Katie.

The hallway creaked beneath us like it was trying to warn me.

I followed Mr. Weasley without a word, Adrien just behind me, silent in that way that said she knew whatever this was — it wasn't small.

The room he led us into was dim. A half-used fireplace, no portraits, just a long couch and a dusty armchair that looked like it had been avoiding conversation for a century.

Mr. Weasley closed the door gently behind us.

"Please," he said, gesturing to the couch.

I sat stiffly. Adrien sat beside me but didn't touch me. She didn't have to. Her being there was enough.

Mr. Weasley took the chair across from us, leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees — the way adults did when they were about to say something that mattered.

"I wanted to speak with you both," he began carefully, "specifically you, Katie. And I want you to know this comes from a place of concern, not intrusion."

My throat tightened.

Adrien glanced at me, but I didn't move.

He sighed softly. "After the... letter Adrien sent me — months ago, before the term — I started looking into something."

My voice came out hoarse. "You went to the Ministry?"

She nodded. "Only someone I trusted."

I looked away, jaw clenched. It wasn't anger. Not really. Just the ache of knowing someone cared enough to dig where I'd long since stopped looking.

Mr. Weasley leaned in again. "Your name, Katie... it was changed."

I swallowed. "I know."

"But do you know why?"

I didn't answer.

Because no. Not really.

"All I remember is coming home from school—the house was absolutely gutted..." I sighed, feeling my body stiffen at the memory. "I owled Adrien and when she and Laura came to see me, they saw—and I've been with them since. Laura insisted on giving me their name, to include me." I elaborated, feeling Adrien stiffen next to me as the same memory seemed to flash through her head too.

He exhaled through his nose. "It wasn't for your safety the way we usually mean it in wartime. It was... a decision. Made by people who didn't want to be followed."

My heart kicked up.

He saw it.

"Your parents," he said gently, "aren't dead."

The room tilted sideways. Adrien reached for my hand without hesitation. I couldn't speak. Not yet. Just stared at him — waiting for the next blow.

"They're alive. In hiding. And... There are whispers, Katie. Nothing confirmed. But whispers. That they've aligned themselves with people who don't value life the way you clearly do."

"Deatheaters," I said quietly. Not a question. The only thing that flashed through my head was Draco and that one deatheater at the World Cup with a staring problem.

He didn't deny it.

Adrien's voice broke the silence. "We saw one. At the Quidditch World Cup."

Mr. Weasley frowned. "What do you mean?"

She sat up straighter. "In the chaos — when the camp was being raided. There was this man in a mask. He wasn't casting anything. He just... stopped when he saw us. Like he recognized her."

I nodded slowly. "He stared at me. Too long. Didn't say anything, but it was like—like I was supposed to mean something."

Mr. Weasley's jaw tightened.

"And that wasn't the only time," I added.

His eyes lifted to mine. "Go on."

"Lucius Malfoy," I said. "At their Manor, he mentioned it—but In Hogsmeade. A few weeks ago. He said my real name. Not Blackwood."

That landed.

Hard.

Mr. Weasley straightened, eyes sharp now. "You're absolutely certain?"

"I don't hand out my secret identity to known bigots for fun," I snapped, then caught myself. "Sorry."

But he wasn't offended.

He looked furious.

"This changes things," he muttered. "This changes a lot of things."

I swallowed. "So they knew? This whole time?"

"Possibly," he said. "Or someone told them recently. Either way — they're watching. At first I thought maybe it was a threat to shake you up, but it's obvious they're falling through on it."

And somehow, that was worse.

He saw the look on my face and his voice softened again. "Katie... I know that's terrifying. But it also means you're not imagining any of this. You're not paranoid. You're right."

I blinked fast. Looked at the ceiling. Anything but him.

Then he leaned forward again.

"Listen to me, Katie. No matter what happens in this war — no matter what comes of your name, your blood, or your parents — you have a place with us. Always."

It hit me harder than I expected.

Maybe it was because he meant it.

Maybe it was because no one had ever said that to me before.

