemort.

Corban Yaxley, the last lover of her uncle Alphard,

and older brother to Loic Yaxley, who always
seemed to be hanging around Anne when she was
still allowed into the parties the family threw.
Neither of them were good people, but Corban had
some conscience left in his mind to know that
attacking the village way too near the school where
most of the Death Eater’s children studied wasn’t
the greatest idea that Tom Riddle had in his life,
but wasn’t smart enough not to say anything. Loic,
who sounded excited about the death of Moody and
had even screamed ‘down with him’ with his
obnoxious French (probably fake) accent, wasn’t
nearly as smart or as well-controlled and was
hurting for nothing more than a cheap thrill, even if
that involved fighting in the middle of one of the
only surviving magical village in the United
Kingdom.

“My youngest brother isn’t that smart,” Corban

corrected. “Hogsmeade’s streets are often filled
with children. Tomorrow will be Sunday, if it’s a
Hogsmeade Weekend, those children – some
pureblood – will be in danger.”

Most people were holding their breath. Corban had

just gone against Voldemort; the price of doing that
was usually too high for people to pay and survive,
but as they waited and waited, a grin took over
Voldemort’s mouth.

“See? SEE?!” he screamed. “This is what I like to

see. Preparation for the next generation and worry
for preserving the blood. Even someone like oldest
Mister Yaxley has some decency in him for that;
never liked women, and yet he lied every night with
his wife until she popped out an Heir – a little girl,
am I right? What is her name?”

“Annabeth, my Lord,” he answered.

“And her age?”

“Just a year old,” he answered once more.

There was a second of silence.

“Lucius, you’re confident your child will be a boy,

correct?” asked Voldemort once more.

Narcissa felt nauseated as her hand flew to cover

her belly just slightly showing the bump at that
point, hand shaking in fear because she knew what
that could mean.

“Yes, I am, my Lord,” her husband answered.

“It would be nice if you two got the children

together, betrothed once your son is born,” he said.
“One single year of difference isn’t much after all.
Abraxas, how many years of difference between
you and your beautiful, late wife?”

“Twenty-four, my Lord,” Abraxas answered.

Narcissa felt a shiver going up her body as she tried
to contain vomit from coming up. “She was
seventeen when we got married. We got Lucius two
years later, and she passed away five days later.”

“Indeed, indeed,” Voldemort hummed. “See, dear

Mister Yaxley, though you do worry for the children
and I admire that trait in you, I do not care. They
won’t be in Hogsmeade and if any of them are
stupid enough to get caught in a fight kilometres
away from their school, then they deserve to die.
Survival of the smartest, strongest.”

“Naturally,” agreed Abraxas. “I believe Mister

Yaxley already understood that, my Lord.”

Abraxas Malfoy and Tom Riddle had gone to school

together and Abraxas has protected Tom from a lot
of the bullying inside Slytherin because of his
blood-status, bringing him under his wing and
insisting he was his ward before he was even old
enough to be able to make calls such as that. He
saw the potential. When they were out of school
and Tom had a dream, Abraxas helped to fund the
cause and there he was – both him and his child
and, when the baby was born, his grandchild were
inside the cause and brought the family of his son’s
bride into it as well.

So it was no surprise that Tom allowed Abraxas to

get away with it when he cut him off in such a
manner, but it was a surprise when Tom turned to
him and said:

“You’re going to the first to attack,” he said.

That wasn’t a good thing or an honour. The first to

attack was usually the first to fall, especially when
against people who were trained to fight back and
fight well, such as Aurors, especially those inside
the Order.

“Who are we going to attack first?” Abraxas asked,

voice wavering.

“You are going to attack Miss Emmeline Vance, and

your son will attack Alastor Moody himself,” Tom
answered.

He was after the money, Narcissa realised in fear.

If both of them were dead, the money would be left
for her because of the son she was bearing – she a
woman, in their world, she was not that well seen.
Tom Riddle would have access to the vault if he
asked more forcefully than extreme kindness
because she would do anything to protect her baby
and he knew that. If Abraxas and Lucius were
dead, he was the owner of the Malfoy’s wealth until
her son was seventeen and she’d have to bear it
quietly.

Narcissa closed the door without making a noise

when silence took reign of the room again and she
took several steps back, hands shaking in despair
as she tried to calm herself to make sure the baby
would be alright.

She touched her bump once more.

“You’ll be alright. We’ll be alright,” she mumbled.

“We’ll be alright,” she insisted.

If she said it several times, perhaps she would start

believing it for real. Maybe she could will it to
existence.

It took almost half-an-hour from the moment she

closed the door for Lucius to walk in, as pale as she
felt herself to be, clearly worried about her, only to
find her sitting with a baby book in her lap,
whispering amongst changing pages that
everything would be alright. He almost pitied her
and the pressure she was clearly under to be with
him as his wife and whole-life-partner, and yet she
was taking it so much better than he had expected
her to be.

“My love?” he called out.

She looked up from her book, eyes red from crying.

“Yes, dear?” she answered.

“You heard?” he asked. “Tomorrow, Hogsmeade. I

don’t know the exact time, but it appears to be in
the hours where Moody’s and Vance’s schedule
overlap. Write to your contact during the night and
send it as soon as possible. We have a small pre-
celebration in the pub tonight, so nobody will be
watching the owl in the house. Tell her not to
answer, but to get ready,” he got on his knees in
front of her, kissing the almost unnoticeable on her
belly over the dress she was wearing. “Be careful.”

“You are the one who needs to be careful, Lucius. If

anything happens to you –” she started.

“No. Nothing will happen to me, my darling wife,”

he said, shaking his head to her as he forced a
smile. “I will come back home and we will live far
away from all this mess. Or we can just… run
away.”

She shook her head.

“Too dangerous,” she said. “No matter what side

wins, they won’t stop looking for us. If I stay with
her, I can get you out of a bad punishment because
you’re helping me, but if you go and fight tomorrow
and they lose, you’ll be seen as loyal to him. Either
way, we’ll be safe, but only if you survive.”

He nodded.

“I’ll come back home,” he insisted.

“Please, come home to me. Come home to us,” she

said, kissing his forehead.

“Anything you ask me, my love. Anything,” he

whispered as he kissed her lips.

And Narcissa closed her eyes as her hands caressed

his face.

Lucius had always been a handsome man. Strong

cheekbones and a sharp jawline, the wavy blonde-
almost-white hair going down his shoulders as his
stone-cold blue eyes looked up at her in such
complete and genuine devotion for her.

“I have one request for you, Lucius,” she whispered

back, leaning down to almost be at his face. He
nodded, whispering ‘anything’. “If you see that you
are losing, change sides. Attack. Protect Anne.”

“Cissy –”

“Protect my cousin,” she whispered the secret.

He blinked.

“Sirius?”

“Regulus,” she answered in such a low voice that

he barely heard it. “He’s alive. He changed sides
and Anne saved his life. She can do the same for
you, but you need to show that you’re loyal to her
if you’re losing. Can you promise me that?”

“I can promise you I’ll protect Regulus and Anne,”

was his answer. “And anyone from their side, if I
can, but only if that makes me sure that you will be
safe.”

“She promised me that if they win, I’ll be

completely absolved from any guilt. I haven’t been
marked and I never was made to do anything,
just… watch, if I prove that my life and the life of
my unborn child was in danger, maybe that even
your life was in danger, then I’m safe,” she
answered. “He threatened me several times, you
said. You can use that, you can just tell them the
truth.”

“I will,” he said.

And he had just promised the truth filled with

tortures, killings and watching rapes happen.
Whatever it took to make Narcissa happy.

Friend,

Tomorrow, Hogsmeade, unknown the exact time,

but the targets are very clear: Alastor Moody and
Emmeline Vance.

Your cousin.

Anne frowned.

“She doesn’t feel safe. She didn’t sign the note;

and she always sends me letters, not notes, even if
she’s passing information. She’s scared,” Anne
said. “She things the attack will be big enough for it
to be dangerous.”

“All attacks are dangerous,” James said, sitting

beside her and rereading the note. “Merlin, her
handwriting is ghastly.”

“It’s worse than normal, she must have been

hurried through it,” Anne guessed.

“Do you think she had someone watching over her

shoulder? She might have been forced,” Alastor
said.

Regulus shook his head.

That had been a fun moment, explaining to the

whole Order that Regulus was alive and had
changed sides. Frank’s face had been the best as
his jaw almost touched the floor with the details of
how he got the Horcrux out of the cave and how he
survived (they decided not telling anyone about the
ring was for the best, so nobody would try to steal
it from him) everything.

“She’d find a way to tell us. She always signs the

letters with ‘cousin’, if she was watched, she would
sign it off as ‘confidant,” Regulus said. “She did that
when her letters weren’t safe and were not
expected answer. She did that when we were
younger and exchanging secrets and complaints
about our parents. She knew I would read this.”

Anne nodded.

“This is real information and this is heavy

information. She thinks this might be the last bit of
information she might pass to us in a while,” Anne
said. “They are targeting two of the people in the
inside of the Order, one being the right-hand-man
since Dumbledore was still alive. This isn’t going to
be a fight; this is going to be a battle. The last
battle.” Anne frowned. “Where did they get the
schedule from?”

“Fucking Todd Keen!” Moody roared. Anne looked

at him in surprise.

“Todd Keen?” she asked.

She had never heard that name before, in either

timeline. Did she miss something?

James slapped the table, Lily jumped beside him.

“I knew that stupid boy had something off about

him, he’s so… nervous,” James said.

Sirius rolled his eyes.

“He isn’t nervous because he’s a traitor, James,

he’s nervous because he’s into you,” Sirius said.
“Everybody noticed. He cried when you talked
about Lily, remember?”

“He said it was because he thought it was so

romantic,” James said.

“He cried because he knew that he had no chance

whatsoever with you,” Sirius insisted.

Anne sighed. It was in moments like these that she

saw Harry in James in more than face; they shared
the same obliviousness and incapability of
understanding emotions besides the basic ones,
other than that, Harry was so similar to Lily that
she could understand the way Petunia looked at
him when he would talk.

“How do we know that the person that passed the

information was this… Todd Keen?” Anne asked.

“Mozhan warned me,” Alastor answered. “She came

to me to talk about some days off because her
parents were coming to visit England when she told
me that he seemed a bit too… chummy with
Rookwood.”

“Rookwood is not a known Death Eater, even if he’s

in the Inner Circle, he’s used mostly as a puppet,
not a source,” Anne said.

“I thought she was just being judgmental, I mean

the two did seem to be sleeping together, but
something changed after that,” Moody added. “He
started acting… off. Asking more questions, asking
for extra-time in the training room and even going
as far as working extra hours. I thought he was
trying to get a promotion after he graduated, get to
a job where he could spend paying-time with his
lover or whatever. I stopped giving him
information, but I gave him extra time.”

“He might have stolen it,” Anne said.

“He most certainly did,” Sirius said.

“What’s the plan?” Emmeline asked.

Anne took a deep breath, mind working way too

fast for her to put everything into words right away.
She leaned back on her chair, hands on her lap as
her finger tapped on her right knee as she formed a
plan.

She looked up at Sirius.

“Does anyone know you asked out?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Sirius said.

“It’s nobody’s business,” Moody said. The truth is

that he had the hope that Sirius, powerful and
strong wizard with determination of admirable
morals, would come back to the force, so he hadn’t
told anyone yet. He had given him until March to
completely decide. “Nobody knows.”

“Then, for all they know, you were away sick,

Sirius,” Anne said. “And the schedules won’t
change, Moody, you will go and put Sirius and
James on it as well. We need the four of you to
take the fire; it’ll rain when it’s time.”

“And the rest?” Emmeline asked.

“The rest will attack as soon as they get out of the

shadows,” Anne said. “Narcissa just gave us our
saving grace.”

Chapter 136: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Five -
Summary:
The eerie feeling before the battle.

THE ORDER’S PREPARATION

TW: SMUT IN THE FIRST PART; CAN BE

SKIPPED.

The Order’s day and preparations started way

before morning.

Anne sat almost the whole night in anxious

preparation beside Regulus, holding his hand as he
cried once more for his mother and his father and
all the things that he had to do to make them
happy; the torture, the killing, the responsibility he
had to take on his shoulders as a fourteen-year-old.
And then he held her as she cried for Harry, for
herself, for Hermione, Ron and all the people that
she couldn’t protect and that deserved nothing
more than happiness and a boring, nice, quiet life.

She kissed him on the lips once the clock hit three
in the morning, holding him tight anyways.

“Love me,” she requested.

“I always love you,” he answered, kissing her lip

once more.

“No, no,” she said, pulling away from him, still lying
in his arms, lying on top of him. “Love me. If you
think we can, I want it. I want you.”

He blinked. Those type of touches were hardly ever

happening ever since he had come back from the
dead; he hadn’t initiated and neither had she. They
both had assumed that, because of the stress the
war was causing, they didn’t want to be touched
and didn’t want to pressure the other into anything.
But Anne couldn’t hold back anymore.

“We can try,” he said.

And trying was enough, trying meant he cared and

trying meant he was there.

He kissed her again, his lips embracing her bottom

lips with care.

“Is the door locked?” he asked. She chuckled,

nodding at him. “Good, good. Just to make sure
nobody is walking into us again.”

He moved at once, flipped her onto her back and

climbing on top of her, kissing her lips, face and
neck with little kisses that made her giggle. Until
she held his face in place, kissing him full on the
lips and deepening it as soon as he stopped trying
to make her laugh – he melted into the kiss, his
weight on top of her becoming heavier as their
intertwined legs started to move. His knee touched
the middle of her legs, she grunted.

He smirked into the kiss.

“Take that smugness out of that beautiful face of

yours, Little Prince,” she warned.

“Whatever you ask me, Princess,” he joked back.

Pushing the knee against her, he kissed her neck,

one of his hands holding onto her waist and the
other was holding onto the pillow as he used his
elbow to hold himself to a position where he
wouldn’t just simply crush her completely. It was
the noise that she made the made him grunt as her
own leg brushed against his hardening cock.

It was natural, his hips moving against her and her

hips moving against him. It had been a long time
since something felt natural at all in his life, and
Regulus was thankful that she had initiated the act.

Gently, he reached for her pyjama shirt, pulling it

up and helping Anne sit up to pass it over her back,
throwing it to the end of the bed, watching her
already naked breasts appearing to his sights. He
had taken glimpses of it when she was showering in
the morning and he went to brush his teeth and
through it hardened him, he had swallowed down
his desire for all the things that they had to do. But
now, as he looked back at her face, she just
nodded, leaning back and raising her chest towards
him. He kissed the marvellous skin, sucking on the
nipple – she moaned, jaw opening. Her legs
tightened around his.

He chuckled.

“It’s been a while,” was her excuse.

“Yes, believe it or not, I know,” he joked back.

Her hands massaged his shoulder lightly before

tugging at his own sleeping shirt, the small smirk
on her lips making clear what she wanted. He
pulled away, getting on his knees (although he
almost lost his balance in the way), taking his shirt
off and throwing it over his shoulder as well.

Without hitting him, Anne took her leg from

between his, putting on the other side of him,
opening access to him as she raised her hips,
pushing her sleeping trousers off. He helped her as
she kicked it off. She started to sit up once more to
reach for his trousers, but he pulled away and put a
hand on her belly, pushing her lightly and back to
the bed.

He was lying on his stomach, holding onto the fold

of the back of her knees, pulling her lightly towards
him as his mouth touched the fabric of her knickers
in a quick kiss. She moaned too loudly by the laugh
that follow as she covered her mouth,
unnecessarily, for her wards of privacy were still
erected around her bedroom. Regulus reached up,
taking her hand away from her mouth.

“I want to hear it,” he demanded.

She nodded to him, panting a few breaths as he

hooked his fingers on the sides of her knickers and
pulled. She hissed when the cold air hit her, but
she barely had time to register for Regulus was
already taking care of covering her with his tongue.
A yelp escaped her lips as she leaned back, hands
shaking as she caressed his hair – beautiful, black,
curls that her loved so much on him. And as his
tongue caressed her on her clit, specifically, she
moaned and twisted on his arms, it wasn’t a
surprise when the climax approached.

“Almost there,” she announced. “Almost.”

Regulus pulled away at once, though she tugged at

his hair out of reflex. She groaned as he sat on his
heels, watching her close her legs and tried to find
friction in her thighs as she pulled her legs away
and got up from the bed.

Anne was beautiful, anyone knew that. But naked

Anne was something only he had the pleasure and
honour of seeing whenever they wanted. He felt
like a real prince as she looked at him, expectantly
as he dragged himself further to the edge of the
bed and she tugged at his trousers, taking him out
and pulling his underwear at once, his cock hanging
completely erect upwards.

She got on her knees.

“May I?” she asked.

“Whenever you want, darling,” he said.

She smiled, taking a hold of him and pumping a

few times before her mouth covered the head of his
penis, making him throw his head back and take in
a shuddering breath. He held onto the sheets so he
wouldn’t move and end up choking her by accident.
He watched one of her hands disappear to between
her legs to get some relief as she took care of his
pleasure for a moment.

“My darling, the love of my life,” he mumbled more

to himself than to her as she took him deeper into
her mouth. He shuddered once more. “Yes, good
girl. So beautiful, so special.” That made her look
up at him curiously, making him groan and moan at
the sight of her on her knees, looking up at him.
“Merlin, Anne! More!”

She took in as much of him as she could

comfortably, feeling the throbbing inside of her
mouth and pulling when he petted her back in
warning. She smiled at him as she got up from her
knees.

He opened his arms to her, feet still on the ground,

sitting on the bed. She straddled him with some
ease for he held onto her behind as she took the
balance.

