Death Beds, Love Songs, and Ancestors

III

She is standing on the edge of a limitless abyss, at her side is a presence, familiar, but she doesn't know who it is. She can see her toes are an inch or so over the edge and bits of matter drop away as the inch continues to grow. The feeling of panic undermines a deeper sense of uncontrollable madness (panic beyond panic if you will) and the presence, which she recognizes as human, falls into the yawning beyond. She grabs the hand before it disappears and is sent sprawling on all fours. For a while she holds it fine, as if holding the hand of a child, but it gets heavier and heavier. Her grip holds fast. Her arm creaks, the weight is pulling it from the socket and the pain is white agony, but she can't let go. Even now, as she tries, she is unable to peel her fingers away from this other hand and unable to pull them back from the blackness. The creaking is worse and the skin begins to tear the madness comes rushing in and...

Pansy opened her eyes, reeling madly, nausea rushing over her in a tidal wave. She pitched herself forward over the rail along the bed, the abrupt change in position clearing her sight.

"Oh, finally!" Madam Pomfrey was more businesslike than relieved. "You were out for most of the morning. Thought I was going to have to go in after you."

"What's this?" Pansy couldn't get her thoughts into words, she struggled to get up.

"Oh no, no, no! People who have concussions and have lost a good deal of blood must be still." Madam Pomfrey pressed her back against the slightly inclined bed.

"But I have to go," Pansy tried to explain, digging the heel of her hand into her eye. Beyond the hospital wing, she heard an intense rhythmic pounding. Anxiety washed over her, she had to meet someone... "What's with those drums?" She asked thickly.

"Drums, dear?" Madam Pomfrey's eyebrows knit together in a searching gaze of concern. Pansy did her best to look back, but found that she was quite incapable of focusing. "Oh dear, I think you'd better lie back."

"It's like drums," Pansy reiterated, motioning with her hands suddenly noticing that her left arm was tethered and suspended high over her head. She shook it violently, "Hey now!" Bullets of black began to shoot through her vision, the pounding grew closer, slower and longer. She dropped her chin to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut against the rolling of her stomach, she knew she had been talking, but couldn't remember what she was going to say, "That's, that's so, uncool, man."

It was blinding, like a shot of electricity, Pansy felt her eyes snap open and she gasped sharply, sending herself into a serious coughing fit. Madam Pomfrey bustled over the bed, face on the hostile side of expressionless. She gripped Pansy's thin wrist between fingers of gentle steel. "Tacky, but stable," she murmured more to herself than to her patient or the stern face of Professor Snape, glowering down at his young student with crossed arms, one eyebrow inches higher than the other. "The princess awakens. Welcome back to the land of the conscious, milady."

Pansy shrank back against the large and firm hospital pillows. Snape's nostrils flared rhythmically with an odd combination of fury and concern. "Where was I before?" Pansy could hear her voice shaking.

"Don't let him get to you," Madam Pomfrey shouldered him out of her way with a frown and bent to raise the head of the bed. "You've just had a bit of a fainting, lost some blood, bumped your head."

"I remember..." Pansy scrunched up her face, thinking hard. After a long pause, she stated triumphantly, "I remember the post." Snape turned from the bed with a snort as Madam Pomfrey went busily about with several stopped vials and a professional smile pasted on her face.

"Here," she shoved something, smelling powerfully of anise, under Pansy's nose, and went the girl tried to protest, found herself choking on its sickly sweet thickness. Instantly, Pansy's body felt like a shrinking wool sweater, and she tried to stretch against it, realizing that her arm was trussed up. She gave it an interested shake. "Whoa, this come with an expiration date?"

"Simply for looks, elevation helps the seams knit. You're good to go," Madam Pomfrey shot a warning look at Snape, "when you feel good enough to go."

Snape waited until she was out of ear shot. His voice was strangely soft and dangerously melodious - even for Severus Snape. "Do you know what I heard?"

