**July 15th, 1976**
There are moments, if you are very old and have seen very terrible things, when peace becomes suspect. When the golden afternoon light slanting through ancient oaks feels less like serenity and more like the calm before something vast and hungry arrives to devour your world.
Dorea Potter, formerly Dorea Black, had learned to trust these moments.
She stood on the terrace of Potter Manor, watching her husband Charlus fuss over his roses with the same meticulous precision he'd once used to plan the siege of Grindelwald's fortress in Prague. He was humming something tuneless and probably obscene—a soldier's marching song from the war—while his long fingers, still elegant despite their scars, pruned away dead blooms.
"You're using your wand on them again," she observed, her voice carrying that particular aristocratic tone that could cut glass at fifty paces. "We discussed this. The roses don't need *Engorgio*."
Charlus straightened, and when he turned to face her, there was wickedness in his smile. He had the bearing of an aging lion—all silver-grey mane and predatory grace—and even after decades of marriage, that smile still did interesting things to her pulse.
"My dear Dorea," he said with exaggerated patience, "I fought Dark wizards through half of Europe. I believe I can manage *roses* without your supervision."
"You turned the west garden purple last month."
"That was—that was one time. And it was lavender. Lavender is a perfectly reasonable color for roses."
"Lavender roses don't exist in nature, Charlus."
"They do now."
She opened her mouth to respond—something cutting about his ego and horticultural impossibilities—when the feeling hit her.
It was like missing a step in the dark. Like the moment between lightning and thunder. Like the silence before a scream.
The *wards*.
They were screaming.
Her wand appeared in her hand as if by magic, which it was, though the truth was simpler: Dorea Black had never truly stopped being at war. She'd simply married a man who understood that about her.
Across the terrace, Charlus had gone very still. The playful husband vanished, and in his place stood something older, colder, more dangerous. His wand was already out. He'd stopped reaching for it years ago—it simply *appeared* when needed, like an old friend arriving for tea and murder.
"North perimeter," he said quietly. His voice had dropped an octave, sliding into the register he'd used to give orders during the Grindelwald wars. "Multiple breaches. Coordinated assault pattern. Professional."
"How professional?"
"Distressingly so."
Then the wards didn't just scream. They *shattered*.
Dorea felt it like a physical blow, centuries of Potter family magic crumbling like paper in a firestorm. Whoever had done this possessed either enormous power or enormous stupidity, and in her experience, the two were rarely mutually exclusive.
"Well," she said, straightening her robes with one hand while her wand stayed perfectly level in the other, "I suppose that answers that. Kreth!"
The head house elf materialized with the soft *pop* of displaced air. He was small, even for a house elf, but there was nothing soft about the set of his enormous eyes or the way his bat-like ears were already flattened against his skull.
"Madam Dorea," he said, and his voice—surprisingly deep for such a small creature—carried absolute calm. "I'm detecting seventeen hostile wizards, north approach. Three more circling east. Two attempting the south gardens, poorly I might add."
"Poorly?" Charlus asked.
"Mipsy is handling them. I believe she's redirected them into the rose garden. Your roses, Master Charlus, the ones you've been... improving."
Charlus's smile was terrible. "Ah. The ones with the spines I enhanced with Peruvian poison?"
"The very same, Master."
"Kreth, you magnificent little bastard. Battle protocols. Anyone who breaches the manor proper—"
"—is to be eliminated with extreme prejudice. Yes, Master Charlus. Shall I go for the throat, or would you prefer we continue with the liver? Only, Mipsy says the liver makes less of a mess on the carpets."
Dorea felt a surge of affection for the House Elves. They'd fought alongside her in '43, when Grindelwald's forces had tried to breach Black Manor. They'd learned their ruthlessness from *her*.
"Dealer's choice," she said sweetly. "But Kreth? Make it *hurt*."
The house elf's grin was all teeth. "With pleasure, Madam."
He vanished.
"I do love that elf," Charlus murmured, already moving toward the manor entrance with the fluid grace of someone who'd spent thirty years in combat. "Though I worry we've corrupted him terribly."
"Darling," Dorea fell into step beside him, their movements synchronized from decades of practice, "we corrupted him perfectly."