“Are you still on the Potion?” he asked.

“Shit,” she groaned, pulling away from him.

Anne stood up once more and walked to her

dresser.

“We can use the Charm,” he offered, knowing she

hated the taste.

Regulus wouldn’t complain about her taking her

time, he was quite happy with the view of her
naked backside as she leaned down to get the small
vial that she had kept within the box for almost
three months at that point. She groaned at the
taste, cringing at the aftertaste. He chuckled.

“Mum’s pregnant while using the Charm, I’m quite

happy with the Potions, thank you,” she answered,
walking back to him, she opened her arms to him
and he enveloped her waist with his arms as she
straddled him once more. “We said we’d wait for all
of this to finish to think of… more.”

He nodded, no complaint on his tongue.

“It’ll be over soon,” he promised.

She took him by the base, kissing him deeply as

she led him to her entrance and sat on him. He
moaned into her mouth as she pulled slightly away,
forehead still connected to one another as they
allowed their delighted noises to come out.

Anne pulled further.

“It’ll be over soon,” she answered.

He put her hands of the place her thighs connected

to her hips, hand resting on the fold of her body.
She moved her hip forward ever so slightly,
moaning as if that was request enough to Regulus;
and it was, but Regulus couldn’t move.

“What is it?” she asked when he didn’t move. “Are

you alright? Do you want to stop?”

Regulus shook his head.

Anne was on top of him, her hand on his chest,

right above the scars that were left behind on him;
she wasn’t cold and wet like those creatures had
been, but that doesn’t mean that her weight wasn’t
something terribly similar to the feeling that it had
been as they topped him, ready to drag him
underwater.

“May I stay on top?” he asked, voice wavering.

He cursed himself and his voice mentally when he

saw Anne jump away from him. Anne was off of
him in the next second, eyes searching into his for
any signs of a flashback, any sign of
hyperventilation. But there was nothing more than
slight paleness on his skin.

“We can stop,” she said.

“I don’t want to stop,” he said.

“Maybe you don’t want, but you need to –”

“Anne,” he said firmly. She blinked up at him as

she sat down on the bed. “I’m alright. Just, give me
a moment.”

Anne was quiet as she watched Regulus, now

slightly softer, pumping himself back to full
hardness.

Though clearly irritated with himself for allowing his

shadows to take over the nice moment Anne and
him were having, Regulus just had to look at Anne,
eyes worried and expectant glued at him, to make
him – filled with desire – be filled with love all over
again as if he had just fallen.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said.

He stopped him ministrations on himself.

“Hands and knees?” he offered.

And Anne was happy to follow the offer as if it had

been an order. She was on her hands and knees on
top of the bed, Regulus climbed on the bed
following that, hands on her hips as he put himself
inside of her again. Anne moaned, back arching as
her elbows gave out. She stayed on her elbows and
knees now, this position making him go so much
deeper and Regulus groaned, her insides feeling so
much tighter.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Not at all, my love. Go on,” she said.

They had used that position twice in their

honeymoon; on the bed and kitchen at Verona in a
hurry while the food was getting ready. This time it
felt as good, if not better than the other times since
there was no anxiety of something new, it was just
Regulus’ favourite position. He leaned forward,
kissing her back and the back of her head, moving
his hip with a thrust as he pulled her towards him.
The thrust was a lot harsher than they both
expected, but his tip hit exactly the place that
made her throw her head forward and scream into
the sheets in surprise and pleasure.

“Oh, do that again!” she said. And he did. “Holy

shit!” and once more. “Fucking hell! Yeah!”

He smiled, leaning once more to kiss her, pushing

her hair away from the back of her neck for a light
bite, making her arch her back once more.

He put one of his hands on her shoulder, pulling her

to her knees, her back flat against his chest as he
hugged her from behind, hips stuttering against
her.

“This won’t take long,” he warned.

“Almost there, almost!” she warned in response.

She reached back, putting a hand over his

shoulder, turning herself around just enough to
reach for a kiss as they moved in tandem. They
were both struggling to breathe, panting through
their movement.

Regulus traced the scar on her back.

Anne screamed as she reached her climax. Then,

she, boneless, tried to hold onto the headboard of
the bed as Regulus continued thrusting inside of
her, feeling her walls tightening even more around
him, squeezing his own climax out of him as he
moaned loudly, falling over her and holding onto
the headboard as well, trapping her in between his
arms as they both tried to get their breath back.

“I love you,” he said, kissing her neck, still inside of

her. “I love you so much, Anne.”

“Tell me you’ll be alright tomorrow,” she said,

turning to look at him over her shoulder. “Tell me
that you’ll come back home no matter what.”

He frowned.

“I’ll be always waiting for you. Where you go, I’ll

go, Anne,” he answered.

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but nodded.

He slowly pulled out of her, their fluids running
down to her leg as he sat beside her, trying to
make his legs work to go get something to clean
her up.

“I love you, Regulus. I’ll do anything to make sure

our family is safe,” she said.

“Your parents will be fine.”

“Our family, Reggie,” she corrected. The one in the

future. The one that they had imagined. The one
that made sure to leave Anne alive – that was her
promise of coming back home to him if he was
willing to take her no matter what happened. “My
parents, Mia, your brother, Remus… Narcissa,
Laurie. They’ll all be fine. Our future will be fine,
because that’s what I’m fighting for tomorrow.”

“I’ll always fight for what you’re fighting,” he said

when she looked at him. “If you’re fighting to make
the sky red, I’ll buy the bloody paint, Anne.”

Nobody seemed to have really slept during the

night.

At five-thirty, they were up and walking around the

Manor, the whole Order had stayed over for the
preparations. Breakfast was set up, but not many
people seemed to be able to eat it, the nausea of
anxiety choking them up. After some people ate,
they took a nap of less than twenty minutes on the
parlour. Warm clothes, but ones that didn’t restrict
movements were chosen and people changed
clothes more than once as they moved around to
wake up and be sure nothing could end up
happening.

It was seven in the morning when Minerva

McGonagall, from Hogwarts, entered in contact with
the Order, telling them that she feared for the
proximity of the village with the castle. It wasn’t
even that close, but with curious children and with
so many of them, she had the right for being
worried about it.

It was eight in the morning with they decided that

the people who would not fight to Hogwarts. Lily
Potter, Alice Longbottom and Molly Weasley went to
Hogwarts; all pregnant.

That morning, as she changed her clothes to

warmer ones since the school was so cold, in the
bedroom with her husband, Lily showed nothing but
fear and anxiety in her eyes, holding onto his hands
for most of the process.

“Please, be careful,” Lily said to James, fixing his

coat around him. She was shaking lightly. “This
isn’t fair.”

“You’re pregnant,” he said to her. “You’re not

fighting.”

“I’m going to be safe and sound inside of Hogwarts,

inside walls of stone and surrounded by children
while you’re the one fighting for your life outside in
the snow,” she shook her head. “James, how is this
fair?”

“You’re protecting those children you’ll be

surrounded with and protecting our child inside of
you,” James answered. He caressed the side of her
face, pushing a strand of her red-hair away from
her face. She blinked her green eyes at him.
“You’re doing the most important thing you could
right now; you’re growing a whole new life and
protecting others at the same time. You’re so
strong! You’re amazing.”

“Come with me,” she mumbled at him.

“I can’t,” he said. “I need to fight, I can’t stand by

and let our daughter fight.”

“Anne can –”

“Anne will not come to safety and you know that,

Lily,” he said, shaking his head at her. “She
wouldn’t give up fighting and I’m not giving up on
her, but I’m begging you that you do to protect the
baby. Anne and I can fend for ourselves, but what
about the baby? The baby needs you.”

She nodded, taking in her mission completely. It

was more than just protecting Hogwarts with the
professors if the time came to it and protecting the
unborn child inside of her at the same time. It
wasn’t a difficult one, but that didn’t mean it didn’t
scare her – she would far from her family; her
husband and daughter fighting a battle that she
knew people would end up losing their lives while
she would be sitting out.

Still, she went at eight o’clock by the floo. Alice

kissed her husband goodbye and followed. Molly
kissed her husband, children and brothers before
going away and Mia took the already born
Weasley’s children to Andromeda’s house.

Mia came back alone.

The Order seemed to flock together around the

house, always occupying less than three rooms at
once. It was around nine when they all found
themselves revising the plan once more in dining
table.

It was ten in the morning when Aberforth left

through the floo to go to his pub, which he opened
and, discreetly opened the passage to Hogwarts. It
was a two-way street; if something happened at
Hogwarts, the children would be able to come to
Hogsmeade and escape through the back and if
something happened in Hogsmeade and they were
losing, the people would be able to run to Hogwarts
and he would close the passage.

“It’s a good idea,” Anne said to Regulus once they

had some privacy. “In my timeline, they opened
the passage once the battle started and the
children were passed through quickly to get out and
some went through the Disappearing Wardrobe.”

He did not ask him what that wardrobe was.

To not be too suspicious, it took another hour or so

for Elphias, Caradoc and Edgar move outside of the
wards to Apparate to Hogsmeade, walking and
laughing as if it was a normal day to Aberforth’s
pub, sitting near the window for a clear view as
they sipped water spelled to look like beer and ate
something as they talked in low-voices through the
plans once more in discreet fear.

Emmeline’s shift started at 12:00.

“Don’t let me die,” she said to Moody as she

grabbed the floo. “I’m being serious, Alastor, don’t
let me die there. I have a brother I need to take
care of once my parents are dead; and I want them
dead soon.”

“I’ll be there soon,” he said. “I’ll kill them myself if I

need to.”

Anne watched, seeing the fear appearing on

Moody’s eyes as Emmeline flooed away.

“I love you,” Sirius said to Remus. He turned to his

brother. “Take care of yourself, you little shit,” he
warned before turning to Anne. “Don’t get in
trouble, don’t throw yourself in harm’s way. I love
you.”

And with that, Sirius was gone as well.

Lunch was ready and put on the table by 12:30.

Coco and Kreacher focusing so much on the food so
not to get too worried about the people leaving the
house and the people that were still to leave soon
in a fight where their Masters might not come back
from.

They all went back to the parlour after a while, all

just trying to rest because there was more coming
soon and they had to wait for the right time to start
moving without giving out that they knew that they
were coming. It was two in the afternoon when Lily
came back into the house through the floo, making
James jump to go to her.

“What? What happened? Are you alright?” he

asked.

“I’m alright,” she dismissed. “Here to pass a

message. Anne and Mia need to hear this, you, too,
Moody.”

Though she had just said those three names,

everybody was paying attention to her words as
Anne and Mia got up from the sofa to get closer to
her, but Moody didn’t move from the chair he was
sitting near the window.

“We decided what we’ll do with the kids. The

younger ones will come here if the battle gets
within eye-range, is that alright?” Lily said, asking
Mia.

“You’ll be Mistress of the House soon enough, Lily,

dear, you can do whatever you want,” she said.

“It’ll be 278 children,” Lily specified. “First to third

year, some of the younger children of the fourth as
well, the others want to stay in the school. They
won’t be allowed to fight, of course, so they’ll be
gathered at the Great Hall and the professors and
us are going to take turns,” she said added. “From
inside the castle, we are protected by wards and
the walls.”

“Do you know my spells by heart?” Severus asked

from where he was standing.

Lily and James looked at him at the same time.

“It’s a good idea. Snape’s wards are really good,”

James said, frowning as if saying that was painful
for him. “Teach McGonagall and you’ll be safer than
ever.”

Severus, once more, wrote down his warding spells

with instructions, mumbling to himself before giving
it to Lily, not saying anything else to her as she
thanked him, just walking away to stand near the
door where he was already standing on before as if
he had done nothing important, not just protected
a whole school with spells he had created as a
sixteen-year-old.

And as Lily disappeared and the children started to

appear, they all knew it was almost time.

Chapter 137: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Six -
Summary:
Almost there.

ONE MORE MOMENT

By the fourth hour of the afternoon of that February

day, the weather made the day outside cold and
darkening quickly. It was a dark moment in many
ways at that point; the battle that was to decide
the future of their world was growing upon them,
towering over the magical people in great
intimidation. Yet, people pushed on, ready to turn
the page and find themselves in a new, magical
and, finally, good chapter of their lives.

Anne meditated in her seat at the dining table,

alone with her thoughts for the first time that day.
Mentally, she recited time and time again the
names of the people she was fighting for and the
list was growing more and more by the second –
past, present and the imaginations of her future all
together, merging into hope inside of her chest and
burning its mark on her determination. The people
she would get and the people that she lost, finally
holding the same weight on her mind and life.

And she stayed there, head down, lips mumbling

things without a sound until the very moment that
Regulus touched her knees, kneeling down himself
in front of her so his face was on her sight with a
small, hesitant smile.

“Princess? It’s time,” he said. She nodded, getting

up and taking another glimpse into the children on
the backyard and ignoring the ones in the front
garden as she opened the door, quietening them
down. They watched the couple. “Do you have
everything?” he added his next question, still in the
mudroom, voice low enough for the children not to
hear.

“I have my dagger and my wand,” she said. “Do

you have your ring?”

He showed her his hand, the ring still in perfect

state on his finger.

“Andromeda is coming soon to stay with the

children, she’s bringing the Weasley’s children and
her own girl,” Regulus said. “She’ll be willing to
prepare an infirmary if someone sends word for her
to do so.”

“I’ll have Aberforth do so when the battle starts,”

Anne said.

They stepped outside of the ward, holding each

other’s hand and twirling, using the movement to
Apparate away from the Manor and almost a whole
kilometre away from Hogwarts, where they walked
under the Disillusionament Charm as quietly as
they could and leaving as few tracks as they could,
wand always in hand in case there was someone on
watch near Hogwarts, but, apparently, there was
no one.

They only got to Hogwarts almost at five of the

afternoon, walking through the unlocked front
gates and feeling Severus’ wards pushing them
lightly for they recognised them as familiar enough
to get through, since Lily was probably the one that
took care of that entrance of the castle.

“Fabian, Gideon and Arthur are probably getting on

Three Broomsticks right now,” Regulus mumbled as
they walked through the front door. “Why are you
spacing them out so much?”

“If they are coming in time slots spaced out, in

small groups, they will look like they are just
having fun, especially if they are getting to different
parts of the village. It doesn’t get as much
attention as a big group coming or several ones
coming to the same place, even if in different
times,” Anne explained. “The ones that went in the
morning are left in trustworthy places because if
they are there for too long, it gets suspicious as
well, especially because not all of them are actually
eating and drinking as much as people usually do in
places such as a pub, you know?”

Regulus nodded. Though her idea was good, he

would’ve done some things differently from what
she did. Perhaps, he would’ve sent bigger groups,
scared the Death Eaters away and attacked them in
the headquarters, similarly to what she had done in
his house months ago, however, he knew that he
would be one of the only ones getting through the
wards of Malfoy Manor, so he had kept quiet.

As they passed in front of the Great Hall, he turned

to her once more, ignoring how the children looked
at them after he greeted Lily with a solemn nod.

“Do you think Mary and Remus going out together

in Madame Puddifoot will get some attention?
Everybody knows he likes men,” Regulus said as
they started to up the stairs.

“Might get some, you’re right, but I don’t think

they’ll mind too much of it,” Anne said.

“Why?”

“Because Remus went out with girls before as well,”

she explained. “Mary being one of them, according
to my dad and your brother.”

Regulus raised his eyebrows almost as if to say to

her that he hadn’t known about that before, after
all he hadn’t been one to know who was going out
with who or anything like that. He had too much to
do as Heir of House ever since he was fourteen, too
much trouble to balance reminding everything his
mother told him and everything that Narcissa told
him.

Walking through the corridors of Hogwarts gave

them an odd feeling.

Both their lives felt like they had started in that

place; Hogwarts felt much more than a home, it felt
like a mother – and not Walburga’s kind, but the
type of mother of hard love, the one that allows
you to make a mistake and learn from it. That
presence was more than a building, it was much
more respectful.

Anne shivered.

“What is it?” he asked, worried.

“I can’t believe I won’t ever walk these corridors

again,” she said, sighing.

He half-smiled at her.

“It’s sad to think about it,” he admitted. “I learnt

everything from the world in here and, now, I’m
fighting to protect the people inside and I’m seeing
them as children. Did we look that young?”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” she said, forcing a smile

out of herself. He smiled back at her, thankful that
she was trying to keep a conversation going with
him. “We are young, Regulus. We just… know
more.”

“Been through more,” he corrected.

“Let’s make sure they don’t have to go through the

same things that we did, alright?” she asked.

He thought of a horrible image. Laurie was older in

his mind and Bellatrix had him pined to the ground
by the arms as she straddled his stomach,
screaming at his face so hard that he was crying
and sobbing, begging for her to stop. She raised
her hand to hit him and –

He shook his head.

“When we are parents, we won’t do anything that

the people that raised us did to us,” he said in a
solemn tone, hope in the back of his mind and
voice.

“We’re better people. I believe that this means we’ll

be better parents as well,” she said.

Before going towards the opening on the wall that

would lead to the Headmistress’ Study, he stopped
her, holding her hands and putting his lips on hers
with a heavy heart. He didn’t want anything to
happen in that battle – he wanted to take Anne
back home and lie in bed with her until the world
around them accepted that everything would be
better if they just got along, but his pacific
fantasies were nothing against the real world and
he needed to fight if he wanted the future to be
better than the past or the present.

She let go of his hands to hold his face and gently

stroke it. He stroked her waist in response, holding
her closer.

“I love you,” she whispered into the kiss.

“I love you,” he answered kissing her again.

The cleaning of a throat made Anne almost jump

away from him while he, embarrassed, looked
around slightly taken aback, but he knew that
cleaning of throat very well. And he was correct.

