Harry Potter and the Amulet of Houle

The Amulet of Houle - #2 in the Viridian Wand Chronicles

PART III: THE GIRL WITH TWO FACES

Chapter 2

September 2020

He checked the address that Charlie had given him- yes, this was it. The Flints’ London residence was large and appeared rather luxurious from the outside- apparently the Zabini wealth had provided handsomely for Marcus Flint, a man of bloodlines if not an overflowing Gringotts account.

The one incongruous note was the kid who sat on the steps, smoking, his bleached hair hanging in his eyes, in weathered Muggle garb. Cautiously, Draco Malfoy approached him.

"Is Marcus in?" he enquired. The kid - he couldn’t have been more than seventeen - shrugged, exhaling like one who has spent years getting to know the intimacies of a cigarette. He looked up at Draco, his shaggy bangs sliding back to reveal a familiar pair of dark brown eyes. Montague eyes. "Salazar Montague?"

Draco hadn’t seen him, Blaise and Keith’s kid, in over fourteen years. Salazar and Emily Montague, those were the twins. Emily was towheaded tomboy who took after their father, while Salazar had looked like their mother, who was pale-skinned and dark-haired. However, little Sal had changed a great deal. The kid coughed, then spoke in a gravelly voice. "Skunk’s th’ name, you berk. Get wi’ th’ times." His accent was truly horrid- probably, Draco thought, exaggerated for the effect.

"Sorry," he muttered, "I’ve been trying to."

Salazar - Skunk - glanced at him again, this time with a look of recognition. "Malfoy? Back from th’ dead, I ‘eard. Was it fun?"

"What?"

Skunk took another drag on his cigarette, then blew smoke at the ground. "Was it fun? Death. Oh, never mind. You want th’ stepdad, ‘e’s in ‘is office. Ask one o’ th’ butlers to ‘elp you. I gotta go." With that, he got up and walked off, leaving Draco Malfoy stricken and speechless, staring at a figure that had just one-upped most of his nightmares.

Blaise Zabini was a striking witch who was always laughing, a born socialite, while Keith Montague was a daring playboy, the Wimborne Wasps’ favorite Chaser. They had a long courtship, but just a year after they married in 2003, their twins were born. Tragically, Keith had been killed in a senseless Quidditch accident before their first birthday. His widow, while still breathing, was in all respects dead as well. Draco had seen her last a few days before his departure to Azkaban- the announcement of her engagement to Marcus Flint had just been made. Marcus looked like a smug, satisfied cat. Blaise just looked blank.

Now, Draco recollected, Blaise had another two children, the eldest thirteen, the younger one twelve. He wondered if she had ever really recovered from Keith’s death.

He found out when he rung the doorbell.

Blaise Flint had not aged well. Not so much that her face was lined- but that the absence of lines where they should have been was so prominent. Her black eyebrows had been plucked to the point where they barely hovered on the edge of existence. She was thin- but too thin, almost gaunt. Her once full mouth was also thin, and harsh, while her eyes shone dully, as if she did not really see him. The only thing left of her beauty was her cascade of black hair.

"Draco," she said slowly, "Have you come to see Marcus?" Even her once-lovely voice was gone from her- now it was strained and low.

"Yes," he replied, nodding, though his mind was reeling, thinking how horrible it was, how bizarre. She seemed little more than a walking corpse.

"He’ll be down in a minute, but please don’t keep him too long. We have a party to attend at eight- you remember the Warringtons? Of course you do," she said to herself, "I’m so silly. Have you seen my Bijoux and Pierre?"

"I don’t believe I have." Draco assumed she was referring to some sort of pet- Kneazles, perhaps? But Bijoux and Pierre turned out to be her two younger children. The portrait that hung in the hallway captured their personalities remarkably well. Bijoux, the thirteen-year-old, looked slightly like her mother but had her father’s smug, unpleasant smile. Pierre appeared complacently anal, rather like the Warringtons; rotund Frederick, plump Forsythia, and their stout son, Firel.

"Bijoux is at the top of every class," Blaise said drearily.

He made the appropriate comments as his former classmate rattled off her two youngest children’s accomplishments, but neither of them really cared. Draco cut her off in the middle of a long discourse on Pierre’s exceptional talent with Bludgers.

"How are Salazar and Emily?" he asked.