Pansy looked up at him slowly, regarding him helplessly yet warily from deep within the confines of her bed. She shrugged listlessly. "Professor, I wouldn't even pretend..."

Her response, unintentionally flippant, made his eyes flash dangerously. "That young Weasley carried you here, that you injured yourself and were carried to the hospital. Pansy, that's just two questionable wizards-" he shook his head rapidly in disbelief. Hands motioning uselessly at his sides. "Oh, so many questions!"

He began to pace the length of her bed. "One - why weren't you at breakfast with the rest of your house? Two - how did you happen to be in the hall with Weasley, of all people? Three - why didn't you remind that git to use Mobilicorpus, or any other of the spells you've learned in these last five years?"

Snape rounded on her, glowering down from behind his craggy nose. Pansy had little recollection of the whole incident, let alone specifics. "Happenstance, professor, with the exception of three, where, ah, I think I must have been knocked out, and thusly unable to remind him of anything."

He brought his face down close to hers, his black eyes watery and rimmed with red, "If you weren't my student, I wouldn't hesitate take fifty points from Slytherin for your clumsiness. That's fifty from Slytherin." Without another word, he turned from her bedside and made his way towards the door.

"But-"

"I did hesitate," he gave a careless wave over his shoulder.

"I'm awfully sorry Professor!" She called after him.

Snape stopped, slowly facing her as an alarmingly cheery sneer spread across his face, "Don't be, oh, Miss Parkinson, don't be."

Relieved, yet somehow anxious, Pansy dropped her head back on the pillows. Beyond the foot of her bed she could see the the green that peppered the burgeoning Spring outside the large windows. "Did he?" She asked, seeing the nurse hovering out of the corner of her eye.

"Did who what?" Came the clipped response.

"Ron Weasley, did he carry me here?"

"As a matter of fact," said Madam Pomfrey, disengaging the arm from the hoist, and the bandages from the arm. "Good as new, well, almost."

There was a very noticeable scar, puckered and bluish white, curving along the bottom of her palm, arching like a question mark. Pansy snickered, showing it to the little old woman who peered at it, and her, with disdain. "Battle Scar."

Unamused, Madam Pomfrey floated away, her long white cape dusting softly along the floor.

After a moment's reflection, Pansy swung her legs over the edge of the bed. It was going to be nauseating; her obviously uninterested friends flocked around her, pawing and purring, oh you poor thing, you poor fatherless thing with your questionable parentage and your bloody arm and your Weasley cooties. Here, let me carry, here, let me walk you, her let me get you, here, let me listen...

Pansy shoved herself off the bed, landing silently on both feet. She narrowed her eyes, that's where you had to be extra careful, those girls chewed on information regarding their peers like wolves on calf bones. If she breathed one word beyond "I can't remember", she would hear about it for weeks. If she waited, the rumors would write themselves, as soon as she could put in an appearance, issue a formal statement, things would soften. You don't spend a year as "Malfoy's Girlfriend" and not come to understand the awesome ability of the the Grapevine. It knew magic that was far beyond the powers of even Dumbledore, and could be controlled by no one.

She smoothed her skirt and rolled her sleeves up over her elbows, noting the blackish blotches that spotted her grey wool skirt and left racing stripes up and down her favorite robes. Her white shirt was beyond remedy, her hair was matted and her face felt thick with grease. She looked down at herself in the shiny mirrored surface of the bedside tray, letting her self-conscious half smile widen into a Hollywood grin.

"Two drops in a bucket, motherfuck it."

Pansy Parkinson did not wear a watch, and when she found the halls of Hogwarts deserted, she surmised that class was still in session, however, she had no idea which class she was to return to. Not Potions, no, must be Transfiguration, because the second hour was Snape's free period and he'd come to harass her. She did pass by the classroom to make sure, Millicent and Erica, sitting rigid with satchels packed on their desk told her exactly what she needed to know - it was minutes from lunch.