McGonagall was standing behind them with her

arms crossed and raised eyebrows.

“Though I’m glad to know that the relationship

survived, I do not agree to public displays of
affection between students, let alone alumni,” she
said, the strong Scottish accent making Anne
cringe.

To worse the embarrassing situation, behind

McGonagall, Mia stood, a small smile on her lips of
amusement and her hands resting on her hips as if
she was ready to scold them, but couldn’t hold her
happiness back.

“You knew?” Anne asked, blushing.

“Albus did guess and we betted,” McGonagall

admitted. Regulus raised his eyebrows in
amusement. “You’re no longer students, I don’t
need to lie about something like this anymore.”

Anne snorted as Regulus looked nothing short of

scandalised.

“We came for the Hat,” Anne said.

Regulus put his hands behind his back, nodding to

himself as McGonagall raised a single eyebrow in
curiosity.

“The Sorting Hat?” she asked. “Whatever for?”

“I have a question for him.”

She felt alone in the Headmistress’ Office, she

stood in front of the desk, wondering what she
would do next to get what she wanted, even if
Regulus was sitting on the corner of the office, legs
crossed and in complete silence to give her time
and space to think, but not wanting to leave her
alone.

If the Sword of Gryffindor – the real one, at that,

and not the copy at display at the corner – was
truly inside the hat as it had been in her own
timeline, she needed to convince the Hat that she
deserved to get it. It would need a true Gryffindor.
Minerva McGonagall hadn’t managed to get it, so
Anne’s confidence had plummeted and she was in
the depths of despair, fearing that she, too,
wouldn’t get it.

She closed her eyes, begging her brother’s spirit to

help her somehow.

Anne put the hat over her head and took a deep
breath.

“Hello?” she mumbled.

“Oh, my, my. I have been waiting for you for a long
time now, Anne Potter,” said the Hat, almost
tasting her name in his voice. He seemed genuinely
happy by her presence. “The late Headmaster
Dumbledore was certainly very fond of the thing
you taught him, he worked very hard for you.”

“I came to ask for a favour,” she admitted.

“You want to know your House?” the Hat guessed.

She opened her eyes, Regulus’ curious eyes looking

away from her. She smiled to herself.

“Not really,” she admitted. “I’m a Slytherin.”

“Are you?’

Something in the Hat’s tone made her hesitate.

“I am. I spent most of my academic career as a

Slytherin and just pretended on my last two years,”
she said. “I’m a Slytherin.”

“I don’t deny it,” said the Hat. “You are a Slytherin,

but are you only a Slytherin?” the Hat wondered.

Regulus was clearly listening with a lot of attention,

eyes narrowing as he heard the Hat and Anne
talking.

“One can only be one House,” she said.

“Who made that decision?”

“You,” she answered.

The Hat truly chuckled. She frowned to herself and

looked at Regulus, searching for explanation in his
eyes, but all that she found was confusion looking
right back at her. Neither knew what was
happening.

“No, no, no. Those decisions were made by you all,

humans, just search your mind to find your most
desperate desire to fit in,” the Hat said. “Perhaps
you are correct and you are Slytherin, I can agree
with that. You are ambitious enough. You want
everything.”

That wasn’t a secret. Everybody that she knew in

her past had called her ‘ambitious’ or ‘selfish’, or
told her that she was ‘biting more than she could
chew’. That had always been part of who she was,
but that didn’t mean she completely understood
what the Hat was trying to tell her.

“I want everything?” she repeated. “Well, right

now, I only want –”

“You want to be a Slytherin because that’s the only

thing you still have from your past,” the Hat said,
cutting her off so suddenly that she jumped at the
sound of her voice. “But, thought you’re a
Slytherin, people change from when they were
eleven. You are so much more than a House.”

“I –”

“You are a true Gryffindor,” he said, once more

cutting her off. “You are a true Slytherin.”

And she wanted to believe that, not only because of

the sword that was in the game, but because of
what and who she wanted to be. She wanted to be
courageous, she wanted to be ambitious, she
wanted to have the nerve to see the problems and
deal with the them face-to-face and she wanted the
determination that only came with resourcefulness.
She wanted to be a Gryffindor, but she also wanted
to be a Slytherin.

“Does this mean you will help me?” she asked.

“Yes,” the Hat said. “You can have the sword. Albus
did tell me that you would come looking for it. You
can have it, take it and defend the school.”

“With my life,” she answered.

Another chuckle.

“Careful with your words. Sometimes, they can

come true,” the Hat said.

She took it off of her head, not wanting to hear

anything else he had to say, eagerly shoving her
hand into the Hat and searching with her hand into
the dark, until her fingers brushed the handle, so
she pulled the sword, feeling its weight as her arm
shook a bit to pull it out and rest the hat back on
the table.

“Anne?” Regulus called. “Are you alright?”

“I don’t understand what he was trying to say,” she

admitted.

Regulus shook his head lightly.

“Sometimes, it’s better to not try and understand,”

he dismissed.

But they did know what that meant, they just didn’t
want to say it out loud. They didn’t want to think of
Anne going down in battle, because they know
neither would end up with a happily ever after like
they had planned.

Anne started moving towards the door, but Regulus

reached for her arm, holding onto it lightly just to
stop her, not trying to hurt her.

“Annie, darling,” he said. She looked at him,

ignoring the eyes of the portraits on them filled
with curiosity. “Use the ring for me, please.”

He took out the ring from his finger as he let go of

her, the wards she had put to warn her that
Regulus took out the ring making her feel the
dread. She watched the ring on the palm of his
head as he offered it to her.

“Regulus –” she started.

“I beg of you to wear it tonight,” he said. “You are

going to be the biggest target of that bloody battle,
while Severus and I will be on the side lines looking
for the bloody snake in case she’s not in the
battle.”

“You know how to kill her?” Anne asked.

“I’ll find a way,” he dismissed. “Severus’ fyendifyre

is good.”

Anne sighed, reaching for her back pocket and

taking out the covered dagger that he had given to
her and giving it to him.

“Here, take it back,” she said. “It’s still imbibed in

the venom. It’s far more likely one of you two will
find the snake than I seeing her in the middle of
battle. If you find her, kill her right away. Don’t
hesitate. No matter what happens, she needs to
die, Regulus, so we can finally live.”

“I’ll only take it if you take the ring,” he said.

“Don’t try –”

“Then I won’t take it,” he said firmly. “You’re in so

much danger tonight, so much more than me.
Please. Anne, please, so I can focus and have some
peace of mind through tonight. Take this. Wear it.”

The pleading tone and those eyes, grey as stells,

but as soft and as vulnerable as an unstable cloud
in a rainy day.

Anne sighed, unable to say no. She took the ring

from his hand and put it on her finger, spelling it to
tighten to her finger’s size so she wouldn’t lose it.

She turned to him, embracing him at once. He

hugged her tight and she felt his hand caressing
the back of her head, fingers entering in between
her hair.

“We’ll be fine,” he said. “You’ll be able to use that

bloody sword tonight, Anne.”

“He’ll be dead by my hand, Regulus,” she mumbled

against his shoulder. “He needs to die by my hand.
This is my last act of revenge and I want this to be
the last shattering of my soul.”

“We’ll be there, by you and with you.”

“Then, let’s go,” she said, pulling away and kissing

him one more time. One last time. “We have a war
to win.”

The group stood behind Anne as she opened the

double doors to the Requirement Room after
passing in front of it a few times. Minerva
McGonagall was quite aware of that room, but was
surprised that Anne knew it, Mia, however, was
blinking in shock as door suddenly appeared on the
wall that she had passed in front of almost every
day in her school years.

“How do you know about this room?” Minerva

asked. “I only found out about this after I became
Headmistress. Did Dumbledore tell you about this?”

“No, I knew it already,” she dismissed. “I used to

come here a lot.”

By the way Regulus ended up blushing, though he

tried not to, neither Mia nor Minerva asked
anything about what she would do in there, but
Minerva certainly did think of putting some Prefects
near the room to make sure no other student would
have an ‘escapade’ there.

They walked into the room. It wasn’t big this time

around, Regulus noticed, and it looked nothing like
Gryffindor’s Common Room or Anne’s bedroom, it
was barely bigger than a cupboard and there was
another door on the wall, which Anne quickly
opened, revealing a tunnel where one would have
to go hunched through.

“Where does it lead to?” Mia asked.

“Aberforth’s pub, isn’t it?” Regulus guessed.

“Yes,” Anne said. “Directly behind Ariana

Dumbledore’s portrait.”

She was the first to climb to the passage. Regulus

stood to the side to let Mia and Minerva go before
him and then climbed up, closing the small door
behind him, casting lumos and biting into his wand,
hunching down and continuing the way, shivering
when he saw a spider, but said nothing. It was
almost two whole minutes walking in that manner
and his back screamed in pain by the time he saw
light coming from the other side of the ‘tunnel’ they
were in and he knew it was the way out.

He took the wand out of his mouth, holding onto it.

Anne jumped out, helping McGonagall and Mia
before turning to him and taking his hand to help
him down as well.

“My back is killing me,” he complained.

“You’re such an old man,” Anne laughed.

Minerva said nothing as she stood tall as if she

hadn’t hunched back and Mia, though cracking her
back with a face, said nothing either. Regulus did
feel old and fragile for a second as Anne rolled her
eyes at him.

They were in the back of the pub by the things

piled up. It was safe for now.

“Where will we go now? Do we have to –”

Wait?, he had wanted to say.

Too late.

A loud, shrill scream made his blood run cold in his

veins as Anne’s wonderful and warm eyes got cold
and she turned.

“Now we fight,” she said.

Chapter 138: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Seven -
Summary:
The fight.

BATTLE, PART I

Emmeline had her back tensed up for hours now,

her neck screaming in pain as she turned to look
around her once more. Sirius, standing beside her,
sighed and rolled his eyes at her lack of discretion.

“If there was someone ready to attacks us, they

would’ve done so already,” Sirius said to her. “And
they would know that you knew that they are
around her by the number of times you’re looking
around. Emmeline, try to look a little bit more
inconspicuous.”

“You’re not the main target tonight, are you,

Sirius?” she said, bitterly.

“Not tonight, but every other night,” he answered,

raising his eyebrows at her as if daring her to
answer. “And I still go out drinking with my friends
every now and again without looking her a crazy
bastard, looking everywhere, even if it’s just a
bloody bunny hopping around the village.”

She blushed.

The way that she had jumped when a bunny

hopped out of a bush when they were walking
further into the village had been embarrassing and
she doubted that Sirius would one day forget about
the scene that had made him laugh enough to hold
onto one of the store’s walls and lean down,
complaining that his ribs were hurting.

“Come on,” she said, frowning as she looked at the

watch on her wrist. “It’s almost seven, we need to
go to the centre of the village.”

“The meeting point, I know,” Sirius said. “I might

have quit this job, but that doesn’t mean I forgot
everything that was taught to me, I still know what
a Meeting Point is.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

Though they had never been close and it was the

first time that they were alone together, Emmeline
knew Sirius could be annoying when he wanted,
she just hadn’t expected he could be so care-free
even when her life was in danger.

As they walked in silence, kicking the snow away

from their way, however, there was something else
making her so scared and annoyed at everything.
There was an idea haunting her mind, a fear that
didn’t seem to want to die, no matter how much
she tried to squash it to the back of her mind.

“Do you think my parents will be here?” she asked

in a voice so low that Sirius didn’t hear. “Sirius,”
she called out. He looked at her, hands on his
pocket. “Do you think my parents are going to try
to kill me?”

He frowned before biting the inside of his cheek.

“Do you want honesty?” he asked. There was

hesitation on his voice, but his eyes were firm.

“Yes. I need to prepare myself,” she admitted.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “But if it comes to it, leave
them to me. Though, I doubt I’ll have a chance,
Moody already said they are to suffer by his
hands.”

They weren’t friends, but she had never been that

grateful to someone. Sirius, even in his honesty,
tried to be somewhat kind to her, whom he did not
like. She noticed, at once, that it was because of
how familiar the story was to him.

With a few more moments of silence, they were in

the very middle of the village, standing near a
light-post. Sirius leaned against it, not caring that
his coat got dirtied with snow. Emmeline sighed
and looked around again, this time to look for the
next group that would ‘take over’ their shift.

Through the window of Three Broomsticks, Sirius

managed to recognise the red hair of Arthur
Weasley gently peeking at them through the glass
and going back to conversation with his brothers-
in-law. He turned to make a comment about it to
Emmeline, but held his tongue when he saw two
figures slowly moving across the space that they
were standing in with their arms intertwined and
whispering amongst each other.

Sirius moved slowly to stand beside Emmeline.

“Two o’clock,” he warned.

Emmeline narrowed her eyes to try to see better.

“Isn’t that –”

She didn’t have time to answer.

The young girl of the couple turned around and the

wand branded through the air, a good and non-
verbal spell flying towards them before any other
warning. Sirius moved fast, raising his wand and
erecting a shield.

“GO!” he screamed.

Emmeline didn’t fumble with her wand; she just

threw another non-verbal spell towards the woman.
The woman’s cloak fell, revealing the face of Alecto
Carrow, letting go of her half-blind brother, Amycus
Carrow.

“CRUCIO!”

“EXPELLIARMUS!” Emmeline screamed.

Sirius glanced at the Three Broomsticks as a

woman screamed as loud as she could due to the
duel starting in the middle of the village’s street, he
saw Arthur, Fabian and Gideon running out of the
pub. He looked back at the couple, seeing, much to
their dismay, Moody running towards them as fast
as someone with a wooden leg could, but James
Potter was sprinting towards them like an animal.

“Expelliarmus! Expulso!” James was screaming,

wand branding through the air.

Amycus fell backwards, his blind side couldn’t have

seen them coming towards them, but his sister was
fast to protect him.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

James out of the way, throwing a non-verbal spell

at the same time.

It looked unfair, so many against the two. But soon

enough, the loud pops that sounded so much like
Muggle guns going off made sure to let everybody
know that Death Eaters were coming.

The panic was clear as people in dark clothes and

masks – at least some of them; the richer ones,
Moody had guessed – started to appear through the
white streets, ready to make them red.

Sirius put himself flat against a wall as he looked

around, counting the enemies his small group was
fighting and waiting for the others to get to the
centre of the village. He could hear the running
footsteps of his brothers and sisters in arms getting
there to help them as spells and curses flew over
their heads without a warning or worry. It’s a real
battle, not one of the training exercises Moody
made him go through. if someone falls to the
ground, nobody would help them up.

“EXPULSO!” he heard Emmeline yelling.

Sirius ran out of his hiding spot, running to

Emmeline in the right moment. Alecto managed to
get away from her spell, but not from Sirius.

“STUPEFY!” Sirius screamed.

Alecto was hit on the chest, falling to her knees

with the pain in her chest as Sirius sent another
spell towards her brother, this time she couldn’t
protect him. Amycus raised his wand, erecting a
shield.

“Leave him to me,” Emmeline said.

“Alright,” Sirius said. He turned to Alecto once

more. “Stupefy! Incarcerous!”

After the girl was unconscious and tied up, Sirius

turned his back to the duel to see the other battles
happening.

It was a scream of pure terror that made him jump

amongst the battle to see Remus Lupin in front of a
young woman that had been trying to run away
from the battlefield, Fenrir Greyback standing in
front of him wand in hand and teeth out.

“No!” Sirius screamed in fear.

Remus was terrified of Fenrir. He feared he would

simply freeze up in the moment that he needed to
fight. Sure, if he was bitten, there would be little to
no consequence, but Fenrir had a wand on him.

Running through the battlefield, jumping away from

a stray spell that Gideon had just throw away from
him coming from Crabbe, Sirius got to Remus as
fast as he could, wand already slashing through the
air.

“STUPEFY!”

Fenrir surprisingly defended himself, turning to

Sirius.

“Don’t know how to fight fair, boy?” he asked.

“Is that why you attack children, you bastard,”

Sirius answered.

There was no anger at the accusation, just a laugh

and that made the half-man, half-monster a lot
scarier to Sirius, but grateful that his attention was
on him, not on Remus, who was helping the young
woman up and ordering her to run away as fast as
she could towards the Hogwarts’ castle to tend the
cut above her eyebrow.

“Are you one of my boys?” Fenrir asked.

“Never!” Sirius spat towards him.

“Then you shall become!”

Fenrir jumped towards him, but Sirius was

someone that knew very well how to deal with
werewolves, after all he slept in the same bed as
one every night.

Sirius turned into Padfoot before his teeth even

brushed his skin, protecting himself and confusing
Greyback to the point of stumbling backwards in
surprise, turning to Remus almost as if expecting
an answer to what he had just seen, but Remus
didn’t answer him, he just raised his wand.

“EXPULSO!”

“Boy, I am your creator!” Fenrir said, defending

himself.

Sirius growled and snarled, even going as far as

barking once at the monster.

“You’re nothing of mine!” Remus said. “STUPEFY!

STUPEFY! EXPULSO! REDUCTO! BOMBARDA!”

But though the spells were behind redirected and

creating quite the chaos with the last two
explosions, nothing seemed to happen to Greyback.
But if there was something that a magical shield
couldn’t help him with, was another animal.

Sirius jumped with all the strength that his back

paws had towards the monster, teeth tearing the
skin and flesh, jaw locking so hard on the wand
arm of Greyback that the monster threw his head
back and wailed in pain, shaking his arm to try and
taking Sirius off of it, but Sirius’ felt his back legs
getting out of the ground and the world turning and
turning, but didn’t let go of his target.

“INCARCEROUS!” Remus screamed.

Greyback fell backwards, head hitting the ground

and snow so hard that blood tainted the white of
the streets.

