FONTAINE MANOR

When Sage returned from her mother's funeral in France—early, because her father had practically kicked her off the premises when she'd walked in—the house seemed eerily empty. There was a note on the kitchen counter from Sirius, saying he'd stopped by and seen that she wasn't there, and another note in Sage's bedroom from Anna-Lee that said she and Noah had taken Madeleine to the coast for a weekend on the beach.

So when she walked through the house, she felt the stillness in her bones.

But a creak in the floorboards upstairs told her that she wasn't actually alone.

Her wand was out of her boot and in her hand in a nanosecond, and she followed the noise until she came upon what had once been Julien's bedroom, untouched for years but suddenly full of sound and strange noises.

And then there was laughter, mad and deranged, from behind the closed door.

"Oh, come on, Sagey. Come join your bestest friend Bella for a chat."

Sage's blood ran cold, and she entered the room slowly, finding Bellatrix lounging on Julien's bed with a dagger in one hand and her wand nestled in the sheets next to her.

"What're you doing here, Bella?" Sage asked.

Bellatrix smirked, spinning the knife around her fingers. "Darling, you've been keeping a secret from me. Nott, well, he isn't the best at hiding things. Not when you...apply a little pressure." She gave a short giggle before continuing. "So, we can either do this the easy way, or the hard way—what are you hiding from me?"

"Nothing." Sage's answer came far too fast, and she instantly knew that she'd dug herself a hole. Goosebumps rose on her arms. "I'm not hiding anything, Bella. You know everything about me."

Bellatrix raised her dark eyebrows, and she looked surprised. She stood up, circled Sage once, twice, three times, like a predatory shark circling its prey, and stopped behind her.

The knife was still in her hand.

And when Sage felt the cool steel press to the side of her neck, she wished Bellatrix had just used her wand.

"Tell. Me. What. You're. Hiding."

Then, suddenly, the sound of a gun cocking was heard, and the blade of the knife moved away from Sage's neck for a mere moment.

"You Death Eaters don't know shit about southern hospitality, do ya?" Anna-Lee's southern drawl was heavenly in Sage's ears, and she turned around to find the American standing in the doorway, a shotgun pointed directly at the back of Bellatrix's head.

"Now, unless you're fixin' to have your brains painted on these fine walls, I suggest you let my darlin' Sage obliviate your sorry ass, and get the fuck out of my house."

Bellatrix laughed. "As if your muggle weapons could hurt me."

Snorting, Anna-Lee replied, "Oh, sweetheart. I don't recommend being on the other side of a double-barrel shotgun, so do you want to die? Or are you just stupid?"

Sage grabbed Bellatrix's discarded wand from the bed, whispering "Obliviate," under her breath, and watched as the shorter girl's dark eyes went foggy and glossed over. "You will forget what you know about me, forget anything you learned in the past month. You know nothing about me other than what you knew at Hogwarts."

Bellatrix, still with a hazy look on her face, stumbled out of the room, and slammed the front door behind her as she left.

Anna-Lee dropped the shotgun carelessly and leapt onto Sage, pulling her into her arms.

"You're so damn lucky I came home early. I got this feeling when we got to the beach, and I saw your face, and I felt awful, but I had to leave Noah with the baby and come home." Anna-Lee said in a rushed whisper, squeezing Sage tightly.

Sage breathed a sigh of relief. "Nana always said you were a Seer, Yankee."

and thus ends our double feature