After a moment's deliberation, she decided to return to the dorm and change before swaggering into the hall in blood stained clothes amid some swirling rumors of Weasley's heroics and her own weak constitution. As she drifted out of the hall and down towards the dungeons, she realized that the flow of students around her was steadily thickening. With a slight pause, she knew there wasn't going to be sufficient time. While she tottered on her toes, indecisive, and a hand caught her arm.

"Pansy, walk with me." Draco's breath was spearmint cool on her ear as he gripped her elbow tightly and lead her briskly down the hall. "Eventful morning, eh?"

"Bit of an accident, see, I can be so clumsy," Pansy laughed lightly, insides cringing at his too cold and too soft touch.

"Wouldn't I know."

"Really, nothing fantastic-"

"Right, and Weasley didn't waltz into Potions an hour late covered in blood and acting oddly, ah, indignant?" Draco's nails bit into the delicate skin of her underarm. "I see you haven't bother to change either. Badge of honor indeed. Cosmos Mariner!"

She didn't respond, vainly trying to catch Sadie's eye as he whisked her through the portal and down the steep, wide, staircase. Face blank, but with steady eye contact, Sadie watched the pair brush by, nudging Livia, who looked up with reasonably general concern.

They made their way to the farthest corner in the long and low common room. Despite it being full day light, the room was dim, the sun struggling through the high and narrow windows. A few students, mostly seventh years - particularly amorous, milled around at the foot of the divergent tunnels, otherwise, the room was empty. Draco pulled her along behind him like an overexcited child and Pansy hollered (mostly with pain) as she banged her ankle on a claw-footed table.

"So, let's see it then," Draco released her with a shove, Pansy managed to keep from stumbling by grabbing the back of the closest chair and glared spitefully at him from under the shelter of hair. "C'mon now!"

Beside himself, he lunged forward and seized one wrist, then the other, comparing them in the dusty sunlight streaming through the common room window. "Lovely, lovely souvenir," he sneered, bearing sparkling canines, his grey eyes alight with his peculiar Malfoy venom. "Tell me, Pansy, is it still tender? As it aches, what comes to mind?" He ran his fingernail over the fish hook scar, then again, harder. She yelped, yanking her arm away.

"That is bad, that is a mark of disgrace. Of loss of control. Think - for minutes, Pansy, *minutes*, you were fatally vulnerable. If that hadn't been Weasley," Draco's voice wasn't threatening, but frightened. He shook his head and seemed unable to continue; the dazed look in his eyes sent goose bumps racing up and down Pansy's arms.

"Don't worry about me," she murmured, gazing shrewdly over his shoulder as a petite and doe-eyed fourth year made her way into the common room, twisting Draco's hat in her hands. "Oh Draco, the help?"

Fury flashing in his eyes, Draco reached out and grabbed the wounded arm again, pulling it towards him sharply. He bent his head over the scar, she could feel the breath of his hair as it over her arm. There was a sharp pinch deep within her arm and the pain shot through her body, sending her painfully down on her knees. Draco leveled her with his eyes, glowing pits in his shadowed face, "You understand then?"

He held her wrist a moment longer, then sudden anger twisted in his face and he shoved her away roughly, flouncing from the room with his absurdly heavy robes billowing out behind him.

P"Understand that you're cold mad," she muttered, rubbing her wrists, bruises blooming lilac under the skin already. Pansy blushed furiously when a second year, Graham Prichard, hurried over to help her up. She accepted, but could not bring herself to thank him, luckily, he didn't stick around anyway. She swore, kicking the nearest footstool, at least their transactions had been blissfully terminated. No more lease/lend baby, she thought, throwing her crumpled and stained robe hard at a chair, it's cash and carry from now on.

Pansy wandered towards the fire, hungry, but with no real desire to return to lunch, head back through the halls in her bloody shirt with the threat of her peers nagging the back of her conscience. She hadn't realized how cold she was until she was next to the flames, throwing heat out against her vaguely marbled legs. Absently, she began to work her waist length hair into a clumsy plait. There was a shuffle behind her, someone advancing in attempted silence.