She blinked, swayed, and unconsciously put out a hand to the hallway’s staircase to steady herself. Her hair brushed the smooth cherry wood of the balustrade. "Salazar has dropped out of school. Emily has been disinherited. She was a Hufflepuff."

"I’m sorry."

Blaise did not say anything; Marcus came down the stairs just then. However, he could have sworn that, if only for a second, her eyes had looked directly into his for the first time.

They were wide, dark blue, and full of some desperate emotion. But Draco never found out what it was, or what she had meant to say.

* * * * *

Mica stood in the foyer of the house, utterly still. Stillness had become a habit with her, over the years, as silence once had been. It was a way of being in control. Over herself, if nothing else.

A board creaked around the corner, and Ananda Lupin emerged from the hallway, stepping into the lavishly decorated foyer. Perhaps, if Mica hadn’t been so fraught – well, fraught was too strong a word for her – with worry about Caro, she would have appreciated it more. It was furnished in a Chinese style, the small hall table black with lacquer, the room otherwise done in shades of crimson and gold.

Crimson and gold. It came to her in flash. The Pensieve seemed to speak into her mind, and she saw Morgan’s screaming, her greatest fears.

Caro will die here.

"She’s awake," said Ananda sharply, appearing oblivious to Mica’s thoughts.

"Oh, good," Mica replied somewhat absently, and she followed the elder woman to the room where Caro now was, up several flights of wooden stairs.

Ananda Lupin was twenty-nine, and a mystery to most who knew her. She was a doctor, yes, a good one, but there was always a hint of something otherworldly to her. Her mother had died shortly before her daughter’s fifth birthday, leaving Ananda to be raised by her werewolf father; little else was known about her. Remus had raised her to "be herself" as he often said, but there was distance between the two of them that was never adequately explained. Possibly because of the fact that he and Ananda’s mother had divorced shortly after her birth, and he and his daughter had rarely seen each other until her death.

Mica herself kept distance from people, but her distances were so far from Ananda’s icy aloofness as to be entirely dissimilar. She did not much like Ananda, but she felt Caro was in good hands.

However, she hesitated before she followed Ananda into the oak-paneled room.

Caro smiled up at her from the bed – such a lovely, large bed, oh, an ebony four-poster, and Caro so small in it, its friendly largeness eating her up. The bedspread was of splendidly embroidered ivory silk, and she almost faded into it, had it not been for her dark hair and golden eyes.

Ananda left them.

"So," said Mica, trying to be brave, but she knew she was all alone now, there was really nothing between her and that terrible vastness of evil out there, except she herself.

"My daughter is in Berkeley," Caro commented out of the blue, propping herself up on her elbows.

"Your daughter?" She took a seat in a chair upholstered in rich, flowered yellow silk. Of course, Mica knew quite well that Caro had been married, it was quite feasible that some little Caro was underfoot somewhere… but it seemed utterly incongruous to her, for some reason. For Caro was such a solitary person.

"I do have one," the Past Bearer continued, "Her name is Lee Yoh, and I have not seen her in twenty-five years. The last I knew she was with her aunt Sandra in Berkeley, but that was in 1995. I don’t want you to find her, I’ve hired people to do that, once I’m gone. I just thought you should know."

"Why don’t you have her?" Mica asked.

"I… She never knew me, hardly. Her father was dead, and I went mad. I couldn’t drag her down with me." Caro shook her head. "I loved her."

"Enough to leave her there?"

"Mica, madness is not a good place for young children. I let myself go for years."

"You were sane enough to rescue me," scoffed Mica.

"No. I was crazy even then. Perhaps I am still. I have emerged from exile to give you a task, Mica. It was not something I would have done had Morgan not asked me to do it!" Caro fairly shouted the last part. When she was finished, she collapsed back into the enveloping embrace of the bed.

"Don’t worry about me," Mica insisted, standing up from her chair. "I can do what Morgan has asked. You’re done. Don’t dwell on it."

The Past Bearer sighed, a sigh that made Mica wince. "Oh, I agree with you. I am done. Death is only a release for me, now that I have failed."

"Caro! You’ve never!"

"Yes, I have," Caro said quietly, but firmly. "I have lost two Lees, my daughter and the Bearer before me. Through conceit I lost a chance to kill Voldemort. I was always arrogant, I always believed that I could never lose, and so I failed. Take the Wand with you, Mica." She reached for a wooden box, which fell open at her touch, yielding the familiar emerald with ease. Caro would have pressed it into Mica’s hand- but Mica was quicker.

