Memories 地平線に

/

The wildgrass is full of birds.

Saiph can hear them chirping even though he can't see them; the rolling fields of gold seem to come alive with the swaying wind and the chatter of the swallows hiding in their boughs. Saiph isn't entirely sure why he's always so drawn to twilight, but dusk is his favorite time to sit outside and stare out into the fading sky. He only has the hiding birds for company, but he's content to be alone. Both his parents are away, so they've been staying at the Burrow for the last few days of summer. As much as he loves his cousins, it can get overwhelming sometimes. He can still hear them from the open kitchen window; Victorie is complaining loudly about her hair being stuck and all of it being Teddy's fault, barely audible over Rosie's loud wails. Teddy is shouting his innocence, as their grandmother tries to keep the peace but seems only a few seconds away from throwing her hands up in defeat and leaving them to it.

Saiph shakes his head, and heads into the tall grass. It's still a little too loud for him, even at the edge of the Burrow's yard, and he wants to be alone for a little while.

It's easy to get lost when the grass stretches high above his head, golden sunlight flickering with the wind, little patterns of drifting clouds caught behind the swaying ferns. He can hear the flutter of wings around him, the crickets singing into the evening, perhaps even a skittering mouse here and there. If he closes his eyes, he could pretend to be anywhere.

He eventually stumbles into a small clearing, far enough that he can't even see the Burrow's chimney in the skyline.

His foot brushes against something soft.

It's a bird, still and quiet in a bed of broken stalks.

He knows immediately— intrinsically— that it's dead. It's not asleep; it's not injured. This is death, here, lingering at his feet.

He doesn't know how long he stays there, caught in a strange trance as he sees death so close to him. It feels like a tangible aura in the air around him; something he feels both compelled and repulsed by. He wants to reach for it. He can sense he's surrounded by something hostile and malevolent, but he ignores his instinctual urge to run.

"Saiph!"

When Cepheus finds him, there are only trace embers of light at the bottom of a heavy, blotted purple sky. The stars are out in full, weaving constellations behind his wide, concerned eyes. Saiph has no idea how long he's been standing there, but the moon is bright in the sky.

His brother's gaze leaves his face to trail downwards, where he sees the dead bird. When his eyes return to Saiph, there is a trace of fear in them. The grip he has on his arm tightens.

"We've been looking everywhere for you." He says, giving the boy a gentle tug. Saiph finds himself unwilling to follow, rooted in place.

He can hear the distant sounds of shouting voices, his own name ringing across the open fields. Ceph's hand is warm against his arm. Much warmer than he is. Unease shifts across the glacial surface of his eyes. He lets go of Saiph's arm, using both hands to cup the boy's face, directing it entirely towards him.

"Saiph… are you here?"

What a weird question to ask.

Saiph blinks a few times, before the fog clears his mind and he registers what Cepheus is saying. He covers Ceph's hands with his own. "Ceph? What are you doing here?"

His older brother lets out a heavy sigh of relief. "I could ask you the same question." He points out, dropping his hands.

Saiph shivers then, as if only just realizing how cold it's gotten with the absence of the sun. He wraps his arms around himself. As they walk back to the Burrow Cepheus pulls off his sweater and tucks it around Sai's shoulders; Saiph burrows into it, but the cold persists. It's almost as if it's coming from his very bones.

/

(the night before)

"...Died?" Harry repeated, horrified.

He wished he had misheard, but from the grim faces on both Cepheus and Asterope, it was clear they weren't kidding around. Harry sat, dumbfounded, as he tried to sort through his thoughts. Saiph… had died? What did that mean, exactly? He was very obviously alive right now.

In contrast to Harry, Voldemort appeared to be taking it all in stride. "He resurrected him, then? That's within the scope of his powers?"

The twins shared a look.

"...No, well not exactly." Cepheus hedged, rubbing the back of his head and making his already rather unruly hair stick up even more. "He can't just go around resurrecting everyone."

"And more to the point, he wouldn't want to, either." Aster added. "Harry doesn't even like talking to the dead, even though that's fairly simple Necromancy."

"He wouldn't have resurrected him, if it hadn't been Saiph." Cepheus agreed, nodding.

"Couldn't even, right?" Aster added, looking thoughtful. "I thought he had to use the blood relation as part of it."

Ceph blinked, then nodded. "Ah yes, you're correct. The point is, Harry wouldn't, and couldn't, do this for anyone else, so unfortunately resurrection is pretty off limits."

"I just…" Harry trailed off, lost. "I don't understand. What happened? How did this happen?"

The twins looked rather pained.

"Err— well, things weren't always so stable in the magical world, y'know. Especially during the first few years of the transition." Cepheus quickly tried to explain. "Consolidating power, unifying disparate communities, having to create a fully sustainable ecosystem without relying on the non-magical world, economic issues… well those sort of things tend to incite volatility within the population, and when there's volatility and unrest there are...—

"Terrorists." Aster finished, when it became clear Cepheus was struggling to find the right word.

He shot his sister a look. "Unhappy civil groups, that, well yes, do tend to resort to violence and typical terror tactics. Once trade and the economy were more secure, most of that fizzled out."

Harry's eyes widened, as his face drained of color. "He was murdered?" His voice was high and shaky, a hand clasped to his mouth.

Cepheus shifted in his seat. Aster looked away. Even Voldemort appeared at a loss for words.

Harry felt numb. "He was killed— because of me. I was the one that caused all that unrest."

"It was inevitable." Cepheus cut in quickly. "Unrest of that magnitude would have happened either way; sooner or later non-magicals would find out about the magical world, and there would be a complete upheaval of everything in both worlds. It wasn't your fault."

"How was he murdered?" Voldemort asked, urgently.

Harry turned to him, aghast. "Why would you even ask that?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "Would you prefer a repeat event of it, then? How are we to know how to prevent it without knowing how it happened?"

That was a fair point. But all the same, Harry wasn't entirely sure he could bear to hear it; not after having to live through the deaths of his friends and family already last night. When he closed his eyes, he could see it so easily; Saiph's small form, laid out in the Great Hall among the rest of the dead, next to a pale and cold Remus, the bloodied form of Tonks covered with a white sheet, Fred's face, so solemn and expressionless in death in a way he never was in life.

"It was a well organized attack; they had inside help. It happened when both of you were away, so they were clearly waiting for the right time."

"How old was he?" Harry asked, shakily.

Cepheus grimaced. "It was six years ago now."

He would have been five, then, Harry thought grimly. Far too young to die. Far too young to be murdered.

By his side, Voldemort looked positively enraged. "Who was it? Dumbledore?"

Cepheus looked surprised by the accusation. "No," he said, after a moment. "Not at all. The attack had nothing to do with the Order. They— well I wouldn't call them your allies, but they're certainly not an enemy. And they would never kill an innocent child."

Well there was a small relief, Harry supposed. It was hopefully a good sign that the Order of this dimension wouldn't kill him on sight.

"Yeah, Dumbledore's old and preachy and I for one don't trust him as far as I could throw him, but for as much as he opposes you in legislation, he would never use tactics like that." Aster added. "The people who did this— I don't think they exist, yet. They hadn't started off like this. They were a coalition in Western Europe that advocated for a rigid social scale based on blood purity."

Cepheus sighed, crossing his arms. "Obviously such thinking is far from surprising in the magical world, but when it became clear that there was no way that kind of legislation was going to get passed— well, they felt angry and ignored. Betrayed might be a better word."

"Betrayed?" Harry repeated, brow furrowing. Then it clicked in his head. He turned to Voldemort beside him, and it dawned on him. "They thought Voldemort ruling would mean the installation of pureblood supremacy, and when that didn't happen— "

"They felt deceived, yes. After all, a lot of Death Eaters have high ranking positions in the government, and they were supposed to share the same ideals on blood purity."

Harry's look turned confused. "Well, I mean— don't they?"

Aster scratched her cheek. "Um, you mean people like the Malfoy's? Yeah I guess; they're not going to just change their minds after years of thinking that way. But that being said they also weren't about to go against the Dark Lord. They wouldn't do anything to intentionally incur his wrath or hurt their positions, so even people who may have quietly agreed with this group weren't going to risk their neck to say something."

"So they retaliated." Voldemort surmised, darkly. "Against me."

The twins shared another look, as if they were both considering the most tactful way to answer something they all knew wasn't a question. Eventually, it appeared they both just gave up, and nodded.

When Harry glanced over at the other man, his expression was cold and closed off. Harry had no idea what was going on in his head, which was never a good sign.

Harry couldn't even begin to guess what the man was thinking.

Hell, he couldn't even guess what he himself was thinking. It was just… he couldn't process it. He'd known this whole time, somewhere in the back of his subconscious in the dreary and dusty closet where he stuffed all the things he wanted to ignore, that something must have gone terribly wrong. The signs were all there, but so disparate Harry could never have hoped to piece them together in this manner. Would never have wanted to. He would have never wanted to believe something like this could happen to someone he loved. Could happen because of him. And it really was because of him. Despite apparently being some kind of all-powerful aspect of the universe, despite upheaving such monumental changes to the world all in the hopes of making it a better place— he was still so weak he couldn't protect the people he wanted to the most.