Julia, the petite fourth year, doe-eyes flashing dangerously from under a halo of brown curls, was inches from Pansy's back when she turned, having just enough time to snatch the smaller girl's arms in one sure grip and stop her pursuit. "- what the devil?!"

"I don't believe," Julia hissed, eyes revealing all the fear her voice and actions hid. With strength Pansy did not expect, Julia threw off her hands. She was flushed and breathing heavily as she backed away from Pansy with her arms up, like a boxer. The two girls circled oddly; Draco's former, bemused but guarded and his latter, terrified but furious. Julia's voice, mitigated by her French grammar school accent, was very high and tremulous yet it only further amplified her words. "All the things they say, I don't believe it. You're nothing, an aberration, a woman, a mudblood! I don't believe!"

With a howl, Julia charged her, wand brandished like a sword. Surprised at the concept of being run through, Pansy completely dismissed her wand and jump up on the chair, hopping easily over Julia's back as she plunged into the thick upholstery. As the frustrated four year attempted to disentangle her wand from the chair, fighting to use the wood to patch up it's hole, Pansy gathered what was left of her resolve and headed for the door, with a shake of her head.

Julia freed her wand to the dismay of the chair, growling pitifully under her feet. She remained crouched in the chair clutching her wand for a long time after; breath ragged, but somehow victorious.

IV

Hermione threw her leg over the bench and plopped down next to her friends. Harry looked keyed up, smiling at her, but his attention obviously on Ron, who was inspecting a sandwich for tomatoes. "Argh, seeds," he made a face, peeling one away from the lettuce. Chucking the offending food onto the edge of his plate, he noticed Hermione. Grinning widely at her, "Hey! Hope you took good notes for me this morning."

"Always Ron," she said absently, leaning far forward. "So, tell us!"

Instantly, his expression changed, his voice was cool, "It was my fault, I was running in the halls. She dropped her bag and tried to keep a bottle of ink from breaking, only, I think she was a bit rough and it exploded in her hand." He shrugged, it sounded as though he had already recited this story a million times. She exchanged looks with Harry, somewhere between skepticism and concern.

"Pardon, but how did she cut herself?"

Ron's eyes sparked, but one look at Harry kept him patient. "To the extent of my knowledge, she grabbed a cracked ink bottle in an angry fist and it shattered. One of the shards cut open her palm." He gave a shrug, glanced at Harry.

"So why did she pass out?" Hermione had yet to release her bag, let alone begin eating. Her face was set in her detective mode.

"I misspoke," Ron replied slowly, taking a long deep breath. "It was an inch and a half long piece of glass entirely embedded in the upper part of her wrist like a screw." He looked pale. Students at several other tables had glanced over, nudging each other.

"Wow, so, what were you doing while she lost enough blood to pass out?" She was not going to let this go. Harry looked a bit sick himself, Parvati held him tightly around one shoulder, frowning at Hermione and Ron.

"She was bitchin' about me carrying her stuff! Whudja think? Discussing the finer point of your speech in Transfiguration yesterday?"

Hermione settled back in her seat, unsaddled her huge bag and let it hit the floor with a resounding thud. She reached for a large bowl of oranges, taking time to select one. She began almost carefully. "Must have been hard, all that blood." Squeeze, squeeze. "I remember, a couple of summers ago, when Fred tried to slide down the rail of Gringott's and smashed his face into the bottom stair, remember that?" She nudged Harry, smiling. Ron's eyes glittered suspiciously in his face. Squeeze, squeeze. Squuueeze. "So we were all trying to get him up, make sure he was okay when *you* fainted, and cracked *your* face on the stairs. That," she continued heartily to her mounting audience, pointing a paring knife in Ron's direction, "was my first experience with the colorful legend of Ron's fear of blood."

"People change," Ron said focusing his attention on his still untouched sandwich, trying to appear unaffected.