"No!" she screamed, and she fled from the house.

* * * * *

Ginny Potter’s fingers trembled as she unwrapped the cards. She was in a dark corner of the attic, hunched over her old Hogwarts trunk, which was black with age and twice as dusty. Once, she had sworn to herself that she would forget- she would leave behind the year of the cards, the year that had changed her and made her the Diviner she was. Even as she became a Realm Watcher, she had denied to herself the cards, if not entirely the Diving Arts, but when the Seeing had come upon her that afternoon, she was forced to return to them.

The trunk was still lined with fading red velvet, faded more now that in the Hogwarts days. She had shut and locked it, as Ginny Weasley, for the final time on the last day of her fifth year, using Percy’s old trunk for her last two years at school. But it seemed as if nothing had changed in the trunk in the twenty-four years it had remained in the shadows.

Those trembling fingers set down the cards next to her, then returned to the trunk once more. The book, its pages crumbling a little, was there. There were her old, ragged, paisley robes, a few tattered schoolbooks, and the white sandals with the silken ties. The requisite school robes, outgrown by the start of her sixth year, sat in neat pile in one corner, and Ginny remembered the crystal globe that was cushioned in their folds.

But in the end, she only removed the cards and the white sandals. In the pale, dusty half-light from an attic window, she slipped them on- they still fit. As she laced them around her ankles, she thought idly of how his hands had felt, tying them the first time, brushing her ankles softly. When she had taken them off, at the end of the ball, she had locked them in the trunk, never to be worn again.

In the end, she locked the sandals back in the box once more. Harry she loved now, Harry she had loved long before she knew it. But she had loved him once, also, something quite separate of her destiny, different from Harry entirely, and she had locked them away in the box as well. She had locked them away, as she had her youth, so they could forever dance in the dusky room that is memory, uninterrupted. The cards were hers, but the shoes were theirs.

She smiled as she turned the key in the lock again, but it was a sad sort of smile, the kind of smile that is a bittersweet memory of some long-forgotten time.

Ginny Potter picked up the cards, and fled the attic.

* * * * *

The rooftops again. But she knew now that she could run and run and she would still find herself. She could no longer get lost with the wind.

The pain got worse as she ran. It had started out in her chest but quickly spread to her legs, her head, and her arms. But she couldn’t stop running, not now. Running was not losing herself but it was postponing the moment when she would have to think – it was so much harder to think when she was running with the winds at her back. Thinking was death, she told herself.

When the moment came when she was too tired to breathe, she collapsed and a wild, anguished cry tore itself from her throat. She lay there, and she cried, her eyes sticky with tears.

* * * * *

When Draco left the house, it was past dark, and he was tired. Marcus had accepted him, it was true, but then there was the tedious process of summoning the League and giving them the news. At least he hadn’t wanted the Talisman; then again, Draco reflected, it would probably do the man more harm than good.

Idly, he fingered the Talisman, which hung outside his robes for once. His mother had given it to him when he was still a child- "to protect you," she had said. It had not done its job admirably, though, and Draco thought it unusual that such a clever man as Marcus could consider it dangerous. But Marcus was peculiarly superstitious; he had even ensured the Dark Pact would be formed on the day of Slytherin’s death, as if the old fool’s prophecy could have meant anything. He had known Diviners, Draco had, well, he’d known one, but in that time he had known one he’d learned that prophecies were often misinterpreted. Or pure fallacy.

At the end of the street, he met Skunk again.

"Oy, Malfoy!" said that person, tossing the hair out of his eyes. "So, you’re in wi’ th’ Purebloods, now are you?"

Draco nodded. "It’s for the greater good, right?" He said, sounding more confident than he felt.

Skunk flashed him a toothy grin. "You keep thinkin’ that, Malfoy, you do." He coughed; it seemed as if those cigarettes were getting to him. "Th’ stepdad’s been wantin’ me to join ‘im, ‘e ‘as, but I ‘ad none o’ it."

"Why?"

"Oh, Mum said she’d be flayin’ me alive if I did, and Em said she’d set fire to m’ dead body," Skunk declared jovially. "The usual."

"Oh?" Draco raised an eyebrow.