Sirius yelped, one of his teeth breaking inside the

monster’s arms. He let go, finally. He limped back
to Remus before transforming back into his human-
form and spitting blood on the snow of the streets.

“Are you alright?” Remus asked.

“Fucking lost my tooth,” he said. “Is that my blood

or his?”

Remus looked at Greyback, tightening the ropes

around him before throwing another stupefy,
making the man who was already dizzy completely
become unconscious.

“I just want tonight to finish,” Remus grumbled.

Sirius sighed, nodding as an answer.

Anne ran through the streets without hesitation,

knowing that Regulus was running to the outskirts
of the village, but Minerva and Euphemia were
following her close behind. And as she got closer to
the centre, she watched several duels and even
trios of people battling one another.

Emmeline was working hard with Amycus, who was

throwing spell after spell against her, but she
seemed to not need help at all. Caradoc and
Rookwood were duelling hard to one another, but
as she looked away, she had to jump over a body.
Gibbon, a Death Eater, was dead by a blunt trauma
to his head by the way the blood was pooling, and
the one that had managed to do that was Elphias,
who had tried to go to Caradoc to help him, but
Karkaroff had gotten in the way.

“Anne Potter!” someone screamed.

She looked over her shoulder in surprise by her

name being screamed. Abraxas Malfoy had a
terribly wicked grin on his lips as he raised his
wand towards her. She yelped, already erecting a
shield. She knew she was looked for alive. Abraxas
wouldn’t dare to kill her. Unsurprisingly, the spell
that hit her wasn’t deadly.

“Go!” Mia said. “I’ll deal with him. Minerva, cover

her!”

And Mia attacked Abraxas, trying to get his

attention. It worked, since she was relentless, not
giving him enough time to try and attack Anne and
Minerva as they ran through the streets once more.

Minerva was covering Anne, raising shields around

her whenever a lost spells almost hit her. Anne
couldn’t pay attention, all that she could think of
was getting to the very tall man on the other side
of the battlefield, looking way too calm and
collected as he didn’t fight anyone, just waiting.

Someone crossed her way and she had to slow

down through her running. It was Moody, throwing
every spell that he knew against Antonin Dolohov,
who laughed and creaked as if there was nothing
wrong. However, when she started running again,
someone else stood in her way and this time the
man wasn’t distracted with someone else.

“You bitch!”

Rodolphus Lestrange was standing, thirty for

revenge for his brother. He looked terribly happy to
find her.

“Don’t,” she said.

“You killed my brother.”

“Don’t make me kill you,” she answered.

“You will not,” Minerva McGonagall said from

behind her. “Go. I’ll deal with him.”

Rodolphus shook his head.

“My talk isn’t with you, old bat,” he spat towards

her.

“It is now,” Minerva said, stepping forward.

With a circle with her wand above her head, fire

appeared on the ground, locking him and her inside
the circle where they were fight, leaving Anne out
of it and free to run out of the way of other duels.

She didn’t stop to worry, she just continued

running as fast as she could, this time without
someone covering her, just luck balancing above
her shoulders and promising Harry in her mind that
everything was going to end.

The image of Lucius Malfoy very clearly not trying

very hard to fight Edgar made her feel a bit more
hopeful, after all that meant that there was some
chance that he would change sides if needed. And
she felt better when she saw Fabian and Gideon
fighting Crabbe Sr. and Goyle Sr., together. Remus
and Sirius were fighting Fenrir Greyback together.
Frank and Bellatrix were fighting each other, very
clearly struggling for their power was similar to one
another. What was surprising was seeing Theodore
Nott barely fighting at all against Arthur Weasley,
though Jugson seemed to be going hard enough
against the man without the help of Nott.

James was right beside her and she hesitated.

Alone, he was fighting Yaxley, but as soon as she
thought of helping him, Mary MacDonald ran
towards them, raising her wand and attacking
Yaxley by his back. So, Anne continued running,
ignoring Aberforth fighting Selwyn and Mulciber by
himself, after all he seemed to have everything
under control.

“TOM!” she yelled as soon as she could see him

clearly.

He turned to her, eyes burning in clear distaste by

the name she had chosen to yell at him.

“Anne Potter,” he greeted, wand in hand, but not

moving to attack her right away. “How have you
been since the last time we met?”

“A lot better than you, of course,” she said. “How

are your ribs? Did the chandelier hurt you too
much?”

The grin in his lips did fall for one second too much,
making Anne smile to herself with the power that
she had over him – embarrassing him was so fun
and so easy, and yet, she knew the consequences
were devastating. Because either she liked it or
not, Tom Riddle was a very powerful wizard and
angering him did make things harder for her, but
she couldn’t help it. Embarrassing him, angering
him made him more powerful, more ruthless. But
not as much as her; not as much as she was dying
for revenge.

“REDUCTO!” screamed the Dark Lord.

“EXPULSO!” she screamed back.

Neither hit its target.

She waved her wand in a circle above her head, the

snow raising from the ground and flying towards
the man fighting against her. It doesn’t sound like
snow can do enough damage, but when it flies
towards someone with enough force, it can hurt
and even cut. It was no surprise that, though Tom
had raised his shield, some of the snow had
brushed against him, cutting his cheeks and arms,
and he ended up grunting with the pain.

But he slashed the air with his wand in response.

All windows of the street broke and the several

shards of glass moved to point at Anne from behind
his back.

She gasped for air with the shock and raised her
wand and made a shield. It was barely enough
time. The shards of glass were already flying
towards her as she squealed in fear, a small scream
escaping her throat when she felt her magic rattle
and try to hold on as tightly as possible. Most of the
shards were indeed stopped, some turned into sand
and fell to the ground, but, unfortunately, some did
pass. She yelped when a shard of glass cut her
cheek deep enough to make her lean down.

“STUPEFY! EXPULSO!” she screamed, feeling the

blood running down her cheek.

“Foolish girl!” he answered, easily blocking her. “It

seems that Dumbledore did teach you a thing or
two before we killed him.”

“If you’re trying to make me angry, talking about

killing him won’t work,” she answered.

She needed time.

Regulus was looking for Severus – who was to

come with Moody and James – in the outskirts of
town.

“We can talk about the fact that you are carrying a
sword with you,” he said. “Do you think yourself to
be the hero of some of the stories your parents told
you?”

Her hand tightened around her wand.

“I have a story to tell you, Tom,” she said. “And I’m

only telling it you because one of us won’t leave
this battlefield and I refuse to kill you or die without
you knowing completely how you ruined my life.”

He laughed.

“Child, this isn’t time for bed-time stories,” Tom

said.

“What about a revenge story?” she answered with

the question, raising her eyebrows. “What about a
story to why I know so much about yourself after
you went through everything to erase your past?”

“Dumbledore told you, girl,” he said. “That’s how

you know.”

“Dumbledore barely told me what he needed to, let

alone details of someone as insignificant as you,”
she answered. He threw a curse at her, but she
leaned out of the way. “Why don’t you let me show
you?”

His eyes narrowed.

That was when she attacked, her mind throwing

itself against his mental shields as hard as it could.
Looking into someone mind forcefully was certainly
a lot more complicated than slipping into it without
them knowing, because it was easy to push it
away. But showing something to someone without
letting them into one’s mind is completely…
maddening.

The lack of control was maddening.

Anne showed everything to Tom Riddle.

From the first memory she had, the image of living

inside a cupboard, the years passing by as people
died and suffered to protect her and her brother
from a world that wanted nothing more than to eat
them alive – and then she showed him the war, the
way her brother died, the way her friends wailed for
help and the way there was nothing she could’ve
done because they had missed parts of information.
However, she showed him enough to let him know
that they hadn’t missed anything this time around.

She pulled back at once.

Tom stumbled, confused and clearly surprised.

“You… you are…”

“Anne,” she answered.

“CRUCIO!” he screamed.

She tried to jump away from the way of the curse,

but there was nothing she could’ve done.

Her knees hit the ground as she tried to keep

herself from screaming, biting down and grinding
her teeth so hard that she feared they would crack.
She fell face first on the ground, nose hitting the
stones so hard that she tasted the blood. That was
when she couldn’t hold on anymore and her throat
burned as she screamed as loud as she could, mind
begging for someone to make it stop.

As suddenly as it started, it stopped.

“You didn’t defeat me once, what makes you think

you’ll defeat me now?” he asked, walking towards
her. With a kick, not too strong, on her stomach.
“And here I thought you had gotten yourself to
work out that you would be safe if you had stopped
being an idiot. Weren’t you supposed to be taking
care of your child?”

“Hard to, when I’m taking care of yours,” she

answered from the ground, coughing.

She spat. Blood. Was it from the nose? Had she cut
her mouth? Had one of her organs given up?

She pushed herself to all-fours before another kick

hit her, this time, however, on her face. She
screamed, falling to the ground. Her wand had
slipped her hand with the second kick and rolled on
the ground.

“You think this to not be fair. You think yourself a

child, a victim of the circumstances,” he mocked.
“I’ll take a page out of your thoughts, a memory
your pathetic brother shared. Come on, get up,” he
said.

Anne gasped when he took her by the back of her

coat and pulled her up. He was physically stronger
than he looked, she thought as she was forced to
stand, blood dripping from her cheek and nose to
her shirt and to the ground. She had a chance, she
thought as he turned his back to her, confident as
he leaned down to pick up her wand. The chance to
get the sword through his chest right at that
moment, however, she couldn’t do that until she
knew that the snake was dead.

“Let’s duel. A real, polite duel,” Voldemort said.

He took her right hand, putting her wand inside of

it and closing it around the wand.

“I’m going to kill you,” she managed to choke out.

“Oh, will you now?” he mocked. He laughed loudly.

“Come on, bow.”

She stood up straighter in clear pride.

She was Lady Anne Potter-Black, and she would not

bow to that man, not even if that meant the
difference between life or death.

“BOW!”

He threw another spell, a common and weak

stupefy aimed to her stomach, making her lean
down in pain, bowing to him. He did the same,
barely moving himself. It was the lack of respect
that made her straighten herself quickly, even
through her pain.

She glared at him.

“You and I are more alike than you think, Anne,” he

said, looking deep into her eyes. She was protected
herself, covering all the cracks on her shield even
through the way her body trembled under the
after-effects of the cruciatus. “I understand your
journey for revenge like nobody does. I know how
you feel.”

“Oh, you know nothing of me!” she barked at him.

He laughed.

“I just saw your last life, my dear child. I know

everything about you,” he said.

“No, you don’t. I’m not that girl anymore,” she

argued. “I’m someone new and my revenge
changed.”

“You changed your path?” he mocked. “Of course.”

“No. You’re still my revenge to take, but this time

around I have a different motivation. I don’t hate
you, Tom, I’m never going to forgive you for what
you’ve done, but I don’t hate you,” she said. “I pity
you. I pity the little boy you were and I pity the
monster that you are now.”

He looked away, lips curling in anger and disgust

that she knew his past.

“STEPS! TAKE YOUR THREE STEPS!” he yelled out,

cutting what she had to say.

He gave his back to her once more. She did the

same, taking three steps and praying that Regulus
had found the snake already because if she needed
to kill him, she would.

“You never had anyone ever love you,” she

attacked.

“CRUCIO!”

She raised her shield.

“Your father never wanted you and never wanted

your mother, she raped him!” she said.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” he yelled.

“EXPULSO!” she yelled back.

The lines and colour found each other midway and

Anne felt her magic jolt in surprise and excitement.

Anne could feel the presence of Tom’s magic

moving towards her, the darkness trying to tighten
around her, choking her out of her own magic. But
Anne could feel her own magic in a way that she
had never felt; it was like standing on top of a cliff
in a windy day – it was wild and dangerous if one
didn’t know how to control oneself.

Anne had never felt as confident as that moment

before. Anne had never felt so in control of herself
and of the magic inside of her before.

She didn’t need to focus or close her eyes to find

her deep centre of magic, all she had to do was
order that she needed more magic and she could
feel it rattling through her arm and going up until it
was out of her wand, spitting out more and more
power, pushing Voldemort’s curse away from her.

She grunted when he first pushed back.

Voldemort laughed, pushing more.

She grunted once more, pushing herself forward,

putting a foot behind herself to ground better.

She couldn’t fall. She couldn’t lose her balance.

There was too much in stake at the moment.

Anne held her wand with both her hands, feeling

the uncontrolled fear growing inside her ribcage as
she raised her wand as fast as she could. The
connected wands made Voldemort stumble with the
movement, she prepared herself and –

“AVADA KEDAVRA!” he yelled.

She didn’t have time enough to move out of the

way.

The green light hit her square on the chest as she

felt herself being embraced by Death, carried away
from her own reality.

Chapter 139: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Eight -
Summary:
Anne gets her much needed
closure.

DEATH

Anne liked being dead.

Death was like being so deep into sleep that when

you wake up, light already shining into one’s face,
but there is no reason to move out of bed because
it’s winter and there is nowhere to be. It was like
being naked under the warm water after a long,
hard day; in a bath so good that even the headache
one has goes away.

“You changed nothing,” someone said.

Anne felt her whole body tense up and then all she
had ever thought in her life hit her in the head
again. All that because she knew that voice all that
well.

“Harry,” she said.

Her voice came out low and breathy as if it was

hard to believe it. But Harry, standing with a small
grin on his face, heard her.

“Still sleepy?” he mocked.

She was jumping to stand in the next second,

jumping into his arms already with a sob escaping
her lips. Her arms went around him, fearing that it
would go through, but it didn’t – their bodies
collided and he held her tight as if he, too, had
missed her as much as she did.

“I can’t believe you are here,” she cried onto his

shoulder. “Oh, Harry, I have so much to tell you. I
have been working so hard to make this work –”

“I know, I kept an eye on you,” he admitted

caressing her hair.

She pulled away, cleaning her tears quickly as she

processed completely what he had said to her.

“You… kept an eye on me?” she repeated.

“I needed to make sure my little sister was alright,”

he explained. “We all kept an eye on you. And,
Anne, I’m so happy for you.”

She frowned, eyebrows almost touching each other

as she scrunched.

“I thought you’d be upset,” she admitted. But that

was a lie.

But there was a part of her that wasn’t surprised

Harry had just said that. Harry, the kind and gentle
boy that he was, would never be upset because she
was happy because that’s the reason that he had
sacrificed so much of himself growing up, to see
her happy and well.

Harry’s grin grew into a smile.

“Why would I be upset?” he asked. “Seeing you this

happy makes it feel like it was worth it. Everything
that I went through… and everything you went
through as well, the things that you didn’t tell me,”
he frowned, smile slowly falling. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”

“Because you’d be…”

She felt stupid. Why couldn’t she seem to find

words to talk to him? That was her brother and she
had so much to say, and yet she couldn’t find the
right words to describe something as simple as
feelings.

“Guilty?”

“Angry,” she added.

“I did feel it all,” he admitted. “I could’ve protected

you.”

“There was nothing that you could do. We were

both so young and you had so much on your plate,”
she said. “Besides, I could deal with it.”

“But you didn’t need to,” Harry said.

They didn’t need to do a lot of things, and yet they

did and they kept quiet about it. There was a lot of
things that they shouldn’t have to do, and yet they
did and kept quiet about it. They both knew it.
Though Harry was saying that, if she had told him
about it, there was very little that he could have
done for her. They were young and depended on
the people of the house.

“I could deal with it,” she dismissed. “I protected

Petunia this time around. She’s going to be fine
now.”

She looked around, finally being able to pay

attention on something other than Harry. She felt
herself almost laughing as she realised where she
was. It was some version of the Great Hall, but
there were no colours – white, everything was
white, like the psychiatric hospital in films that
Uncle Vernon had threatened to put het in when
she was ten and Harry had gone to school.

“You are in the limbo, that’s why there’s only me,”

he explained as soon as she started looking around.
“You started seeing Hogwarts as temporary when
you got there, so… I suppose that’s why you see it
as a station.”

“Station?”

“When I died, I was on something similar to this,

but it was King’s Cross Station,” he explained.
“Your station is the Great Hall because you grew
up. Hogwarts is in your past now, but it’s what
gave you your future.”

She nodded, trying to understand what he was

saying.

She shook her head. She needed to focus.

“You called this limbo. What do you mean by that?”

she asked. He raised his eyebrows at her before
looking for at her hands. Well, her hand. The one
with Regulus’ ring. She understood at once that she
wasn’t really dead, or, well… she was, but not for
forever. “What do I do now?”

“You choose,” he said.

“I have that right?” she asked. “Did Regulus have

that right?”

He nodded.

“Regulus doesn’t remember, he asked not to before

going away, so he just has feelings, but you can
remember this if you want. And you can choose
either you go back or go forward,” he explained.
“There’s people waiting for you on both sides.
Where do you want to go, Anne?”

She just stared at him for a moment.

Her death could mean that they were working hard

on the living world and were probably winning the
war already and on the other side there were
people that she missed and loved so much waiting
for her and they would be so happy to see her
there. Still, she couldn’t help but think about her
parents and her uncles and her grandma… and,
God, Reggie was there as well and Laurie was
waiting for her – she had promised to get him more
pears soon.

Harry chuckled.

“That’s something I never thought I’d see,” he

admitted. “Anne, the family woman. A married
woman.”

“I can’t leave them,” she whispered.

“I’m not asking you to. I like that you found

yourself alive inside and out,” Harry said. “And I
don’t blame you, either, you made a good choice.
Regulus is… different from what we expected.”

“A lot less rude than Hermione joked he probably

was,” she joked back.

“Dramatic enough, though. He did write a note

when he knew he was about to die to a man who
was never going to read it,” Harry said. Anne
laughed, nodding, more tears gathering in her eyes
now. “And you have the baby.”

