◤ ❝If Andromeda and Theodore are two sides of the same coin, she and Draco are two halves of a single heart. It seems impossible, doesn't it, to imagine one surviving without the other?❞ ― Daphne Greengrass ◢

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CHAPTER TWENTY: PERSES

December 25, 1996

                   Theodore Nott had spent much of his life watching over Andromeda Erebus. The responsibility fell on him when he was only two months old and the small, dark-haired baby was brought into the world. From that moment on, Theo wrapped himself tightly around her like protective vines. It was Theodore who used to spring to action when his younger cousin accidentally fell on the hard floors, Theodore who would clutch her hand tightly during Christmas dinners, and Theodore who would hide her in the jacket of his suit when the Lestranges scared her during those kinds of parties. He supposed he was a big brother more than a cousin, a protector and a best friend more than just simply family. For as long as he could remember, it was him who protected her, and him who assumed the responsibility of making sure that no harm would ever come to her after her father died.

So to discover that his younger cousin, the shy little girl whose cheeks flushed any time she spoke, was a Death Eater had been the brutal awakening of a lifetime―and the guilt had been eating him alive from the moment she told him. He had known that something changed within her. No longer was she the bustling, mildly irritating younger cousin that he always rolled his eyes at. Instead, she was the girl he kept a close eye on every second of the day in fear that she would topple over. Andromeda had become less of the little girl he would laugh until he cried with, and more of the woman that he would hold until she stopped crying...and that was an adjustment that he was still struggling to accept.

To watch her sleeping on the sofa in his aunt's library, he could feel that weight hardening in his chest. She had been in an odd state since taking Eleanor to bed last night, and had fallen asleep the moment their grandparents left the manor. The dark circles that he hoped would disappear over break still shadowed her eyes, although they were less prominent now that they had been. Her face had gained some color and life, if only from the cold weather and the food that they had forced her to eat. The very core of her still carried a lifelessness, though, that he feared nothing could fix. Her bones were withering away into her skin, her left arm stuck deep under her as if she were attempting to hide its darkness from them. Theodore's heart was broken into a million splinters just watching her.

"There is no one she trusts more than you, you know," a gentle voice murmured through the quiet library, and Theodore turned his head away from Andromeda to his aunt. Celicia was already looking at Mia, her eyes turned away from Slughorn's book. "Athella and I always hoped that the two of you would become two halves of a whole, separate sides of the same coin, like she and I...and to see that not all hope is lost is a reminder that perhaps the light is not gone in us, after all."

Theodore looked back at Mia, a lump growing in his throat. "It should have been me the Dark Lord called upon. Not her. Father was just as unreliable as Uncle Alastiare, he just didn't get himself murdered. If I had known that this would be the consequence of our family's mistakes, I would have―"

"Would have what, Theodore?" she asked, softly, as not to wake her up daughter. "The Dark Lord did not choose blindly from those in our family. He targeted her because he wanted us all to reap the consequences of what Alastiare did―all of us have felt the burden carried through her. If you had taken the position instead of her, she would still be where she is now. He would have found her one way or the other...she would have gone mad if it had been you taking this responsibility, Theodore."

"And is that not what I am doing now?" he croaked. "She is dying, Aunt Celicia, and there is absolutely nothing that I can do to keep it from happening because she will not let me. How can you sit and allow him to do this to her?"

Celicia's face hardened, and she sucked in a deep breath as she kept her watering eyes on Mia. "This is not the first time I have watched this happen to someone I love, Theodore...and I have come to learn that, sometimes, you have to hold onto the possibility that they will overcome the trials that await them. It is what she told us yesterday―she is not safe anywhere. Not a one of us is. She cannot escape his order, and she cannot escape to the Order. The only chance that she has―that any of us have―is that she is strong enough to overcome the darkness that threatens to consume her."

"What, like Uncle? He is the reason she is in this mess."

She shook her head softly. "This is not what he wanted..."

"But it is what happened," Theodore finished with a finality to his words, although quietly. "The motives and means that he had on that day, whether he considered protecting you and Mia or not, do not matter now. All that matters is keeping her alive."

