Chapter 321: News Spreads, The Aftermath |
Within an hour of the Christmas feast breaking up, the story was out.
The departure had been ragged. The great families left early, in no need of lingering outside the manor to trade pleasantries; the ones who stayed late were the lesser and middling houses.
And then a fight broke out inside.
Walls came down, rubble flew, an explosion, firelight.
A few people glimpsed the scene within. A boy in a dark dress robe stood in the middle of the ruin, and across from him stood Bellatrix Lestrange, the air between them buckling.
Then the Fiendfyre came out, and no one dared stay another moment.
What they'd seen was fact. What they hadn't seen filled in the rest.
What happened after the cursed fire, how the banquet hall ended, whether Bella lived or died, whether the Black boy walked out or was carried out, none of it they knew.
But not knowing did nothing to slow the telling.
"Did you hear? Something happened at Lestrange Manor."
The first-hand account held together well enough. The Black heir and Madame Lestrange had come to blows, the banquet hall was wrecked, and at the end someone loosed Fiendfyre.
By the second telling it had drifted. The two had fought their way out onto the grounds, half the manor was destroyed, the Black party and the Lestrange party squared off on the lawn, a hair from open war.
By the third it was another story altogether, the clever ones folding in their own judgment as they passed it along.
The Black heir dared raise his wand inside Lestrange Manor. Would the Lestranges stand for that?
Of course not. So the Blacks and the Lestranges were going to war.
It wasn't just that the little brat and Bella had traded blows; the two families would carry it on across the ruins, several powerful wizards taking the field, a far larger battle to come.
Orion Black and Rodolphus Lestrange had stepped in themselves, the casualties unknown.
And why no further word? Why no count of which house had lost its dead? Fiendfyre had been raised. How could a thing like that end cleanly?
By the fifth telling the answer had arrived too, because a certain great man had stepped in.
Stepped in himself, brought Orion and Rodolphus to heel. Otherwise no two such houses would have pulled back like that.
The chain of reasoning was clean enough. Fiendfyre had been used, Bella had been beaten to such a state, yet no word that Bella was dead, no word that the Blacks faced any punishment.
A clash between two top pure-blood houses, taken to that pitch and still reined in. Count up all the names the wizarding world could think of who'd manage that at once, Black and Lestrange both, and you came down to one man.
That version had no witness. No one saw Voldemort walk into the manor, and no one saw him walk out. But it was believed all the same.
Without it, the affair wouldn't have stopped where it did.
Once a clash between two great houses escalated, there had to be aftermath, some stir, some answer. And so far there was nothing.
No reprisal. No declaration of war. No house in mourning.
The only explanation was that someone had made it stop, and the one who could do that needed no naming.
When the wizarding world wanted news to travel, distance ceased to mean anything. The Floo Network, owls, Apparition, a houseful of elves to carry tongues, and a single night was enough to circle the globe three times.
By the next dawn, everyone meant to hear had heard.
The versions came in every shape, the details never matching. Some said Bella struck first, some said Regulus provoked it, some said the Fiendfyre was Bella's and got away from her.
And some said the fire had been the Black boy's from the start, that he'd been waiting the whole time for that exact moment.
---
A few hours on, day broke.
The Nott house sat in the hill country of Yorkshire, a three-storey gray-stone manor wrapped layer on layer in Muggle-Repelling Charms and Illusion Charms, so that from outside it showed only a stretch of barren pasture.
On the morning of the twenty-sixth, Mr. Nott sat at the head of the table, a copy of the Daily Prophet before him, the front page given over to Christmas greetings, not a word about Lestrange Manor.
Of course not. A thing like that would never make print.
At his right sat his elder son, just graduated from Hogwarts and already in some unremarkable post at the Ministry of Magic.
At his left sat his younger son, Darius Nott, first year, who'd lost the new-student Chief challenge this term to Rosalie Selwyn.
Mr. Nott turned a page, eyes down, his tone offhand. "From here on, when you run into anyone from the Black house, keep your bearing low."