Flashes of his dream struck behind his eyes, making him tremble slightly. Merlin, he could remember so well. If he closed his eyes, he could see it all over again as if he'd lived through those memories himself. It was unbearable, watching the people he cared for die in such gruesome and awful ways. Watching the people he cared about grieve for the ones they had lost. Just watching all of that destruction and sadness in an endless cycle he couldn't escape from.

He'd tried to reassure himself that it was just a dream, or a figment of a reality that didn't have to be real for him. Voldemort wasn't like that, Saiph was here, and Harry— Harry was apparently god. Surely god could stop something like that?

But just as easily, it was clear god could cause that as well. Harry's mere existence would start a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the death of his own son.

He couldn't dwell on that now though. Later, maybe, when everything was said and done and he could finally have a chance to breathe.

Harry consciously pulled himself out of his thoughts.

"But he didn't stay dead, obviously." He hastily interjected, as the tense silence grew into something unbearable.

"You resurrected him, but it wasn't easy." Aster answered.

"What actually happened is that you imbued part of your power into him— power that allows you to transition between life and death with ease. In essence it's a very complex runic array that embeds a small portion of your power inside of him, that resonates on the same level as your own magical frequency, tying your life forces together. But it's not advisable under normal circumstances, for obvious reasons. Firstly, your magic has to have compatibility, so there must be at least some kind of blood relation, preferably mother and child. Secondly, no other wizard could attempt it without exhausting their magical core, and for another your magic in particular has very special properties that oscillate at the same wave frequency as the rest of the universe, allowing you to—

"Ceph." Aster cut in, exasperated.

"Right, yes, sorry." Cepheus looked sheepish. "You resurrected him, but not without difficulty. It's probably not the sort of thing you should— or could— ever attempt again. Bringing back someone from the dead is…"

"Unheard of?" Harry tossed out, raising a brow. He'd heard that said many a time in his classes, even the ones he didn't pay much attention to. There was no spell, no rune, no potion, no magic scrying compass that could resurrect the dead. Reanimating the dead was different; that was merely controlling a body. To actually bring back a person; with thoughts and feelings and dreams…

He looked over at Saiph, fast asleep on the couch past the muffling charm. Harry had heard terrible horror stories of resurrections going awry; the most famous of which was written into Tales of Beedle the Bard. In the end, the second brother's wife could no longer remain among the living, and took her own life.

"Impossible, under normal circumstances." Cepheus conceded solemnly. "But of course, nothing about you is ordinary."

"I noticed." Harry sighed under his breath. He shook his head. "I can't imagine something like this wouldn't have side effects for him, though."

"Yes, many." Cepheus replied, frankly. "And I must say, while I understand not elaborating on the subject at the time was probably for the best, if you had told us the entire story we could have avoided all of this."

"What do you mean, all of this?" Harry repeated, slowly.

Aster gave a vague wave. "This dimensional traveling business."

"Saiph travelling here was… my fault?" Harry frowned.

"Not directly. He did it to himself, as father had already figured out." Cepheus delineated, shaking his head. "I believe he was intending to help you somehow. The spell he used though was from a rather archaic book called—

"The Sayings of the Desert Fathers." Voldemort interrupted, pensive.

Ceph nodded. "Yes, and it's full of a lot of blood magic and some really quite fascinating cannibal-based rituals, all of which are designed to siphon power into a single source. A single person, rather."

"And he was intending to transfer his magic to Harry somehow?" Voldemort confirmed.

"I believe so." At this, Cepheus looked thoughtful. "But how he knew to do it is another mystery. His memories of his death are supposed to be sealed off. He shouldn't know anything about his death and resurrection, so how did he know that he had so much of Harry's powers?"

He looked to his sister, who looked equally as pensive. "He'd been acting strange that whole day— the day he disappeared, I mean. We spent all of the day before learning how to open portals, and he was doing a really good job. We were supposed to finish up the lessons, but he begged off to go to the library. I just figured he'd found something else to interest him over break."

"The library?" Cepheus pondered, frowning. "That's very close to the alchemy lab I had used earlier in the break. That would explain how the dimensional travel went so awry, then."

"Add to that Harry's magic that is keeping him alive— a kind of magic he wouldn't be able to have any control over— and I guess it's really no surprise he managed to throw himself into this dimension." Aster mused, with a fascinated glint in her eye that really highlighted her similarities to her brother. They leaned in close to each other as they continued talking over one another, not unlike a pair of evil mad scientists excitedly discussing world domination.

"But how curious— why this dimension? Could there have been any particular reason for it? Just chance?"

"If that was the case, then the probability of him ending up in a uninhabitable dimension would outweigh his chances of finding himself in a habitable one— and the chances of him coming here? To a dimension so similar it may as well be parallel? Unlikely." Aster countered.

"So you think there was a reason he came here also." Cepheus concurred, nodding along. "I imagine it must have something to do with Harry, then? Like magic calls to itself, after all."

"Bombadil's Theory on Magical Relativity would validate this," Aster agreed, resolutely. "Magic is the perfect antithesis to magnetism, after all. Where opposite charges attract in electricity, like charges attract in magic. And Harry's magic is very unique, to find a like pair wouldn't be as simple as it is for prototypical magic."

Cepheus leaned back in his chair, blinking up at the ceiling with a spark in his eye. "Yes, yes— you're absolutely right. He must have known that, and was attempting to find Harry through the magic inside him."

Aster shook her head. "I still don't understand why, though. Or how he would have even known to do that. Like you said, he shouldn't have any memories of that period."

Cepheus craned his head back down to look at Harry. "Has he mentioned anything to you?"

Harry stared at them blankly. "I'm sorry. You two lost me ages ago." He said, with a trembling quirk of a smile. Ceph grinned in response.

It really wasn't the time to think it, but the exchange yet again made him really in awe of the both of them. It was really rather impressive, how the two of them could bounce ideas off each other and follow each other's trains of thought with such perfect harmony they may as well be one brain split between two people. Honestly he'd thought them rather polar opposites for twins. Cepheus was very obviously the academic; he was inherently curious, and always open to suggestions and theories. And he was always willing to try these theories out for himself, apparently to the detriment of the structure of the house. Aster was the more pragmatic and effervascent of the two. She was affable and easy to talk to, and seemed, well, normal for a lack of a better word. Far too normal for a child of Voldemort (and himself, if he was being honest). She liked clothes and fashion and the same girly magazines that Ginny did, as far as he could tell, and was as funny and clever as Fred and George, and as easy to get along with as Charlie.

But seeing them together, he could certainly see how they just… fit. Slotted into each other like two halves of the same coin, so glaringly identical and yet so obviously different.

"He has no memories of anything within that twenty-four hour period." Voldemort spoke, pulling Harry out of his ruminations on the twins and back to the topic at hand.

Ceph sighed loudly, crossing his arms as he flopped back in his chair. "A dead end, then." He shook his head. "Unless he manages to regain his memory— an unlikely outcome, to be sure— we won't ever know why he did it."

"At the very least, we now know the how." Voldemort muttered, looking pensive.

"Yes, but without the 'why' we're still at a loss as to what he was doing here, and what he was trying to accomplish." Aster frowned.

Cepheus ran a hand through his hair. "I mean, does it even really matter? We found him, he's in one piece. Isn't it enough to just take that at face value and bring him home?"

Aster pursed her lips, her ice chip eyes narrowed at the table with intense focus. "I can't help but think we're missing something here. Something that explains what he was trying to do… something big. I just… don't you think it's super weird of Sai to pull something like this? He's the unproblematic child of this family; the worst thing he's ever done is steal books from the library. And he puts them back! He's basically just borrowing them, and even then he gets so guilty about it he always ends up confessing to Harry on his own. Can you really imagine this kid doing something like this?"

Cepheus considered it, before looking a bit crestfallen. "No, you're right."

Aster made a grand gesture with her hand, snorting; "I mean, even for you this would be a pretty bad fuck up."

"Hey."

Despite the severity of the situation— of all of this— he couldn't help but smile at the two.

Cepheus caught his look and groaned. "Oh no, not you too Harry. Listen, I acknowledge the fact that I can be… difficult to live with—

"Capable of causing extensive property damage at a moment's notice?" Aster cut in, drily.

"— And a great deal of the things I've done in the name of science were, purely out of context, rather extreme. But I assure you, I always have a perfectly valid reason for doing them."

"Valid?" Aster sits upright, outraged. "In what world are any of the things you pull valid?"

"Is this about the whale shark again? Will you ever let me live that down?" He whined loudly.

"No! You know why? Because I still get shit for it. Me! The one who went all the way down to Mozambique to drag your arse back before you could do something catastrophic like turn the local sea turtle population into zombies—

"— Physically impossible—"

"And then you come back with a baby whale shark of all things and try to tell me it'll fit in the basement! We might have a big basement, but it's definitely not the size of the pacific ocean! But what did you do when I tried to impart this perfectly sound piece of logic on to you, huh? You told me I had no sense of ambition and didn't understand the capabilities of magic to—

"If I had gotten the expansion matrix down properly, it seriously wouldn't have been an issue." Cepheus spoke over her, rolling his eyes. "It was a small miscalculation on my part."

"Small?" Aster all but shrieked.

"Well, large, relatively speaking, but theoretically small." Cepheus amended, calmly. "Magic really is capable of expanding a space to almost three hundred times its own size, or have you never wondered how you can shrink an expandable trunk the size of a house down to the size of a thumbtack?"