"How do we manage that? She's ill, Theodore...more than I could have ever imagined in my worst nightmares. She barely eats, this is the first time I have seen her lay her head down since you arrived back home, she flinches any time she sees a glimpse of herself..." Celicia stopped, her words cutting off as she swallowed down another bout of sobs "....Theodore, she said she wanted to...to kill herself...and after what happened―that episode after Apparating..."

Theodore's jaw tightened, and he struggled to keep his emotions in check as he clenched his fists together. He was not an angry person, and for much of his life, he had always been very reserved with his emotions. However, in the coming months, it seemed more and more impossible for him to contain even the smallest sliver of feeling inside of him. Like a poison, it surged inside of him and screamed to be set free. In that moment, all he could feel was his rising irritation at his aunt―and for the sole reason that she was doing nothing to help the situation.

"She didn't say that she wanted to kill herself," he dismissed coldly, breathing through his nose to calm himself. "She said that she would have just to save everyone else the trouble. There is a difference. If Mia truly wanted to die, she would have gone and done it already."

Celicia swallowed hard. "She wouldn't...she would never truly―"

"No. Because I would never let her fall so low, and I know he wouldn't either."

Theodore tried not to think too much on all of the things his cousin had revealed to him over the holidays, if only because they caused the strain in his heart to pull tighter in opposite directions. He knew that, by becoming a Death Eater, there were things she had to go through that he did not know about. He just hadn't been expecting to hear that Mia was, not only a Legilimens, but that she had been forced to use it against Draco. That she had been victim to the Cruciatus Curse. That Bellatrix Lestrange laid her wand on his cousin. He had not been there to hid her beneath his coat pocket. Most of all, Theodore despised the idea that Draco Malfoy was the one Mia had to fall upon.

"Does she love him?" came quietly from behind his shoulder.

He was shaking his head before she could even finish the question. "No...she cares for him deeply. I think he represents something for her―some form of her that she fears we would never accept―but I don't think she loves him. She had feelings for someone else for quite a while, and I assume she still does, but that is another thing she had to sacrifice for this. I believe the friendship between her and Draco...whatever bond they have created...it has become a reminder to her that she isn't alone."

"But she has you―" Celicia paused in mentioning herself.

"So she does, and she always will, but it isn't the same. I understand that. I represent something entirely different. A part of her she fears she will never see again in herself," he muttered, blue eyes narrowing in on her eyelashes as they flickered from sleep. "As much as I despise the idea of Draco Malfoy knowing my cousin more than I do...it's true. He has been by her side as she struggles through this, and I'm only just now sweeping up the damage that he was there to witness..."

Theodore paused, his shoulders tensing as he tried to relinquish his ill feelings for Malfoy. But they were festering, building on months and months of dislike and irritation. Regardless of how much he laughed and bickered with Mia about the boy, there was still a bad feeling rising in his stomach at the reminder of their partnership. Perhaps he did not hate Malfoy, but simply the Malfoy that was intertwined with his cousin's life.

"I believe he may be falling in love with her."

Theodore's words were a whisper underneath the crackling of the fireplace in the library, but Celicia heard it like it had been shouted directly in her ear. Her eyes widened, flickering between Mia to her nephew with a mouth wide of questions. 

"You...believe...Draco?"

"Yes," he said factually, before peering briefly over his shoulder to give her a frown. "I may not be a Legilimens, but I have always thrived in my ability to read people...he has not been the most subtle in his...feelings recently. Feelings that I was surprised to see him even show, seeing as I always believed he was incapable of understanding human emotion. I don't think he realizes it. Not yet, at least, and I reckon it will be quite a while before he accepts what he feels for her...but there is something there. Something deeper than all of this."

Even though Theo had mentioned it already to Mia, he was not concerned about the difference it would make if she knew his assumptions. She would never accept it, just as Malfoy wouldn't, but he had seen enough in the coming months to know that Malfoy felt something for his cousin that went beyond partnership. It first began with his jealousy over Andrew, but once Theo noticed the way that Malfoy looked at Mia directly after smelling the Amortentia―he knew. The thought only grew stronger when they were each standing in the hallway before the Christmas party, and he could not look away from Mia across the mistletoe. After Malfoy got back together with Parkinson, probably out of spite, that had been the moment he truly considered the possibility. 

He was not a fool when it came to hiding feelings for someone.

