---

From what I was able to make of the incident upon breaking it up, Romilda had had Pansy sat with her back to the door and had a handful of the once-Slytherin girl’s hair. The pounding of Pansy’s head against the door had sounded like exuberant knocking. My attempts to get into the room proved more hurtful than helpful, as I pushed the door open right into one of Romilda’s slams, sending Pansy bouncing off of the door and into a heap in front of it.

Romilda’s eyes are alight as I enter, her face sitting in that middle space between utter joy and complete psychosis that looks perfectly natural on her. Pansy, for her part, is curled up in a fetal position and looking like she’s barely conscious. The latter part is likely my fault, given my charge into the room. Seeing Pansy less than in complete control sends me down a path of memories, back to when I had first come to be taking care of her. Despite what she wants people to see, she’s delicate, awkwardly so.

“Romilda, let her go. Please.” Before ‘please’ even fully leaves my mouth, Romilda’s hand has begun attempting to untangle itself from Pansy’s hair. I was expecting another of Romilda’s docile stages, when she grabs her wand and pushes Pansy’s head to the ground in a way that was more protective than anything else.

“Oh Harry…Where are you?” Well there is a voice I hoped to never hear from again, and yet knew would show up anyway.

Daphne Greengrass.

The entire plane ride back from my confrontation with Hermione, I had read into her journals, looking for any information that might be there. I found nothing. Not a mention. Which was a huge red flag. The utter lack of mention was suspicious. Deeply so.

When I got back here, I went searching. And was again confronted with the realization of the utter lack of information. Something about the lack of any kind of information stirs a worry in me.

“No one’s home!” I shout, reaching for my wand and inching to the side so I can be behind the door. The minute I move, however, Romilda is moving as well. She moves to the opposite side of the door from me, and pulls it open slightly.

Daphne’s voice rings out again, “Harry…I know you’re here. I don’t know why you’re hiding though.” She has this playful lilt to her voice that has the hairs on the back of my neck on edge as I am confronted with the level of distrust that has arisen in me from seemingly nowhere. “You and Pansy doing something you shouldn’t be, perhaps? …Or maybe you’re just playing hard to get. Is that it, Harry?” There is mirth in her voice that has my stomach aching as I try to decide what spell I want to use on her first.

Her voice moves closer and closer, and soon she is clearly right outside of the door. Romilda pulls the door closed just enough that Daphne shouldn’t be able to see in, and then she slips over to my side of the wall, behind the door. Romilda’s body presses back into mine, forcing my back somewhat painfully against the wall. Her voice is a whisper, as she asks me to say something, before motioning her head toward the door, and Daphne on the other side.

“Come get me, Daphne…” I try and find a measure of playfulness to add to my voice, and realize I fail terribly at it. Romilda looks back at me as she drags her right arm up my right leg, onto my arm, and then pulls it up so my wand is pointed at the door. There is that glint in Romilda’s eye that reminds of the insanity this woman is so gripped by, and I am, once more, reminded of how happy I am to have that insanity directed away from me.

Almost before I can register the woman’s wand and arm as they enter the room first, Romilda braces her back against my front and kicks the door hard, slamming it onto Daphne’s hand with a loud crack that removes any doubt that Daphne’s wand arm is broken.

The door springs open after impacting Daphne’s arm, and as I start to move from behind Romilda to swing around and face Daphne, Pansy jumps up from the floor. I make it around the door just in time to see her tackle Daphne to the ground. Pansy is able to get up as Daphne holds her broken right forearm with her left hand, and without even stepping back from the injured girl, Pansy starts to kick her in the side.

Around the fifth kick, I become aware that Pansy’s aim has slipped as Daphne curls into a ball. The downed girl’s head whips back a few times, and around kick number eight, I finally speak. “Pansy, please stop kicking Daphne in the face, she’s unconscious already. Besides, you’ve gotten blood on your slippers.”

---

We lift Daphne up, sit her in the chair and bind her to it. Pansy continues glaring, though I am unsure if it is because Daphne is seated there, or because it’s the chair I had been sitting in when she walked in on Romilda and me. My personal pride all but demands that I assume it is the latter, but considering that she seems to preen between bouts of glaring, leads me to believe that she just really wanted to beat on Daphne. A part of me wonders why, but the rest of me mocks that part for not realizing the answer.