Adrien's hand tightened around mine. I didn't even realize I was gripping hers back.

"I don't know what to say," I whispered.

"You don't have to," he said gently. "Just know you're not alone."

And for the first time in a long time—I almost believed it.

The door clicked shut behind Mr. Weasley, leaving a heavy kind of quiet in its place — the kind that settles after someone drops the truth and walks out before the dust can even start to fall.

I didn't speak right away.

Neither did Adrien.

She just sat next to me, one leg tucked under the other, eyes fixed on the fireplace even though there wasn't a flame in it.

"It's all true," she finally said.

I knew what she meant.

"About my parents," I said.

"About everything," she muttered. "Draco. Blaise. The Cup. Hogsmeade. All of it."

I sighed, rubbing a hand down my face. "I wanted it to be wrong so bad."

Adrien leaned back. "Same."

We were quiet for a moment, the air between us thick with old questions and newer, sharper truths.

Then she said, "They knew."

I looked at her.

She wasn't blinking. Just staring at some invisible point ahead like if she focused hard enough, the world might make sense.

"Lucius Malfoy, that Death Eater at the Cup — they knew who we were. Not just names. Blood."

"I'm not ready for that," I whispered.

"You are," she said immediately. "You just don't feel like it."

I didn't respond.

Because if I did, I'd cry. Or laugh. Or explode.

And none of those were helpful right now.

Adrien folded her arms across her chest. "We're going back to Hogwarts surrounded by people who've already made decisions about us. And some of them are going to want to see us fall apart."

I exhaled. "Then we don't."

"We can't."

She looked at me then — and her eyes weren't scared.

They were ready.

And that scared me more than anything.

"What if they come after us directly?" I asked. "What if they already are?"

Adrien didn't hesitate. "Then we burn their robes and ruin their reputations."

I huffed. "Blackwood family motto."

"No," she smirked. "That was just last week."

The laugh slipped out before I could stop it — dry, tired, but real.

Then she went quiet again.

And when she finally spoke, her voice was quieter. Slower. A little more fragile.

"Do you think... we should check on Mum?"

My chest seized.

I hadn't thought about our mum in weeks. Maybe longer. It was too complicated. Too distant. Too raw.

But the way Adrien said it — not with anger, but with something close to... resignation — it hit different.

"Why now?" I asked.

Adrien shrugged. "Because if she's wrapped up in any of this — if she's choosing sides — we should know before someone else makes that decision for us."

I looked at her. My sister.

The one person I had left that I still believed in.

"I don't know if I can face her," I said honestly.

"Neither do I," she scoffed, sliding closer to me. "We'll go together.."

And I knew she meant it. Whatever was coming — war, truth, names, legacy — we were going to face it together. Even if it meant opening old wounds. Even if it meant going home.

Wherever that was now.

We didn't say it out loud.

Not the why. Not the what if.

Just the when.

And apparently that was now.

Adrien was already lacing up her boots, jaw locked tight. Maddie and Sage barely asked questions. Just nodded. Grabbed their wands. Said, "We ride at dawn," even though it was barely past breakfast.

Fred and George didn't joke.

Not this time.

"We're coming," Fred said, no room for argument. "You're not going back there alone."

We stood in front of the house. If you could still call it that.

The windows were boarded now. The porch steps sagged more than I remembered. The garden — once tangled with wild lavender and rogue magic — was just dirt and weeds and broken fence posts.

I swallowed hard. My tongue felt too big for my mouth.

Adrien didn't speak. She didn't move. She just stared up at it like the place owed her something.

Maddie shifted behind us, wand drawn and ready. "This is it, right?"

Sage narrowed her eyes at the rotted siding, the sagging roofline. "Yeah... but it shouldn't look like this."

I stepped closer to the porch, heart thudding.

Because she was right.

It hadn't looked like this before term started—a few months ago. It had been worn, sure.

But not aged.

Not withered.

Not like it had been sitting in rot for decades.

The shutters were barely hanging on. The garden was a skeleton. The house creaked like it had arthritis.

"This isn't time," I said slowly. "This is magic."