The first Death Eaters appeared at the tree line like black-robed ravens, all silver masks and billowing cloaks. There were twelve, no—fourteen. More emerging from the woods.
This wasn't a raid. This was an *execution*.
The Death Eaters advanced with the swagger of those who believed their victory assured, wands raised, spreading out in a textbook flanking formation.
They had clearly never heard of the Black Dragon Legion.
"Charlus," Dorea said conversationally, "do you remember Prague?"
"When we held the cathedral for three days against Grindelwald's inner circle?"
"No, after that. When we were so tired we could barely stand, and they sent another wave?"
"Ah." Charlus's voice was warm with nostalgia. "When you invented that delightful curse that turned their lungs to glass?"
"That's the one."
"Fond memories. Shall we?"
"Let's."
Dorea's wand moved in a pattern she'd learned from her grandmother, who'd learned it from *her* grandmother, all the way back to the Blacks who'd danced at the edge of what magic could do and decided to leap. "*Fulgur Serpens!*"
The spell that erupted from her wand was not the neat, controlled magic they taught at Hogwarts. This was something older, darker, more honest. Lightning coalesced into the shape of a serpent—of course it was a serpent, she was a Black—and it *flew* across the lawn with a crack like the world breaking.
The first Death Eater it struck went down convulsing, his back arching so violently something in his spine audibly snapped. But the spell didn't stop. It leaped to the next target, then the next, a chain reaction of exquisite agony.
"Beautiful," Charlus observed. "Though I think your form was better in '44."
"I'm rusty. It's been nine months since anyone tried to kill us."
"That Fudge fellow at the Ministry party?"
"He tried to bore us to death. That doesn't count."
Beside her, Charlus's wand carved a brutal pattern through the air. "*Lapis Mortis!*"
The ground beneath three Death Eaters didn't just soften—it *liquified*, stone flowing like water around their legs. Then it solidified. Instantly. Completely.
The screaming started immediately.
"I think you got the femoral arteries," Dorea noted clinically, her healer's eye assessing the rate of blood loss. "They have perhaps forty seconds."
"Thirty-five," Charlus corrected. "I improved the spell."
More Death Eaters poured from the woods. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
"Darling," Dorea said, already moving, her body remembering the old dances, "I'm beginning to think someone wants us dead."
"Perceptive of you."
"It's been remarked upon."
A cutting curse screamed past her left ear, close enough that she felt her hair stir. She didn't even blink. Instead, she pivoted, her wand moving in a gesture that was almost casual, and spoke a word in a language that predated Latin.
"*Sanguis Erupto.*"
The Death Eater who'd cast at her managed one strangled gasp before blood erupted from every pore. His mouth. His eyes. Places blood should never emerge from. He collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, his silver mask clattering against stone, already filling with red.
"That's new," Charlus observed, blasting another Death Eater off his feet with a banishing hex powerful enough to shatter ribs. "When did you learn that?"
"Last Thursday. Found it in your family grimoire. The Potter section, specifically. Page four hundred and twelve."
"We have a grimoire?"
"We have *seven*."
"Merlin's beard, why didn't anyone tell me?"
"I did tell you. You were busy with your roses."
"Those roses are important, Dorea!"
They were moving now, back to back, wands creating overlapping fields of death. It was like watching a deadly ballet choreographed by someone who understood that beauty and brutality were siblings.
A Death Eater apparated directly behind Dorea, wand raised for a killing curse.
He made it halfway through the incantation before Kreth materialized, grabbed his ankle, and disapparated.
The Death Eater reappeared fifty feet in the air.
Gravity, unlike magic, played no favorites.
"GOOD INITIATIVE, KRETH!" Charlus bellowed, his voice carrying across the chaos.
The house elf's response was lost in the meaty *thud* of impact, but Dorea could have sworn she heard satisfied cackling.
"I'm promoting him," she decided, sending a bone-breaking hex into a Death Eater's chest. The sternum caved inward with a sound like wet timber snapping. "Head of security. Full benefits."
"He's already head elf."
"Then I'm inventing a new position. Chief Elf Assassin. It has a nice ring to it."