But Skunk Montague seemed disinclined to say any more, and he left Draco at the end of Peachtree Terrace Road. The latter stood there in the dim glow of the lamplight before a car drove by, narrowly missing him, and, startled, he continued back to the flat.

It was at the flat that he was met by Diana, who was perched on the stairs that led up to it. She looked awful- almost as if she had fallen asleep in the rain that had pattered on the ceiling of Marcus’s office all afternoon. Her long hair was wet, messy, and tangled; a sooty blotch marred her left cheek.

"What happened to you?" The words burst from his lips. "Did you get run down by a motor lorry?"

She laughed, a shrill laugh that made his ears hurt. "No. No, I don’t believe I did." With a gesture to her ankle, which had been wrapped in what apparently a makeshift bandage, she continued, "I was out running and I sprained my ankle. Since I was only a block away, I decided I’d wait for Sirius to show up. He’s not half-bad as a medi-wizard."

"Why didn’t you Apparate home?" he asked her.

Diana seemed to hesitate before she spoke. "Truthfully, I can’t."

"Flunked your tests?"

"No…" she shook her head, "I just can’t."

"Because you’re a weretigre?"

She shrugged. Draco gave up on trying to get answers out of her- an impossible task when she didn’t want to give them, it seemed- and unlocked the door to the flat. She limped in with a grateful smile, then settled herself, to his irritation, on the couch.

"I’ll just ring Sirius, shall I?" he inquired. Diana gave no answer but a half-hearted nod, and he realized that she was more tired that she had appeared in the moonlight. So he lit a fire in the hearth, and set about Firetalking with Sirius.

Before half a minute had passed, Sirius’s head appeared in the fire against the familiar background of his office, which was presumably in some remote location. Draco had never exactly asked what Sirius did for a living- somehow, he didn’t quite relish finding out the elder man’s occupation. However, it didn’t seem to inhibit Sirius’s frequent Talks both at home and at work.

"We’ve a surprise visitor," Draco said, "Your friend Diana’s shown up and she’s sprained her ankle."

Sirius frowned. "Tell her I’ll only be a minute."

"She said she couldn’t Apparate, or I’d have sent her-"

"Ah," Sirius interrupted, and his furrowed brow smoothed out. "I’d forgotten about that. Get her a cup of tea, will you?"

"Very well."

The fire flickered and Sirius’s face disappeared. Draco straightened up from the fireplace to find Diana’s gaze on him, the flames eerily reflected in her coal-black eyes. The expression on her face was inscrutable in the firelight, but it was not her usual smile. She looked exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and he felt a wave of sympathy for her, despite the fact he knew her so little, for she seemed so lonesome and lost.

"He’ll be coming soon?" she murmured, her voice as well redolent with weariness.

"Yes," said Draco, but she had already fallen asleep.

* * * * *

She managed, somehow, to attend the rest of her classes that week. Mica was sick with grief, but she pushed it away, knowing quite well the kind of backlash she would get when it all hit her. She was tired, too; but it was the kind of fatigue that comes with holding in emotions, and she could do little about it. Some days her very bones ached, and even her magic could not help.

On Friday night, she crashed. Mica lay down on her couch and simply could not muster the strength to get up. At all.

It was fortunate that her aunt came by.

Alex let Ginny Potter in, and the latter made a beeline for the prone figure on the couch.

"Dear," Ginny said softly, "Give me your hand, so I can mend it."

Mica didn’t protest; she moved her hand a few inches to rest under her aunt’s warm fingers. Suddenly, warmth shot through her, and the gold hummed in her blood.

"Mica? Do you hear me?"

She opened her eyes slowly. "Yes…" she said faintly. "What did you…?"

"It’s a charm; you’ll feel better in the morning. When you wake. It won’t make you go to sleep, though; you’ll have to do that yourself," her aunt said.

Mica was silent for a long moment; then she spoke, halting at first, and then faster and faster. "You- you knew- didn’t you? She must have told you- something. You were Protectors, after all. I saw her… last week. She is like the face of death itself."

"I have seen death," Ginny replied calmly, "I have seen it too many times. I saw Dumbledore go peacefully; I have seen Harry die in my dreams. I know how his end will come. And I saw a girl die, when I was young. She died of magic poisoning."