"That is so not the point—

"Enough!"

This is from Voldemort, and his voice is loud enough to startle all of them. Harry even chanced a glance towards Saiph, half-worried it managed to break through the charm. With relief he saw Saiph was still fast asleep.

When he turned his gaze back to Voldemort, he was stunned with what he saw.

The man was… really, really pissed. Harry had no other way of explaining it. He wasn't even entirely sure when he became capable of reading Voldemort's moods so well, because on the surface it was difficult to tell anything was wrong. Maybe that was it, though. When Voldemort was annoyed, or deeply irritated, or frustrated, he tended to express it on his face. Whenever he and Harry argued, Harry could see his anger in his eyes with easy clarity. But this… Harry couldn't see anything. And frankly, that was far more frightening. The stark impassivity shook him to the core, because it reminded him all too much of the horrifying monster from his dreams who started a madman's quest and burned the world to the ground. It was a look of sole and single-minded fury, and Harry couldn't help but cower at it slightly.

From the looks on Cepheus and Asterope's faces, they too were adept at reading Voldemort's moods and knew this was a poor sign, going still and quiet immediately. Apparently even those two knew when to stop pushing his buttons.

He breathed out of his nose sharply. "It's readily apparent nothing more productive is going to get done here. If you want to stay here and bicker about worthless topics, by all means do so. I have no intention of wasting my time in such a fruitless manner."

He stood up abruptly, and without another word or even a backwards glance, slammed the door open and stormed out.

Harry watched him leave in stunned silence.

The Ceph sighed. Aster shrugged.

He looked at the two with no small amount of bewilderment.

"He does that." Was Aster's succinct and apathetic response.

Harry, however, was not so calm and reassured. "He… isn't going to do something crazy, is he?"

Because he sure as hell looked like he was going to. He looked uncannily like a crazy and murderous madman who would start a genocidal campaign purely for his own gain.

"No— he's just going to stew in anger somewhere for a little while." Cepheus paused, considering. "Or maybe for more than a little while. It's hard to say sometimes."

"Frankly, I'm surprised it took him so long to explode like that." Aster mused, looking vaguely intrigued.

Harry looked at them blankly, feeling rather lost. "Is this… normal behavior for him?" He can't help but ask, incredulously.

Aster snorted, playing with her teaspoon as she dunked sugar cubes into the dregs of her tea. "Believe it or not, this is actually him dealing with his anger in a relatively healthy way."

Harry's look only turned more incredulous.

Ceph nodded readily. "Truly, I'm impressed by his own level of self-awareness. How long have you been here?"

Harry gave him a blank look of bewildered disbelief. "Err— maybe a week or two?" He wasn't actually sure how long he was asleep, come to think of it.

Him and his sister looked positively fascinated. "This really is quite odd for him. What do you think caused such a drastic change so early?" Aster asked, excitedly.

"It must have something to do with Harry and Sai. What else could it be?" Ceph pointed out, logical.

"Yeah, but, in a week?"

"You two have lost me— again." Harry interrupted, still rather bemused. "What is so drastic? What has changed, exactly?"

Cepheus rubbed his chin. "Ah, well, as you may have noticed, our father can be rather… quick to anger."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, I may have noticed."

"And he's not always the best at dealing with it, either." Aster added, waving her spoon around. "Um, anger management has always been a thing with you two. He used to, well, you know, not exactly deal with his anger in a healthy way—

Yeah, Harry had plenty of examples of that particular trait.

"And it definitely took him a while to develop, err, 'productive coping strategies' you could say." She ended, sheepishly. "Anyway, our point was that his reaction just now was a surprisingly constructive and effective coping strategy for his anger. More than I would have expected from him, honestly."

Harry blinked rapidly. "How exactly was that constructive or effective, at all? He basically just stormed off."

Voldemort storming out in a mood from hell didn't exactly seem all that effective or productive, as far as he could tell.

"To put it simply, he removed himself from a situation that was inciting his temper— the alternative being him sticking around and getting even angrier until it becomes something really unmanageable and he starts doing something drastic, like, cursing us or something." Aster explained, nonchalantly. Harry looked at her with varying degrees of horror; would he seriously curse them?

Upon further inspection, Harry realized that thought wasn't as outlandish as he had first assumed. After all, was that not Voldemort's default reaction every time they had met previously? Was that not his first reaction when one of his Death Eaters told him something had gone awry? Harry had seen it plenty of times with his own eyes this past year, seeing visions of Voldemort at all hours of the day. He was a man with an awful, terrible temper and terrible ways of coping with it. Harry had seen it first hand, and had even been a victim of it firsthand.

Cepheus sighed heavily. "Still, I wish there was a way to talk to him when he gets like this. I just feel like he shouldn't be alone."

"You want to help him?" Harry asked, completely flummoxed. What exactly about this current situation would inspire even an ounce of sympathy or empathy from them?

Aster shot him a wry smile. "He's not, like, actually angry. I mean he is, and he's going to be in a foul mood and temper for the foreseeable future, but he's actually— he's just very upset. And this is how it manifests."

"He's… upset?" Harry repeated, blankly,

Harry stared at them like the were aliens. What was this superpower? And how could he get it? How could they read all of that from that brief interaction? Harry was positively floored. Maybe the twins were mind readers. Maybe they were just as skilled in legilimency as their father and were able to like, somehow intrinsically read people's emotions in the air. Like scent hounds or something. Wasn't that a thing? Smelling fear?

Aster's smile turned a bit sad. "A bit more than that too, I'm sure. I mean, we did just tell him it was kind of his fault his youngest son was murdered."

Harry blinked furiously, brow rising in confusion. "In what way?" Because as far as he could see, wasn't it his fault? He was the one who caused all this civil unrest.

"It was his follower base that ultimately revolted and killed Sai." Cepheus pointed out, flatly. "I'm not saying I think it was his fault— I don't. But I think the political climate of the time was very unstable and… things happen. People do terrible things when they feel helpless and betrayed, and those pureblood supremacists felt that way when he tossed his agenda in favor of you."

"He gave up his whole pureblood domination thing because of me?" Harry asked, eyes wide.

"I don't think he was all that interested in it to begin with. He certainly hates non-magicals, but the agenda against muggleborns was more to capture a wealthy following to further his own motivations. When it became obvious you were the better ticket to absolute power and consolidation of the wizarding world, he unsurprisingly did what any Slytherin would do and cut his own losses in favor of an ultimate gain. At any rate, the people who did not see it that way were displeased."

Harry frowned down at the table, brow furrowed. "So… right now, he's blaming himself for what happened?"

"In essence, yes." Cepheus nodded. "I can't say for sure what he's feeling, but I imagine it's not entirely dissimilar to what he felt back then. Hatred and a directionless anger, a sense of helplessness and impotency to fix the matters at hand, guilt and remorse and regret?"

Harry merely sat there in awed and astonished silence.

Later, after Aster has reminded her twin that they've been up for well past twenty-four hours now and some mortal creatures need sleep, and they've unanimously decided to just transfigure the other two armchairs by Saiph's commandeered sofa into beds, and Harry has sleepily but resignedly trudged himself back into Voldemort's unused bed, he still finds himself awestruck. And a little ashamed. Just a little.

The door was still open, and he could hear Aster's soft, even breaths (Ceph had complained she snored, and she'd told him she just breathed loudly and he could kindly go shove himself and his pile of drool into another dimension, thank you very much) from the dark sitting room beyond. The occasional rustling as Saiph turned in his blankets; Ceph's intermittent low muttering as he talked in his sleep. It was reassuring, and the sounds made him feel less alone. It was a lot like sleeping in the Burrow; the comforting affirmation that he wasn't alone, that there were people next to him and in the room across from him and the one above and below him, and they were all familiar people. He imagined this was what it would be like to go to sleep with his family surrounding him— it was, in fact, that very predicament. Because this was his family, in and odd and convoluted away.

And Voldemort was somehow, unfathomably a part of that.

And Harry felt as if he'd failed him.

In all fairness, Voldemort had failed Harry countless times as well. All the same, Harry liked to pride himself in being the more emotionally-aware and empathetic of the two, and he definitely hadn't been either of those earlier.

After the twins had spelled it out for him, it had started to make a lot of sense. A lot of things started to make a lot of sense.

Voldemort's reactions to things, the way he would fly off the handle for the most inane comments, the way his mood would flip so quickly… It was just as Cepheus had explained. Any emotion he wouldn't— or perhaps even simply couldn't— understand was met with anger. It was perhaps the only emotion he could fully understand, so it was the one he reached for when he was uncertain. It made a lot of sense; it also made Harry… somewhat sad.

He felt rather irritated with himself, sitting here stewing silently in Voldemort's bed as he thought about feeling sorry for the blasted man, of all things.

Harry, of all people, had no reason to feel empathy of any kind for the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord was singularly the reason why Harry's life sucked so badly, and every bad thing that had ever happened to him was directly caused by the man. Voldemort was cruel and sadistic and self-absorbed and he'd shown that side to Harry countless times. He certainly didn't deserve Harry's sympathy.

And yet, stupidly, Harry wanted to give it to him anyhow.