I’ll never understand women in particular, but I do understand people well enough to recognize why Pansy takes such joy in her assault on Daphne. Because Pansy couldn’t assault Romilda. Ah…the circle of life. Or…the circle of displacement. Much in the same way that I took my anger at Fred out on Ginny while she laid in the bag, Pansy took her anger at Romilda out on Daphne.

Oh Pansy, I’m so proud of you.

…It’s not until a few moments of very awkward silence have passed, that I realize that I said that out loud. Romilda has arched one of her thin eyebrows at me while playing with her hair, and Pansy looks about fit to break into a huge grin. And…Daphne looks barely conscious, bloody, and quite confused.

“Wha?”

“Good morning, Daphne! How are you doing! You know…besides the broken face. Pansy’s sorry about that. Oh…and the broken arm. Romilda’s…” I glance over at Romilda and sigh. “I can’t even lie about that one. Romilda doesn’t give a damn.”

Daphne’s scowl is just so cute. And by cute, I mean it makes me laugh at the utter lack of severity behind it. I suspect it’s a result of the pain. I just want to pinch her little cheek at how nonthreatening it is. Or perhaps because I’ve just been on the receiving end of a lot of glares with vastly more conviction, and this one doesn’t even begin to approach those. Hell, Romilda’s basic expression has more intensity to it than Daphne’s glare does right now.

“Now Daphne, you have some things to answer to. Like why it is that you decided to come in here with your wand drawn, looking for me. I mean, I know why my view of you has changed recently, but I can’t quite get why you’d go from all but gyrating your hips at the mere mention of me, to wanting to kill me.”

“I did no such thing!” She’s seething, but her attempting to look threatening and angry is defeated, once more, by her utter vulnerability. That, and she and I both know, there was definitely gyration. “And let me out of this goddamned chair!”

“Harry…she’s yelling. Can I make her stop?” Movement passed the window catches my eye as Romilda asks, and I nod idly. Something isn’t right, and the kind of movement I noticed wasn’t the kind of moving around I’d expect at this time of night. It wasn’t a neighbor walking their pet, or going for one of those obnoxious jogs in the middle of the night in their fluorescent windbreakers. This was movement across cover.

I glance over at a screech from Daphne, just in time to see Romilda bludgeon the restrained girl in the face with a throw pillow from the couch. I quickly look away, as I notice movement again, and I catch someone scurrying behind the gate to the house across the street. I grip my wand and sit down on the floor with my back to the wall under the window. Romilda’s eyes snap toward me, and then to the window, before she sinks to the floor and crawls toward me.

There is a smile in her eyes that makes me completely sure that she knows just how sexily she’s doing this. It’s an awful time for her games, but I can’t take my eyes off of her until she is sat directly in front of me. I only look away because I notice Daphne’s head slumped forward, making it quite evident that she is unconscious. Romilda shifts to the side and glances back at her handiwork, before she lifts the pillow she had hit Daphne with, and pulls her shoe out of it and puts it back on.

“I figured you’d be more allowing of me hitting her with my shoe, if you didn’t know I was doing it until after.” She’s right. Even now, I don’t know if I like her methods.

Oh well, what’s done is done.

Romilda continues her slow, eye-catching crawl toward me, and she stops inches from my face.  She literally climbs up my body to look out of the window above my head, her stomach pressed against my face and her left knee digging into my chest. When she has finished looking, she slips back down, removing her knee from my chest and planting it on my side.

Her head is down, her long, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders and blocking her face from view. When she lifts her head back up, her face is only slightly visible through what could only be called a veil of her hair. I can feel her breath on my face. She has her lip caught between her teeth. And her eyes; aglow with that damned inner light I have associated with her…mental detachment, are staring straight into mine.

Oh look. Insane Romilda is back. Yay.

“Twenty, at least. Not Elite Guard, but if this is a sanctioned attack, then at least one of them is around here, observing.” Yes. Insane Romilda is back. And apparently, not a moment too soon.

“Only twenty? I’m insulted.” She stares at me after I speak, and cocks her head to the side. There is silenced for a long moment, and then she is laughing. It is a thick, throaty laugh that is all at once, uncomfortable, sexy, and scary. She taps me on the nose with one of her fingers, before sidling up against me again and looking out of the window once more.