"You See, don’t you." It wasn’t a question. Mica looked at her aunt warily; could she- did she know? Had she Seen it within her?

"I do, yes; I went away from it for a long time, though. Seeing is pain. It gives hope, yes, but it also destroys. I would not wish it on you. It does not make love easy."

"Love is never easy."

At this, Ginny stood up abruptly from Mica’s side. "Oh, Mica! If you knew- what I know…" She paced around the living room, tense. "I have Seen things around you, since you were a child. So I tried to keep myself from Seeing, for your sake. For many years, I did. I thought they were lies, when I was young. I did not want to know the truth."

"Will I die?" she asked, nonchalantly.

"Death! Do you really think She would await you now?" Her aunt laughed, and Mica knew that something greater than Ginny spoke through her. "Death is a winged Lady, have you seen her black lips? You are meant to be Princess. The four signs of the night live on – and the gold-eyed is the Empress. Too young, with Old wisdom. The flame child will be the Queen. But Lady Death, she never changes. She is both beginning and end. When the circle is complete…"

"The circle?" she prodded.

"When the circle is complete, the Prince is reborn."

Ginny was silent.

"A prophecy," said Alex, who had been hovering in the doorway. "Cool. I’ve got it all down on paper."

* * * * *

She had lain out the cards the night before, and true enough, they hadn’t lied to her. The High Priestess, The Moon, The Empress, and… Death. Though the Empress in her mind wasn’t the Empress card at all.

There had been four other cards. Herself - the Queen of Wands - and the Wheel of Fortune.

The eeriness of the reading had not struck her until the cards were away. For seven out of eight cards to be Major Arcana… it was Fated.

Ginny brought her mind back to the last two cards, the Hanged Man and the Fool. The Prince and the Prince reborn? She would know soon enough.

In thirty minutes, she was ready. The twins were at school. Harry was at work. No guests were scheduled to arrive anytime that day. So she cleared off the dining room table once more, readying it for the cards.

"Tell me," she murmured, "of the Prince."

She used the Celtic Cross spread she had learned first, when she was still a girl, when she had learned of her Sight.

The first card, herself. Ginny smiled wryly with amusement when it turned up the Queen of Wands, as always.

The second, the aura around her. She was surprised to see the High Priestess, intuition, once more. Could that mean… Could it be? But Ginny brushed the thoughts away. It wouldn’t do to be biased, she reproached herself. No, it really wouldn’t do at all.

The third, why she had asked. Death smiled up at her, his white bones gleaming and his skeletal grin wide. Change, she remembered. The cards’ knowledge had never left her.

The fourth, the past. The Lovers. She didn’t need to interpret that one, no, not at all. Ginny bit her lip, biting back the cry of... what? Surprise? Recognition? Perhaps. For the cards still knew her fears. They knew what she had Seen for Mica.

The fifth, the possible future. The Five of Cups – an emotional loss. Devastation.

The sixth, the definite future. The Ten of Swords: the end of a cycle, which she already knew. But what cycle? Would it be the four aspects of the Goddess, or the end of Caro’s life? Perhaps something else altogether, she thought.

The seventh, her fears. Not the Lovers, this time. The Hanged Man hung, content. Ginny smiled again, a grim smile this time. Oh, yes, she feared knowing. Why had she been gone from the cards all this time? For she had known of the Prince eons ago, she reminded herself. Before she knew of the cycle. Though she had seen the Princess.

The eighth, what others thought. What others? she wondered idly. But there was a card; the Eight of Swords. Someone trapped in a prison they had locked their own self into; someone trapped by fear.

The nineth, what she would have to brave to reach the tenth. The Nine of Swords. Some times truth was hard to see. Especially when it featured nightmares, terror, and depression.

The tenth card, the final answer to her question. It was the King of Cups.

Ginny said nothing, but she dug her nails into her palms until they began to bleed.

* * * * *

In the week of the waxing moon, the stripes in her hair were darker.

In the week of the waxing moon, she grew hungry at the smell of blood

In the week of the waxing moon, she was not beautiful. She was ravenous, ready to ravage the world. She was impatient, drenched in desire.

In the week of the waxing moon, she was waiting.

* * * * *

After a long and extremely agonizing day at work, Draco went home and curled up before the fire with a snack and a battered copy of The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul, one of his favourite books. He hoped Sirius wouldn’t mind the loss of his secret chocolate stash too much.