"Not like that they don't, not without professional help they don't," Hermione chuckled, selecting an orange. "And when Harry fell off his broom when the Dementors overran the Quidditch field? You screamed like a girl, I was more afraid for you for a second there! I won't *even* bring up the Triwizard Tournament when Viktor got lashed by that dragon. You barely made it to the edge of the stands before harffing." Her voice had maintained it's benevolent tone, but that was all. Hermione gazed at Ron with a curled upper lip, eyed narrowed. "I find it hard to believe that you acted so rationally this morning."

"It's not a matter of acting rationally, it's about doing the right thing." Ron countered, sandwich now completely forgotten.

"Why didn't you use Mobilicorpus?"

"Because I didn't think of it!"

She nodded, as if digesting this. Harry saw Ron's excuse as reasonable, he was still working on his recall in class, let alone in everyday situations. But Hermione's delusion was that everyone was as capable under pressure as she, especially her best friends, and had trouble grasping the concept as it pertained to Ron. It seemed to Harry that there was more than a mere pinch of malevolence in Hermione's attack.

"So something about this morning made you braver than all those other times?" The orange rolled towards the edge of the table. Dean caught it and he went red, immediately dropping it next to Hermione's plate and actively engaging the other spectators in a show of conversation.

"No," Ron said shortly, clearly uncomfortable over the attention. He glanced at Harry, shrinking further towards Seamus with a glazed expression.

"You just grew out of this phobia in a heartbeat, eh? Your sense of chivalry is stronger than your well-document vomitous fear of blood? There was nothing else?"

"If you have something to say to me, Her-my-oh-nee," Ron broke her name in to mocking cockney syllables, leaning close to her face, "you be better to say it already."

She did not reply, instead spread a napkin across her lap and picked up the orange where Dean had dropped it. With overt caution, she began to slice the rind into peelable sections. Her tone was acidly conversational. "Boys like you, Ron, are stimulated by two things in this world, beauty and money. Pansy is a little of both, though luckily for you, not much else."

Harry pressed back against Parvati, hard, disturbed by the odd twitch in Ron's expression and the implications behind what Hermione had said. Other classmates had now gone silent around them, discreetly watching the progress of the widening rift.

Ron stood up unexpectedly, bumping against the table hard enough to startle Hermione who nicked her ring finger with the paring knife. Two seats over, Lavender Brown gasped, instinctively covering her mouth with her hands.

Ron glowered over her for a long moment, Hermione did not give, clutching her wounded finger with the opposite hand and staring him down with angry, pitying eyes. The Great Hall, often with the atmosphere of a chaotic circus, was as solemn as a dirge. Without warning, he reached down and snatched up her bleeding hand. "There's a place beyond panic," Ron said softly, running his thumb over the small droplets of blood and smearing them into her skin, "when it dawns on you that whatever happens, help might not be on its way. Somewhere beyond chivalry, beyond phobias. Beyond what stimulates guys like me," he drawled nastily, feeling the silence of others around him rather than actually realizing it.

Hermione's finger remained in his grasp, he gave it a hard squeeze, watching the blood ooze down her hand, the way the white tissue bloomed crimson under his pressure. The rivulets ran over the web of his hand and down his wrist, seeping into his already stained shirt sleeve. Hermione watched this with no expression, and said presently, her voice steely and nutrasweet. "Are you talking about inspiration, Ron? Did Pansy Parkinson *inspire* you?"

With a shove, he released her hand and stalked out of the room, leaving the entire student body utterly speechless.

Leaving, Ron brushed past Pansy, just entering the room with Gloria, who an old friend and one of the Ravenclaw chasers. Her first instinct was to stop and thank him, but quickly she assumed it had been his fault in the first place. He obviously owed her an apology.

It was very still in the lunch room, heads were pressed together, voices were soft. Pansy and Gloria exchanged curious looks, then said their good byes and headed to their respective tables. "So, what'd I miss?" Pansy asked, sliding in next to Livia.

Sadie didn't bother to mask the smirk that did her country looks no favor. "Seems Weasely and his frizzy haired girlfriend just got in quite a row over you."