But more Death Eaters kept coming. And these were better. More cautious. They'd seen what happened to their companions and were adapting.
"Charlus," Dorea said quietly, and the playfulness had gone from her voice, "this is wrong."
"I noticed." His jaw was set, his aristocratic features hardened into something that would have made his Potter ancestors proud. They'd been warriors before they were lords, and it showed. "Too many. Too organized. This isn't random."
"The boys—"
"Are with Remus and Peter. They're safe." But there was doubt in his voice, and Dorea heard it.
A Death Eater's cutting curse sliced across her shoulder. She barely felt it. Pain was something that happened to other people during battle.
She retaliated with "*Ossis Solvite*," and watched dispassionately as every bone in his wand arm dissolved like sugar in tea. He dropped his wand, screaming, and Charlus finished him with a curse that stopped his heart.
"Behind you!" Dorea snapped.
Charlus dropped to one knee—still quick, still graceful—as a killing curse turned the air where his head had been a toxic green. He came up casting, his wand moving in a complex pattern that pulled moisture from the air and the earth, condensing it, shaping it.
The water formed into a dozen ice spears, each as long as a man's arm, each sharp enough to cut shadow.
"*Impale*."
The spears launched with the force of artillery. Three Death Eaters went down, punctured through chest and throat and belly. They wouldn't rise again.
"Show-off," Dorea muttered.
"Learned it from you."
"Liar."
Then the temperature dropped.
It wasn't gradual. One moment, they were fighting in autumn warmth. The next, their breath misted before them and frost crept across grass still wet with blood.
Every Death Eater stopped attacking.
Every Death Eater *retreated*, falling back into defensive positions.
And Dorea Black, who'd faced Grindelwald's inner circle without flinching, felt something cold settle in her stomach.
"Oh," she said very quietly. "Oh, *bugger*."
He came through the manor gates like a nightmare learning to walk.
Lord Voldemort was tall—too tall, somehow, as if he'd stretched himself beyond human proportions. His face was pale as bone, with features that might have been handsome once, before whatever he'd done to himself had warped them into something reptilian and wrong. Red eyes—impossibly red, the color of fresh arterial spray—fixed on them with an intelligence that was utterly inhuman.
He wore simple black robes. He didn't need ostentation. His presence alone rewrote reality around him.
"Ah," he said, and his voice was soft, cultured, almost gentle. Which made it worse, somehow. "Charlus Potter. Dorea Black." The red eyes gleamed with something that might have been amusement. "The legendary Black Dragon Legion. I've wanted to meet you for *years*."
Charlus inclined his head fractionally, a gesture that managed to convey both acknowledgment and absolute contempt. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of old money and older blood. "We don't accept autographs."
Voldemort's thin lips curved into something adjacent to a smile. "Humor. How delightful. I was told you were the dull Potter. Arcturus Black gets all the best lines in the stories."
"Arcturus is my brother," Dorea said, her wand never wavering. "He's also twice the wizard you'll ever be. On his worst day. Hungover."
"And yet," Voldemort gestured elegantly at the destroyed manor, the dead Death Eaters, the chaos, "here I am. Vertical. Victorious. Where is dear Arcturus?"
"Busy," Charlus said flatly. "We didn't feel you warranted interrupting his afternoon tea."
This time, Voldemort actually laughed. It was a terrible sound, like something broken trying to remember joy. "Oh, this is *delicious*. Do you know how long it's been since anyone spoke to me like that? Since anyone dared?"
"Not long enough," Dorea said. "Tom."
The laughter stopped.
The red eyes went very, very cold.
"Ah," Voldemort said softly. "So you know. How... inconvenient."
"Tom Marvolo Riddle," Dorea continued, her voice sharp as broken glass. "Half-blood. Orphan. Slytherin. Brilliant student. Absolute bastard. You really thought we *wouldn't* know? The Blacks wrote half the books on Dark magic. You're talented, certainly. But you're not *original*."
"You made a few impressive anagrams," Charlus added. His tone suggested he was discussing a mildly interesting chess move. "Changed your name. Declared yourself a lord. All very dramatic. But you're still just Tom Riddle playing dress-up in his betters' clothes."
