Cadence

A/N: With thanks to Kelly Chambliss for betaing!

Cadence

The radiant voice of a soprano soars through the tiny sitting room of an upstairs flat in Gower Street, indulging in a seemingly effortless coloratura before it sinks back into the warm embrace of a deep, velvety contralto. Both voices hover around each other for a while, a dozen string instruments surrounding them like so many cherubs, then fall into perfect synchrony, two lovers, their hearts beating in the rhythm of a harpsichord.

Amelia Bones is sitting in her armchair in the corner, eyes closed. Muggle magic, she calls it. There is no better way to unwind after a frustrating day at work, and frustrating days have become rather frequent of late. Fudge overruling her decisions, deploying her Aurors without consulting her, thwarting her efforts to solve the Dementor problem, revoking her sanctions on staff members who throw all professional ethics to the wind. But all those annoyances are miles away when Amelia carefully places the needle of the gramophone on an old record and lets the music take her away from her daily concerns and into a world where monsters are fought merely as a proof of knightly valour, where a simple pair of trousers serves as a perfect disguise for a woman, and where all anguish and despair invariably vanish after a skillfully-placed six-four chord.

The earthy voice of the contralto embarks upon her solo. Amelia loves this voice, relishes the curiously dark timbre that is so unique in its perfect androgyny. She knows little Italian, but it doesn't take much to understand this tale of a bittersweet caress between two people who may never hold each other again.

I embrace you.

She knows those embraces, knows them well. When every parting can mean farewell, taking leave is never as casual as in those earlier, happier days when 'goodbye' could be trusted to mean 'I will see you'. With her niece, it is hardest. Her Susan, still a child despite her age of sixteen, upon whom she has bequeathed her middle name and, much to her regret, her jawline and poor eyesight. How can a quick hug be sufficient when there is always the fear that it might be the last one?

The contralto finishes her solo line. Now the soprano joins in, and the two singers resume their dance, taking turns following each other's lead, sending each other flying and being there when the other returns, picking up each other's tunes, repeating and varying them in patterns of ever-greater intensity before they merge once more to begin their descent into the all-resolving harmony of F sharp minor.

Only they never arrive.

The shields of Amelia Bones' flat burst on the six-four chord. A loud, swooshing noise in the fireplace accompanies the earsplitting cackle of a crow transforming into a short, black-haired man. Barely in his human form, he aims his wand at the window, smashing it into a thousand pieces for a man and a woman to soar into the room, the woman laughing maniacally as she sweeps the gramophone off its table with her broomstick. The lovers' song ends abruptly, suspended in dissonance.

Summoning her senses takes Amelia less than a second. Her wand at the ready - she wouldn't be so foolish as to indulge in her little operatic spell without its goblin-made wristband sealed firmly around her arm - she jumps onto her armchair by the now-empty gramophone table, sends the black-haired man back into the fireplace with a well-aimed Stunner, and turns to face Bellatrix Lestrange and her own former staff member Rowan Prendergast. Hexes and curses cut through the room that was just until recently filled with pure harmony, are deflected and repelled, and end up shattering glass, overthrowing furniture, and sending a seemingly endless array of picture frames, books, old records and teacups crashing on the floor.

'Expelliarmus!'

'Crucio!'

Amelia parries. An acrid stench of burnt hair tells her that her deflection has missed Bellatrix only by a narrow margin. Her next Stunner is a better hit, paralysing the arm that Bellatrix holds out for balance as she jumps onto the couch. For the shortest moment the woman in black looks taken aback, but Prendergast comes to her help, sending a Cruciatus into the direction of the armchair that forces Amelia to duck so that her next spell is diverted into the wineglass cabinet. The man redoubles his efforts, yet his Severing Curse ricochets off the shield drawn by Amelia's wand like a saw-toothed bludger off an invisible bat, and Prendergast screams in pain as it is his own hand, still clutching his wand, that is propelled into the fireplace by a deep red gush of blood. He falls on his knees, but before Amelia can render him completely harmless, Bellatrix Lestrange has regained her composure.