“Laurie, his name is Laurie,” she said.

“Laurie Potter-Black,” he tasted the name. “I like

it.”

She had no idea why that made her so emotional,

but she couldn’t hold her tears anymore. They were
streaming down her cheeks again and she couldn’t
help it when she threw herself against him once
more. Harry didn’t seem to have a problem with
her, just held her as she had done when she first
woke up.

“It’s alright, everything is going to be alright,” he

said against her hair.

“I’m never going to see you again,” she cried.

“Of course you are,” he said. “Mum’s pregnant, isn’t

she?”

“It’s not going to be the same!” she argued. “You’re

not going to be my older brother; you’re not going
to love me and tease me and pull my braids.”

“Anne, there isn’t a single universe where I

wouldn’t love you,” he said. “You’re always going to
be my little sister, no matter where and when you
are. But stop crying, you look very ugly when you
cry and when you go back, you already have your
fucked up, don’t worsen it.”

She let go of him.

“Fuck off,” she scoffed.

He laughed at her.

“Listen, things are going to be different, yes, but

that doesn’t mean that I won’t love you or be your
brother, it just means that you get to teach me to
be a better brother than I was before,” he said.
“Well, who knows, maybe I’ll get really into
Divination now that there’s no prophecy trying to
kill me and I’ll use some Past Magic and end up
seeing my past life.”

“As if,” she teased.

“Oh, you never know,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe

McGonagall will get an actual professor this time
around.”

“For you, it’s Professor McGonagall still,” she said.

“Don’t start,” he said, rolling his eyes. He turned

his back to her at once, as if he had been called. He
blinked a few times before turning to her again.
“It’s time, Anne. Did you make your final choice?”

“I’ll go back,” she announced.

“Good. I’m very proud of you,” he said. “Come on,

I’ll walk with you.”

They were so near the staff’s table, they had to

walk all across the Great Hall to get to the doors.
So, she reached for his hand and Harry held it,
gently as he could as if she was going to break.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he said.

They had never been the ones to talk about feelings

to one another, but losing him had… changed
everything.

They stopped in front of the heavy double doors

and Harry snapped his fingers, opening them and
looking at her, expectant.

“You just have to cross it,” he said.

She nodded, working up the nerve, taking a deep

breath.

He took a step back.

She turned.

“Harry!” she called out, voice wavering. He looked

at her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say and
he seemed to know it, because he seemed amused.

“Yes?”

“I have a doll now,” she said. He smiled. “I named

her Esme… you said that you were going to name
your baby Esme if it was a girl, so I used it. I
wanted to remember that.”

“That’s alright, I’m not angry about that either,” he

said. “Go on. Cross it, Anne,” he added. She
nodded. “And, by the way, it was an Esme. It was
supposed to be a girl, and her middle name was
going to be Anne – you were going to be her
godmother.”

Anne smiled.

With that, she crossed.

Chapter 140: Chapter One

Hundred and Thirty Nine -
Summary:
Ending the war that they all
started.

BATTLE, PT II

James felt the world slowing down as he watched

Anne falling backward, head hitting the ground with
a loud crunch.

That was his daughter. That was the girl that he

first saw sitting in front of the fire in the Common
Room, shaking, pale and underweight and he found
himself completely enamoured with the admiration
that she had in her eyes when she looked at him; if
he was being completely honest, he tried to start a
friendship because he really liked the way that she
seemed to find him amazing, but then he noticed.
The flinches, the fear, the confusion, the clear
distaste of people she had never even talked to;
and yet, through those things, she talked to
Slytherins as if she their princess, without a fear –
those were not normal, so he had pried and insisted
until he saw the name and the name led to the
truth. And from that moment on everything
changed.

Anne changed him.

From the young boy that wanted nothing but fun

with his friends into someone that paid attention to
the war and understood that there was a lot more
to his actions than fun, but that even an unthought
word could end up hurting someone. He grew
because she needed someone. He grew because
the war needed someone and it was that growing
that led him into one of his biggest and happiest
decisions in this life: marrying Lily.

And now she was dead.

Yaxley had been focused on Mary at that point, so

James threw his best Incarcerous and gave his
back to the battle as she heard the man screaming
and Mary taking his wand away from him.

James didn’t care Lord Voldemort himself was

standing feet away from his daughter’s body, all
that he cared about was that Anne was on the
ground, eyes open and blood tainting the ground
beneath her; from the cut, from her nose and from
the wound on the back of her head. He didn’t care
he could end up dying, all that he cared about was
that Anne was pale and still.

“No, no, no, no,” he whispered to himself.

Either it was the way his voice was high and

breaking through the wavering or the way that he
was stumbling towards her as if he was about to
faint and fall, but Tom Riddle threw his head back
and laughed.

“I’ll kill you myself, you bastard!” James screamed,

on his knees beside Anne.

“Your daughter wasn’t strong enough for me, what

makes you think you are, boy?” he answered.

He hadn’t had an answer for that question as he

thought of it. All that he thought was how Anne
looked as he put her head on his lap.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Don’t do

this to me. Don’t do this to your mother. He… He
won’t make it without you, come on, please, wake
up.”

No matter how much he wished that was a private

moment between him and his daughter, but
someone laughing made him hold her tighter
because he knew that laugh. Bellatrix was laughing
and he didn’t want to look away. What if he looked
away and Anne disappeared?

However, when he was focused on Anne’s eyes,

ever so alike to his, he heard another thing. A hiss.

He turned, eyes widening as if he already knew

who – no… what was behind him, A snake. A huge
green snake as thick as his thigh, coming towards
him with its mouth as open as it could be. He
screamed, holding Anne as if that was going to
protect her.

Until the pain didn’t come and Voldemort’s painful

wail made him flinch and turn to look.

A dagger was sticking out of the snake’s head.

Somebody had thrown a dagger at the snake.

He got up quickly, taking Anne into his arms and

walking away from the snake as Tom Riddle walked
towards it. But James’ eyes were running around
the people, trying to find the people that truly
mattered; and there they were, Sirius and Remus
running towards them, Sirius staggering before
continuing.

“Anne!” Sirius said.

“ANNIE!” Remus screamed.

“Take care of her. Take care of her,” James said,

pushing Anne into Remus’ eyes.

“What are you doing? James? James!” Remus

screamed, pushing Anne into Sirius arms.

Sirius couldn’t breathe well. There was blood on his

mouth, but there was blood everywhere of Anne.
Her red hair was soaked in the back, her cheek was
open deeply and her nose was slightly crooked,
eyes open and unfocused. He sat down with her in
the corner of the street, looking up to find help – he
was no good in healing spells, but he was trying to
feel her pulse.

It was like having his brother’s dead body in front

of him once more.

His eyes met Severus Snape, walking towards them

with all his glory, his only hand waving his wand to
try and help Regulus, who was now battling
Voldemort with James and Remus. But his attention
was caught when he saw the limp girl in Sirius’ lap,
who was crying, mouth slightly open in shock.

“Save her,” Sirius demanded.

“What’s wrong with her?” Severus asked, getting

closer.

“She has no heartbeat, Snape, save her! Go! Bring

her back!” Sirius demanded; this time louder.

A shrill scream made Sirius raise his wand in fear.

It was Mia, running full speed towards them,

drenched in blood that most certainly wasn’t hers.
Her face was pale and her feet seemed to be
stumbling.

Severus took Anne away from Sirius, who yelped

and tried to hold onto her, but the man pushed him
away, lying her down on the street’s stones and
looking her body up and down, finger on her throat,
searching for one single thump.

“NO! NO!” Mia wailed.

Sirius held her in the very moment that her knees

gave out. They both slowly went down to their
knees near Anne’s head. Sirius had yet to cry, his
adrenaline and fear still bumping too much, but Mia
was inconsolable.

Severus saw something shine with the light that

was still up in one of the stores of the street and
looked down. In her finger, the ring he had seen in
Regulus’ finger several times before made him gasp
and then let go a breathless chuckle.

“She’s going to be alright,” Severus mumbled. “You

foolish, genius girl.”

“What?” Sirius asked.

He took her hand and raised it, holding his wand in

between two fingers.

“She has Regulus’ ring,” he explained. “She’s dead,

but she’ll be back in a bit.”

Mia cried even harder, forcing herself to get up and

clean her tears.

“Stay with her, Mama,” Sirius said. “I’ll go and

help. Stay here with her.”

“Sirius,” called Mia. He nodded at her to show that

he was listening. “Get Bellatrix. She’s killed Frank.”
Sirius’ face hardened as he nodded and marched to
the battles once more. “I can stay with her,
Severus, you can go, if you want to.”

“I’m no good duelling anymore,” he dismissed. “I’m

good with healing spells, though.”

He was quick to heal her head before anything,

hoping that it would make her recovery faster when
she was back to life, but he didn’t have nearly
enough time to help her while she unconscious
because Anne’s hand twitched near his knee,
touching the inside of it by accident. He jumped
back, confused.

“What?” Mia asked, worried.

He reached for her throat once more, finding,

finally, the thumping heart.

“She’s coming back,” he said, surprised. “It has

barely been five minutes.”

But Anne was already fluttering her eyes open by

the time he finished saying that, eyes confused and
wildly searching for explanations. Until they
stopped on Severus and she opened the most
genuine and happy smile he had ever seen her
give.

“Hi,” she said.

“After this fight is over, keep the ring,” he warned.

“Because I’ll kill you all over again, you stupid
dunderhead. You almost killed your grandmother of
a heart attack.”

Her eyes moved again, finding the ruddy Mia sitting

beside her, face red and eyes still wet.

“Oh, grandma,” she whimpered, eyes filling with

tears again. “I saw Harry,” she told them.

“And you will tell us everything about that when

you can, Anne, but for now, you will stay quiet over
here and –” started Mia.

A scream.

So loud that Anne’s ears start ringing as she forces

herself to sit down and see Remus being thrown
against the wall of a shop, falling to the ground as
if he was a rag doll, not a reflex in sight.

The scream had been James’. He seemed hesitant

to keep fighting and not checking on his friend.

“KEEP GOING!” Severus yelled. “I’LL GO!”

James threw another spell against Voldemort,

nodding to himself and to Severus.

“TRAITORS! BOTH OF YOU!” Voldemort had been

saying. “I GRIEVED FOR YOU, YOU INSOLENT BOY.
I PUBLISHED MY SUPPORT TOWARDS YOU,” he
added to Regulus. “AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY
ME? FUCKING THE HALF-BREED?”

Regulus was angry at the way he was talking of

Anne, of course, but James was more. Regulus had
taken months of those insults, but James had never
heard someone talking about his daughter like that
– especially not metres away from her body was.
He yelled in frustration, putting his complete all in
that fight.

“MAMA!” Sirius screamed.

Anne turned her head so quickly that she felt dizzy,

still recovering from coming back to life. She
understood why Regulus had fell asleep almost
immediately, but she wasn’t safe or at home, she
was in the battlefield and she needed to be awake.

Sirius was fighting Bellatrix and had fallen, elbows

preventing him from having his back to the ground,
and all he could do was try and get his shields
stronger. But Bellatrix wasn’t a common witch, she
wouldn’t just use magic, if she needed to, she
would use physical attacks as well, and they both
knew that she was stronger than Sirius.

“Go,” Anne managed to choke out. “Go!” she

insisted.

Mia hesitated. But at the end, she ran.

Anne stayed there, sitting on the ground for a

second more.

Her vision was a bit blurred, coming in and out of

focus, and she could feel all her limbs trembling,
her head heavy and her eyes burning and her
mouth so dry that she seemed to have eaten sand.
Still, she knew that she needed to get up and she
needed to fight – everybody was counting on her.
Well… they thought her to be dead, or most of
them, but she was counting on herself to keep
them safe from the same destiny that she had
come back from.

She had a war to win. She had a man to kill.

Tom Riddle was hers to destroy, and she would

never let anyone dare do it for her.

She reached to her side, the pommel of the sword

right by her hip. She pulled, taking control of the
grip and taking it out of its sheath. She put the tip
of the blade on the ground; it was Goblin-made it
had no problem to do that and she needed support
to get up. Anne got to her knees first before
pushing herself to stand, leaning down against the
pommel, hoping it would stabilise her for time
enough before she could walk by herself.

Between the noises of the battles and the screams,

it was no surprise nobody heard her steps on the
snow.

The trio fighting had moved away from the place

where her spell had taken away all the snow as a
weapon, so her heavy footsteps were muffled.

She was exhausted. The sword was heavy and she

didn’t have much left in her to raise it and aim. So,
Anne did what most people would do; she raised
the sword and slashed it across the air with as
much strength as she could – so much that she
actually fell down after it hit its target and flew to
the ground.

Her feet slipped on the snow and ice, making her

do a deadly pirouette with the sword still in her
hands, slashing across the air around her. Both her
and the sword fell side to side on the snow.

SPLASH.

A surprising amount of blood painted the white

snow red.

She saw Voldemort falling to his knees before his

head tilted to the side before slipping, falling to the
ground right between her and sword and then he
fell belly to the ground in front of Regulus’ and
James’ feet.

She didn’t move from her place in the snow, though

it burned the back of her head.

“Anne!” Regulus said, smiling at her.

“The world of the dead is surprisingly white,” she

shared with him.

James appeared on her area of vision, looking like

he had just seen a ghost.

“Annie?”

“Hi, Dad,” she said, smiling at him, but her smile

was shaky. She was too tired. “I had Reggie’s ring,”
with her hand trembling, she showed it to James,
who didn’t look anything other than traumatised.

Regulus leaned down, helping her sit down.

“Dizzy?” she nodded. “Nauseated?” she nodded

once more. “Exhausted?”

“Absolutely knackered. I want to sleep for two

days,” she answered. “Now, help me up. I got to do
something.”

“The Battle is almost over,” he said. “We won.”

“I know, but there’s something I must do,” she

insisted. “I might need some help, though.”

James was on her side in a second.

“We’ll help you,” he said to her.

She smiled at James and Regulus, knees buckling,

but they held her in place until she could get herself
together again.

“Reggie? Get me the head,” she requested.

The head was raised from the ground by the hair,

blood dripping and making James have to look
away for a second and swallow before continuing to
be prepared to do whatever Anne needed him to
do.

“Your revenge, my Anne,” he said, giving it to her

hand.

She nodded, breathing through her mouth. Her

eyes threated to fall closed, but the feeling of
Regulus’ arms snaking around her waist and
holding her up made her shake her head, waking
herself up just a little bit more.

Regulus had been right, she noticed as she looked

around.

The Battle was won already.

Death Eaters dead and tied up in roped way too

tight around their bodies, some dead and tied up.
The only Death Eater who seemed completely well,
tied up and sitting against the wall was Lucius
Malfoy, who nodded solemnly at her as she walked
past.

“Where are we going?” Regulus asked.

“Mia,” she mumbled.

Mia was on her knees, tightening the ropes

manually around Bellatrix’ hand and Sirius was
laughing at her, sitting beside her head, the space
above his eyebrow bleeding profusely enough to
make him keep one of his eyes closed.

The woman got up, back still turned towards them.

“You can let go now,” she mumbled.

Regulus followed her request, but James hesitated,

afraid of letting her fall. But let go once she looked
into his eyes and nodded.

She did fall.

She was on her knees in front of Mia, struggling to

breathe right and making enough noise to make
Mia turn around and gasp at the present Anne had
on her hands, soaking her jeans with crimson
blood.

“I said I would get revenge for what they did to

Monty,” Anne said, voice wavering now that she
was trying to talk loudly, ignoring the way now
Sirius was sobbing at the sight of her alive. She
pushed the head lightly towards Mia. “Now,
revenge is at your feet.”

Regulus looked away, trying not to cry.

He knew how it meant to Anne to have been the

one to kill Tom Riddle. And she knew how much it
meant to her to give closure to Mia and Monty,
even if he wasn’t there to enjoy it with them.

Mia kicked the head, disgusted at the sight, but

kneeled down over the ruddy know.

“Do you think I care about revenge when I could’ve

lost you?” she asked. Both of their eyes filled with
tears. “My brave, brave girl, there’s nothing more
important to me than my children. I told you this
before.”

Anne felt the sob rising on her throat. She didn’t

hold it back, throwing herself on Mia’s arms,
sobbing.

“It’s over,” she said, as if saying it out loud would

make it feel more real. “It’s over, Mia. We can live
now.”

“Oh, dear Anne, we have been living for a long time

now,” Mia said. “But now there’s nothing more to
fear. Now, we have time.”

She looked at Regulus over Mia’s shoulder.

Time.

That was all that they needed.

The fallen were taken to Hogwarts before the news

arrived at full.

Madame Pomfrey was with Alice in the moment

they took Frank for her to identify, to their luck,
because the stress had been enough to make her
so emotional that she had almost lost the baby.
After that, Lily didn’t leave Madame Pomfrey’s side,
for her own stress levels were growing and growing
as her family didn’t walk through the door and she
feared something would happen, but at least her
baby would be safe if she was stuck beside the
Healer’s side.

Andromeda had arrived not too long ago with the

younger children now that people were saying that
the battle was over and all children – of all ages –
were sent to their Common Rooms, which they
obeyed quite quickly once the first dead body
arrived.

Now, Andromeda and Madame Pomfrey were

working into preparing an infirmary in the Great
Hall and Lily was doing her best to prepare herself
to whatever was going to walk through that door.

There was a time in her life that Lily was certain

that she was going to be a Healer, especially when
she was younger and Severus would show her
healing spells, however, as she waited, she feared
that it wasn’t for her. She was quite glad having
her garden of herbs, growing important things and
making them into medicine, if requested, however,
she was in no mood to actually medicate the
injured people.