He was not surprised to hear the familiar sound of the window at the end of the couch sliding open. Well, not much.

She looked marginally better than when he had last seen her- fully recovered in most respects, slightly worse in others. He remembered that it was just before the full moon, so perhaps that might have attributed to her current appearance. She looked rather gaunt and hungry- sort of, Draco reflected, like his teacher Lupin had around that time of the month. Lupin had been – was – a werewolf.

"Hello," Diana said, scooting his legs off the couch with one stiletto-clad foot, then sitting next to him. "So, do you have any news for me?" she asked.

He shrugged. "What sort of information?"

"Don’t play games," she chided him laughingly, "You know. Who, what, where, when. I’m verrry interested."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "In what?"

"In information, obviously." She wagged a finger at him. "Don’t be silly. Now tell me."

"Well," he drawled, "There are twenty-six of us. People you’d be interested in are Marcus, Blaise Zabini Montague Flint, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle-"

"A Goyle?" Diana whispered, her face carefully blank. "Not a Goyle, surely not…"

"What aren’t you telling me?" he demanded, being rather sick and tired of her evasive conversation, her tendency to worry over odd details without explanation. "You’re hiding something from me. If you didn’t happen to react to strange things all of the time I wouldn’t bother asking you, you know. The Ministry’s in shambles if a half-assed agent like you is all they’ve got."

"No!" She was remarkably childish in her explosive nature. "They have better-"

"Then why are you here?"

"Because," Diana said, sounding deflated, "I was part of the League."

"What!" Draco exclaimed, leaping up to look down at the weretigre still seated on the couch. She leaned her head back to rest on the edge of the couch, her eyes half-closed.

"I can’t, oh, never mind… just… meet me on the roof tomorrow evening."

And she left.

* * * * *

Groans erupted all over the classroom as Professor Philbert passed back their essays. One student, a young man with shocking green hair who was seated next to Mica, actually passed out when he looked at his grade. Mica didn’t notice his sudden collapse, nor the 100% on her own paper. She was more preoccupied with her professor’s neat note in red ink on the final page.

Contact with M. F. has been confirmed. Some information has been extricated. More will be coming soon. Code in post class.

Her feelings at reading Nine’s note were admittedly mixed. Had it really taken them this long to process it? Or perhaps… but the troubles of bureaucracy she pushed from her mind. She could breathe, now. Cogs in the wheel were turning.

A few minutes later Philbert dismissed the class, and she haphazardly stuffed her materials and papers into her rucksack. The other students pushed past her to the exits as she stood up, and she tripped, falling hard against the edge of one of the seats in the large lecture hall. Her foot slipped out from beneath her and she landed on the floor.

"Need a hand?" a voice above Mica asked, and she nodded dumbly in reply. A large, omniscient hand descended and pulled her up. She bit her lip when she saw whom she stood nose to nose with.

"Tom? Tom Parkinson?" Mica hadn’t seen the Slytherin since June. Wavering a little on the slippery shoes that had already once betrayed her, she leaned heavily against one of the seats.

"Oh," Tom said, his voice slightly colder, "It’s the Weasel. Too good for the rest of us, eh? We didn’t need your kind fouling up our school."

"Nor I yours," she snapped at him. "All I asked was that you leave me alone. Was that a problem for you?"

"Apparently so." He scowled at her. "Watch your back, Weasel," he muttered before moving on.

She narrowed her eyes at his slowly receding back, but said nothing. After the students had all dispersed, grumbling and irritable, she approached the professor.

"Professor, I can’t understand how horribly I did on the essay," she said, adopting a petulant tone. "Are you sure we’ve been covering all that material in class? There’s nothing new?" She twisted her fingers together in mock anxiety. "I’m sure there’s something I must have missed."

"We didn’t cover the Phoenician Star in class, Ms. Weasley, but it was a reading assignment on page nine."

"Oh! I thought we were supposed to read page thirty-seven."

Philbert sighed. "I’ll see if I can give you a make-up assignment. Come into my office."

As soon as they had entered the professor’s somewhat Spartan home-away-from-home, the professor sealed the door with sixteen different rapidly issued charms. He then dropped into the well-cushioned chair behind his desk, and, almost as an afterthought, moved a stack of parchments several feet high slightly to the left so that he could see her.