For a moment—just a moment—something ugly and small flickered across Voldemort's inhuman features. Then it was gone, replaced by cold amusement.
"I came here," he said, "to make an example. To show the old families what happens when they refuse to bend the knee. I see now I should have come sooner. Before you became... inconvenient."
"The Black Dragon Legion doesn't bend," Charlus said. Each word was precisely delivered, weighted with absolute certainty. "We break our enemies instead."
"The Legion," Voldemort's voice dripped contempt, "is a *ghost*. A memory old men tell themselves to feel important. I am the future."
"Funny," Dorea said. "Grindelwald said the same thing."
"And where is Grindelwald now?"
"In prison. After *we* broke his armies. After *we* shattered his inner circle. After *we* spent five years bleeding his forces until he was weak enough for Dumbledore to swoop in and claim credit." Her eyes were hard as diamonds. "Tell me, Tom, do you think you're more powerful than Grindelwald?"
"Yes," Voldemort said simply. "Would you like a demonstration?"
"Go on then," Charlus said. His stance shifted subtly, and Dorea felt him gathering power. "Impress us."
"*Avada Kedavra.*"
The killing curse erupted from Voldemort's wand like a green comet, and it was *fast*—faster than any curse Dorea had seen, faster than should be possible.
She moved anyway, yanking Charlus aside while her wand was already moving, already casting. A wall of stone erupted from the ground, thick as a castle wall.
The killing curse hit it and the stone *exploded*, fragments flying like shrapnel.
"Rude," Charlus observed, then raised his wand. "*Fulmen Maximus!*"
Lightning—real lightning, not the conjured sort—split the sky and screamed down toward Voldemort.
The Dark Lord didn't even look up. He simply raised one pale hand, and the lightning bent around him, redirected into the ground. Where it struck, the earth exploded.
"Oh," Dorea said faintly, "oh we might be in trouble."
"Noticed that, did you?"
"Just an observation."
She was already casting, her wand moving through the forms she'd perfected during the war. "*Fiendfyre!*"
The cursed flame erupted from her wand, taking the shape of a massive lion made of fire—because she was a Black, and the Blacks had always understood the importance of style. The lion roared, shaking the air itself, and leaped toward Voldemort with jaws that could consume stone.
Voldemort looked at it.
Just... looked.
Then he smiled and waved his wand almost lazily.
The Fiendfyre lion stopped mid-leap. For a moment, it hung in the air, snarling. Then it began to *change*, shifting and flowing, transforming from lion to serpent under Voldemort's control.
He sent it back at them.
"Bloody hell," Dorea snarled, and her wand was moving again, banishing the cursed fire up and away before it could consume them both. It dissipated high in the air with a scream like dying stars.
"That," Charlus said tightly, "was rather impressive."
"Don't encourage him."
Charlus didn't answer. He was already casting, a rapid-fire sequence of curses that had made the Legion feared across Europe. Bone-breakers. Blood-boiling hexes. A particularly nasty curse that turned organs to liquid. The kind of magic that made Ministry bureaucrats faint and Dumbledore lecture about morality.
Voldemort blocked them all with contemptuous ease, his wand moving in elegant patterns, each gesture precise and economical.
This wasn't like fighting Death Eaters. This wasn't even like fighting Grindelwald's inner circle.
This was something *else*.
"Dorea," Charlus said quietly, and she heard something in his voice she hadn't heard since Prague. Since the cathedral. Since the moment they'd realized they might actually die.
Fear.
"I know," she said.
"Any brilliant plans?"
"Still working on it."
"Work faster."
A cutting curse sliced past Charlus's face, so close it drew blood from his cheek. He didn't even flinch, just pivoted and cast a curse so Dark that it didn't have a name in English. Dorea had helped him invent it, back in '43, when they'd needed something to breach Grindelwald's wards.
It hit Voldemort's shield and cracked it.
Just for a moment. Just a hairline fracture.
But Voldemort's red eyes widened fractionally, and for the first time, he looked *interested*.
"Now that," he hissed, "that was impressive. Where did you learn—no. You invented it. Didn't you?" His smile was terrible. "I really must study that. After."