“Don’t be, Harry. There are so few, because she just wants you to know she knows where you are. She’s trying to scare you. But if I know you, Harry, you don’t get scared.” Her voice dips an octave as she speaks the final few words. There is a faith in them, and at the same time, almost an…expectation.

I reach up and wrap my hands around her waist, pulling her down. She plops down on my lap, her eyes wide but playful. “You’re right. I don’t.” A grin slides up her lips, and I follow it with my eyes. “Now, how about we go show Narcissa just why she shouldn’t be attempting to scare me?” Romilda doesn’t needs words to show me she agrees.

“Um. Harry. What in the fuck are the two of you doing on the floor in my goddamned house!” Pansy doesn’t sound pleased. It seems she finally pulled herself away from glaring at Daphne while holding the ice pack to her forehead, long enough to come see where Romilda and I had disappeared to. I can only imagine what the situation looks like, with Romilda on my lap and our faces so close together.

I open my mouth to respond, and am saved from having to bother to speak, as the door to the house is flung open and a form comes barreling in, slamming into the wall across from the door. Romilda and I both have our wands trained on him, but he drops to the floor, kicks the door closed, and tossed his wand toward us, his hands up.

“Don’t shoot, Potter. I’m unarmed now, and I don’t have the time to fight you or convince you that you can trust me. Don’t trust me. I don’t want you to, but what I do want you to do, is listen.” He is panting, but I recognize that voice. Blaise tosses his hood back, and pulls himself up on shaky legs. “Potter, you have-”

“I know. There’s a bunch of Defenders outside.”

“Yes. And I doubt they’ll just be sitting by for much longer, seeing me come in here. I’m sure they’ll have people on each exit, prepared to attack if anyone leaves, even me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because, they can’t have anyone go in and come out. I had my hood up, they couldn’t get an ID on me, meaning they can’t know if the person who came in with my hood on, is the person leaving with it on. I take it they want someone in this house, likely you, so they can’t afford to have anyone leave. And I can’t afford to get caught by Narcissa any more than you can.”

…What could he have to hide from her? “What could you have to hide, Zabini? All you’d need to do is tell them the office you work for…”

“Dammit, Harry, it doesn’t work like that! You of all people should know how she is. If she thinks you have information that she wants, then she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer to her questions. And our organization is about information. There are things kicking around in my head that she can not know. And I don’t bloody do well with torture.”

His eyes are wild, as he crawls toward his wand, seemingly very wary of the windows. Apparently the overall odd actions of everyone has confused Pansy a great deal, as he eyes are bouncing back and forth between me, Blaise, Romilda, and the window nearest to her. I’m glad that, if there is one thing that Pansy knows, it is that problems tend to show their solutions if you watch long enough. She is vastly more able to just sit back and observe than I am, and I’m sure she is working things out as Blaise and I speak. Saves me time, explaining the severity of the situation.

“Then, if your mind is so goddamned important to keep out of her hands, why the hell would you come here? I’m sure you didn’t come just to warn me of an impending attack, considering how we left out last conversation.”

“Of course I didn’t come to save you, Potter. I came to save her.” I look to where his eyes are, and I see Daphne, whose eyes are glued to Blaise. “My god, what have you people done to her?”

“Wait.” It seems Pansy has finally caught up to the situation, and she feels it is time to interject her own questions. “Why the hell would you risk compromising your information, for her?”

“Because everything I know, she knows. And then some.”

…Wait.

My mind runs back to earlier in the day, the last time I had seen Blaise. The woman who had been with him…

“Daphne’s a fucking Unspeakable?” Even as I basically shout this, pieces slide into place, and it all makes a crazy kind of sense. And suddenly things make a lot of sense. “So…is that why you’re on the No Heal list?”

Blaise’s eyebrows raise, as do Daphne’s. It would appear that they didn’t expect me to know that. “…Daphne has…special clearance. Certain information that she has is very sensitive. If anything were to happen to her in the field, she is on the No Heal list because, any time someone on the list is admitted, they are flagged and certain calls are made. It would let us know where she is. It also prevents anyone looking to extract the information from her through use of torture, from employing a licensed healer to keep her alive.”

“…But from what I understand, that list is for people who have done some very bad things. You don’t just get put on there as a contingency.”