"To make short work of things," he said, "The League of Purebloods has been located and confirmed to exist. For some reason, the agent who made contact had to cut off a meeting in the midst of receiving the information, but we have confirmed five members of the League, one of whom is a mole."

"Good," Mica replied, and then she was silent.

"Good…?" prompted Philbert.

"I am a consultant to the case, Nine. I suggest that you remember that." She sighed, and ran a hand through her hair. "The names…"

"Crabbe, Goyle, Flint, Zabini Montague Flint."

"And Malfoy."

"Yes, and Malfoy."

Mica stood up, and slung her rucksack over her shoulder. "Well, that wraps things up for the moment. Just… Blaise Flint, don’t go hard on her. She’s got troubles far beyond the ones we’re attending to at the moment. If I know those at headquarters, they’ve got a tail on everyone. Tell them to keep her safe."

"Why?" She gave the professor a stony glance from where she stood by the door. "No, I want to know, Thirty-seven."

"Because I knew her once, Nine. Because whatever Blaise does, it can be no worse than what’s been done to her." Softly, she shut the door behind her.

* * * * *

Ginny sat in the window seat in their bedroom, looking out over the houses around them, over the garden she and Lily Elizabeth had planted two years before. It was late, and the only light came from the nearly full moon in the sky. She sat silently in the dim stillness of twilight.

It had been a singular week, the sort of week that is riddled with strange moments that mean a great deal to oneself and a very little to others. The cards had laughed at her for asking them so many questions, but still they told the same truth. Oh, Mica, do you know? she wondered. Would you want to?

To be truthful, it was not that the future her niece did know was very pleasant. Caro would be lost, of course. But then again, Caro had been lost for a very long time, and not many people were aware of it. Perhaps she ought to bring out the crystal ball…

Her husband opened the door. She turned her head to smile up at him, for after both of their days even smiles meant a great deal. The work of an Unmentionable was quite as grueling as that of a Realm Watcher. Harry came and sat beside her.

"The twins are asleep," he said quietly. Ginny smiled again.

"Finally?" she asked.

"Yes."

"It’s been a long week," she murmured, twining her arms around his neck. "The cards have been remarkably enigmatic."

"The cards?"

"Never mind the cards, Harry."

They sat there in the window seat for a while, looking at the sky, before she leaned up to kiss him and he drew the curtains.

* * * * *

This would be the last time, she swore to herself, the very last time. It would all be over quick.

She put on a dress, a black dress that came only to mid-calf at the moment, but it would fit when she changed. That’s all she asked. As for shoes… she’d Transfigure them or something. No matter. Time is a-wasting the clock sang…

So she yanked up the black boots, they’d be warm enough. She tied a scarf around her neck. Green for luck, she told herself. Don’t think about the past.

* * * * *

He was up on the roof at thirty minutes to sunset. He knew she’d have to be there before sunset- she couldn’t Apparate, the only way to get there was to run as a weretigre.

Draco wasn’t stupid. He’d been quite a good student at Hogwarts, despite the fact that Hermione Granger had nabbed top places in all of their classes. So he well knew that weretigres were quite extinct, though he hadn’t remembered it until a few days ago, when he was perusing an article about extinct magical animals in the Daily Prophet. However, it was quite possible, and most likely, that Diana was an animagus.

He laughed quietly to himself, thinking of her nom de guerre. It was so simple; how could he have missed it? Diana, the virgin huntress, the Roman goddess of the moon. Whoever she was, she had quite a knack for satire.

After barely five minutes, Draco saw her, leisurely leaping from rooftop to rooftop. She was before him, slightly flushed and bewildered, in a matter of seconds.

"I should have known you would find me out," said she, her long blonde hair whipping about her face in the wind. She was dressed in black.

"Who are you?" Draco asked.

"Forgive me," was the only response he got. She half-turned to look at the mass of rooftops that was London behind her. Her hair glowed in the fading sunlight. For a moment.

Then it was wavy, loose, shoulder length, and suddenly, she who had been perhaps an inch taller that he was became near four inches shorter. She looked up at him.

"Granger?" he said, the second time now, though he knew it was the wrong answer. Her eyes glanced over to London again, but now she wasn’t beautiful and elegant like Diana had been. Her black dressed enveloped her in billowing, robe-like folds. Draco said nothing more. He knew.