Elder son, chewing a piece of toast, paused.
He'd openly questioned Regulus's standing as new-student Chief while at Hogwarts, but in the end that was a school matter, a child's grudge. And he'd heard about last night.
At school, everyone was Slytherin all the same; you rub me wrong, I rub you wrong, no matter, the circle was only so wide and you couldn't be at odds with all of it. But he'd graduated, he was out in the world now, and the squabbling-over-nothing of school had long since stopped counting for anything.
He pushed the toast into his mouth and gave a vague grunt.
Darius sat in his chair, the usual gloom on his face unchanged.
He'd watched some of what Regulus could do at Hogwarts with his own eyes, a far cry from last night's level, but daunting in its own right. In the Slytherin world, strong was strong, no arguing it. He could never have held a high bearing in front of the boy anyway, so lowering it came naturally.
He nodded, drove his fork into the fried egg on his plate, and said nothing.
---
The Avery manor.
Mr. Avery was in his study, the door pulled to. Above the fireplace hung the family's oil painting of a falcon, the bird in its frame turning its head now and then to sweep the room with golden eyes.
A sheet of parchment lay across the desk. He was writing a letter, addressed to Orion Black. The wording had taken long deliberation, warm but held in check, the proper weight there, the proper meaning conveyed. The matter raised at dinner, a visit to Grimmauld Place, a few proposals before the Wizengamot that wanted discussing face to face, a date to settle.
He finished the last line, set the quill back in the inkwell, and blew across the wet ink.
He looked up.
Cuthbert stood in the doorway, not coming in, still not quite recovered since the night before.
He remembered how stirred he'd been at the dinner. A belief his father kept pressed down inside, one he'd turned over and over alone in this very study, spoken aloud in front of everyone in Bellatrix's commanding tone, and his blood had run hot to hear it. Reforge the glory of pure blood. Let true wizards take back everything that was theirs.
He'd wanted to throw himself in, wanted to be at the very front, to stand with Regulus, with Hermes, with every true pure-blood there was.
Then they had left, and not long after he heard that Regulus had beaten Bella, struck down the very person he'd been cheering for moments before, not only struck her but set the place ablaze.
Cuthbert thought more that night than perhaps in the whole year behind it. Hours earlier he'd felt every word out of Bella's mouth was right, and then reality had schooled him. The one you'd believed in had ended up on her knees before the one in front of you.
Mr. Avery looked at his son in the doorway, and something moved in him he couldn't name as relief or worry. The boy was growing, but what he grew into might unsettle who he'd been.
"Come in," he said.
Cuthbert stepped through and stood across the desk, hands hanging at his sides, with nowhere to put them.
Mr. Avery leaned back and studied him. "What sort of person do you take him for?"
No name was needed. They both knew.
Cuthbert opened his mouth, thought, and let one word out. "Strong."
Mr. Avery's face didn't move. He held his son in his gaze, the meaning plain. That was nothing.
Cuthbert's hand twitched up to scratch his head, made it halfway, dropped again.
"He thinks differently from us," he said.
Mr. Avery said nothing, and waited.
"It's like he's planned it all before it happens." The words came easier now, going where his thoughts led. "He's calm, like everything he does has a purpose, that kind of... You know he has to have a reason, but when you look at him you feel he's saying nothing, like he did it on a whim."
Mr. Avery gave a slight nod. Sharply purposeful. A deep mind.
"And he never stops practicing," Cuthbert went on. "Magic, always at it, always learning something new, like it's never enough."
Another nod. Expected. To pull off a thing like that at his age, talent was the foundation, but a good foundation unworked never reached that level either.
Here Cuthbert stopped. His lips parted, as if to say something, then he swallowed it back.
He was wavering.
He knew some of Regulus's magic, had seen it in the Room of Requirement, where Regulus had worked it in front of them. That was trust. A ball of light he didn't recognize forming in the boy's hand, the air twisting for no reason he could name, spells he couldn't begin to read flying from the wand tip and vanishing in midair.