Blaise looked at Daphne for a long time, before sighing. “Daphne’s initial mission was…not a good one. They trusted her to infiltrate the wrong kinds of places, and with that, came risks. Rumors began flying around about her, of her possibly killing, maiming, torturing people for information. All of this was a cover so we could get her into the right place, get her set up properly.

“She got pulled once proper information was gathered, but those kind of rumors don’t just disappear overnight. So, the higher-ups did the best with a bad situation. Those rumors got her on the list, and that list can help keep her alive, and our information protected.”

Blaise’s story sounds like all different kinds of poorly-concocted bullshit. I don’t believe it for a moment, and I take a long look at Daphne. Sitting, so beaten up and bound in that chair, she doesn’t look like anything she could do would make her so important. So dangerous. But if there is something I have come to learn about this post-Hogwarts world, it’s that looks are always deceiving, and the more you trust what people appear to be, the more likely you are to end up dead.

Daphne Greengrass was worth Blaise Zabini risking his life to save. “You know, Zabini, you could have skipped the attempts to craft a lie big enough to make me believe you. I don’t believe a word you said, and all of the air you wasted spinning such a half-assed tale, could have been saved.” His eyes narrow at me, and Daphne starts to squirm in her chair. “All you had to do, was come in here and tell us that it was worth possibly getting captured, to save your girlfriend.” The look on Blaise’s face told me all I needed to know.

I realize that Romilda is still sitting on top of me as I go to sever the bindings we had affixed Daphne to the chair with. I roll out from under her, surprised to see her spring to her feet and reach a hand out to help me up. I grin and take her hand, letting her help yank me to my feet. “This is going to get very messy. As you said, they aren’t just going to let you waltz out of here. They also, likely, don’t have any sort of orders to hold their fire to less than lethal spells. Meaning, if anyone is getting out of here, they have to fight their way out.”

I look toward the window again, seeing more movement around the cars parked across the way, as well as the door in the house to the right of the house across the street open and close, despite the lack of lights inside. “They’ve been watching the house for a while. Running would just mean we can’t ever come back. I for one, refuse to lose this place.”

Everyone in the room is looking at me intently. I hate doing motivational shit. “I will be goddamned if they think they can win this. If she thinks she can just run us off, never mind the fucking skeleton crew of people she’s sent to do so. As has been made quite clear to me, I don’t fucking do scared. So why don’t we go make them regret fucking with my house?”

Romilda brushes past me, rubbing my shoulder with her cheek before walking across the room, peering out of the window closest to the door. I knew I had her support, and if it came down to it, I could expect the crazy girl to be willing to fight until there was no fight left.

“I’ll fight. But only long enough to get a lane so we can get out of here. I am all for teaching them a lesson, but this isn’t my fight. This isn’t my home. Moreover, the longer we stay here, the more time Narcissa has to decide to send more people. If she finds out that either me or Daphne are here, she’s not going to let us just wander off.”

“Fair enough, Blaise. But if that’s the case, I’d say that you should fight for a while, but go out through one of the windows and make a run for it. If Romilda and I are going to make our stand here, better if you aren’t running through. No idea who could hit you with what, and as much as you drawing fire away from us would seem like a good thing, it’s not. I don’t have the time to play medic. Keep your head down and your feet moving. Until then, have good aim, and put them down, and keep them there.”

Blaise has his marching orders, and Daphne’s been placed in a seat near the door. She can’t fight effectively, with her wand arm broken and all, and it seems like a much better idea to just keep her out of the way until Blaise can take her and leave. That just leaves…

“Pansy, I need you to go to your room, get under your bed, and do not move from there unless I come and get you, or Romilda drags you out.” Pansy’s eyebrow raises, and she opens her mouth to disagree.

“Don’t argue with me on this, dammit.”

“This is my house too, Harry! I will not lay there in my room like I’m an invalid while you go off and fight my battles for me! I’ve been there and done that, thank you very much. I’ve had enough of standing by and letting you run off to play my bloody knight in shining armor. I laid here for years while you fucking saved me, protected me, took care of me.

“I didn’t deserve it, and you did it. And now my…no - our - home, is about to be attacked, and you want to sit me in a fucking corner and tell me to put my head down? I’m sorry, Potter, but fuck that, and fuck you. Now get the hell out of my way, I need to go find my fucking wand.”