"Me? What in God's name for?" Pansy asked, reaching across the table and grabbing a handful of grapes.

Erica turned a gasp into a cough, Livia abruptly averted her gaze, Millicent guffawed, pointing at Pansy's arm, "So it's true!"

"I'll be damned," Livia murmured, glancing sideways at Pansy as she examined the scar. "You know what this means?"

"Mm, Hermione has every reason to wonder." Erica was prim, but her eyes sparkled wickedly.

"What about?" Asked Pansy suspiciously, keenly aware of her friends' body language and tone of voice. When it came to them, it was more about what they did not say, rather than what they did.

"Well, as the story goes, the very sight of blood has the power to make Weasley faint, puke, that is, until this morning." Millicent was clumsily coy.

"Wouldn't say that," Pansy was annoyed and pulled her arm loose from her friends' prodding fingers. "Story goes, I did have to spend the whole goddamn morning trussed to a bed, so it's not tender feelings that *eventually* got me to the hospital."

"So it's true then!" Sadie banged her hand on the table with an eerily triumphant smile. "You were so incapacitated that Weasley carried you!"

Millicent's eyes widened. To Erica, "Bet he's got a right strong grip. Those big hands."

"He didn't really have a choice," Pansy protested, mentally smacking herself for saying anything at all.

"I will be damned," Erica proclaimed, "if anyone, not you, Pansy!"

"I would have fought tooth and nail, I would have crawled, ooh, just wait until everyone else finds out!" Sadie squealed, clapping her hands in excitement.

"People have lives Sadie," Livia shrugged the waifish blond off of her shoulder. "Classes and romances and Quidditch, no one is really going to care." She offered Pansy a sympathetic glance from the other side of her charms book.

"Maybe so, but this is big politics, the best friend of The Boy Who Lived saving a girl who could be directly linked to the death of The Boy's parents? Not to mention the deaths of countless others," Sadie stopped herself by cramming a treacle tart into her mouth and chewing frantically. She refused to meet Pansy's injured and questioning gaze.

"Yeah," Erica was thoughtful, "What would Weasley have done if he knew who he was rescuing?"

Pansy threw up her hands in exasperation. "He's a Gryffindor! What do you think Dumbledore would have done if he found out that one of his holier-than-thou lifesavers left a lowly Slytherin to die alone in a hall? He had to do it, just as if we had exchanged places, I would have had to leave him. It's about what's expected, not what you want to do."

"True that," Livia nodded sagely. "Besides, all this lifesaving, rescuing, it all sounds a little extreme. I'm sure you weren't in any mortal peril."

Over her shoulder, Draco tossed Pansy a nasty look, escorting a glowing Julia down the aisle by the arm.

"He always looked so much better with you," Sadie said with an awkward little smile, patting Pansy on the arm.

Pansy had to hastily shove grapes into her mouth to keep from laughing or smiling, and managed to look appropriately upset by the newest coupling. She focused on her empty plate, watching her four friends give each other knowing looks when, Pansy told herself, they knew nothing at all.

V

Amalthea Grue returned to her maiden name after her life fell apart, but it didn't matter anymore anyhow. Daniel had served his purpose, Pansy would always be Parkinson, she would always have that safe distance from the Grue name. It had been a marriage of convenience, not necessarily loveless, but made increasingly impossible by the controversy that had built up around Amalthea to the point that who she was had become entirely eclipsed by who was perceived to be. And who she was perceived to be was no minor happenstance in and of itself. Even her husband, even her two school aged sons, they all saw her for what her brother had left behind.

Her sons, whose best magic was in their mother's looks and their father's charm, had been attending Hogwarts just before her life fell apart. Exhausted, emotionally, physically, and financially, she'd relented, and allowed their father to take them from the school they'd both attended and enroll them at some new age center in San Francisco, where he'd dropped roots with his once apprentice - one aptly named dye-job called Molly Frost. He didn't want Pansy, who was barely two, not to mention female. And despite all he knew, despite all the warnings and stories, he did not pick them up, nor send an escort.