"What does this mean for her?" Celicia asked, her concern falling on the tip of her tongue as she tested the waters on being a mother.

"Right now? Nothing. Until she begins to feel something more for him in return. Then...I'm not so sure."

"...until?"

"You cannot spend all that time together without walking away feeling some variation of emotion for one another. You learn too much about them. So, yes, until."

Theodore stood up hastily after that, shoving his hands stiffly into his pockets and muttering something about going on a walk around the gardens. Celicia only had the chance to blink in surprise before he was out the door, his body wracked with emotions that threatened to consume him the longer he let them build. She did not have the faintest of ideas that Theodore was not simply talking from his intelligent frame of mind, but from an experience in his life that had handed him more questions than answers. 

――――――――――

December 28, 1996

Andromeda missed Draco.

It took her a while to realize the emptiness growing in her stomach came from that. The longer that she sat in her mother's library, the more she noticed how often she would glance up and expect to see a head of white hair and glaring grey eyes in front of her. Each time, she winded up mildly confused when it was not her usual companion staring back, but her mother and cousin. The adjustment of partnership had not been considered much in the first few days, but it had been a full week since she last saw Draco, and she felt sick. It was the longest in months that the two of them had ever gone without each other. Separation anxiety, it seemed, was an entirely real thing and entirely something Mia had fallen victim to. 

So, while she sat with another spellbook shielding her view of the cursed diary from Hell, she couldn't help but wonder if he was feeling just as sickly as she was. Hopefully, he was having better efforts with the Cabinet than she was Slughorn's book. It seemed like they had tried every single variant of charm and spell to no avail, and her last option was to just throw it in the fireplace and watch as it burned. Maybe she would get lucky and catch a word or two, but she honestly couldn't care anymore.

The only thing that was becoming painstakingly obvious to her was the growing bond between her and her family. When she allowed Celicia and Theodore to involve themselves in opening the book, she didn't think that they would be spending every waking moment doing it. Then, they proved her wrong and divulged deep into the quicksand that was her life. She was beginning to accept Celicia as a friend and had grown accustomed to her presence. It was Theodore who had her perplexed. Since the Christmas dinner, she could not get her mind off the odd reaction that he gave the moment that Vaisey was mentioned, and from that moment on, he acted like it never happened. It only made her more eager to figure out the truth beyond his oddness.

"It can't possibly be this difficult," Theodore snarled abruptly, bursting out all of a sudden as he slammed his wand down on the table in frustration. "There must be something we haven't thought of―he is a Potions professor. Perhaps he laced it with a combination of ingredients so that they only open to a certain mixture―"

Mia sighed from underneath the book that was covering her eyes. "There's nothing inside of the locket that could be hiding the ingredients. It has to be a spell. There's no way that he would be able to trust in anything else when there could be idiots out there desperate to read what's inside. Oh...wait, that's us!"

"No..." another voice, Celicia, spoke up unsurely. Mia rolled her eyes behind the pages, but no one had been able to see it "...if this book truly holds something of importance, he would not make it so no one could access it. All things need to opened in the event of death―"

"Unless it was a secret he wanted to die with."

"―and Slughorn is much too prideful of his accomplishments and life experiences to simply withhold information. There must be something that we haven't thought of. Back in the time when I was a part of the Slug Club, he always prided himself in having a variation of students who could each perform different ideals of magic. Myself and Lily Evans were best at Potions―"

Mia groaned, muffled. "I forgot you were friends with that woman."

"―and there were others, different witches and wizards that showed exceptional talents...but he always seemed interested in a specific area of magic...and I can't help but think..."

Celicia stopped talking through her thought process, but Mia already understood where she was going with her idea. She sat up abruptly, the book falling off her face and slamming against the wooded floor when she looked at her mother with wide eyes. Celicia had a particular look in her eye, twinkling with the same horrible question as they silently configured the possibility.

"You..." Mia trailed off as her mouth opened wide. "Bloody hell."

Theodore looked between them like they'd grown three heads. "I've missed something."

Mia fumbled around the mountain of books around her, trying to stand up as quickly as possible to get to where Theodore was standing. She reached for the book, all but shoving her cousin out of the way to get to it, and rushing back to the couch so that she could throw it into her mother's hands. Her mother immediately started to look over the lock again with a newfound interest.