Adrien's voice was cold. "They made it look like no one ever lived here."

And somehow, that felt worse than if we'd come back to fire and ash.

This wasn't just disappearance.

It was erasure.

Fred stood close, watching me. George scanned the treeline, tense and quiet for once.

Adrien stepped forward first. The porch creaked under her boots — slow, like even the wood wanted to warn her.

The front door was unlocked.

Of course it was.

She pushed it open.

And that's when I felt it.

Not just the chill. Not just the dust.

The absence.

Like the soul of the house had been yanked out through the floorboards and left everything hollow. A black hole in wood and plaster and memory.

We stepped inside, one by one.

No furniture. No warmth. No trace of the girls we were when we lived here.

Just floorboards. Faded paint. Empty walls.

The ghost of who we used to be.

"This was how I found my house," I said quietly. "Before I moved in with you."

Adrien turned to look at me with silent acknowledgement—something shifted with her then, something I didn't recognize.

Attempting to shake off that moment of horror, we moved.

Fred hovered behind me. George stood near the door, like he didn't trust the silence. Maddie and Sage split off instinctively, already sweeping the first floor with their wands out.

Then Adrien stopped in the kitchen.

I saw her go still.

Like still still.

Not shock. Not confusion.

Recognition.

And that's when I saw it, too.

The only thing left in the entire house.

A single piece of parchment.

Lying on the center of the kitchen table — untouched, deliberate.

And on it, scrawled in heavy, black ink:

A.

My blood ran cold.

Maddie edged closer. "That wasn't here a second ago."

"No dust," Sage murmured. "No fold lines. No wear. That was placed."

Fred exhaled sharply. "Someone wanted you to see that."

"A."

That was it.

And it was enough.

Adrien froze.

The kind of stillness that screams run.

"Adrien—" I started.

Too late.

She detonated.

The explosion wasn't fire. It was worse — raw, directionless magic flaring like lightning through every crack in the walls. The table splintered in half with a gunshot crack. The floor shuddered. Cabinets burst open. The glass in the windows spiderwebbed and screamed.

Fred yanked me back just as the corner cupboard blew apart.

Sage ducked low, Maddie flung up a shield. George had already pulled his wand, eyes wide but not surprised.

Adrien stood at the center of the storm, magic rippling off her in waves, hair wild, fists clenched, breath ragged.

I'd never seen her like this.

No one had.

Her eyes snapped to the letter — then to me.

And when she spoke, her voice was broken glass and hellfire.

"That's not a signature," she spat. "That's a threat."

Fred's voice was low. "Who?"

I already knew.

"Anselme," I said. "The professor. From Beauxbatons."

Adrien let out a laugh that didn't sound human. "He got us kicked out. Nearly got Draco and Blaise killed. And now he wants us to know—he's back and not done."

"That was months ago," Maddie muttered. "How the hell is he even out of Azkaban—?"

"He never left," Sage said darkly. "He's just been waiting. Something had to have happened between the Forbidden Forest and the arresting process."

George shook his head. "This... this is personal."

Adrien's magic flared again — a spark cracking across the ceiling like thunder before a storm.

"This was supposed to be home," she growled. "But it was just a trap. A reminder. He knew we'd come back."

The windows rattled again. My chest locked up.

Because it was all too familiar. Too much like the night I came home to an empty shell. A hollow space that used to be my life.

"This was how I found my house," I whispered, clutching Fred's arm. "After our first year at Beauxbatons. Just—gone."

Adrien turned to me — and for a split second, the fury cracked. She stepped forward, wrapped both arms around me like she might come undone without something to hold.

"I hate him," she whispered. "I hate that he still has this power."

Geroge moved to press a hand to my back. Fred moved to hover near Adrien like he might catch her if the walls didn't hold.

Sage moved toward the fireplace. "They cleared this place clean. No residue. No trace. This wasn't just disappearing — this was erasure."

"They wanted to rewrite your story," Maddie said. "But they forgot something."

Adrien pulled away, eyes burning.

"What?" Sage asked.