"After?" Dorea asked.
"After you're dead, obviously."
He cast, and the spell was nothing Dorea had ever seen. It was too fast, too complex, too *wrong*. Reality seemed to bend around it.
She threw up a shield—the strongest she knew, layered seven times, each layer keyed to a different defense.
The spell shattered through all seven like they were paper.
It caught her in the ribs, and pain *exploded* through her chest. She flew backward, twenty feet or more, hit the ground hard enough to crack stone. Blood filled her mouth. Something inside was broken. Several somethings.
"DOREA!"
Charlus's roar was pure fury, and suddenly he wasn't fighting like a duelist anymore. He was fighting like a man with nothing left to lose.
Magic erupted from him in waves—raw, uncontrolled, furious. The Potter family magic, called up from ancestral depths. The air around Voldemort began to *compress*, a crushing hex that should have pulverized bone and organ.
Voldemort's shield held, but Dorea saw his expression tighten. Saw actual strain.
She staggered to her feet, tasting blood, feeling broken ribs grind. Breathing was agony. Casting would be worse.
She cast anyway.
"Charlus!" She coughed blood. "Together!"
They'd done this before. In Prague, when they'd been surrounded. In Berlin, when they'd held the line. In a dozen other battles where survival meant perfect synchronization.
Their wands rose as one. Their magic flowed together, intertwining like dancers, like lovers, like two halves of a single soul.
The spell that erupted was silver-white, bright as a dying star, and it tore through reality like paper.
Voldemort's eyes widened.
He threw up shield after shield, then conjured a wall of the manor's stone to block it.
The beam punched through everything, inexorable as time.
For one perfect moment, Dorea thought they had him.
Then Voldemort raised his left arm, and the Dark Mark on his forearm *burned* with eldritch light.
He was drawing on it. Drawing on his Death Eaters. Drawing on their *life force*.
Three Death Eaters collapsed, drained to husks. Two more screamed as years of life were ripped away.
But Voldemort *glowed* with stolen power, his form becoming almost too bright to look at.
His counter-curse met their beam, and when they collided, the world screamed.
The force of it threw them both backward. Dorea felt something else break inside her. Heard Charlus cry out.
But they were alive.
Voldemort stood breathing heavily, the stolen power already fading. He looked at them—really looked—and something almost like respect flickered in those inhuman eyes.
"Magnificent," he said softly. "Truly. I haven't been pushed like that since... well. Since never, actually." He raised his wand. "But I'm afraid playtime is over."
"Wait—" Charlus began.
"*Ruina.*"
It wasn't a killing curse. It was something worse.
The manor itself—three floors of ancient stone and timber, centuries of Potter history—simply collapsed.
Dorea saw it happening, saw the ceiling above them crack and crumble, saw tons of stone beginning to fall, and she was already moving, wand raised, shouting a shield charm with the last of her strength.
Charlus added his power to hers, and for a moment, they held.
The weight was enormous. Impossible. Stone piled higher, burying them in darkness.
"Dorea," Charlus's voice was strained, rough with effort, "I can't—much longer—"
"Hold," she gasped, her magic burning through her like fire, consuming everything. "Just hold—"
"James," Charlus whispered. "Our boy—"
"Will be fine. Sirius will protect him. Arcturus will—"
"I love you," he said, and his voice was suddenly young again, the voice of the man who'd courted her fifty years ago. "Every day. Every moment. Worth it."
"Charlus, don't you dare—"
The shield failed.
The last thing Dorea Black heard was stone screaming and her husband's voice saying her name.
Then darkness took her, and she dreamed of Prague, and smoke, and a war that never truly ended.
---
Above the rubble, Lord Voldemort stood breathing heavily. His robes were torn. His face was cut. For the first time in years, he'd been *hurt*.
He stared at the collapsed manor, at the tomb he'd made, and felt something complex and uncomfortable.
They'd been magnificent. Truly. Better than Dumbledore, in their way. More *honest*.
"My Lord?" A Death Eater approached cautiously—Avery, if Voldemort remembered correctly. The man was bleeding from a dozen wounds. "Are they...?"