'Stupefy!'

'Sectumsempra!'

Searing pain shoots through her knee, then there is a warm, trickling sensation, and in the heartbeat it takes her to make up her mind not to look down, her ears pick up the first syllables of the one curse she dreads above all others.

'IMPER--'

Amelia brandishes her wand with such force that it leaves a scorched trace across the cream-coloured wallpaper and the ceiling. The bulbs of the small chandelier Transfigure themselves into white-hot flames as the entire fixture zooms out of its ceiling mount and hurls itself at the distorted face of the woman now sneering at her from the coffee table. Mere inches away from its destination, the chandelier crashes on the floor, its burning electric candles soaring out of their cups and turning into blades that now chase Amelia, who returns them to their sender, sharpened and serrated. A shriek more outraged than pained tells her that one or two must have grazed her opponent, but the rest end up in one of the few remaining pictures on the wall. She sends a Stunning Spell after the knives, and there is another scream. This time it is a male one. Perching atop the piano, her feet on the keyboard producing an eerie soundtrack to the scene, Bellatrix Lestrange laughs at Amelia as Prendergast, propped up in front of her like a shield, slumps forward.

'Cowardly bitch!'

'Half-blind dog of a woman! Take this!'

Purple sparks fly through the room, and Amelia feels her right arm jerk backwards. A rush of numbing pain pries open her hand. The wand! Her fingers aren't obeying. Grip it! She feels chilly. Think! Catching the wand dangling from her wrist with her left hand, she presses it against the palm of her right one and directs its tip back at Bellatrix.

Both women now have their eyes fixed on one another, daring the other to make the next move like a mother lion and a starving hyaena.

Then Amelia sees Bellatrix's finger move toward the mark on her left forearm.

Her two-handed Stunner hits the woman only a fraction of a second too late. Bellatrix Lestrange's body is thrust against the piano, its chords reverberating as if protesting the violent impact, and lands on the floor next to Prendergast's, a limp heap of white flesh in black frills, smeared with the red of Prendergast's blood. And yet, Amelia Bones knows a lost battle when she sees one.

'At last we meet, Madam Bones.'

The voice sweeps over from the window like a harsh wind that cuts to the bone, bodiless, soulless, devoid of the resonance and warmth of a human chest. A voice made for curses.

Memories flare up of loved ones who have heard it. She was first at the scene, back at Godric's Hollow, she and Mad-Eye. Saw her sister-in-law, torso slashed open from bottom to top, breasts severed in cruel mockery of her recent motherhood. Saw the babies, felt something die in herself at the sight of the two newborn girls with their still, blue eyes that would never marvel at the beauty of the world. Saw Edgar, carelessly finished off last, after watching his wife and children perish at the hands of a cold-voiced man and a few Death Eaters feeling playful.

When their Secret Keeper fell into her hands, she was as close as she ever thought she would come to taking a life. Freed him from the Imperius instead, condemning him to a life sentence with no need for Dementors. It made little difference.

Yes, she knows the work of the man with the bodiless voice, knows the work that will be hers if he succeeds in controlling her.

Unless.

It's not as if she's never thought about it. Doesn't know if she'll manage, but knows she'll try.

She has one attempt, and she will have to mean it.

Will have to want to refuse to deliver colleagues, friends, loved ones and not-so-loved ones more than he wants them delivered. Them: Shacklebolt, her hope, the best since Alastor, better than she has ever been. Tonks, unforgettable protagonist of the duelling exam in which the examiner had her monocle inadvertently Transfigured into something more appropriate in a sex shop than a Ministry courtroom. Kind Weasley. Dolores, who does not see that too much zeal can make you a nuisance even for those whom you may wish to please. Even Dawlish, who may yet come round, slim as the chance is. Minerva, friend, continuo and counterpoint. Eugene, the last Bones who still shares her childhood memories.

Susan.

She has one attempt, and she will mean it.

I embrace you.

Amelia Bones raises her wand and ends her life with a jet of green light.

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