Adrien's jaw clenched. "We're still alive."

Sage looked between us. "So what now?"

Adrien didn't flinch.

"We're done hiding. We're done hoping they'll forget us. We stop pretending any of this is over." Her voice dropped into steel. "We go back to Hogwarts. And we watch everyone."

I looked at the torn parchment again — that single, curling A staring back like a curse.

Then I said it out loud: "We go to war."

We didn't talk much on the way back.

No one did.

Adrien sat in the corner of the train car like her limbs didn't belong to her, eyes fixed out the window, face carved in something between fury and collapse.

This was the quietest I've ever seen her.

I held the parchment in my hand — the A still bold, still burned into my head like a brand.

By the time we stepped back through the doors of Grimmauld Place, I could barely feel my legs. My boots hit the floorboards too hard. The air inside felt warmer than I remembered. Too warm.

Suffocating.

Molly was in the kitchen, Arthur beside her. Sirius and Lupin were gathered near the fireplace, low conversation murmuring between them.

The moment they saw our faces, the room dropped silent.

Fred took the parchment from me and handed it to Mr. Weasley.

"They left this," he said simply.

Sirius took it gently, brows pulling low. "That handwriting..."

Adrien didn't say a word.

She crossed the room slowly, like her limbs were made of smoke, and sank into the chair in front of the fire.

Not curled. Not crying.

Just silent.

Lupin leaned closer to the parchment, eyes narrowing. "Anselme."

Molly's hand flew to her mouth.

"I thought he was dead," Arthur muttered, glancing between myself and Adrien, "I thought you two did enough damage..."

"He's not," I said, throat raw. "Apparently he's not in Azkaban either."

Sirius didn't look up right away. But when he did, something in his face had changed.

Resolved.

Dark.

"We need to talk," he said. But not to Adrien.

To me.

I followed Sirius and Harry up the creaking staircase, my feet moving because they had to, not because I had any energy left to give.

They didn't speak until we turned into a small, dust-coated room with a cracked window and a single lantern floating by the ceiling.

But the wall —

The wall stopped me cold.

It was covered in paint — no, ink. Not messy, but methodical. Ornate. Dozens of names. Burned-out circles. Lines connecting generations like veins beneath parchment skin.

A family tree.

"Welcome to the Black family history," Sirius muttered, crossing the room. "Or what's left of it."

I stood there, not sure what I was looking for.

Until I saw it.

There, just to the right of Sirius's own name — his brother, his parents, all that rotten legacy — was another name.

Elegant script. Unburned. Clear.

Draco Lucius Malfoy.

I stared at it like it might bite.

"You didn't know," Harry said gently.

I shook my head. "No."

"Malfoy's my cousin," Sirius said casually — like it wasn't a bomb he was dropping into the middle of my chest. Like it was just... fact.

I blinked once, twice - still there.

My eyes traced over the branches until it hit another familiar name; Bellatrix Lestrange.

"What?" I breathed, my eyes going wide.

"You really didn't know?" Harry huffed beside me, and I just shook my head in silence.

"It's always been implications, rumors..." I almost stuttered, blinking between Bellatrix's face and Draco's. "...that's Bellatrix Lestrange, right?"

"Yes," Sirius moved closer to me, to point, but I stiffened at the heat rolling off his figure. The smell of something between cologne and metal coming off of him was strangely comforting. "That's my cousin, that's Draco's Aunt. She was—was—in Azkaban too."

I blinked again, unable to find the words.

"Is this confirming what I think it's confirming?" I almost choked out the words, as my chest tugged lower, heavier than ever before.

"I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you this," Sirius sighed, glancing at Harry as he placed a hand on my shoulder—pardon me while I completely seep through the floorboards— and his eyes had nothing but reluctant sympath in them as he whispered, "The Malfoys are Deatheaters and it's more than likely your boyfriend there, Draco...is or will be one soon."

"Meaning he's probably the one that told them about you...about Adrien's Mum." Harry added, but his voice was heavy, thin.

I blinked back tears.

"What the fuck..." was all that managed to come out of my mouth.