"Dead," Voldemort said flatly. "No one survives that." He straightened, pushing aside the uncomfortable feeling. "Cast the Mark."
Avery obeyed, and moments later the Dark Mark rose into the sky—a glowing green skull with a serpent protruding from its mouth like a tongue.
Voldemort looked at the ruins one final time. "The Black Dragon Legion," he murmured. "A worthy end."
Then he was gone, disapparating with a sharp crack, his remaining Death Eaters following like black shadows.
The anti-apparition ward he'd raised fell exactly four minutes later.
*CRACK.*
Arcturus Black arrived like vengeance given form.
He was tall—taller even than Voldemort, but with the bearing of someone who'd been born to power rather than seizing it. His hair was white, swept back from a face that belonged on currency or monuments. His eyes, dark as midnight, swept across the devastation with the cold assessment of someone who'd seen the worst humanity could offer and decided to meet it head-on.
*CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.*
More wizards appeared. Moody arrived, his magical eye already spinning in its socket, his scarred face twisted into a snarl. He was shorter than Arcturus, built like a brawler, all compact muscle and barely contained violence. His normal eye fixed on the ruins while the magical one scanned for threats.
Benjy Fenwick came next—sharp-featured, elegant even in battle robes, his wand already out and moving through diagnostic charms.
A dozen others. All bearing the subtle dragon emblem of the Legion, worn where only those who knew would see.
"DOREA!" Arcturus's voice was thunder, carrying across the devastation. "CHARLUS!"
"Here!" Moody's magical eye had stopped spinning, fixed on one spot. "East wing. Both of them. Under about three tons of stone." His voice was gravel and broken glass. "They're alive. Barely."
"Move," Arcturus commanded, and it wasn't a request. "NOW."
Wands rose in unison. Levitation charms, applied with the precision of people who'd used them to clear battlefields. Stone and timber began to rise, slowly, carefully.
"There," Benjy said quietly, pointing. "I see them."
Charlus and Dorea lay in the rubble like broken dolls. Blood matted their hair. Their robes were torn. But their chests rose and fell—shallow, barely there, but present.
"Magical coma," Moody diagnosed grimly. He knelt, his magical eye whirring as it scanned them. "Seen it before. Prague. Their magic's keeping them alive, but..." He shook his head. "They're not waking up soon. Maybe never."
"Then we take them to Black Manor," Arcturus said. His voice was ice and iron. "Melania will tend them. They survived. That's what matters."
"Arcturus," Benjy said quietly, "the Dark Mark. He was here. Voldemort was *here*."
"I know."
"They held him. The two of them held him long enough—"
"I KNOW." Arcturus's voice cracked like a whip. Then, softer: "I know. And when they wake, I'll tell them how proud I am. But first, we get them somewhere safe."
"And James?" Moody asked.
"Find him. Find Sirius. Get them somewhere secure. If Voldemort targeted Charlus and Dorea, he might target the boy next."
They levitated the unconscious Potters with infinite care, treating them like spun glass, like precious things that might break.
None of them noticed the faint shimmer of Dark magic clinging to the two prone figures—a final curse from Voldemort, ensuring they'd sleep long and deeply.
Nine years, as it turned out.
Nine years in which James would die.
Nine years in which Sirius would be imprisoned.
Nine years in which their grandson would be lost.
Nine years in which the Black Dragon Legion would be forgotten by everyone except those who'd fought in it.
But that was later.
For now, there was only the careful transit home, the desperate hope, and Arcturus Black standing in the ruins of Potter Manor, staring at the Dark Mark hanging in the sky like a promise of horrors yet to come.
"We'll remember," he said quietly, to no one and everyone. "We'll remember what you did here. What you survived."
Then he disapparated, following his sister and brother-in-law home.
The ruins burned throughout the night, and in the morning, the Ministry would arrive and write it all down wrong, as they always did.
But the truth remained, patient and waiting.
As truth always does.
—
**Black Manor, October 1985**
Melania Black had grown accustomed to silence.
Nine years of tending the sleeping, of monitoring vital signs that never changed, of hoping for changes that never came—it created a peculiar rhythm. The soft whisper of diagnostic charms. The quiet rustle of bedlinens being changed. The occasional pop of house elves arriving and departing.