He turned over in the bed, feeling restless and uneasy. Despite the late hour, he couldn't seem to manage to find any relief in sleep. He just kept tossing and turning and thinking. It was awful.

He knew enough about Tom Riddle's life to infer it… had never been particularly pleasant. He remembered feeling sympathy for the boy in the diary, and even thought of him as a kindred spirit. Tom Riddle had no home to return to during summers, he begged and pleaded with his Headmaster but was forced to return to the abysmal orphanage he'd been tossed into for as long as he could remember. Harry too had no home to return to, and despite his wishes was forced to return to the purgatory of the Dursley's every summer, the only hell he could ever remember since infancy, ostensibly for his own good.

Tom Riddle had never had any friends, either. He said he was too strong to be bullied, and Harry believed it, but he had to imagine there was a time when Tom Riddle hadn't been that strong. There had to have been an incident that made him decide he never wanted to be bullied again. Harry had never been allowed to have any friends, and even if he did manage to get one or two kids to smile at him, they were chased away by Dudley, who would then turn his ire back onto Harry. Instead of trying to turn around and face his bullies and be stronger than them like Tom had, Harry had just got really good at running.

After he'd found out who Tom Riddle really was, he'd brushed it all off as lies. Even though he really did know Voldemort had grown up in an orphanage, he refused to believe— or rather, he refused to care— that Voldemort had such a past. It wasn't an excuse for all the horrors he'd wrought upon the world as an adult, it wasn't an excuse for him to kill Harry's parents.

It wasn't an excuse; but it was at least a reason.

Harry could no longer convince himself to see the man as some kind of two-dimensional specter of evil. He'd sort of had to drop that delusion ever since following Sai into the Dark Lord's lair, but it was still easy to brush off all his more annoying tendencies under his lingering assumption that Voldemort really was a cruel man with no empathy.

But seeing him tonight… it was very clear that was no longer true.

Harry blinked dully at the ceiling, foggy and hazy without his glasses.

He didn't know what had happened between Saiph and Voldemort when he'd been asleep, but it was clear something had changed. Something fundamental, but subtle. He could just tell, from the almost subconscious gestures between the two. Saiph no longer leaned as far away from the man as possible, as if too scared to approach. He no longer held himself still and quiet when in the man's presence. He actually even talked back; he was bolder and more sure of himself. And in turn, Voldemort was not as hard on him as usual. He wasn't snappy or rude. It would be a hard stretch to call him affectionate, but he was hardly cold, either. And certainly not with the twins, despite whatever outward irritation he might show.

He wasn't entirely sure whether Voldemort had actually changed, or if Harry had just become more perceptive of his moods.

Harry didn't know what to think about him, anymore.

Sleep was a long time coming.

/

The rumble of the Hogwarts Express lulls him halfway to sleep.

His eyes are still open, little slits of dazzling (inhuman) green, but his mind wanders. Their compartment is packed. Hugo is flush against him, his incessantly bouncing leg knocking into Sai's with the swaying of the train. Rosie is across from them, guffawing loudly over a fashion magazine with Molly. Lou and his sister are arguing with each other in French. A bunch of Willy's friends from the Quidditch team are draped over the compartment entrance, arguing with Willy over Puddlemere United. Then Alfie and Maisie return from the trolley, kicking Willy's friends out of the way.

It's so noisy Sai has half a mind to drag himself over to a compartment full of silent Ravenclaws he doesn't know with their heads buried in books.

He knows he won't though, even though he wishes he could. But he knows himself well enough to realize he doesn't have the confidence to waltz into a compartment full of people he doesn't know and sit with them. It's easier to just sit here with the people he's known since he was born; it's easier to just hang out with them than have to make friends on his own; it's easier to just go with the flow than forge his own path. Sometimes he wonders why he even bothered to argue with the sorting hat for Slytherin; it's pretty clear he has absolutely zero ambition.

"— made any friends yet, Sai?"

He breaks out of his musings, to see Maisie squatting down in front of him with a pleasant expression. There's no room for her to sit on the benches, even with Willy's friends tossed out of the compartment, but she seems content to sprawl out on the floor. He realizes then that he hasn't had much opportunity to talk to her or Alfie— they're both pretty busy with their head girl and prefect duties respectively.

He shrugs. "A few, I guess."

She gives him an encouraging smile. "You seem to spend a lot of time with Holtby."

He shrugs again. "He's quiet."

Maisie laughs as she tucks her knees beneath her. "Yeah, I bet you can appreciate that when you're usually stuck with all of us, huh?"

Sai smiles shyly. "I mean, I like you guys too."

She just grins. "Sure, but come on, we're family. We're bound to annoy each other eventually."

"Eventually?" Rosie snorts from behind her. "Have you met Hugo? Try everyday."

"Hey!" Hugo protests. Rosie ignores him, turning a page in her magazine.

Maisie looks amused by the two of them, but keeps her attention centered on him. "But you're settling in okay and everything? No one's giving you any trouble? All your classes are fine?"

"Give him trouble?" Willy guffaws, rolling his eyes. "Oh come on Maisie, no one would be stupid enough to touch a hair on his head!"

A frightened look crosses her eyes, a little too fast for Saiph to catch. He would assume it was just a trick of the light, but her expression turns a bit uneasy, even as she laughs it off. "You know what I mean! I just want to make sure he's adjusting to his classmates."

Basically, she's just worried he's not capable of making friends on his own. And in all fairness, she has plenty of reason to.

Saiph was born squished between Willy and Hugo, both just a mere few weeks on either side of him. The entirety of his baby album(s)— prolific and frankly a little embarrassing, but baby photos are a 'thing' with Harry (and maybe even his father), who didn't grow up with any at all— is full of photos of a round-faced blob that apparently is him, surrounded by two other equally ambiguous blobs. These morph into toddlers in hideous outfits, little kids with their broomsticks, elementary school photos, and finally, the three of them with their arms slung around each other, posing in front of the Hogwarts Express. He has never once needed to make friends of his own, because he had two already built into his life, and those two were outgoing enough to attract even more friends.

And now, for the first time in his short existence, Willy and Hugo are not within immediate radius of his social circle. They're both in Gryffindor, with the vast majority of their family, and while they still spend as much time as possible in each other's orbit, there is suddenly a wide chasm of distance between them. Saiph can sit with them in the dining hall, but at the end of the day he has to return to the Slytherin dorm, alone. He has to sit in classes with his fellow Slytherins when they don't have classes with Gryffindors, in free periods when the rest of his family members have class.

It's been an adjustment, to say the least.

"I'm fine. They're all very nice." He answers, truthfully.

And he really is being honest— nice might even be a bit of an understatement. No one would dare to say anything about him anyway, just because of his parents, but beyond that his older sister seems to have effectively terrified the Slytherin student body into near falling over themselves to cater to his every whim.

Maisie doesn't look entirely convinced, but she merely nods along. Still, she clasps his hand in her own, squeezing it lightly. "If you need anything, just let me know, okay? I know every prefect says that, but seriously, I'm your cousin. It's my job to look out for you."

Saiph is skeptical, but the look in her eyes is dead serious.

Later, when his family has finally quieted down, and the winter sun has met its early demise, and the Hogwarts Express ambles its way across the darkened countryside, Saiph can't help but consider the veracity of her words.

His eyes slide back to his cousins, scattered around the compartment around him. Rosie is quietly reading— something of substance now, not just a fashion magazine— Willy and Hugo have left to go pester their Quidditch friends; Alfie left about thirty minutes ago to begrudgingly patrol the train corridors; Maisie is next to him with her head tilted back against the seat, out like a light; Domonique and Molly have joined her, slumped against each other across from him. The seventh year beside him seems as if she could use the sleep the most; she's taking all NEWT classes and is also Head Girl. He can imagine that to be very stressful and exhausting, and yet she still clearly worries about him.

He would hardly consider it her 'job' to look after him, but she certainly takes it as seriously as one. And she's not the only one. Most of his older cousins baby him— to a fault, really. They can get overbearing at times, if he's being honest. They act like he can't even walk down Diagon Alley on his own. He's not sure who's putting them up to it— his older siblings? The Dark Lord? Harry? Frankly, he's surprised by how much they've let off now that he's at Hogwarts.

Maybe it's because there are teachers now to hound him over his every move.

His own Head of House being exceptionally irritating on the matter.

Snape seems to forever both loathe his presence and yet attempt to stay as far away as possible from him, and Saiph is usually too exhausted to care. He knew the man and his eldest sister got along like cats and dogs, but aside from that he has no idea why the man would despise him so obviously. It can't just be because Aster is a pain, right? He's never once heard Ceph speak ill of the man (or speak of him at all, really) and the same could be said of Harry, although Harry's ambivalence towards the man seems rather forced. And as far as he knows, Snape is a well regarded follower of his father's. He would assume they were on good terms.

So what is it about Saiph in particular that the man seems to loathe? He refuses to even look in Saiph's direction most of the time, and yet he always seems to be there when Saiph wants him around the least.

Be it a simple walk (with ample time before curfew), a perfectly sanctioned trip to the Quidditch pitch with his cousins on a weekend, or an attempt to sign up for the dueling club, Snape always has some reason or another to pull him away from it all and back into the dungeons, well within his sight. It's like he has Saiph under constant watch.

Saiph lets his head fall against the window with a soft thump.