"Would one of you be kind enough to explain?" Theodore asked with his hands raised high in question, exasperated.

"Slughorn is a Slytherin, Theodore, and if he were holding important information in this book, he would want to ensure that the only people who could access it were ones worthy of accessing it. We have been trying to do the spells that anyone could perform, trying everything except the one thing that he has always prided himself in: talent. In the Slug Club, he has always shown greater favoritism towards those of us exceptional in magic rather than simply being excellent Quidditch players or otherwise...that is why he became so fascinated with me, because I could do one thing that no other in my year could do yet―"

Theodore's face fell, mouth gaping open in realization. "Nonverbal magic."

"Which was also something that only one other wizard Slughorn valued the talent of could do so well," she explained, giving her cousin a knowing look. "The Dark Lord could preform nonverbal magic without even the flick of his wand at my age, and that must be the reason why he became so enthralled with having me in his Club after he saw me do it on the train. He seeks those talented in nonverbal magic―possibly because he hopes they could challenge who Tom Riddle once was. Possibly because he wants them on his side if the Dark Lord comes after him. If this diary holds some information about the Dark Lord, he would have wanted only those capable of rivaling his magic to know of its contents."

There was a long pause as he processed the information, and then his face twisted. "Well, that's absolutely dimwitted. How is anyone meant to know what nonverbal spell to use? What, you're just meant to say spells over and over in your head until the correct one works? How is this supposed to help us, Mia? We're back to where we first began. No one can defeat the Dark Lord. Well, besides Potter, but that was by a chance of fate―"

Theodore stopped immediately.

"He protected the bloody book with a spell only Potter could open?" he hissed, his eyes wide as he looked between the two of them like they were insane. When neither of them spoke, his jaw clenched tighter and rephrased his question. "Mia, Potter is a hopeless buffoon when it comes to nonverbal magic. You saw him in Defense. There's absolutely no way Slughorn would ensure the contents of that book to the dying possibility that Harry Potter was not entirely inept―"

"Which is why he didn't. It isn't a single spell, Theodore. I think it's all spells."

"You... lost me." His brows furrowed in confusion. "What does that mean?"

"He was much too smart to use just one spell. He would, however, be smart enough to use every single spell that members of his Slug Club used upon meeting him―every nonverbal spell that introduced him to his most talented members, all specific to each of us. The spell that unlocks this lock for me will be different than the one used for anyone else...his own variation of a fingerprint sealing it shut. The day I met him, I used the spell Aqua Eructo. Nonverbally...this has to be it."

Theodore glanced over at the book again in his aunt's hands. "And you think that spell will open the book?"

"Not for her," Mia dismissed. "Because I'm not the one saying it. Each spell is catered specifically to each wizard. It would have to be the spell Mother used when he was first introduced to her, when he first realized that she should be a part of the Slug Club. I can't perform my own spell because of that stupid Trace, otherwise I would have the damned thing opened by now instead of explaining it."

"Well..." he looked expectantly at Celicia. "What was your spell?"

For the first time since she had the realization, she looked back at her mother and noticed the wary expression that was growing on the woman's face. That immediately deflated her hope, and she narrowed her eyes at Celicia. "Oh, what now?"

"I never had a nonverbal spell, Andromeda..." Celicia explained with dejected eyes. "As I said before, Potions were always what I favored and what gained me popularity from Slughorn. Nonverbal spells were not something I grew familiar with until halfway through my sixth year. This book can only be opened by you."

No one spoke for a while, but eventually, the silence got the best of them as they all started to let the truth of the situation settle in. The only person who was brave enough to speak the truth that they were all feeling was Mia, and she began to glare darkly at the book. The growing urge to pitch the thing into the fireplace had reached inferno heights.

"So..." she began slowly, her tone of voice dark and condescending "...we can do nothing."

Celicia frowned. "Until you return to Hogwarts and your Trace is no longer applicable, then yes...this isn't a failure, Andromeda. Had we not been testing out different spells and theories, there is a likelihood that we never would have discovered the way to open the book in the first place."