Amalthea remembered offering up her children, the weeks leading up to their sacrifice spend in withdrawal, intensely orchestrated avoidance, knowing exactly what would happen, if Pansy did not go with them. Daniel didn't understand when she tried to explain - if it's all three... But don't give it a chance. What will happen will happen, let's not facilitate it!

"Get over it, Thea," he'd said, not so much preoccupied as determinedly unaware. "Molly will meet them at the airport tomorrow night."

"No, she won't," Amalthea responded, then hung up.

Sure enough, when she returned home from Heathrow, it was splashed on every channel. Flight 243, from London to New York had gone down in terrible weather. No survivors were expected.

She had not spoken to Daniel since.

Amalthea was a woman of equal and proportionate amounts of tragedy, secrecy, loyalty and righteousness. Her witching family could be traced back to Arthurian times, and it was said that the first in her line had actually been a Unicorn that a kindly but mediocre wizard transformed into a girl to save from hunters. Unable to change her back, he married her instead. Both paid a terrible price.

As the story goes, she bore him three daughters, one was so horribly disfigured that she died within hours. The second was hit by lightening before ten. Only the last, translucently beautiful, but mute, survived to adulthood. Not that her mother ever knew this, for she threw herself into the ocean, crazed with the inevitability of her own dying body.

This surviving daughter married into a wealthy muggle family by catching the eye of an egotist who preferred his wife say nothing. She bore him two sons and died in the birth of her daughter, who so depressed her father, that she was given to the childless caretakers to raise as their own. Within weeks, the main house burned in a fire said to have been so hot that the neighbor's iron weather vain, some fifty meters away, melted right to the stone roof. There were no survivors.

The caretaker was married to a witch by the name of Waterhouse who recognized the girl, pale as sea foam, as the descendant of the unicorn (now a local legend). Feeling her own common name unsuitable for the precocious child, she called her by the name of the unicorn of legend, Grue.

This girl went on to marry the son of a prominent but poor wizarding family, but kept the chosen name as her only condition in the union. She bore him male twins and a daughter, blind. One twin died in a hunting accident, the other had always been sickly. Again, only the girl survived to adulthood (her mother was crushed beneath the wheels of a local lord's horse cart) - and thus the cycle reciprocated itself. Fifteen generations of curse in her blood, fifteen generations of mother's passing their daughters the name of the Unicorn instead of the name of their fathers. Amalthea, young and crazy with need to end it, had been the first to give her daughter her husband's name. That should have been enough to end it, after all, wasn't prophesy mostly in repetition of the details? But no.

Amalthea had, of course, lost both siblings - her infant sister had been crushed by debris in the London Blitz that also drove her parents far into the country. It had taken Amalthea's mother, Diana, ten years to risk pregnancy again. As fate would have it, she did not have one, but two, fulfilling that part of the ritual. Once ensnared, Diana attempted to drown both babies in a kitchen tub, but her husband came home from cutting wood early and stopped her with the axe in his hand.

It was a horrid shadow to be raised in, but it was the death of her brother that brought her promising young life to a chaotic boil. Her twin brother - Oh, how nasty fate can be.

He had been offed by Aurors in the wee hours of November 1, 1981, hours after the dissipation of Voldemort himself. Adam had been charismatic, an excellent dueler with a whip of a sense of humor, but arrogantly aligned with Voldemort, especially on the muggle issues. She'd tried to change his mind, but he was as young and passionate as she, and the harder she pulled back, the more fury he used to push her away. Her lovely, gentle, compassionate brother had enlisted with the Death Eaters - she'd threaten to throw herself in front of train. He'd smiled, a grim, loveless smile, grey eyes lost somewhere on the horizon, "Don't be ridiculous, we both know that I was born to die. Your time will come too."