She stood now in the west wing bedroom, wand moving through the familiar patterns of healing magic, watching the silver light play across Dorea's face. Her sister-by-marriage looked almost peaceful, like a princess from a Muggle fairy tale. Except princesses woke when kissed, and Dorea had been sleeping for nine years.
Melania Black was seventy-three years old, silver-haired and steel-spined, and she did not believe in fairy tales.
"Any change, Kreth?" she asked, not looking at the house elf stationed by Charlus's bed.
Kreth—older now, his ears more grayed, his enormous eyes dimmed by grief—shook his head slowly. "None, Madam Melania. Master Charlus and Madam Dorea remain as they were. Stable. Unchanging. Lost."
His voice carried a weight that hadn't been there before the attack. The Potter elves had fought that day—had killed and died defending their family—and Kreth bore the scars. Not physical ones. The other kind.
"We keep trying," Melania said quietly, completing her diagnostic charm. "We keep—"
Dorea's eyes opened.
Melania froze, wand still raised, certain she'd imagined it. Nine years. Nine years of hoping and checking and praying to gods she didn't believe in, and surely—
Dorea blinked. Slowly. Once. Twice.
Then she gasped, her back arching off the bed, sucking in air like she'd been drowning.
"KRETH!" Melania's wand was already moving, casting stabilization charms, monitoring charms, everything she'd prepared for this moment while never truly believing it would come. "Get Arcturus! Get him NOW!"
The house elf vanished with a crack like a gunshot.
Dorea's hand shot out, grabbing Melania's wrist with surprising strength. Her eyes—those sharp Black family eyes—were wild, unfocused, seeing something that wasn't there.
"James," she rasped, her voice like broken glass. "Where's James? Charlus—the manor—Voldemort—"
"Dorea, you need to—"
"WHERE IS MY SON?"
The words came out as a scream, raw and terrible, and suddenly Charlus was moving too, his eyes snapping open, his hand reaching for a wand that wasn't there.
"Dorea!" His voice was rough from disuse. "The ceiling—we have to—"
He tried to sit up, failed, tried again. His warrior's instincts were fighting against a body that hadn't moved in nearly a decade.
Melania caught him, her hands firm on his shoulders. "Charlus, stop. You're safe. You're at Black Manor. The attack was years ago. You've been in a magical coma—"
"Years?" Dorea's voice cracked. She was staring at her own hands now, at the way they'd aged slightly, at the unfamiliar nightgown, at the room she didn't recognize. "How many years?"
Melania met her eyes steadily. "Nine."
The word fell like a stone.
"Nine," Charlus repeated slowly. He'd gone very still. "Nine years. James. Where's James?"
The door burst open, and Arcturus Black strode in like a storm given human form. He'd aged—white hair whiter, face more lined—but his eyes were the same. Dark. Sharp. Uncompromising.
He stopped in the doorway, staring at his sister and brother-in-law, alive and awake and conscious for the first time in nine years.
"Dorea," he said, and his voice broke on her name. "Charlus."
"Arcturus." Dorea's voice was steadier now, but Melania heard the steel underneath. The Black steel, forged in war and hardened by loss. "Where is my son?"
Arcturus's face went very still.
"Where," Charlus repeated, and his voice was ice, "is James?"
Arcturus looked at his wife. Melania gave the tiniest shake of her head. There was no good way to do this. No gentle way.
"I'm so sorry," Arcturus said quietly. "James is dead. He died five years ago. October thirty-first, 1981."
Dorea made a sound—not a scream, worse than a scream. Something animal and broken.
Charlus simply stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Stopped everything.
Then, very carefully, very precisely, he asked: "How?"
And Arcturus Black, who had faced down Dark Lords and Death Eaters without flinching, who had built the Black Dragon Legion into a force that made Grindelwald himself retreat, took a breath and began to explain how the world had ended while they slept.
Outside the window, rain began to fall.
As if even the sky was weeping.
---
Hey fellow fanfic enthusiasts!
I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you!
If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord (HHHwRsB6wd) server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling!
Can't wait to see you there!