"It feels like a failure. What are we meant to do for the next week now? Sit around and fumble with our hands until―"

Her words fell silent, cut off cold as a different sound replaced her words. A blood-curdling cry escaped from Andromeda's mouth, sucking the life out of the room and taking her along with it. It was a sound that tore through the spines of those in her vicinity, knocking hard on each rib and settling somewhere in their pained heart. Theodore shot into action immediately, falling to his knees in front of her as he tried to pull her face to his attention with shaking hands. Celicia raised herself halfway in the air, but the panic overruled her clouded mind as she watched her daughter curl up in pain.

Mia did not realize what was happening until she noticed where the agony was pulsing. Deep, deep, deep down into the veins of her left arm, she flinched away from Theodore's hands and tried with shaking hands to pull up the sleeve of her jumper. The sight awaiting made her nauseous immediately, and she was up on her feet and skidding as quickly away from Theodore and Celicia as she could possibly get.

"Mia," Theodore rushed, panic rising in his tone as he stood from his crouch. "Mia, what's going on? Why does your arm look like that?"

The Dark Mark was jet black. The color of a dead night splotched along her arm as the veins leading into it burned darkly against her porcelain skin. Mia would have recognized the sight anywhere, but this time, it just looked wrong. The last time that her Mark looked this way, Draco was suffering the same effects, but she certainly hadn't felt a burning pain like the one that just sparked up her arm. No, something was different. Something was wrong, and there was only one person that she knew would have answers.

Her head shot up from her Mark to her mother, eyes widening with fear and desperation. Celicia was not paying any mind to her stare, her attention focused on the Dark Mark with an expression similar to Mia's―nausea, and fear, and unfathomable panic. "Mother, what is this?"

"He's..." Celicia's voice was strangled, tears starting to well up in her eyes as she finally flickered them from the Mark to her daughter's terrified gaze. "He has... summoned you, Andromeda..."

Theodore whipped his head to his aunt with wide eyes. "What? No! She isn't going anywhere!"

Mia and Celicia did not look away from one another. For the first time, there was an unspoken connection between the mother and the daughter as they both realized what was about to happen. Celicia could feel the tears burning harshly now, desperate for release, but she could only watch as one of the most horrifying moments of her life occurred right before her.

Andromeda's face hardened, steeled over, and any emotion that she once showed so brightly before had been murdered right before Celicia's very eyes. Just like Alastiare. 

"No," Mia said, blankly.

She finally braved up and found the courage to look over at her cousin. The degree of detachment that she was feeling had already started to carve her out until she was hollow, and she swallowed down any violent emotion threatening to creep back up when she set eyes on Theodore. His fear wracked every possible crease in his face and his blue eyes turned into tumultuous waves, but they were a reminder all the same. With one final push, Mia served herself up to the trick that she and Draco learned over the summer―detachment. It was better to feel dead when talking to the Dark Lord than to be dead.

"He is coming here."

It had taken exactly one minute after Andromeda understood what was about to happen for everything to suddenly twist into chaotic motion. She turned back to Celicia to make eye contact, her mind burning brightly with only one thought that rang loudly in her mother's mind soon after: Go. Take him to Narcissa. Now! And there was only a brief moment of pause between the order propelling into Celicia's thoughts through Legilimency. Her mother looked at her with hesitation, eyes desperate to do something more, but Mia only shook her head. There was no trying to change anything for her. She only needed to make sure that Theodore was safe from him now.

Celicia had grabbed Theodore's arm tightly and tugged on it just as her cousin understood what she was trying to do. Before his protest could completely escape his mouth, her family members were disappearing in a twisted warp of Side-Along Apparition. When she knew that they were gone, and the only thing left in her mother's library was the small sound of parchment falling to the ground after the gust of air, she allowed herself to let out one shaky exhale. 

Where was Draco?

Then, she closed herself off to feeling anything just as another gust of air rippled through the library, sending the same parchment as before under the desk. Before she could think, a wand was perched on the side of her neck and sticking deeply in her jugular. She froze instantly, her left hand reaching for the wand she had in her coat pocket, but she stopped halfway there. The wand at her throat was one she recognized, but even more was its holder―Bellatrix.

"Now, Bella," came the voice in her nightmares, "Andromeda is a friend to us. There is no need for that."