He quickly rose the ranks through his daring and post-graduation relationships he shared with certain pivotal instructors. He was an apprenticed Auror himself, even though his education had been stymied after a brief marriage to one Esme Malfoy, which was the first shadow of suspicion that was cast. Adam had been a Gryffindor, proud, strong, stupidly brave, and had no problems manipulating Peter Pettigrew's jealousy towards James and Lily Potter into betrayal. It was remarkably easy, he'd bragged, the whelp merely wanted to be special.

It all sifted, as it did endlessly, through Amalthea's head as she absently swirled whiskey around in the bottom of her tumbler, vacant stare fixed somewhere through the picture window. The gardens had long since had burst forth in an uncontrollable riot of color, obscuring the panes of glass and casting Briarwood into an endless and shadowy garden. The ivy that veiled the study brick mansion had a magic of its own, obscuring the house from the eyes of the curious. Watching the outside world from deep within the flower casket of her own sadness, Amalthea lived her horrid past over and over, asleep or awake.

-It wasn't sadness- she thought -not depression, nothing emotional. It's like having an occupation one despises, I must do it, I am bound, not by tradition, but by inevitability. I must die young, tragically, as per my family curse, and I must accept the staunch awareness of Death Eaters, in accordance with my brother's inherited destiny. In order to ensure that my daughter would be given a shot to fulfill her own destiny, free from the constraints of Good and Evil... I wasn't not forced to take Adam's place, but at least now Pansy will not be asked to do it. She can continue on, as pure as she wants, she can pretend to have a future as best she can. I will keep my sorry secrets to myself. Without the knowledge of the curse, she cannot continue it-

He'd played roadblock, that's how they caught him. Suicide, more or less. He'd thrown up as many obstacles as possible around Godric's Hollow, trying to buy time for Voldemort's escape. They had expected Aurors to flood the area within minutes of the attacks. The plan called for Adam to simply Disapparate, instead he climbed through one of the rear windows and fell neatly into the lap of the Longbottoms. It was heard that he died with a smile on his lips. That smile would follow the Grue name for years.

Destroyed, Amalthea married the first man outside her social circle who asked her. Just to escape the whole conceptual wizarding world with its light and dark and death and endless, messy war. Daniel Parkinson was plain, but charming, the son of a non-practicing witch and a muggle doctor. A Hufflepuff during his time at Hogwarts, he could recall his own house clearly, but very little else. True to their credo, he loyally carried her, even bodily, as she attended trial after trial, recited her story over and over, forced to answer questions about a lineage that no one could really verify, special powers she could never recall accessing, secret caves and castles she knew nothing about. After long last, they were satisfied that Adam took his secrets to the grave, but it did little to quell the rampant suspicion. Albus Dumbledore helped exonerate her in the Potter's deaths, but could do little to dispel the clouds that developed around her and her ancestors' precious, precious name - Grue.

But marriage hid the name, it would hide her son's names as well. She slunk into the shadows, retired her wand, chopped off her famous hair, and called herself Thea Parkinson.

When Pansy was five, three years after her brothers had died in the horrible crash, Thea had happened across a rumor in the Daily Prophet that 'the eerie and silent Amalthea Grue had long ago perished beside her sons in a plane crash that some might blame on her desire to fulfill, what she believed, was an ageless curse placed on her family.' She had bristled. She'd given up her name, lost her whole family, was besieged by guilt, obligation, and absolute, debilitating shame. For a long time, she let them call her names, speculate on the extent of her involvement, didn't challenge the letters asking for her head - did everything in her power to hide herself and her odd daughter from the ideas and nuances of the past. But when she read that, it was as though they were forcing her death, a fabrication better than the hideous truth. And she felt the last bits of her dignity crumble to the ground - her life had officially fallen apart. That's why she changed her name. That's why she began to drink.

She drained her glass, stood, and wove across the room to get a refill. Not to bury pain of regret or guilt because her life was endlessly connected to death, but as to render herself completely useless to the Death Eaters that demanded her loyalty in exchange for her daughter's ignorance. Yes she would join them, of course, she would do their bidding, but she would remain inebriated, mindless, until they found her worthwhile in silence, yet useless in practice.