Especially because the first one to be brought

through the doors was Remus Lupin.

Madame Pomfrey gasped as Severus controlled the

stretcher that was bringing him in put the man
down.

“Head! He hit his head. I didn’t know what to do in

the field, I needed help,” Severus said.

“Anne –”

“Anne couldn’t help,” he cut Madame off.

The woman looked up at him, eyes widening in

fear.

“Is she --?” she asked.

“She was,” he confirmed. But once he saw Lily’s

pale face, he added. “She’s not anymore. She’s
with Regulus.”

Lily stumbled towards him, arms outstretched and

for a moment he cringed, thinking he was going to
be hugged, but she grabbed him by the shoulders
and shook him hard enough for the back of his neck
to hurt.

“Where’s James?” she asked, voice firm. “Where’s

Mia? Where’s Sirius? Does Sirius know that Remus
is here?”

“Yes, I’m alright, thanks for asking,” he said

bitterly, pushing her away with his arm, but gently
enough that she just took a step back. “They are
fine. Black’s is already on his way here; he was just
trying to find Lupin’s wand. James and Regulus are
helping Anne walk.”

She blinked, realising how rude she had been,

shaking her head side to side before taking a deep
breath.

“I’m sorry, you’re right. Are you certain you are

alright?” she asked.

He seemed untouched but a small cut on the side of

his cheek.

“Yes,” he said. “But I might ask you to get some of

my blood. Anne’s going to need it.”

“What’s your blood type?” she asked, confused to

why he was offering it.

“A+, like Anne and Potter,” he answered, raising

the sleeve of his arm with his teeth. “James is hurt
as well, he’s got a cut that’s bleeding quite a bit on
the back of his neck; he might need to keep his
blood to himself tonight.” Andromeda was by Lily’s
side in a second, a kit with a needle already being
stuck on Severus’ arm. “If Lupin needs blood as
well, I’m here.”

“He might need,” Madame Pomfrey said, working

hard beside the chair that Severus threw himself
at.

“Then go on,” he said.

Lily moved towards the doors when she heard

movement and the doors once more opened.

This time was more than two people. Most of the

Order was walking in, and some prisoners followed.
Lily recognised them quickly; Lucius Malfoy and
Theodore Nott, both tied and gagged, but certainly
obeying.

In the very back, she saw them.

She squealed, running full force towards James,

who waited for her with open arms and quickly
lifted her off the ground as soon as their bodied
met. Still, over his shoulder, she reached for Mia,
grabbing onto her shoulder and pulling her into the
embrace. Since Mia was helping Sirius since he was
shaking so much now that the adrenaline was
sinking, he also got pulled into the embrace.

She heard a laugh, gentle and amused.

Anne.

Lily pulled back.

“You died! Severus told me you died!” Lily accused.

“I’m back, though,” she said.

Regulus looked at her by the corner of his eye, not

finding her answer at all amusing.

“Anne –”

“I’m alright,” she said. But Lily didn’t believe her at

all, after all, she could barely stand on her own for
more than a few second. “I’ll be alright,” she
corrected herself. “Besides, Severus already
threatened my life, so nobody needs to do that to
make me learn my lesson.”

“What you need to learn is the three little words,”

Regulus said, bitterly.

She scrunched her eyebrows, turning to him.

“I love you?” she guessed.

“No,” he said, frowning.

She sighed, understanding his meaning.

“You were right,” she said. He nodded. “Well, you

were right, Regulus. I really did need the ring this
time around.”

He smiled, proud of himself.

The group moved further into the Great Hall slowly.

Severus barely raised his eyes to look at them as

they stopped right in front of him and Remus.

“Thank Severus, boys, he saved Remus life,”

Madame Pomfrey said, checking the back of Remus’
head.

“Thank you for checking on him right away,

Severus. We don’t know what would have
happened without your first-aid,” James said.

Sirius looked at James surprised. He hadn’t known

about that part, all that he knew it was that it had
been Snape that had gotten Remus into Hogwarts,
which would’ve been enough for a grateful genuine
‘thank-you’, but that brought things to a whole new
level.

“Hey, Snape,” Sirius said. He looked up from the

needle in his arm. “Thank you, mate. Really.”

“It’s fine. Just don’t even call me ‘mate’ again,”

Severus said. “This is blood is Lupin, but lie down
because the next bag is for you, Anne.”

She smiled at him.

“I thought you were going to kill me,” she joked.

“After you’re healthy, I’ll strangle you,” he said

back in a joke.

Regulus sighed, leading Anne to the bed on the

other side of Severus’ chair.

“Sometimes, I don’t know if you two are really

threatening death, flirting or are just plain weird,”
Regulus admitted.

Sirius was shocked when a genuine smile with teeth

came from Severus Snape.

“I guess you’ll never know,” Severus said.

“I don’t know, Sev, people do gossip about us,”

Anne said, eyes fluttering open and closed.

Regulus sat at the foot of the bed, worried about

her.

“That they do,” Severus dismissed. “Now, rest. You

did a good job tonight.”

Praise was rare coming from Severus, they all knew

that. Lily barely got any praise from him when they
were friends.

“I did fucking amazing, you little shit,” she slurred

at him. “I killed the Dark Lord with a sword. I’m the
fucking –”

And Anne slept.

Regulus raised his eyebrows.

“Good to know her dirty mouth came back with

her,” he said more to himself than to the others.

It did get a chuckle.

Chapter 141: Chapter One

Hundred and Forty -
Summary:
Actions always have
consequences.

WAR

When the physical war ends, another one starts,

this time a mental one where nobody is completely
sure who the enemy is.

Fear there’s no form or silhouette. Fear there’s no

voice and no smile.

But it did take form on Tom Riddle’s laughter and

the way his eyes bore into one’s mind, prying all
and any information that he could in the most
painful way possible. Not many people would get a
meeting with him and live to tell the tale, but the
remaining Potter and Black family did, and they
weren’t sure they wanted to tell the tale to the
world.

There had been two days with barely any sleep and
all of them were exhausted, but Anne looked
completely normal, as if nothing had changed for
her – it took a moment for Remus to realise at the
breakfast table that it was correct; nothing had
changed for her. She had just gone through
another war, it was just damage on top of the
damage that she already had, and it was a lot
better than the first time. This time they had won.
This time she was home. This time there were
people waiting for her to get back home.

They found comfort in some things.

Remus started to buy more furniture for the

apartment Sirius and him would move as soon as it
was furnished. Sirius found himself studying Child
Psychology for fun and deciding to get another look
into it before starting to work with Mary. Lily found
herself reading more and more about raising a
baby. Severus found comfort in the way that the
newspapers were hating him, but were calling him
a hero. Mia found comfort in Regulus bringing
Laurie to live with them after asking for permission
– an unnecessary one, Mia had insisted, because of
course Laurie can live with us. Regulus found
comfort in Anne and Anne in him; they were both
alive, something that both believed to be
impossible by the end of the war.

“There’s so much we can actually do now,” Anne

said, looking at the newspaper in the third day. “We
can get married –”

“We are married,” he argued, grinning at her.

“Well, married in the way that you wanted to be

married. With the big party and the family; in the
way that you were taught that weddings should
be,” she explained. “And we can get Laurie,
officially.”

“I’m his godfather, though. His mother is in prison

for the rest of her life, I have been absolved of all
my crimes and his father is dead,” he said. “He’s
already mine.”

“But nobody needs to know whose child he is by

blood,” Anne said. “It’s safe for him.”

Now that the Dark Lord was gone and really dead,
a severed head there to prove it, a lot of people
presented themselves with anger towards
purebloods, even Regulus, who had literally helped
them to bring the whole ordeal down. Just because
Laurie was a child and completely innocent of his
father’s crimes, that didn’t mean that he was safe
from the population post-war anger.

“You want to put your surname?” he asked. “I can

get Nott on it.”

“Nott’s in prison for another six months,” Anne

reminded him.

“I mean his brother,” Regulus said, chuckling. “He

was kicked out of the family for being gay. I kept
contact for a while, fixed him some money for a
terrible apartment in Yorkshire. He owes me one.
Besides, Monty was his grand-uncle; anything for
family.”

Anne nodded.

“Ok,” she said. “I get it now.”

“What?”

“You really are the Slytherin Prince,” she teased.

He chuckled, getting up from the sofa he was

sitting in to go to where she was lounging and
kissing her lips gently.

“There’s a reason I call you Princess,” he teased

back.

There was a moment of silence as she smiled at

him.

“Do you think the others are going to be alright?”

she asked. “They are pretty shaken up.”

“Some had never been in a real battle before,

Anne, give them time,” Regulus said. “Lupin met
the man that ruined his childhood and held your
dead body on his arms. Sirius arrested his own
cousin and almost got killed by her, after that he
almost lost his boyfriend and held your dead body
on his arms. James… he was devastated, Anne, you
didn’t see that man falling apart; his mother was
fighting, his wife was far away and his daughter
was dead. Severus really got emotional on the
infirmary after you fell asleep and ended up crying
in front of everyone – they all need time to
recover.”

“It’s just that… it was a big deal,” she said. He

nodded. “But it’s over now. We can live.”

“You have been preparing yourself for this moment

a lot longer than they did,” he reminded her.
Sometimes he acted like her emotional intelligence
angel-on-the-shoulder and he was quite proud of it.
“We were all very scared.”

“I was, too.”

“The difference is that there wasn’t a day where

you weren’t scared,” he said.

She nodded, understanding where he was getting

at.

“I can understand. Nothing changed for me. I’m

still scared and I still got nightmares, but things are
going to get better now,” she said to Regulus. “I
thought they would be happier than that.”

“They’re mourning. We lost people.”

“Frank, Caradoc, Elphias, and Aberforth is still St.

Mungus,” she said. “I know. I mourn them too. But
what good does it make to let the world around you
stop as you mourn? They would want them to be
happy and live on in the world that they fought for.
Neville deserves his mum, Elphia’s grandchildren
want to write a book about him, Caradoc’s daughter
is about to have her first son and will name him
after her dad. They won’t be forgotten.”

Which was more than the people that she fought

with the first time around would have. In her
original timeline, they had lost and they would be
forgotten as if they had never been important
before. But there, where they won, there was
happiness and hope blooming inside her chest and
Anne didn’t want it to wither away from her
because she was mourning, so she mourned and
kept on going. That’s what she always did. That
was what she was forced to do her whole life and
the only way that she had learned to deal with
those feelings – she buried them behind another;
revenge. Now that revenge was done, there was
nothing to do but feel, but she had felt it already:
in death.

She never really told anything about her death to

anyone, but babbling that she had when she woke
midst the battle, but she knew them to be curious,
just too scared to ask.

“Do you like it?” Regulus asked.

Confused, she raised her eyebrows at him, sitting

up. Regulus sat where her head had been and she
lied her head on his shoulder.

“Like what?”

“The things the newspapers are talking about you,”

he said. “To the world, you’re James’ sister.”

“I’m his daughter, but I’m proud of carrying the

legacy of Fleatmont with me,” she admitted. “I
won’t tell the truth to them; these people… they
don’t deserve my story when they refused to help
us.”

Regulus looked down at the newspapers.

“The Lost Hero,” he read. “Anne Potter, 18, was the

one to finally end the period of horror the Wizarding
World has been living in.”

She folded the newspapers, putting it aside.

“They don’t know what they are talking about,” she

dismissed.

Regulus reached for the newspaper once more.

Frowning at her reaction, he started to pass his
eyes across it, looking for something very specific.
His name.

“Regulus Black, 17, is to have his trial today,

February 20th, after he was allowed to wait for his
trial out of custody, will be trialled for murder,
kidnapping and conspiracy to commit crimes,” he
read. “It’s expected a minimal sentence due to his
‘involvement’ with the Light side that won the war.”

“Forget about it,” she said, shaking her head a bit.

“Why ‘involvement’?” he asked. “What is Paul Crane

trying to say?”

“People think that you’ll receive a shorter sentence

because you’re married to me,” she explained. “I,
however, doubt that you will get any sentencing at
all.”

He sighed.

“We can’t forget that it is a possibility, Anne, don’t

be too upset if I do get time,” he said, getting up
from his seat and kneeling in front of her, he held
her knees. “I’m prepared to pay for my crimes.”

“They are not judging me for mine, though,” she

said. “I committed crimes as well, Regulus. It’s
unfair. You did what you had to do to keep your
cover, the one that I asked you to keep so we could
have information. Just look at Severus… if you were
found out, something worse could’ve happened to
you”

“Let’s just be glad that Severus won’t be judged

either,” he said, grabbing her hands and kissing the
back of them. “I love you, that’s all that you need
to keep in mind through today.”

She nodded, pulling his hands to her and kissing

them back of them as well.

“I love you. I’ll be by the door when the trial is over

and we’ll go home hand in hand,” she said. It
sounded like a promise.

His eyes narrowed.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Well, let’s just say that being Monty’s daughter

can pay off,” she said.

Before he could ask any more, Sirius opened the

door to the parlour and called them out to come.

Anne sat on the right side of the inversed ‘U’,

Regulus noticed her in the moment he was dragged
into the court-room. The next thing he noticed was
that there were a lot of people sitting there besides
the ones that had power, that meant that they had
allowed common people to watch his trial.

He was sat in a small wood bench, facing the

middle of the ‘U’ with some hesitations. There were
twelve people there, besides the guy sitting in the
middle. He almost cringed at the man’s name;
Chief Warlock Wollcot. He didn’t know that
surname, which mean he was either a half-blood or
a muggle-born, both sides did not see him very
kindly at the moment. On the ground level where
he was sitting there were two guards standing
behind him, one on each of his sides (as if he
hadn’t gone to that place voluntarily) and two other
people standing in front of him; a man and a
woman. He recognised the woman as his lawyer,
well, the lawyer that his Uncle had contacted,
though he said that he didn’t need one, her name
was Emily Watson and she was his Uncle’s lover.
The man, however, he did not know, but he know
he was the prosecutor.

“Regulus Arcturus Black, did I say your name

correctly?”

“Yes,” he answered.

The tight ropes around his wrists were hurting him.

Chief Warlock Wollcot cleans his throat, making the

whole room face him.

“Let the record show that today, the 20th of

February of 1978, the trial of Regulus Arcturus
Black versus the Ministry of Magic will commence.
Regulus Black, you are accused of murder,
kidnapping and the conspiring treason against the
Wizarding World with the Dark Wizard known as
Lord Voldemort, or Tom Riddle. How does the
defendant plead?”

“The defendant pleads not guilty to all charges,”

Watson said.

Regulus took a deep breath.

“Let’s commence,” the Chief Warlock said.

“Mister Black was seen in several trips searching for

support outside of the country with Tom Riddle,
always accompanied by the members of the Inner
Circle of the criminal organisation called ‘Death
Eaters’, as most of his family did,” said the
prosecutor. Regulus really hated not knowing his
name. “He was seen in several attacks that led to
the murder of dozens of muggles and muggle-
borns. And not only that, but he carries the Dark
Mark in his arm; mark that Lord Voldemort branded
his most loyal followers with following with a
celebration that involved the usage of the
Unforgivable Curses,” the man turned, looking
around the room. Regulus’ back was as stiff as a
board, but he refused to look away from the man
when their eyes met. The man looked away first.
“His brother, Sirius Black III, managed to escape
the house. Why couldn’t he do the same? Why did
he stay and joined a terrorist organisation and was
loyal enough to get a Mark on his arm?” he looked
around once more. This time, his eyes met the
small group of people that had accompanied him:
his family. “Are those the acts of an innocent man?”
Regulus saw Anne fix her back, staring right into
the eyes of the prosecutor and glare. He almost
laughed when the prosecutor looked at the Chief
Warlock. “I yield the floor.”

Emily Watson took a step back, nodding at Regulus

once as if he needed some type of comfort. He
barely looked at her, because his eyes met Anne’s
and she smiled at him. Everything was alright while
Anne smiled and he knew that.

“My client was underage and under duress the

whole time he was forced, under the threat of
death and torture, to proceed with several things
he did not agree with and only joined the
organisation so he could get information from the
inside and pass it to Anne Potter, who will be called
down as a witness, with evidence backing up that
claim – written evidence in letters and in a
notebook that they created when his letters were
being revised by truly loyal members of the
organisations. Regulus Black is a wonderful man
that tried to protect as many people as he could at
the same time, and ended up having to do terrible
things to protect the world from the true evil that
Tom Riddle, whom he helped destroy more than
once, threatened to bring,” Watson said. “I yield
the floor.”

There was whispering.

Watson was known for being a good lawyer, but

she was also known for not saying much, which
worried Anne. In cases such as this, the best option
was to tire them out until they decided Regulus was
innocent already to make someone shut up; she
had seen in happen.

“Mister Black,” called the Chief Warlock. “You can

take the stand now.”

His hands were untied and he moved his wrists as

the Aurors took him to the stand, a small podium
with three steps as stairs. He stood there,
uncomfortable.

“Mister Sienna, the floor is yours,” the Chief

continued.

Regulus put his hands behind his back, though his

shoulder cracked at the movement. He had slept
terribly the night before and, though Anne was
sleeping on his chest, he feared moving and waking
her up. He was regretting it now.

‘Sienna’, as the Chief had called, was a surname

that Regulus did know. He had gotten a prize when
he was thirteen due to a wonderful trial where he
took a man wrongfully accused out of Azkaban
before he lost his mind. It was impressive.

“Mister Black, you said that your contact inside the

order is Anne Potter. What is your relationship with
Miss Potter?” Sienna asked.

“It’s Misses Potter-Black now. She’s my wife,” he

answered.

That took the man by surprise, clearly as he looked

back at the Chief Warlock.