He didn't know what those things were, but Regulus had tried them out in front of him, and that meant that within this small circle, at least, he was no outsider.
Now his father was asking. He knew what should be said and what shouldn't.
There were things that belonged inside a group like that, things that gathered around anyone who led. You saw them, fine, but you didn't carry them out. The right answer wasn't one or the other; it was knowing the line between.
Cuthbert was silent a while, then spoke. "I haven't really seen his magic. You saw it. I saw a bit at the dinner. Who knows what it was."
And he closed his mouth.
Mr. Avery looked into his son's eyes and nodded once. The boy had answered the trust shown him exactly right, holding his loyalty to the circle and playing the fool before his father, both at once.
The visit to Grimmauld Place. Mr. Avery picked up the parchment, folded it in two, let a drop of sealing wax fall, and pressed the Avery family seal into it. "He goes with you."
Cuthbert's eyes lit. Grimmauld Place, the Black house, to see Regulus. In a formal meeting between the houses, standing as the Avery heir at his father's shoulder.
He could hardly hold it down.
Mr. Avery handed the letter to the house-elf crouched by the table and waved a hand. "Out you go."
Cuthbert turned and left, his step slower than when he'd come in.
Mr. Avery watched the doorway, waited for the footsteps to fade, then drew his eyes back. The falcon over the fire turned its head, golden eyes fixed on him.
He paid it no mind, took up another blank sheet of parchment, and began the seventh letter.
---
The Mulciber house, far from any settlement, with not so much as a road to it.
The manor was built at the bottom of a valley, sheer bare rock at its back, the mouth of the valley wrapped year-round in heavy fog. A Muggle-Repelling Charm was hardly necessary; a place like that drew no one of its own accord.
The building was raised in white limestone, the walls cut with very old runes, some weathered past reading.
Hermes sat at the breakfast table, the meal in front of him nearly untouched.
His father sat across from him, a cup of coffee in his hand, and took a sip.
"Hermes." He set the cup down, the base knocking once against the wood. "How far apart are you?"
Hermes's face had been gloomy to start with. The question pulled it darker still.
A long moment passed before he spoke. "I couldn't tell."
His father said nothing.
Hermes thought, then added, "I couldn't follow it."
Mr. Mulciber lifted the coffee, drank, swallowed.
Couldn't follow it.
If the boy truly couldn't follow it, that said the Black boy had pulled so far ahead that someone his own age couldn't comprehend the gap. And a gap like that was no single thing.
If it were only one spell, only one curse run harsher than the rest, Hermes could have understood it. He'd seen powerful magic. The dark spells stacked in the Mulciber library ran to the hundreds; one curse wouldn't leave him stunned.
Couldn't follow it meant the weakness was total.
Hermes had told him Cuthbert could put him flat on the ground with nothing but an Impediment Jinx. The Impediment Jinx, one of the most basic defensive spells there was, the sort Avery had learned in first year.
"Set the dark magic aside for a while," Mr. Mulciber said.
Hermes looked up, something shifting in his face.
His father offered no explanation. "Train with me a while."
Hermes stayed silent.
Mr. Mulciber looked at him. "Is it magic?"
Hermes shook his head. "It's not a magic thing."
His father's brows drew together, a touch of reproof in his voice. "Obviously."
Of course it wasn't a magic thing. A weakness in one branch of magic, the Mulciber house mended with resources; the father's own command of the dark arts was more than enough for Hermes, no outsider required. But a weakness across the board couldn't be drilled out that way.
"The core things, I'll give you." Mr. Mulciber raised the coffee and drank again. "The family inheritance, my own spells, my private methods. Don't trouble yourself over those."
Hermes thought, and gave a small nod.
"But how you train, how you carry yourself into a fight, how you judge under pressure." Mr. Mulciber went on. "You stay at my side, with your own eyes in your own head. Can't you watch?"
Hermes nodded again, and answered, only inside. Why do I have to watch? Couldn't you just tell me straight?
His father looked at his son's face. "Go..."