He doesn't want to think about Severus Snape right now. He just wants to finally go home and (hopefully) see his parents, preferably together but right now he'll take what he can get, and sit and chat with his older brother late into the night, and maybe bake horrendous cookies with Aster, and just enjoy his holidays for a moment, pretending that everything is fine and nothing has changed.

/

"Forgive me, Severus. I've kept you waiting, haven't I?"

The figure turned from the windows; his expression was worn and weary. He looked tired, and older even than his already pronounced years. Severus would not know it, but the headmaster was almost in an identical position to the mysterious man who had just left his office. Looking out into the lake, lit gold with the morning sun, wondering how much longer such idyllic days could last.

"I...found the added time to be rather useful." Severus returned, hoarsely.

It had taken him a good while to bring himself back into the present, after wondering for a long time if he'd managed to catch a glimpse of the past. The memories of Lily proved too much to bear at this crucial juncture; he had to gather himself and settle his mind. It wouldn't do to lose his control now, after all these careful years.

His time may be short, but he still had a promise to uphold. And he would do his best to hold it, even at the cost of his own life.

"I'm glad to hear it. I needed the time to organize my thoughts as well." Dumbledore turned away from the windows, adjusting his spectacles. "Now, my old friend, what did you have to tell me that was so urgent you've finally broken your perennial sabbatical, after all these years?"

Of course Dumbledore would recognize Severus' anomalous summer arrival for what it truly was; a prophecy of doom.

He swallowed with difficulty. "I imagine you took notice of the… peculiar weather patterns earlier."

"Ah, yes. That sort of dark magic is a tad bit hard to miss, to be sure."

So he knew what it was? Severus looked up quickly. "Then, Albus, do you know…?"

"I have some suspicions as to what happened, yes." Dumbledore cut him off, with the sort of vague and unreliable response Severus has come to expect from him when he knows something as fact but does not wish to say so.

So Dumbledore knows?

Severus can't imagine how. Severus himself didn't know until mere hours ago. Even now, he's not even entirely sure what he knows. He could only describe what he saw as dutifully as possible, and hope the Headmaster could make some sense of it. Because frankly, he cannot even bring himself to guess. The events of yesterday were so bizzare he wanted to believe he'd dreamed it all up. Unfortunately, he'd had a hysterical Lucius, a deathly quiet Narcissa, and a sickly looking Draco approaching him earlier this morning to prove him wrong.

"And… and you're okay with this?"

Severus might not fully understand what was going on here, but even he can tell this is the sort of situation that required grave and urgent action. They needed to get Potter out of there, immediately, at any cost.

To his utter disbelief, Albus broke out into a small, fond smile. It looked sad, however. And full of regret. "As it stands, I don't think I could have come up with a better solution myself."

Severus stared at him, utterly dumbfounded.

Everyone in the Order has been positively beside themselves over Harry's disappearance, and yet here Dumbledore is, barely even batting an eyelash at the idea of Harry Potter at the hands of their greatest enemy?

Albus took his shocked silence as acquiescence, and made for his floo. "Now, I have a deeply critical matter to prepare for, and some things I'd like to see with my own eyes. Would you like to join me?"

/

He is standing in the graveyard.

He doesn't remember how he got there. Saiph has trouble remembering a lot of things these days. Today at school he'd even forgotten his own name. There are long, yawning stretches of blankness in his memory, a darkness that hides most of his childhood. He can't remember anything from before his sixth birthday. He hardly remembers anything from that whole year, when he thinks back on it. Teddy screaming at him in a bookstore, horrified at the idea of losing him from sight for a mere few minutes, Cepheus pulling him through a curtain of golden ferns. It's gotten better recently, he thinks, but then things like this happen. Things like forgetting his own name in class, waking up in places he doesn't remember walking to, forgetting what day— or even what year— it was. He is eight now, and the flightiness of his memories seems to have settled for the most part, like a restless, frightened bird finally coming to roost.

It's been months since he's blacked out like this. He's not even sure why it happened.

Saiph blinks down at the grave. It has a strange mark on it.

This isn't the first time he's come back to consciousness and realized he doesn't know where he is or how he got there, so he doesn't panic. He knows he needs to take a few deep breaths, and then slowly and logically categorize the things around him.

He looks around. He recognizes this graveyard— the low slung iron fence, the gnarled yew tree standing sentinel in the far corner. This is St. Jerome's. His grandparents are buried here. Lily and James Potter. He is in Godric's Hollow.

Saiph squeezes his eyes shut, and presses his hands to his temple. Why is he here?

A… funeral, maybe?

Yes, that sounds about right.

It was great-great Aunt Muriel's funeral. Or were there three greats? Saiph shakes his head. Either way it was someone's funeral, and about halfway through the service he had suddenly begun to feel clammy and cold and thought he was going to be sick so he'd rushed out of the cathedral. It had overwhelmed him so suddenly he had no presence of mind to tell anyone where he was going. There were crowds of reporters at the front of the church— there always are, whenever his parents are around— so he'd darted down a side path for some fresh air and quiet and then… then he must have ended up here. He squints down at the grave beneath him; why this grave, though? The only grave he knows in this graveyard is his grandparents', and it's clear across the other side. This one is so old and weathered by time and the elements that the name and the dates are almost impossible to make out.

I—-T—-S

PEV-RELL

1— , 1291

But the symbol at the top appears to have fared better. It looks awfully familiar. A triangle cut in half, with a circle in the inside. Where has he seen it before…?

His head begins to pound again, even worse than it had been inside the cathedral. A cold sweat prickles on the back of his neck; his heart kicks frantically against his chest. His breath rushes out of him in quick heaves, too fast for him to recover any air, and his vision starts to fade around the edges, and he thinks he collapses to his knees and then—

"Saiph!"

He recognizes his father's voice, and then his heavy eyelids slip shut.

When he finds himself drifting slowly back towards consciousness, voices slip in and out of his ears. He recognizes them, which puts him at ease.

"... Knew we shouldn't have brought him… too soon… to close to…" It's his father, muttering under his breath in a quietly furious tone. The exact sort of tone that never fails to set Saiph ill at ease. When his father is genuinely mad, he tends to make a concerted effort to pretend like he isn't— as if ignoring his anger or pretending it isn't there would make it go away somehow.

"... You said it was supposed to stop happening... " His father's voice washes like a film of static over his mind, sometimes too distorted to hear properly.

Then there's his mum, sighing heavily, voice resigned but firm. "... healing on its own time... "

"... How much longer…"

Saiph drifts off again, floating into a comforting (familiar) darkness. As he submerges again he hears Harry sigh;

"...I wish I had an answer for you…"

/

Remus Lupin let out a weary sigh, as he stared down at the graves he'd been avoiding for roughly fifteen years.

St. Jerome's graveyard was as quiet and still as the dead it housed. A lone yew tree in the corner spread its spindly green arms over a perfect summer sky. The majority of the graves here were nothing but weather-worn rocks, marking the endless marching of time. It still pained him to see Lily and James added to their ranks, far too soon. But that was an old wound, a throbbing, relentless pain that never went away, but was no longer as crippling as it once was. It was an added topping of grief atop the already not unsizeable grief and guilt he currently held for Sirius.

Grief and guilt he was well on his way to holding about Harry, too.

How could I have let this happen?

He hadn't been the one on guard duty that night, but all the same his thoughts swirl endlessly like water down a drain, constantly returning to this one singular point. He was too lost in his own grief to even stop and consider how Harry must have felt; tossed aside like used up garbage once the fiasco at the Ministry was over, left to fend for himself with those horrendous Muggles. He hadn't been on guard duty that night because he hadn't wanted to be. He had been avoiding that particular ongoing mission like the plague, even preferring to meet with the werewolves instead. Tonks had picked up most of his slack, but on that particular night she too had been called away, leaving just old Mundungus to the job.

He couldn't even blame the man, either. Whether he'd been sleeping on the job or not, Harry was in possession of a quick wit, far too much stubbornness and his father's invisibility cloak. If the boy wanted to escape, he only had to put his mind to it.

It was his job to protect him. Harry was just a boy, dragged into a brutal conflict, bearing responsibility no one his age should have to bear. If he had just been there that night, perhaps he could have convinced Harry out of whatever terrible scheme his grief-addled mind had come up with.

He'd spent the last few weeks hunting down the trail of Bellatrix Lestrange, certain that if he could just find Sirius' murderer, he'd most likely find Harry boy had hated her enough to even attempt to Crucio her, although with little success. Perhaps he'd been left to stew in his anger long enough to attempt to actually finish the job.

But Bellatrix's trail had gone cold, and with it the last hope he'd held out for finding the missing Boy-Who-Lived.

There was only one option now.

Harry had been caught.

Remus shook his head, shoulders tense with anxiety as he gazed sightlessly at the grave at his feet, fresh flowers bundled against the headstone.

If that was the case, why such silence from Voldemort?

There had been no movement from his side of the war. Remus would have expected him to continue capitalizing on the fear permeating through every household in Wizarding Britain right now, as he had been all summer. Acts of random terror, more and more people going missing everyday, hatching plans to make the Ministry even more ineffective than usual. He would have expected the man to parade Harry around like a caught trophy, just to relish the desolation and despair it would bring his friends and those closest to him.