“This wasn’t in the file,” Sienna said.

“Anne Potter will be allowed to witness; however,

you will need to add another witness to the list,
Miss Watson,” the Chief Warlock.

Watson nodded, starting to annotate something in

the piece of parchment she had in front of her.

“When did you meet Misses Black?” Sienna asked,

going back to his job.

“May 5th of 1976, in my fifth year, her sixth. We

were in the corridor towards the Great Hall at
Hogwarts and I was accompanied by my cousin,
Narcissa,” he said. Sienna waited, wanting him to
elaborate more. “My friend Severus Snape had
complained to us about the fact that she had gotten
the attention of Professor Slughorn, who teaches
Potions.”

“And you went there to ‘take care of her’? ‘Take her

out of the way’?” Mister Sienna asked.

Regulus almost laughed.

“No, but even if I did try, she would probably win,”

he answered.

“Then why did you go to confront her?” he asked.

“Because, I don’t know if you know my friend,

Severus, but he’s quite good in potions, got an
internship and all that before the war,” he said.
“When she was as good as him, he was quite upset.
He tried to confront her, however, she was quite…
forceful in pushing him away, so I went in his stead
to get answer. Ask her where she learnt it.”

“Is that the only reason?” Sienna asked, insisting

on an answer.

He wanted something out of Regulus, however,

even with the compulsion of telling the truth
(Anne’s secret only protected by another
compulsion, which he did long before the trial),
there was nothing he was hiding.

“Well, I had seen her around before, she was

pretty. I wanted to talk to her,” he explained.

“And you took your cousin with you? Don’t you

think that’s a bit odd?” Sienna asked.

“Objection! Relevance?” Watson said.

The Chief Warlock sighed.

“Sustain. Ask a relevant question, Mister Sienna,”

he said.

Mister Sienna nodded, thinking of how to proceed.

“How did the conversation about the war started in

between you and Misses Black, at the time, Miss
Potter?” Mister Sienna asked.

Regulus blinked, trying to remember completely

what had happened.

“It was on May 13th –” he started.

“How do you remember that?” he asked, cutting

him off.

“Because I remember a lot of things about my wife,

Sir,” he answered. “May I answer your question
now?” he asked. There were a few chuckles out of
the people watching the trial. Sienna looked
uncomfortable as he nodded. “She overheard me in
a conversation where I told a friend that I had been
beaten after I refused to go to the Dark Lord and
offer myself up. She healed me when I found her
hiding.”

“Can you tell us the injuries you had?” he asked.

Regulus scrunched his eyebrows. Was that guy

trying to touch on every single part of his trauma at
once?

“A broken rib, a healed one that healed in a wrong

position, bruises, cuts, but it had been weeks that
they had been healing at that point,” Regulus
answered. “At first, I had two broken ribs, a
contused kidney and the after-shocks of the
Cruciatus Curse.”

Regulus didn’t need to look up to see Sirius trying

to make himself look smaller.

“And how did you go under the Cruciatus Curse?”

“My mother,” he answered, firmly.

“Was that a common occurrence?”

“Only when she thought I did something wrong or

disrespectful. Which was often.”

“More often before or after your brother left your

house?” Sienna asked.

Regulus closed his eyes, refusing to meet Sirius’ in

the crowd. He knew his answer was going to
destroy his older brother’s confidence and
tranquillity that he managed to get after leaving the
house.

“It got worse after he left,” he answered.

“And why did your brother leave the house?”

Sienna asked.

“Objection! Speculative!” Watson said loudly from

her place.

“Sustained. Please, refrain from making the

defendant speculate other people’s motives, Mister
Sienna,” the Chief said.

This made the boy sigh a bit more relaxed than

before, but the next question made his whole body
grow cold at once and he felt his blood leaving his
face. It was a question that he didn’t have to
answer completely honestly before – he had
answered a version of it to his brother before, but…
never this, never in front of everyone.

“Mister Black, why didn’t you leave, if things were

so bad at home?” Mister Sienna asked.

So many answers came to his mind, but none went

to his tongue as he tasted the bitterness of the
helplessness that he felt as his brother left him
behind as he begged him to stay one more year so
they could run away together and he could be his
responsible-adult.

“Because I was a scared fourteen-year-old kid who

had nowhere to go,” he said, the same answer that
he gave to his brother. But the next part was new.
“And because, if I ran, then Mother would go after
Sirius. I stayed so my brother could run. I stayed
because I was always a better actor than my
brother.”

“And what did you have to act as?”

“As the perfect son,” he answered.

“And did you managed to act like one?”

“For a long time,” he answered, nodding. “Until I

couldn’t hide anymore. Not when Anne came into
my life and said that she could protect me.”

“Did you need protection?”

Sienna sounded so condescending that Regulus

couldn’t keep his outraged reaction within himself
anymore.

“Yes. I was in a house where physical punishment

was as common as rain, where my mentally ill
mother had complete control over the house as my
father slowly died of Platos. Yes, I needed
protection; I was vulnerable,” he said. “And I was
the Heir of the House, being raised to be the Head
as my father wasted away because the rightful heir
ran away and got himself kicked out of the family.
Do forgive me if I thought making a powerful friend
with inside information of the other side of the war
could get me out of trouble when I didn’t even want
to be involved in this shit to start with!”

Surprised by his own reaction, he looked at Anne.

She looked at him in warning, telling him slow
down and pay attention. You’re the Prince of
Slytherin, she had said to him, you’re the one with
a sharp mind and a quick tongue, play your words
right.

She was correct. He needed to calm down.

“If you do not contain yourself right away, Mister

Black, I will be forced to hold you in contempt for
this court,” the Chief warned.

Regulus sighed, lowering his head as he took a

deep breath and nodded.

“Alright. I’m sorry, Chief, I lost my temper,” he

said.

“Go on, Mister Sienna,” the Chief said.

Sienna turned to Regulus once more.

“I see this is an emotional subject,” the man said in

a soft voice. Regulus locked his jaw. Damn right it
was an emotional subject, he wondered what gave
it away to that piece of shit of a man. “Why don’t
we move on? Mister Black, can you tell me when
you agreed to be a spy for Misses Black, at the time
Miss Potter, inside the Death Eaters?”

“In the summer right after we met, 1976, though it

was never a complete agreement, I just did it,
there isn’t a date where I said I would do it,” he
answered. “Though I believe we met for tea in July
10th for a more formal conversation on the
matter.”

“Then tell me, when was the first time you helped
Misses Black with a mission?”

“In my cousin’s wedding at Malfoy Manor,” he

answered. “I helped her get an Horcrux hidden in
the house and helped her out of the Manor without
getting too much attention. It was August, the
15th, I believe, but you might need to look in the
newspapers to make sure – there’s a photograph of
the wedding party and you’ll see Anne and I in the
corner of the room, talking.”

“And how can you know that?”

Sienna was trying to get Regulus to say that he

looked at it to prove his alibi. Regulus blushed a bit
instead of looking uncomfortable by lying, he just
looked flustered.

“Because I cut the picture and it’s on my childhood

bedroom in my Family House. It was the first
picture she and I had,” he explained.

He could see some of the younger girls in court

giggling and he could almost imagine Anne glaring
at him for never telling her that.

“Misses Black said in her statement that the first

information that she received was from your cousin
Narcissa, information that you passed to your
cousin, in your birthday party in the same year of
1976,” Sienna said. “Are you saying this didn’t
happen?”

“I’m saying that I was too drunk to actually

remember Narcissa passing anything. I did pass the
information to my cousin because I had eyes on me
and couldn’t tell Anne, however, I did not think
Anne knew that it had been me to pass it,” Regulus
admitted.

“Mister Black, what happened at Christmas Break of

1976?” Sienna asked.

He felt his stomach drop to his feet with the simple

memory of that horrible trip that he had been
forced to take.

“I was forced into going to a trip through Easter

Europe and a part of Asia in search for international
support for the Blood-Supremacist Cause,” he
answered.

“And in this trip, did you meet a man in Bulgaria

named Giorgi Stoyanov?”

The old man’s face came to mind.

Regulus nodded.

“I did,” he admitted.

“And what happened to him?” Sienna insisted.

“He died.”

“How?”

“He was killed.”

“By whom?”

“Me. I was the one who killed him,” Regulus

admitted.

There was another wave of mumbling and

whispering, making the Chief say a few well-chosen
words to the public watching.

“And after Bulgarian, did you meet a young

seventeen-year-old girl named Helga Aknes, a
Norwegian muggle student in Russia?”

“Yes, I did,” he answered.

“What happened to her?” Sienna asked.

“She was killed by Evan Rosier after she screamed

for help during her kidnapping,” he answered.

“And how did she end up in the hands of Mister

Rosier?” Sienna asked.

“She passed us on the street when we were walking

by the access to the wizarding world in Russia,” he
answered. “Rosier thought she was pretty and tried
to take her. He wasn’t right in the head and had a
fetish on Easter European women.”

“And you did nothing?”

“Nothing at all,” he answered. “Her screams alerted

people. I turned my back and walked away, so
Rosier had to deal with the trouble alone. There
was nothing I could for her but hope the Muggles
would come help her.”

Though it was a horrible thing to do, certainly he

couldn’t be held accountable for kidnapping. So
that charge was pushed away; he could see it on
the eyes of the jury.

“And did you tell all that to your wife?”

“Objection, irrelevant!” Watson said.

Regulus almost rolled his eyes. His answer would

help him!

“Overruled, answer the question, Mister Black,”

Chief said.

“I did tell Anne,” he said. “Well, I did try to tell her

midst the vomiting and panic attacks.”

This seemed to throw Sienna out of his rhythm,

because he looked uncomfortable as he nodded to
himself.

“You said in your first statement that your

internship was arranged so he could have inside
information of the Gringott’s Bank,” Sienna said.

He waited for an answer. Regulus raised his

eyebrows.

“That was a statement, sir, do ask a question, if

you want an answer,” he said, irritable already.

“How did you help with the Gringott’s Bank Heist?”

“I searched the wards and the counter-wards for

the Lestrange vault, gave access and found a
willing goblin to proceed the members of the Order
inside the vault without my help to steal another
Horcrux.”

“Why didn’t you do that yourself?” Sienna asked.

“Do you know the concept of the word ‘spy’? They

couldn’t know who I was, or my cover would be
blown,” Regulus explained. “At this point, the only
people that were completely aware of my identity
were Anne, James Potter, to whom Anne confided,”
Regulus added forcing himself not to roll his eyes.
“Besides, I was just an intern; the only moment I
was there was with my cousin, Bellatrix, and her
husband as a guest for I pretended to be interested
in Curse-Breaking. I had no real power inside the
bank.”

“Were you close to your cousin, Bellatrix?” Sienna

asked.

“No.”

That woman had tried to kill him more than once,

had tortured him out of fun and had laughed of his
most embarrassing moments, hoping to make
everything worse to him. No. He wasn’t close to
her.

“Then, can you explain this photograph?” Sienna

asked.

He showed to Regulus a photograph before showing

to the rest of the room. Regulus felt his throat
closing up – he was seven in the picture, sitting on
Bellatrix’s lap with a huge smile on his face and
chocolate smeared around his mouth. Narcissa had
been the one to take the picture. He didn’t know
she had kept it.

“I was seven,” he forced himself to dismiss it. “I

assure you it was before she tried to kill me.”

“Bellatrix Lestrange threatened your life?”

“More than once and since I can remember,”

Regulus said. “She’s family. I was Heir of the
House, I needed to be polite to her either I liked it
or not, and I did not like it at all, I assure you.”

“Did Bellatrix Lestrange ever physically hurt you?”

“Yes, several times,” he answered.

“Can you describe the first instance?” Sienna

asked.

Regulus scoffed bitterly before taking a deep

breath.

“It was the day of that picture, actually, no more

than an hour later,” he said. Another time taking
Sienna by surprise. “I said that, perhaps, my young
neighbour, a muggle girl around my age, wasn’t a
monster or disgusting as she insisted that they
were. She pushed me down the stairs.”

“Just that?”

“My Family House has three floors,” he answered,

anger starting to take over him once more. “She
pushed a seven-year-old kid down three flights of
stairs and bashed my head on the floor twice by
pulling my hair. Mother walked in, screamed for her
to unhand me. Bellatrix then told my mother what I
had said. Her reaction? She kicked me in the guts
while I was bleeding on the ground,” he raised his
eyebrows. “Do you need any more instance of
attempted murder in my family? I have several.”

“I believe that to be sufficient,” dismissed Sienna

with a fake smile. “That was all. I yield the floor.”

Chief Warlock seemed to find it odd, but nodded,

soon after allowing Watson to step forward and
question Regulus as well. He took a deep breath
preparing himself for more prying around his
private life.

“Mister Black, when were you and Anne married?”

Watson asked.

“Objection, irrelevant,” Sienna immediately said.

“Do you have a reason for that question that is

relevant to this trial, Miss Watson?” the Chief
asked.

“Yes, Sir, I do,” she said, almost sounding like a

promise.

“Overruled. Answer the question, Mister Black,” the

Chief ordered.

Regulus nodded.

“Anne and I were married in November 4th of

1977,” he answered. “In Verona, Italy, in the house
I was born.”

“So you got married after you were already helping

her with the destruction of Lord Voldemort?”
Watson asked.

This made his lips twitch. Perhaps Watson wasn’t as

bad a lawyer as he thought because she was a
mistress.

“Yes.”

“But did the relationship start before this?”

“Our relationship started on September 1st of

1976,” he answered.

“And that was after you helped her with the fist
Horcrux?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Why did you start helping Misses Black against the

traditional belief that your family held?” Watson
asked.

“There was a time I did believe in blood-

supremacist beliefs, after all I was raised to believe
them, but then I got to Hogwarts and I was beat
more than one in subjects that I was good at by
Muggle-borns. I started paying attention. They
didn’t bleed mud, they bled red like us and they
were smart and they had friends and personalities.
They were normal people,” he said. “And though I
believed it, unlike my brother, I was smart enough
to keep my mouth quiet and not be daily tortured
with Cruciatus at home because I disagreed with
their beliefs at the dinner table?”

“Did you agree with them in the dinner table?”

Watson asked.

“No. I just stayed quiet. Because if I was quiet for

long enough, they would forget I was there, which
was what I was always aiming for,” he answered.

“How many Horcruxes did you help the Order to

get?” Watson asked.

He took a second to think.

“That would be the Diary, the Cup, the Medallion

and the Snake,” he answered. “Four.”

“Out of six, you helped the Order reach four of the

Horcruxes?” Watson asked, as if trying to make
sure it was clear.

“Yes. Two of them which I destroyed myself: the

Medallion, which I almost died getting, and the
Snake in the Battle of Hogsmeade,” he answered.

“How did you almost die?” Watson asked.

“To get the Horcrux, I needed to drink a poisonous

potion, which made me severely dehydrated, and
when I reached into the water, Inferis came out of
it and their claws cut me and dragged me into the
water,” Regulus answered.

“For the evidence, there are pictures of the deep

scars across Mister Black’s body,” said Watson,
turning to the Chief Warlock and the jury. “There
will be a specialist who will be able to confirm the
creature that created these scars on him based on
the depth, internal healing and the position of the
claw scars.”

In the back of his mind, the smell of rotten flesh

and the feeling of not being able to breathe under
the water made a comeback. He felt nauseated and
impossibly angry with the fact that he had been
forced to relieve that – he could’ve just sent the
memories to the jury and let them decide, however
the Ministry of Magic decided they wanted a
traditional full trial to the biggest controversial star
of the war.

Regulus sighed. He wanted to go home. He wanted

to disappear in bed with his wife until dinner to just
lie there and talk about his feelings.

“Mister Black,” called Watson, bringing him back to

his horribly boring reality. “How old were you in
your first interaction with Lord Voldemort?”

“Fourteen,” he answered.

“Can you describe it?”

“Bellatrix, my cousin, dragged me to a rally where

he was speaking at. They already knew each other,
they were already sleeping together, so Lord
Voldemort came to us to greet her and introduced
himself to me.”

Gasps of shock and outrage came from the crowd.

Not only that woman had dragged a child to a Dark
Wizard’s way, but the married woman was cheating
on her husband with a man a lot older than her.

“Did he express interest in you?” Watson asked.

“In which sense?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Professionally? Sexually?”

“Any sense at all,” she answered.

“Not right away. He only expressed real interest in

my academic career when I skipped a year, then he
realised I was, apparently, worthy of my surname,
by his own words, and expressed interest in having
me in his Inner Circle as soon as I completed
sixteen, since my tracker would be taken off my
wand early as well.”

“How many times did you refuse him?”

“Twice,” he answered, a shiver going up his spine.

“And were there consequences to this refusal?”

“I was forbidden from leaving my house. I was

starved and beaten,” he answered. “If it hadn’t
been for my house-elf, who also worked for the
Order, Kreacher, sneaking foot to me, I believe that
I would’ve died out of starvation. My mother had a
terrible sense of time, so she would forget I was
locked in my room for too long, her record was four
days and she gave me half an apple as a meal after
that.”

“Has he ever made sexual advances towards you?”

“In a way,” he agreed. “He expressed really big

interest in my sex-life, prying on rumour and
asking me for details on my sexual encounters with
Anne, whom, at the time, he believed to be nothing
but a friend. He did once imply that he would like to
watch an intercourse between Marina Bulstrode and
I, but once I expressed no interest in either him or
Marina, the subject died out.”

“How old were you when that happened?”

“Fifteen,” he answered.

More whispers, more gasps. More and more people

started to see him as victim of the circumstances.

“Did you ever feel in power to say no to Him?”

Watson asked.