The mad woman holding her wand to Mia's throat could not be seen entirely from the obstructed view. When Bellatrix very reluctantly let the wand drop, Mia relaxed hesitantly as she turned at the waist to look directly at her...and it took every ounce of control she had built up over the months not to gasp the second she realized what she was actually seeing.

Bellatrix was pregnant. She knew instantly that the child was not Rodolphus' offspring. He had been incapacitated in Azkaban far too long, and she was not showing nearly enough to be seven months. That left only one other option. Mia swallowed hard, knowing without a shadow of doubt that the child Bellatrix cradled close to her black heart belonged to the very same man who influenced its death in the first place. The Dark Lord was going to be the father.

Nausea swept through her again at the mere thought of the life the child would have, infinite pity coursing through her veins as she wished to protect the unborn child from the life they had no choice in. Just as she didn't, standing there with her eyes permanently fixed on the shelves of books that her mother owned, directly between the line of sight of both Bellatrix and the Dark Lord. She never dared to look into the red pupils unless she was given no option but. Unless that was impossible to ignore, she would repeat the titles of the books she could see until she was black and blue in the face.

"Bellatrix comes with exciting news, as you can see, my dear Andromeda..." the voice, once again, triggered something deep inside of her that told her to flee "...and we believed that you should be one of the first to know, and hope that you pass the celebrations onto Draco. I was so upset to hear that he would not be returning home over the holidays. I wished to have a word with both of you, but..."

She needed Draco.

When his words trailed off, inviting her to speak up, she swallowed once again and found the courage to. "I apologize, my Lord...and a congratulations are in order from the both of us. I'm sure Draco will be delighted to hear that he will have a cousin. He decided to stay behind over the holidays to continue pursuing different avenues for our mission, my Lord."

"Ah...and you decided not to stay to help, as well?"

Mia did not like the connotation behind his words, and she stiffened. "No...no, of course not, my Lord. I would have stayed, but we wanted to avoid any suspicion that others may be placing upon us. I have been working to complete my mission pertaining Horace Slughorn over break, my Lord."

There was a shuffling, dark and ominous as it infected the Erebus home with its evil, and Mia's jaw clenched tightly as she briefly flickered her eyes over to Bellatrix once again. The action was bold, and one that the Lestrange woman took notice of with raised, temptatious brows. Then, Bella's lips outstretched into a knowing grin and she directed her stare across the room where the Dark Lord was undoubtably lurking through the library. Mia only sucked in a labored inhale through her nose when she noticed that he had found the book, perched halfway on the arm of the sofa where it was last left by Celicia. 

"What is this?" he asked coldly, the back of his pale head the only thing that Mia could see as he inspected the leather in his hand. If she had looked closer, she would have seen the way his sharp nails dug deep into the skin of the book out of remembrance. "I've seen this before..." 

Mia swallowed, finally daring herself to retain eye contact with the back of his figure. "I obtained the book from Slughorn this past week, my Lord, but I have noticed him carrying the object around throughout the year. I believed that it may contain the information that you desire, but since retrieving it, there have been...complications....discovering how to open the lock binding it shut."

"And have you met success?" his voice suggested something darker, a lingering question with a deep-rooted threat. She recognized it immediately. The shadow of doubt, and the sliver of hope that she would fail. It sounded just the same as it did that summer. 

She needed Draco.

Mia pressed her teeth down hard together when she saw his figure straighten, noticing that she had taken longer than favorable to respond. "I believe so, my Lord. I have reason to assume that Slughorn has locked the book shut with a variation of individual spells by his most talented Club members―intermingled and bonded with the witch or wizard who first impressed him with their use. Each nonverbal, as I have noticed over the coming months that he favors―" 

"Those who can preform magic similar to my own," he finished. "Yes. I've noticed. Decades have passed, and he still acknowledges that I am the greatest presence he has come across...you obtained this crucial information all on your own, Andromeda, or with the aide of Draco, perhaps?"

While she prided herself in believing she was an emotionless stone of a witch, the question fluttered an emotion deep in her gut and sent a fear shooting through to her brain. The Dark Lord's words had been innocent enough, but she knew the hidden question layered beneath it―it was not a question at all, merely a test. He wanted to see if she would lie about the truth behind who helped her or if she would be honest with him. He wanted to see if she would put her loyalty deeper in him, or in the family that she had so desperately protected from then on. 