Remus could only hope that Voldemort's silence was a sign that Harry wasn't with him at all. That Harry, unfathomably, was not in danger.

But such fanficul wishes were hardly going to get him anywhere in this day and age.

"You didn't find anything either, huh?"

Tonks wandered up behind him, her hair a somber dark brown. He hadn't seen it in any of its usual bold shades since… well, since Harry went missing. It was affecting all of them, he knew, not just him. It was unfair to act as if he was the only one mourning the boy.

The werewolf crossed his arms, shaking his head. "No sign of him. Not even a hint of a scent."

They'd come here on the slight hope that perhaps Harry had returned to Godric's Hollow, for whatever reason. Sirius had a small gravemark here, next to Lily and James— the best they could do without a body or any time for a real funeral. But there was no way Harry could have been here recently; there has been no rain, despite no small amount of storm clouds, so there was no water to wash his scent away. Even outside of his wolf form, Remus had an excellent sense of smell. To not even catch a whiff of him here meant that Harry had never been here at all.

At the very least, the trip wasn't an entire waste. He got to lay flowers on his friend's graves, and pray for forgiveness from them that he knew he didn't deserve.

"There's still hope, Remus." Tonks insisted, quiet but resolute.

Remus had no idea where her optimism was coming from. Couldn't she see the dire straits they were in— the impossible future that lay ahead of them? They would lose this war before it could even begin in earnest at this rate. The Dark Lord was stronger than ever before.

But maybe Tonks is right. Maybe it's better to hope for an impossible future of peace, than sit around in despair.

"Dumbledore and Snape both apparently left for an 'urgent matter'." Tonks confided then, quietly.

Remus whirled around, staring at her with wide eyes. "What? When? Did they say where they were going?"

Tonks shook her head. "I heard it second hand from Mcgonagall. Apparently they left after the Headmaster had a mysterious meeting earlier this morning."

The werewolf's brow furrowed. "Mysterious meeting?" He repeated, concerned. "With whom?"

The metamorphmagus shrugged. "Well, that's what makes it so mysterious, isn't it? Mcgonagall had no idea who the man was— she just said he was a father with his young daughter. She asked me if I knew anyone who fit the description, but I was really at a loss. Does that sound at all familiar to you?"

A man with a young daughter? He catalogued all the Order members he knew. Most of them were members from the first war, either without children or with children too old to be considered young. He didn't know of any that currently had young children— unless they were supposed to be a secret. Perhaps Dumbledore had many quasi-Order members who spied for him, the kind that liked to keep a low profile.

"I can't say anyone comes to mind. But he must have had important information, if Dumbledore himself left to act on it."

Tonks frowned, expression serious. "Then there's no doubt, is there? It had to have been about Harry. Nothing else is as important."

Remus sighed. "You're probably right. I suppose there's nothing else we can do but hope the situation isn't as dire as we all fear it to be."

Tonks shook her head. "It's Dumbledore, Remus." She said, firmly. "He'll find a way."

A small flicker of hope in the darkness, he supposed.

/

Saiph is always, always, cold.

He can never seem to find enough warmth no matter how hard he tries. Cassiopeia laughs at him and calls him a snake— she teases meanly that he's not actually her brother at all, but Nagini's long lost egg. Saiph is a little too old to fall for something so nonsensical, but it still bothers him. He doesn't need yet another thing to make him feel different from his siblings. He feels that way enough as it is.

He was born into a family of inherently talented necromancers, and even still he does weird things, like waking up in the middle of the night in the graveyard. Maybe that's an auspicious sign in some necromancer families, but in his it's just plain weird. Not even Cepheus, inarguably the best necromancer of his time, was so subconsciously obsessed with death.

Death seems to follow Saiph wherever he goes.

Like an unwanted imaginary best friend, Saiph can feel a cold chill roll over him like morning fog, something sweet and sorrowful clinging to the backs of his knees, trying to draw him back into— into—

Saiph curls into a ball beneath the covers, rolling over to face the wall as he wills the thoughts away from his head.

Tonight it's especially hard.

Earlier that morning, a gnome had literally died at the sight of him.

His cousins had found it hilarious— Saiph was utterly horrified. There were a couple jokes going around about how Saiph's ugly mug could even petrify a basilisk (a joke in incredibly poor taste, considering Saiph is hardly unattractive and basilisks are a bit of a sore subject in the Weasley household, but that's Uncle Fred's sense of humor for you) and a couple more about how great it would be to have Saiph around full time to cull the rampant gnome population.

Saiph hadn't meant to kill it on sight. Maybe he really was born hatched out of an egg— except instead of Nagini's, it was actually a basilisk's.

He probably would have found it vaguely funny, but mostly alarming, if this had been the first time this had happened. If it was just a weird fluke, perhaps he could just brush it off. But animals had died at the sight of Saiph before. Not all of them, to be sure, but sometimes a stray bird would fly too close to him and would just plummet right out of the sky, dead in an instant. He had a weird habit of consistently causing flies and most flying insects to die within getting a few meters of him (mosquitoes especially, to the exuberant joy of his family; Saiph was a hot commodity during summers) However, this was the first time a magical creature had done so. Saiph didn't know what it meant. He was positively terrified. Not even Harry could kill things just by being in close proximity to them (without intentionally doing so), and he was supposed to be Death personified!

There was something definitely wrong with him. There were a lot of things wrong with him, actually, but this one was definitely at the top of the list.

Gnomes are the scourge of the Weasley garden, but Saiph hardly thought the poor thing had to die.

Was he cursed or something? Born under a cursed star? Was Saiph actually a cursed star?

The thoughts chase themselves round and round in his head, even as his cousins snore around him. It's the dog days of summer, and there's no air conditioning in the Burrow, so there's plenty of flying insects all about the room. Whenever one flies too close to Saiph, burrowed under at least three different quilts, they drop to the ground like stones. There is a little pile of dead gnats around his bed, that Saiph is actively trying not to look at.

All his siblings have an inherent affinity to death.

Aster explained she and Ceph have the same problem with insects, although Aster tends to liberally abuse this power in the name of vanquishing all mosquitoes off planet earth. But Ceph and Aster also don't seem to passively have this ability ingrained into their magic, and they've certainly never accidentally killed a gnome of all things. They both, like Harry, have to actively want to kill things off in order to cause death. For Saiph though, it just seems to be an ambient part of his existence. Which is alarming, to say the least.

There's a shuffling from somewhere above his cocoon. Someone is peeling back the layers of his blanket fort, and then carefully slotting next to him beneath them.

He half expects it to be his older brother, but is still unsurprised to find it's actually the other twin. Ceph is his pillar of strength, the person he relies on perhaps even more than his own parents, the one he turns to when he feels angry or upset, the one whom he has an unfathomable and unbreakable connection to. But as far as who's best at consoling, explaining, or just general human interaction, Aster's definitely the better of the two.

"Still cold?" She asks, even as she looks like she's about to combust under all these blankets in the summer heat.

Saiph shakes his head. He always feels warmer when someone is next to him. Like a snake leeching off a source of warmth, he can't help but be reminded.

"Still thinking about earlier?"

Aster had laughed along with everyone else, but he also noticed she made a concerted (and effective) effort to change the topic as quickly as possible. He shouldn't be surprised she knows what's on his mind.

He shrugs, helplessly. "How could I not?"

"I guess that's true." She's also not really one to mince words. "It's not really something you would ever forget, huh?"

At seventeen, she feels both impossibly mature and yet still young enough to be considered a better confidant for a ten-year old than a real grownup. She won't lecture or dismiss him and all of his youthful, pre-Hogwarts candor as the fanciful naivete of an unlearned child like most adults, but she seems to always have their strange level-headed wisdom.

"It's unnatural." Saiph mumbles into his blanket.

"Yeah, well, most necromancy is." Aster points out. "And that's never stopped me, my brother, or Harry from doing it anyway."

"But it's not…" His brow furrows, as his expression turns miserable. "You guys don't just do these things on accident."

"You're fabulously unique, don't you know? You might even be a better necromancer than Ceph!"

He is not at all amused by her glibness. "I don't want to be strange or unique. And I don't want to be a necromancer," Saiph insists, despondently. "I don't want these things to happen to me!"

"Ah. Well, that ship's sailed, so maybe it's time to stop freaking out about it and do something about it instead?"

"Like what?" He mopes. "I've tried controlling it. It works, I guess, but then I have to think about it all the time, and then I forget, and then…"

"Then your powers seem to spiral out of control?"

"I guess so." He sighs. "They don't seem to go away no matter how much I try."

Aster rolls over to face him. With a scowl of displeasure she kicks one of her legs out from beneath the furnace of Saiph's cave, and pushes her hair away from the back of her neck and onto the pillow above her. Saiph feels a bit guilty for making her climb in here with him when the summer heat was overbearing enough as it was, but she'd done it over her own volition, so he tries to brush away the guilt and just focus on feeling grateful instead.

Once she's no longer in danger of overheating, she props her elbow up, arching a brow at him. "Maybe you should stop trying to get them to go away, and try learning to use your powers instead?"

Saiph gasps, looking affronted. "I don't want to make more things die!"

"Right, but if you know how it works maybe that'll help you find ways to control it— at the very least, if you know more about it you might not be as scared of it as you are now."

For someone who always looks bored and somewhat cavalier, she does dispense rather sage advice.