“When you spent some time with him is that there

are times and times. There were days where the
fact I said ‘no’ would change everything, and there
were days where I could say and cry ‘no’ and he
would ignore it completely,” he explained to her.
“He was a mentally unstable man in seek of power.
I was just in the way sometimes, just like I was the
way to get in other times. You never knew when a
slap was coming or when the stroke care. I did feel
in the power to say no, but my ‘no’ wouldn’t mean
a thing to him if he wasn’t searching for it already.”

“Did you ever feel like your life was in danger with
Him?”

“Every single second that I was beside him. Even

when I did everything right to his standards and
was quiet about my thoughts and feelings,” he said.
“He was known for torturing for fun. Sometimes I
was the easiest target.”

“Do you feel guilty about the things you had to do?”
she asked.

“Every day.”

Watson turned to the jury.

“No more questions.”

Free. Regulus couldn’t believe his own ears.

“On the count of murder, the jury declared the

defendant… not-guilty,” the Chief Warlock said,
voice booming through the circular room. “On the
count of kidnapping, this jury declared the
defendant… not guilty. On the count of conspiring
to crimes against the wizarding world, the jury
declared the defendant… not guilty. Mister Regulus
Black, you are free to go.”

It was like music was playing in his mind as he

heard Watson celebrating and watched Sienna
grabbing his things. He could hear Anne’s yelp of
happiness as she held back an actual scream. He
could hear Sirius running to meet him in the
corridor outside. He was led by Watson towards the
exit, but he felt so astonished that he could barely
move on his own.

Until he did.

Because in the middle of the crowd of reporters, his

family waited for him.

He did not hear the reporters calling his name and

asking for quick interviews and his opinions. He
could only see Anne Potter-Black, his wife, standing
there as if she was painting with the sunlight
entering the skylight of the Ministry of Magic and
hitting her red hair, making her look more angelic
than she had ever been.

He walked forward, pushing reporters out of his

way.

“Hi,” she said.

He did not answer, he held her face with gentle

hands on both sides and attached his lips to hers in
a deep kiss that he had never thought he would
have in front of so many people, eyes closed
through the flashes. His hands let go of her face as
her arms went over his shoulders and went to hold
her waist, sighing in delight for her closeness.

There were giggles and wolf-whistles, but he didn’t

care. Not now. Not after he truly thought he was
going to be sent to Azkaban for the rest of his life.

This time she pulled away first, searching for air.

She smiled at him, surprised at the sudden public
display of affection in front of several cameras and
reporters, hungry for their next story for the front
covers after the war, starved of good news.

“Hi,” she repeated.

“I truly thought I was going to be sent away,” he

admitted.

“I told you that you wouldn’t,” she said.

Sirius suddenly slapped his back, whispering near

them.

“As if the name throwing in there wasn’t obvious.

No jury would be crazy enough to condemn Regulus
Black, Anne Potter’s husband, to jail for being
devoted to her,” Sirius joked. “Half of England
wants to be devoted to Anne; the other half wants
you to be devoted to them.”

Regulus pushed his away lightly.

“Am I know as Anne Potter’s husband?” Regulus

asked.

“Yes,” James said, red in the face for the kiss that
he had seen, but he didn’t seem angry, just
uncomfortable.

Anne blinked, worried.

“Does it bother you?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m very proud to

forever be Anne Potter’s husband, the heroine of
the Wizarding War against the Darkest Wizard of All
Times. Anne Potter, the Blade.”

“Don’t start,” she said, frowning. “That nickname

was ridiculous.”

“I thought it was well deserved,” Remus said,

shoving his hands into his pockets. “But can we go
now? The flashes are making my head hurt.”

And they all went home.

Chapter 142: Epilogue

Summary:
Finally, they are home.

Notes:
Thank you so much for reading up
until here. I'm sorry for taking so
long and I'm quite happy with all
the support that I had. I posted
these last few chapters during
Carnaval, so I had some free time.

The girl we see is no longer a girl, but a woman.

James can’t help but allow his eyes to fill with tears
as he watched his daughter in her second wedding
dress. Finally, he was able to see her. He fixed the
waistcoat around himself with pride as she
struggled to put on her shoes.

“Here, let me help you,” he said, getting to his

knees, taking the shoe from her hand and putting it
on her feet. “Are you sure you’re going with high-
heels? It’s grass outside.”

“Mum spelled it to not sink in the grass,” she

explains. “Do I look pretty?”

“You look amazing,” he answered. “If Regulus

doesn’t start crying in the moment that he sees
you, I’ll drag you back here and walk you down the
aisle again,” he warned.

She chuckled.

“He’s seen me in a wedding dress before, I don’t

think he’ll find it too overwhelming this time,” she
dismissed.

He disagreed in silence. There was nothing that

Anne did that didn’t bring Regulus down to his
knees; seeing her in a wedding dress, this time
with everyone they loved there to support them,
might just be enough to make him actually cry,
after all it did make James cry just by seeing
Anne’s reaction when Mia brought it to her
bedroom. There was a huge smile on her lips as her
wide eyes to Mia made the woman rest against the
wall with pride.

Now, Anne in the dress was sight that he thought

he would never forget. She looked beautiful sitting
in the lounging chair at the foot of her bed, fixing
the long skirts around her legs now that her white
shoes were already in her feet. She looked like a
princess. The dress had a high-neck neckline with
buttons from her neck to the middle of her bust and
the short-puffed sleeves (apparently a joke
between her and Regulus, whom she insisted on
sending a note calling him Gilbert Blythe for some
reason). Above the real cloth that made the dress
white, there was a thin cloth with several small
flowers embroidered in white. Her hair had not
been pulled up; it was a twist of braids and curls
that Lily had done to her and put the veil on top of
her head with metal twisted twigs in a surprisingly
beautiful crown.

“What is it?” she asked when James watched her

for so long.

“You just look beautiful,” he answered.

She smiled at him.

“Well, you’re not bad yourself,” she answered. “You

look good in grey.”

He fixed his blazer around himself now, smiling at

her.

“I know,” he joked.

Somebody knocked at the bedroom door and a

smiling Lily put her head into the bedroom before
walking in and holding the door open.

“You look stunning,” she said.

“Thank you!” Anne answered, smiling at her.

“It’s time,” Lily said. “Are you two ready?”

Anne nodded.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered.

“Just a warning,” Lily said before they got to the

door of the bedroom. “I did try to convince Regulus
to wear the Derby shoe.”

“But he chose to wear the Oxford?” Anne guessed.

“Yes,” Lily said, sounding a bit disappointed.

“He likes the Oxford shoes,” Anne dismissed. “And

he looks good in them, so there’s no problem at
all.”

“I still can’t believe you let him choose your

wedding dress,” Lily said, rolling her eyes. “If I had
allowed your father to do that, he’d choose a red
wedding-gown.”

Anne laughed.

“Well, I chose his clothes in exchange,” she

answered. “And we all know how Regulus is about
his clothes.”

James sighed, not really ready.

With Lily and James helping her with the dress as

she walked down the stairs of the Potter Manor, it
was easy to see Petunia waiting for them down the
stairs, using the same dress as Elizabeth, her
official girlfriend. Anne’s bridesmaids. They wore a
dark green satin dress of long length and big
smiles.

“Hi!” Anne said.

“Oh my God!” Petunia squealed. “You look

beautiful!”

“Thank you!” Anne answered.

Her mum and Mia had helped her get dressed with
the assistance of Coco and her father saw her
ready, but nobody else had seen her in the wedding
dress yet. When the bridesmaids got there to say
hello and give her some presents and help with the
makeup, Anne was still in a robe, trying to wake
Regulus up before anyone saw him naked.

Beside her bridesmaids, Morgana stood in her own

little white dress, looking into the small basket with
flower petals with curiosity. She looked up when
Anne appeared, jaw opening, making the other
laugh at her.

“Auntie Anne, you look pretty,” she said.

“Thank you, Morgana, you look beautiful,” she

answered.

With all the glory of being five years of age,

Morgana fixed her posture and smiled, making
Elizabeth chuckle at her.

Anne looked around.

“Where’s Laurie and Esme?” she asked.

“With Mia,” Lily said. “James, go and get Laurie.”

James did what he was ordered without a

complaint, running out of the house to the front
garden.

Lily watched.

“Now that your father is away, did you like the

lingerie we got for you?” Lily asked, turning with a
smirk.

It was an awkward conversation of the most part,

but Lily was young and so was Anne, so it was a lot
easier than they both expected. However, Anne still
wondered how Lily had found out Regulus favourite
colour was pink.

“It’s pretty, but… I’m a red-head,” she said. “And I

got you to thank for that. Pink and I don’t go
together.”

“It’s pastel pink, though, you’ll be fine,” dismissed

Lily. “Are you wearing it?”

Anne nodded.

Lily smiled at Petunia, who giggled.

Elizabeth was on her knees talking to Morgana,

telling her the instructions to the petal-throwing
when James walked back in, carrying Laurie in his
arms as the little boy giggled, happy to be with his
Uncle James.

“Mum,” called Laurie. “Esme and Harry are sitting

with Grandma.”
Anne had guessed that much.

“Thank you for telling me, Laurie,” she said. “Are

you ready to walk with Morgana and the rings?”

“Yes,” he said with a nod as James put him on the

ground.

Lily, the Matron of Honour, ushed them out of the

door in honour. Elizabeth and Petunia first, then her
in front of Laurie and Morgana and, finally, Anne
arm in arm with her dad, who held her tight.

As soon as Petunia and Elizabeth walked out of the

house, a sweet chord quartet started playing a
song that Anne did not know, she wondered if it
was one of Regulus’ secret composing songs. He
had been so busy writing more and more songs
now that he had a record company interested in his
songs and was recording his first album after his
single ‘Cherry Wine’ made top the year before as an
independent artist.

Anne took a moment to breathe.

“Look at the bright side, besides Regulus and a

family, you got two weeks of paid leave for the
honeymoon,” James said when he noticed Anne
seemed nervous. “You’ve done this before, Annie.
This is just formality at this point.”

She nodded.

“I’m not scared.”

“What are you?”

She wasn’t sure for a moment. All that she knew

was that she wasn’t scared of someone breaking in
and making a mess, she wasn’t scared of fighting
or anything like that. No… it was something new.

“I’m excited,” she answered. And she was, to an

extent that she had never been before.

“I’m sure that so is he,” James said as they stepped

out of the house. “Sirius said that he was ready
three hours before the ceremony.”

Anne smiled at that. It sounded like Regulus.

And then they were standing in the line, walking

into the really big tent they had erected. The
transparent tent made the people protected from
the sun, but magic made them feel still fresh,
though it was March. The several lines of chairs and
people standing in front of them, smiling at her
with pride made her hold back her tears, especially
because Minerva McGonagall seemed proud of
another one of her lions being married, tears in her
eyes as she tried to hold them back as well.

“Oh, God, McGonagall is crying,” Anne whispered.

“Hold it! Don’t cry yet, Annie!” James whispered.

“He needs to cry first.”

That made her tears retreat a bit as she chuckled

at his joke.

She recognised several of the faces on both sides of

the aisle. She saw Mia, Esme – Anne’s and Regulus’
daughter – playing with Harry and stopping once
she saw her mum to stand like everyone else.
Harry helped her down from the chair. However,
her eyes stopped in the way Esme smiled before
she turned to look at her dad, standing at the end
of the aisle.

Anne blushed right away.

Regulus always looked good in light colours, but the

fact that he looked so much better in black made
her very affected from the very moment that their
eyes met. He wore all black, which wasn’t the
original plan. He had a black button-up shirt, a
black waistcoat, a black tie tucked inside of it and a
black blazer with the black trousers, shoes and
leather belt.

“Save that look for later,” James grumbled, now in

terrible mood.

She giggled, trying to make it pass as just a

nervous giggle.

James was almost dragging her at that point, her

knees seemed to want stop working. But James
made sure that she got to the end of the aisle as
the final chords of the song played, gently taking
her hand away from his bicep and leading it into
Regulus’ hands, reaching for her with a smile.

He looked so handsome and so kind. But what

called her attention was the fact that his eyes were
as filled with tears as hers.

“Why are we like this?” she wondered out loud.

“We’ve done this before.”

Regulus gave her a chuckle, though a tear fell off

his eyes and rolled down his cheek. James laughed
at it, turning and giving Anne a kiss on the top of
her head with a smirk on his lips.

“I did say that if he didn’t cry, we would walk down

the aisle again,” he teased.

And with that James gave a step back, walking to

sit down beside Mia, having Harry and Esme in
between him and calling Morgana to sit down on his
other side now that her job was done and her feet
were hurting already by the bad face she had on.

The Officiator smiled at both of them as Regulus

winked at her through his tears, making her
chuckle.

“Welcome to all of you. Thank you for coming. We

are all here tonight to make an official celebration
of the already married couple in front of us,” the
Officiator said, making a few people laugh. “It’s no
secret the story between this couple for it has been
everywhere; in the news, in books and even in
textbooks for the next generation of young witches
and wizards. Still, not a single person looks at them
and think they are not still in the same level of love
as they were when they were younger. That’s not
something we can say for all couples, but it’s
something we’re fortunate to see sometimes.”

The Officiator looked around, nodding to himself.

“But what is love?” he wondered out loud. “There’s

so many types of love that every single person will
have a different answer to this question. I,
particularly, see love as quiet, as something that
sneaks into one’s life to the point where it’s so
common and important that it’s equal to oxygen.
However, when asked what love was, Mister Black
right here had a different answer, one which he’ll
like to share as his vows.”

Anne raised her eyebrows, taken by surprise as she

wondered which songs which of the songs he would
sing, passing the list of the songs he already had in
her mind, but noticing through Severus’ smile – the
best man – that it was probably something entirely
new. Sirius (the groomsman) spelled the invisible
piano behind him to appear as Regulus walked to
him.

Regulus threw a smile over his shoulder to Anne,

who nodded in encouragement, but shifted her
weight, nervous.

Still, her Regulus wasn’t nervous as his finger

started moving through the keys with the similar
familiarity that they moved across her body, with
the same devotion and the same undying curiosity
of always wanting to know more about her and her
reactions to him and his love.

As the piano played, Regulus looked at her.

“This song was actually written after our first kiss,

but I finished not too long ago. I wasn’t sure how to
find the words,” he admitted.

More notes on the piano.

“Babe, there’s something tragic about you.

Something so magic about you, don’t you agree?”
he sang. Anne smiled. It was really a new song.
Anne realised he was talking about when they first
met and his first impressions of her. “Babe, there’s
something lonesome about you. Something so
wholesome about you, get closer to me.”

That was how he saw her in school. Enchanted by

her mystery and in quiet hunger for more – for
more information, for more attention from her, for
more of her relentless, but quiet ambition growing
steady underneath her skin.

The notes of the piano were stronger, louder and

shorter.

“No tired sigh. No rolling eyes. No irony. No ‘who

cares?’. No vacant stares. No ‘time for me’.” He
continued singing.

Anne smiled softly at this. That was how Regulus

had been taught love was. His father saw his
mother was unbearable, as the reason he lost the
woman he truly loved. His mother saw his father
was the undesirable, as something so far away
from her that it was barely seen. He grew up seeing
it and thinking it was normal, that the violence and
coldness was normal, but it wasn’t. Anne had
taught him that it wasn’t.

“Honey, you’re familiar, like my mirror years ago.

Idealism sits in prison. Chivalry fell on its sword.
Innocence died screaming. Honey, ask me, I should
know. I slithered here from Eden, just to sit outside
of your door.”

When younger, Regulus wanted to look perfect. He

would stare at himself in the mirror, picking and
poking for hours and hours at what he thought was
out of place in his face and body. He stopped when
Anne showed him her scars, proud of having
survived them all and no fear of showing them off.
As she showed him how the idealism that his
parents had ready for him to believe (a world
where he could be king, and the people with
different blood would crawl for him) was wrong, he
noticed how many of the values he was taught
were guilty of his terrible thoughts.

So he left them. He left the comfortableness and

familiarity of his home to follow Anne blindly, even
if she wouldn’t allow him into her heart. He left his
Eden for her.

“Babe, there’s something wretched about this.

Something so precious about this. Oh, what a sin!”

That one wasn’t hard to figure out.

War.

Regulus had hated every second of the war, but it

had been what brought them together and the
reason why he changed himself to a better person.
He hated how there was a part of him, even if small
enough to be mostly ignored, that had liked the
results of the war in his own life.

Once more, the notes were shorter and stronger.

“To the strand, a picnic plan for you and me. A rope
in hand for your other man to hang from a tree,” he
continued.

He wanted the peace. He wanted a moment

between Anne and him where nothing and no one
could break. But he wanted between him – that
version that Anne was in love with – and her, not
the other versions that other people were allowed
to see; he wanted to be Anne’s man.

“Honey, you’re familiar like my mirror years ago.

Idealism sits in prison. Chivalry fell on its sword.
Innocence died screaming. Honey, ask me, I should
know. I slithered here from Eden, just to sit outside
of your door.” With a small pause for a few more
notes of the piano, the chorus changed slightly the
tune. “Honey, you’re familiar like my mirror years
ago. Idealism sits in prison. Chivalry fell on its
sword. Innocence died screaming. Honey, ask me, I
should know. I slithered here from Eden, just to
hide outside of your door.”

And Anne smiled, knowing that this time there was

nothing she could say or do as he got up from the
piano midst the claps of the people that could top
it.

Once the clapping finally stopped and Regulus was

in front of her, she smiled.

“Well, I can’t sing,” she answered.

Laughs followed the sentence.

“Please, don’t let her sing!” Remus screamed from

where he was sitting.

More laughed followed.

And there was nothing wrong in the world for Anne

and Regulus, because they were home.

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