"No, my Lord. I received help from my mother and cousin over the holiday, as I could not preform magic on my own with my Trace still present." 

The slicing of her gut from betrayal, pulling deep into her soul, nearly made her fall to her feet. Still, she managed to stay upright and resisted the urge to exhale in relief when she saw the way the Dark Lord's shoulders relaxed. Mia wanted to feel guilt, that she had unwillingly admitted how Celicia and Theodore helped and pulled them into this, but she couldn't. Not when she knew if she had lied to protect them, it would have only gotten all of them killed. 

Finally, with the painstaking movement of a gliding shadow, he turned around and faced her. She resisted every instinct in her body, telling her to flinch away from the grueling face of the wizard. His pale, translucent skin made Mia's look like tanned beauty, red pupils burning holes into her brown ones. The most unsettling thing, though, was the upturned expression on his lips as he breathed out a sigh. It was his attempt to smile, to feel an emotion like joy that he could not experience or know well enough to show. The smile did not carry and twisted sickeningly instead.

It made Mia sick. Where was Draco?

"Ah, young Theodore, only just turned seventeen...how is your cousin favoring? I noticed that he is not present. You can be sure to inform him that we are currently planning to free all off our friends from Azkaban as we speak, his father included―Draco will be elated to hear the news of Lucius as well, I presume..." 

The restraint she felt to sob in that moment at the mere sound of Theodore's name falling off his lips was unrivaled. It was wrong. A disgusting nightmare falling off his bloody tongue. Her eyelashes fluttered, drying her tears before they showed any indication of weakness as she stared into the eyes of a dead man walking. 

"Theodore is well, my Lord," she said, shortly. She did not want to indulge his interest in her cousin any more than necessary. She paused, pursing her lips. "I will be sure to inform Draco of the new information regarding the others. Is there anything that we can do to assist you?" 

There was a gleam in the Dark Lord's eye as she said this, the red darkening deeper. 

"Perhaps... your cousin would find interest in joining us in the future. Our ranks have been growing by the day, my dear Andromeda, and I would love to see Eldrice's son among my closest and most loyal―a family affair..." 

"He's a cute one, isn't he?" Bellatrix cooed darkly, her eyes flickering with mad amusement as she thought back on the last time she had seen Eldrice's son at one of those parties. 

Any rational plummeted into the deepest pits of Tartarus, and her worst fear in the world had just been presented to her on a silver platter with Theodore's arm presented darkly with the same looming Mark she despised. She always prided herself in remaining unemotional, but nothing could have prevented the way her mouth was already starting to form words to his request―to protest, to lie, to argue, to die if that meant Theodore would never go near the world that she was in. The low cackling of Bellatrix in her ear reminded her off how stupid she must look, mouth gaping and eyes trying to hide the immediate terror that debilitated her every movement. 

The Dark Lord's mouth turned up more, his attempt at a smile looking more like a sickening sneer of a snake as he watched her reaction. "I see...well, I suppose a delay in Theodore's loyalty is not too harmful to our current success. Very well, Andromeda...I trust that you and Draco are being vigilant in discovering a way to allow Bella and the others into Hogwarts? I know you need no reminder of the importance of completing this task."

No, she thought. You have just reminded me. 

"Of course, my Lord," she muttered, clearing her throat briefly to recollect her previous peril. "The mending process on the Vanishing Cabinet that connects to Borgin and Burkes is going well, and we hope to find a complete fix in the coming months. It won't be long now."

There was a low hum, and the Dark Lord finally diverted his eyes away from her to continue inspecting the library's contents. His hands, as she noticed, still held Slughorn's book with a growing indentation from his nails. "It has been brought to my attention that Draco has been trying other measures to complete his mission. Measures that were not successful. Need I remind you that if that man―Dumbledore―discovers what Draco has been trying to do..."

The open-ended threat redirected her panic from Theodore and her own family to Draco and his. Once again, she felt the impact of not having Draco next to her and wished desperately on every star that he would magically appear and bear half of the burden with her. However, she knew that was an impossible wish, and she swallowed down the different sensation of fear and nodded complaisantly with his words. Another sound came from Bellatrix, a disgruntled and displeased scoff, but she ignored it. 