"I wouldn't even know where to start." Saiph let out a weary sigh. "Whenever I bring this up with Harry, he just seems to get really sad and promises it's not anything to worry about."

"Harry?" Aster repeats, distracted. "And since when did you start calling him Harry?"

"So what?" Saiph retorts, defensively. "You guys call him Harry."

"Yeah, but we're adults."

"You're barely an adult."

"Still adult enough for him to let us call him that." She gives him a look. "A permission I'm pretty sure he didn't give you."

"How is it any fair that you guys can call him Harry and I can't? I'm just as mature as you guys are!"

Aster doesn't even bother to remark on that. And, as usual, she's observant enough to notice that this chain of conversation will get them nowhere, and tactfully changes the subject before Saiph even realizes what she's done. "At any rate, Harry isn't exactly wrong. But I think he might just be a little too used to living with the extent of his own powers, so he doesn't realize how scary it would be for a kid like you, who isn't quite as used to it."

Saiph stares up at her with wide, hopeful eyes. "So… this really is normal? It'll go away?"

"Normal?" She repeats, scratching her cheek. "Hm. Well, normal in our family, maybe. But it's definitely not something you should worry this much about. Like Harry said, it should resolve itself as you get older."

"So, what, in the meantime, I'm just going to keep accidentally killing insects and small pets and garden gnomes?"

Aster can't help but laugh at his plaintive whine. "Well, when you put it like that, I guess maybe we should try to do something about this. But I hope you've realized by now that you don't just kill everything that comes near you."

Saiph frowns, brow furrowed in thought. "Well…"

Aster blinks at him. "You mean you haven't noticed?"

"No, of course I've noticed that!" Saiph scowls. "But… well… I don't really know why that is."

"It's because they're close to death. Small, primitive creatures like insects— especially the flying ones— are always close to death, just by the nature of their small lifespan, so they die very quickly when they get too close to it. The same goes for animals and magical creatures with short lifespans, especially the ones that are old or sick. Basically, you're not doing anything that wouldn't happen anyway. But because they're in close proximity to you, it just speeds up the process a bit."

Saiph considers her words contemplatively. "So you're saying… I'm Death?"

Aster's eyes go wide, as if she just said something she shouldn't have. Then she laughs nervously, waving it off; "No, no, that would be Harry. I'm just saying you have a latent ability in death magic, that… can… mimic the effects, or something. Maybe ask Ceph this question." She ends quickly.

Saiph squints at her, but ultimately just drops the issue with another world-weary sigh. "So you think I can find a way to control this." He summarizes.

Aster shrugs. "I think there's no reason not to try." She yawns. "But I think that can wait until after we've both gotten some sleep, huh?"

He can't help but feel a bit better after getting all of that off his chest. With a warm and familiar presence beside him, he can almost feel content— even safe. The clutches of darkness seem to recede, at least for this moment. After seeing the way Rosie and Hugo, and even Louis, Dom and Vicky, fight like rabid manticores and resemble venomous creatures more than they do siblings whenever they have clashes in opinion, he can't help but be a little thankful for his own siblings. He could probably live without Cassi, who is usually a menace, but Aster and Ceph are invaluable. Watching his cousins has made him greatly appreciate just what the age gap can do to relieve sibling tensions.

Aster gives an unintelligible grumble, flinging out another leg to join the first. Still, she makes no move to leave the nest, or him by extension. Saiph smiles, and burrows back under the quilts. He'll have to thank her tomorrow. She'll probably brush it off in her usual cavalier manner, insisting she is perfection and perfection needs no gratitude, but he'll do it anyway.

/

Saiph stared down at his hands.

They didn't look different, but… they felt like it. They felt cold. Well, they always felt cold, but now he knew why.

Despite everything Cepheus had told him, it still didn't feel real. Despite the vague but chilling dreams he had so frequently, despite the strange calling he's always had for Necromancy and the dead, despite all the strange anomalies that plagued his life finally starting to make sense… he just didn't want to believe it. But it was no longer possible to deny it. Everything had fallen into place. The way he had such a difficult time recalling memories of his early childhood, the way he was both endlessly drawn to death and yet terrified of it as well. He could hardly stand the sight of it. Even watching Harry— who was perfectly incapable of dying— plummet to his death had him paralyzed in fear.

He'd always had issues with using his magic. He knew all the theory behind it, and he was by far the smartest in his class, but he always struggled with the actual execution of it. Unless it was Necromancy, he found even the most basic of spells to be trying. He had to concentrate twice as hard as other children his age to achieve the same results. He'd always thought he was just a dunce or something— everyone else in his family was so staggeringly impressive, he always seemed so lackluster in comparison. Even Cassi, almost four years younger than him, could cast spells better than he could. He always felt ashamed about it, like he was letting his parents down or something, but not even his father ever commented on his difficulties with spellcasting. Which was bewildering, to say the least— his father was never without some kind of constructive criticism. That he'd never made any mention of it, even when he'd lecture Saiph on studying properly for a test he'd only missed three points on, should have been telling.

Of course Saiph had trouble controlling his magic. He had the unimaginable power of the universe in his fingertips; how was any eleven year-old child supposed to be able to control that? Even Harry, the proper owner of such power, struggled with it on the best of days.

The glass door behind him rattled.

Saiph didn't turn around as he heard someone step onto the balcony with him, remaining curled on a lounge chair facing the Malfoy gardens. He'd spent the majority of his time out here ostensibly counting the peacocks out in the maze; he had yet to get any farther than six.

"Ceph talked to you, huh?"

Saiph nodded, chin tucked against his knees.

He heard a rustling behind him— Aster settling into the lounge chair across from him.

"I guess you knew this whole time too, then." He mumbled, eyes downcast.

"Yeah, well, I was there for it and all." She replied, dry as a bone.

Saiph looked over at her with a sheepish expression. "Ah… good point." Obviously she would know; she was apparently the one who finally managed to pull Ceph off his corpse.

He can't remember anything about it, really. There's just a hazy wall where he imagined his early childhood memories were supposed to be. Cepheus had explained that was a natural side effect of… well… dying. He'd told Saiph the general overview of what happened; how he'd found Saiph there, in a pool of his own blood, the cathedral in ruins around him. It had been basically obliterated, a few remaining pillars standing, the rest of the structural integrity in pieces on the ground. The glass dome had collapsed into a million shattered stars, like an ocean of color in the blood red sunset.

Ceph had been the one to find him. He'd died in his arms. Saiph honestly cannot fathom how traumatizing that must have been for his older brother, but he imagined that was likely the reason Saiph was so embarrassingly attached to him still, even as a pre-teen. He wanted to believe he and Ceph had always been close, even before this, but, well… he'd have no way of knowing, because he couldn't remember anything before his death.

Eventually Aster had found them there, well before the Aurors, the Order, or even the Death Eaters managed to do so. She managed to pry a hysteric Cepheus off of him eventually, but by that point he was already dead.

He wasn't sure how it had went from the hellscape that Saiph saw in his dreams to the immaculate cathedral that existed in the present day. It had to have been entirely rebuilt from the ground up, structured to be as close to the original as possible. Except for the stained-glass mural. He wasn't surprised to hear his father had used the opportunity to swap the original vaguely-religious interpretation into something more agnostic. Suddenly it made a lot of sense why Saiph always found himself drawn to it. Why he would escape to there when he wanted to be alone for a little while, to think and feel a bit of calmness in the maelstrom of his life.

Was it death then, that made him so calm? Was there something to his proximity to the place he died that gave him a sense of tranquility? Perhaps there was a part of him that still longed for the peace of death, for the serenity of transcendence that he'd been cruelly ripped away from.

He didn't remember what it was like to be dead. Not consciously. But it was clear there was a part of him that remembered what it was like to die— that was still irresistibly drawn to it, even as the rest of him rebelled against the mere thought. It was just as clear that death was just as drawn to him, that it walked in his shadow, watched him unwaveringly from the other side of the abyss.

"It wasn't like… I mean, I don't think anyone intentionally kept it from you, or anything." Aster went on to say. After a bit of thought, she added. "Besides our parents."

Saiph snorted derisively.

"But, like, the kids and stuff." Aster continued. "We weren't allowed to talk about it. The whole thing was covered up. Obviously Ceph and I were there for it, but the rest of them… they at least knew what happened, even if they didn't know the specifics."

"Is that why they're always babying me?" The answer was obvious, so he doesn't even know why he bothered to ask.

Aster gave a wince. "Yeah. They might be going a bit overboard but, well… it was pretty traumatic. For everyone. No one had thought something like that could happen… and right under father's nose. You can imagine it was a pretty volatile time; people were certain there'd be a civil war."

"I'm surprised he didn't start one." Saiph mused.

"He didn't need to. He had them all executed." Aster replied, blandly.

Saiph blanched. Yeah. That certainly sounded like his father's usual approach.

The boy shook his head, suddenly feeling exceptionally tired. There was something that had been bothering him ever since Cepheus had told him the truth. To hear he'd actually died and couldn't remember it was shocking, but if he's being honest, he feels as if a part of him had always known something was wrong with him. So it was also rather reassuring, to have his suspicions confirmed.

But now he had another suspicion— one he didn't actually want to have confirmed, but felt he had to nonetheless.