"It’s Mica," she told him solemnly. "I can’t forgive you, you know."

"For what?" he asked.

"You let him do it."

"I couldn’t-" Draco started to say, numbly, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

"Of course you could have!" Mica shouted. "The scar is no matter. I was in the middle of a magical working. I had no shields. It made me an Animagus-"

"And you can’t Apparate," he finished. How foolish he felt. Of course she despised him, for letting her suffer one of the things all wizards feared: magic poisoning, which was quite similar to Muggle radiation. Some wizards died. Mica had been very lucky, he thought.

"I hate you," she said. "Maybe when I’m done with Marcus, I’ll kill you, too."

"I’m sorry!" he exclaimed, not liking the look in her blue eyes. "If I had been there, I would have stopped him!"

"You weren’t there?" Mica asked, a strange note in her voice.

"No. How could I have been? I was arrested! I would never have let-"

Her voice was curiously flat. "He lied." She sat down heavily on the edge of the roof. "He lied." Mica buried her face in her hands.

"Listen," Draco said, feel somewhat at loss at to what had just happened, "I’ll help you kill him. It’s really not a problem."

She didn’t say anything.

"Truly."

Brushing a few strands of hair out of her eyes, she looked up at him. "He lied to me. He told me that you were out there, watching us, and you wouldn’t stop him. He told me-"

"I’m sorry." He held out a hand to the little girl he had befriended so many years before. "Would you like some tea?"

"Tea would be nice," she said, her voice wavering a little. "I haven’t had tea with a fellow Slytherin in a while."

* * * * *

Sirius and Remus, the silly boys, had thrown a party for James’s birthday. It was heartwarming to know that even in times such as these, they still remembered such things. Lily reminded herself to pick up a present for Sirius on the next Hogsmeade visit. His birthday was only a few weeks away.

As she walked back to the Gryffindor common room with James, she realized she’d left something in the vacant classroom where they’d held the party.

"I’ve got to go back, James. I forgot my purse," she said. James nodded.

"Should I wait up for you?" he asked.

"Don’t- it’s late," Lily replied. She gave him a good night kiss before returning the way she had come, through Hogwarts’s dark hallways.

Suddenly, someone – or something – leapt on her. She was terrified, but she remembered enough of her training to send it flying backwards with a half-thought banishing charm.

Lily ran back to the common room, not looking behind her.

Another dream. But this time Lily Elizabeth was going to fight back. It was very late that night when she crept into the library. So late that Madam Pince was off duty. But that did not deter Harry Potter’s eldest child. She was on a mission.

Her dreams, the strange occurrences, the occasionally experiences of déjà vu had mounted up over the summer and now that school had started. Not that she was frightened. Lily Elizabeth was quite proud of the fact that she was frightened of very little.

It took her only a few moments to find the book she was looking for. Possession, Fixation, and Other Screams In The Night wasn’t even in the restricted section, mainly because it didn’t contain any harmful spells or gruesome descriptions. However, when coupled with her book on Voodoo she’d picked up in the back of Flourish and Blotts that summer, it made for interesting reading.

She stealthily crept back up to her dorm room to look them over. Someone was trying to fix her with a spell, to make her do what he wished. This Lily nonsense was truly getting unbearable. Lily Elizabeth wouldn’t let herself think of other options.

Perhaps, though, she might have, had not someone who was only a dark shadow to her seized her from behind.

"Silencio," muttered the shadow.

Unlike Lily, Lily Elizabeth could not fight back.

 

COMING SOON

Chapter Three of Part III: The Girl With Two Faces

 

I’m sorry this chapter’s so short, but the next one will be longer; I’m also working on another new (short) story called Don’t Call Me Angel; check it out!

 

This all belongs to J.K. Rowling/Warner Bros., with the exception of Mica, Caroline, the Cassadaga Coven, etc. J

 

You can email Love at [email protected] or [email protected] ; or you can write a review. Or, if you’re not already a member, check out the SevenOfQuills Yahoo Group, where you can read and discuss the work of Lissanne, Tabitha Jones, karei, Andie, Plumeria, Kellie, and Love Gordon.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SevenOfQuills/

 

Thanks: My family, who put up with me, and thus deserve a great deal of respect. Laurie, Bob the Amazing Wonder Guitar, and fellow members of the Mod Squad, especially Lissanne, beta-reader extraordinare.