"We understand, my Lord. We will not make another mistake, I assure you," she said, her voice struggling to finish the final sentence as it nearly gave away under her terror. 

The Dark Lord finally stopped in front of a small portrait, an image that was painted of her family―she, Celicia, and Alastiare―when she was fourteen. It was right before the word broke of the Dark Lord's return, and a picture Mia barely acknowledged anymore. She had not even realized it was in the room until he brought attention to it. The dark wizard's jagged nail came forward, extending all the way out so that it would meet with the coarse feeling of the canvas, before he dragged a small, thin line through the expanse of her father's face. Bellatrix laughed loudly, elated. She watched, her face paling darkly, as he continued on his path down through her mother's heart. Then, he paused, letting up and showing only Mia to be untouched by his hand. 

He turned around, the same unfinished and mirthless smile present as he made soft movements back to where she and Bellatrix stood. His red pupils danced dangerous in the dim lighting, the fireplace burning heavily behind him and casting a silhouette behind his growing frame. Mia stopped breathing, her chest falling coldly when he finally stopped in front of her and held something out for her. 

It was Slughorn's book, opened, and revealing the dusty and endless pages of the man's writing. The Dark Lord's lips pulled up even more sickeningly, his eyes flickering with a dangerous amusement at the expression that unconsciously fell along her face. 

"The first nonverbal spell that I preformed under the eyes of Horace Slughorn was Aqua Eructo, to stop a potion that had gone wrong and burst into flames by Eldrice Nott my third year at Hogwarts...what was yours, Andromeda?"

She did not answer because she could see as plainly as a winter's day that he already knew the answer. Her hands carefully and painfully grabbed the book from his hands, keeping from wincing when his nail caught on her palm and pulled back in one sharp line. Already, she noticed how the skin parted and made way for a deep set of blood. The memory of when it was her cheek that he cut, back in July, pushed her down into the depths of the terrified child that she once was. Only that time, she had Draco. She had no one but her own dying mind now, and a bloody palm.

"I believe that you are the beginning of something beautiful, my dear Andromeda." 

And Mia could not find the words beyond her fear to question what it was that Voldemort found beautiful―as the only things he valued were power, death, and the annihilation of every single person who ever dared to cross him. How could he have any concept of the word and what it meant? What beauty did he see her?

The same I see in myself.

Mia would take those six words to the grave with her, as they had not been her own thoughts ringing loudly inside of her mind, but the voice of the monster that plagued her in her nightmares and her realities. Her bloody palm fell flat on the cover of the book, a distant reflection that her fingertips were the same as his. Stained. 

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Author's Note: 

I just want to wrap Mia up in a protective bubble and take her away from the world. She keeps getting hit time and time by every little thing, and it's severely hurting my heart, but it is the truth of the situation and the beginnings of war. I didn't want to shy away from the reality of what Mia would be going through as a Death Eater, and talks with the Dark Lord are a part of it (also, insert mention of Delphini). Hopefully I wrote Voldemort in-character. He is one of the hardest characters, personally, to write.

I TRIED to make the spell-lock make sense as much as possible. Essentially, Slughorn cast a charm so that the book could only be opened by certain individuals gifted in nonverbal magic within his Slug Club. He charmed it so that each of those witches/wizards could open the book with the nonverbal spell that they met him with, but no one else could use a different spell if it was not the one that Slughorn was introduced with (the only exception being Potter, as he had deflected the Killing Curse & Slughorn has a stick up his ass for Harry). It's very similar to a fingerprint, except their fingerprint was the spell they used when they met him. 

I struggled so much with ways to make opening the lock original without simple means of a single spell or anything like that. The small insertion that Voldemort and Mia had the same original spell is just indication of their lives beginning to mirror―and perhaps Slughorn's hope that Mia will be his second chance to do the right thing and lead her in the opposite direction that he led Tom. 

I hope you enjoyed!! Back at Hogwarts next week. And Draco returns. What do you think about what Theo revealed about Draco and Romy's feelings? Do you agree? 

And what do you think is up with Theo (I know most you have your theories)? 

This is OFFICIALLY the END of THE BEFORE. 

PERSES: TITAN OF DESTRUCTION