"This is why they're always fighting, isn't it?" He asked, quietly.

Aster scoffed. "Yeah right. They'd fight about everything under the sun if they could."

She had a point.

Still, Saiph shook his head. "No, I mean— this is what started it all, isn't it? This is the reason they're getting divorced."

His older sister didn't answer right away. That in and of itself was answer enough.

"There's so much more to it than this." Aster replied, eventually, sounding thoughtful. "I'll be honest— I'm sure it contributed. The death of a child is exceptionally traumatic, and people deal with trauma in different ways. It wouldn't be the first time a couple has split because of it. But they were also only a couple to begin with because of a peace treaty— I'm sure that wasn't helping. And then there's all the animosity and history behind them… well, frankly, I think it's astoundingly more surprising they managed to stay together this long, and actually managed to be happy for the majority of it."

It was with a heavy heart that Saiph conceded she was right.

When he thought of it that way, his parents loving relationship really did seem like an impossible dream. The rose-colored childhood lens he'd viewed their relationship through had finally begun to worn off, leaving nothing but cold reality behind.

"It was inevitable, is what you're saying." He sighed heavily.

Aster shrugged. "Well, you never know. There's just as much keeping them together as there is to keep them apart. Ultimately, I think it's up to them to do whatever it is that makes them happiest."

She paused then, looking a bit sympathetic. "Sorry. I know that's easy for me to say, as an adult and all. It's easier for me to see them as people, rather than parents, and I'm not as affected by their decisions."

Saiph pursed his lips. "I want them to be happy, too." His arms tightened around his knees. "But I just… maybe it's still childish of me, but I want them to stay together."

His sister gave him a sad smile. "That's not childish; that's perfectly normal."

/

Harry returned from the pond, wayward youngest in tow, and found himself unable to meet Voldemort's — the real Voldemort's— gaze, so he busied himself with brushing her long and unmanageable hair out of his eyes.

Unfortunately, Cassiopeia was not the chatterbox Harry had a feeling she normally was, subdued and a little listless as she tucked her head over his shoulder, her fat and slow familiar waddling some ways behind him with its dumb smile still in place. Voldemort looked like he has something to say to Harry, but it was waylaid by the appearance of the creature.

"What is that menace?" The man said, aghast. Harry had a feeling it was the color that had him so appalled.

"Daddy, don't be mean to slowpoke. He's had a bad day too." Cassi replied from his shoulder, sadly. It hurt his heart to see her like this, but he had no idea what he was supposed to say.

What does one do, when comforting a child whose father just went off to save the universe and might never return? He has a feeling cake and ice cream won't cut it. Harry reconsidered it. Actually, he was sure at the very least it wouldn't hurt. Perhaps their first stop would be the kitchens, then.

Voldemort appeared rather dumbfounded at being addressed in such a pedantic and offhand manner, staring blankly. Harry would have found it hysterical if he wasn't feeling so conflicted. He wished he could make up his mind about this man. It would save him a great deal of trouble, to be sure.

"You've had a bad day, huh, Cassi?" He patted her back gently. "Say, what do you think about having ice cream? What's your favorite flavor?"

He thought he was doing a somewhat okay job of consoling her.

Clearly he was wrong.

Cassi promptly burst into tears, near startling him into dropping her. "You don't even know my favorite ice cream flavor!" She sobbed loudly, burying her face into his shoulder.

Harry was at a loss for words, quietly cursing himself. Her reaction was understandable, though. Of course she would be upset that her mother— the person that knew her since before she was born, who knew her better than she even probably knew herself right now— hadn't the slightest clue what her favorite ice cream flavor was. Or her favorite anything, for that matter. At her age, it was probably the end of the world.

He could feel the wetness on his shoulder, helpless to stop it.

"Where did daddy go?" She sniffled pitifully. "I want him to come back now and play with me."

Harry had never felt so inadequate in his life. He floundered for words. "He— your dad had to go do something really, really important, so he left you here so you could be with your siblings. Um, do you want to see them?"

Cassi sniffled again. "Not Sai. Sai's mean to me."

Harry couldn't imagine a reality in which Saiph was mean to anyone, but he imagined siblings as close in age as they were probably had arguments and petty childish fights.

He laughed weakly. "Okay, not Saiph. What about Ceph and Aster?"

She made a noncommittal noise, pushing off his shoulder to sit up and rub her eyes. "Aster promised me she'd give me princess braids."

Harry thought that was as good a sign as any. "Okay then, let's go find her and ask her to give you some princess braids, how about that? And how about some lunch too while we're at it? I don't know about you, but I'm pretty hungry."

He finally got a smile for his efforts at that. "Mum, you're always hungry."

Harry could hardly argue the point, laughing in agreement as he hefted her up a bit higher on his hip and made for the doors back inside. He was stopped by a disgruntled voice. "And what exactly am I supposed to do with this appalling creature?"

Harry turned back to see Voldemort staring at him with a nonplussed expression, pointing to the creature at his feet. The pink familiar was staring up at him with that dumb and blissful smile.

Fortunately, this managed to get another giggle out of the little girl. "You should carry him daddy! Otherwise, he'll just slow us down."

Voldemort looked outraged to be made into a ferryman, but Harry just turned and left him out there as he walked back in with a wide grin on his face. Who knew enraging Voldemort could be such a surefire way to lighten his spirits? His levity is painfully temporary, but with the sheer magnitude of life-changing events recently, he'll take what he can get.

It's just one thing after the other these days, and Harry has given up holding out hope that maybe his life will finally stop with this nonsense.

His life is a hot mess, everything seems to be going wrong, the universe is literally ending and he still has no idea what he's supposed to tell his friends.

But in the interim of all this catastrophic mayhem, he's found himself in possession of a family for the first time in his life, a would-be husband who clearly has some potential to be real marriageable material, and god-like powers that— as far as he can tell— seem to have no limits. So much has changed in these past few weeks, and all he can do is forge a new path forward.

"Say, what do you think of grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch?" He asked the girl in his arms.

Cassi looked distinctly unimpressed. "Again?"

It appeared he and his future counterpart shared their disdain for complicated recipes and love of warm cheese sandwiches.

"Then— what about we go out for lunch?" Harry suggested, the idea coming to him suddenly.

Cassi didn't seem entirely convinced, giving him a skeptical look.

But the idea had rooted in his mind, and the more he thought about it, the better an idea it seemed.

First of all, if Cassi was going to stay here for any serious duration of time they'd need to at least procure her a new set of clothes. Especially considering she'd more or less ruined the set she was currently in. Saiph had apparently just been wearing Draco Malfoy's shrunken down clothes this whole time, which was also appalling and a situation that needed to be rectified. And while Harry himself had brought the entirety of his belongings, that still only constituted of about a half dozen sets of old and worn-out clothing, which Voldemort had given him the side-eye over ever since he arrived. This was to say nothing of the fact he was currently wearing the man's clothing— again, a situation that desperately needed to be rectified immediately.

And secondly, he had a feeling they were all going to go stir crazy if they stayed in Malfoy Manor any longer than they already had. He and Saiph in particular, but Aster and Ceph didn't strike him as the kind of people who could sit still for very long. And he only had to meet Cassi for all of ten minutes to recognize that she definitely could not sit still for any amount of time, period, so getting out of the house would do them all a load of good.

So Harry thought it was a fine opportunity to drag his surprise family with him to do what he liked the least: shop for clothing.

On the bright side, he can imagine that having them all there with him would turn what was usually an uneventful and somewhat depressing errand into an exciting and perhaps even enjoyable outing.

"We could go out to London and find somewhere to stop for lunch, and then go and get some shopping done?" He shrugged, and then, suggestively; "I don't know about you, but I could use a new set of clothes."

Cassi's eyes immediately lit up. "I want new clothes!" She said, pushing away from him with such excitement he nearly dropped her.

Harry couldn't help but laugh. "Yes, I'm sure you do. And your sister seems to be the kind of person who would never say no to a new outfit."

Cassi nodded seriously. "But don't let her drag you to Oxford street, mummy." She said, seriously. "She'll bankrupt you."

He grimaced. "Yeah— that doesn't exactly surprise me." She also seemed like the kind of person who would never say no to an expensive outfit. "So, let's go round up your siblings and go. What do you say?"

Cassi was very agreeable. "It's an adventure!"

Oh yes, he could imagine it certainly will be.

Man, so I've been confusing even myself lately with ages and all that, and I thought it would be fine because I didn't expect to write them all in like this? But here we are ?￢ﾀﾍ ️

1998 (~22 years-old)

Teddy Lupin (Remus + Tonks)

2000 (20 years-old)

Cepheus and Asterope

Victoire Weasley (Bill + Fleur)

2003 (17 years-old)

Alfie Weasley (George + Angelina)

Maisie Weasley (Fred + ?)

Domonique Weasley (Bill + Fleur)

2006 (14 years-old)

Rose Granger-Weasley (Hermione + Ron)

Molly Weasley (Percy + Audrey)

Louis Weasley (Bill + Fleur)

2009 (11 years-old)

Saiph

Hugo Granger-Weasley (Hermione + Ron)

Willy Weasley (Fred + ?)

2012 (8 years-old)

Cassi

Roxy Weasley (George + Angelina)

Lucy Weasley (Percy + Audrey)