Cute. But now is not the time for self-righteous Pansy to be appearing.

“Listen. Either you go and get under the bed, or I stun you and tie you under it. I don’t have time for this, Pansy. I respect your desire to help, but these people will not be fucking around. It’s been a long time since I found you on that floor. A long time since you were out there, slinging spells around and being in battles. It’s not the same anymore.” She locks eyes with me for a long moment, before deflating.

“Be careful out there, Harry.” She walked toward me, pressing her cheek against my chest and snaking her arms around my waist. “Please.” And then she was gone, the door to her room closing loudly.

I’ll do the best I can, Pansy…

I head over toward Romilda, who is leaning against the wall next to the door, staring up at the ceiling. She doesn’t look toward me when I get close to her, but I know that she’s aware of my arrival.

I can’t hold back my sigh as I lean my back against the wall next to her. She shuffles slightly, almost imperceptibly, and I feel her arm press against mine softly. “I have to protect this house, Romilda.”

“Nah, you don’t.” I look over to her, prepared to rebut, until I see that slight smile on her lips again, before “We have to protect it.” She pushes herself off of the wall, before turning her body to stand right in front of me, her legs apart so that her feet are on either side of my own. She is right in front of me, her face inches away once more.

Her positioning does make it quite clear to me that Romilda is a fairly tall woman. She is only slightly shorter than I am, and as such, I am confronted with her bright, intense gaze. “You had better not get yourself hurt out there, Potter. If you get yourself killed, I will follow you.” …This bitch is insane. I know I should have known this a long time back, but something about the conviction in her eyes goes a long way to make sure I am aware that she isn’t lying. “So, how about we go kill some people before it gets too late. In my estimation, we have about 20 minutes until Pansy’s dinner is finished.”

I go to answer, when the first spell hits the door. It doesn’t go through the door, but it does rattle the large door in its frame. Cute. It’s like a magical knock, aggressive as it is. “Well, seems like they got tired of waiting. Let’s answer the door, shall we?” Romilda nods to answer me, but doesn’t move out of the way. She tilts her head to the side, her long hair tumbling to the side, before she leaned toward me.

“Romilda…if you lick my face again, you and I are going to have some words after this.” That throaty laugh leaves her lips, before she leans even closer. That uncomfortable feeling spreads through me, though I find myself deeply intrigued by if she is going to heed my words, or ignore them.

She is silent, simply pressed against me, before she speaks in something barely above a whisper. “Looking forward to it. So you’d better survive long enough.” There is something…charged, in her tone. She leans back, and I feel like I watch her change in front of my eyes. The insanity reappears, and wipes away the almost coy look that had been in her eyes before.

As…interesting as this gentle, almost sensual Romilda is, if I’m about to go into a deadly fight, I am vastly more comfortable doing that with the insane woman Tonks referred to as Romitrix, at my side.

The door shakes twice in rapid succession. They’re getting impatient.

Romilda moves and walks over toward the door, pressing herself against the side of the frame. Blaise looks up from his place of kneeling in front of Daphne, who seems to have either fallen asleep or been put to sleep.

…Shit.

“Blaise, get her away from the door, and then help Romilda and I move the furniture against the walls. If they’re serious, they’ll fire spells through the walls, and we don’t need her taking a curse through the head.” We scramble with the furniture, swinging the couch against the wall where the windows were. Fucking stupid, stupid. I’m not used to defending a location, it’s foreign to me, but I need my brain working properly, and that was a stupid mistake.

“No. That stays there.” Blaise looks at me in confusion, but releases the chair and walks away from it to grab something else from another room. I lift Daphne’s unconscious form, and place her back in the chair she had been bound to before, which I had instructed Blaise to leave. The room looked so empty, devoid of any furniture except for that one chair, sat in the middle of the floor.

I grip my wand and square my shoulders. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve felt like this. Like I had something, other than myself, that I had to protect, to defend. Feels like forever. And entirely too soon.

I move toward the door, which by this point is rattling almost incessantly from the impacts from outside. Impatient indeed. Romilda catches my eye, her pink tongue slightly visible between her lips. Somehow, I think she knows my plan, as the motions toward the door with her eyes. Her hair has been pulled back into a ponytail, and I can’t help but be unnerved by how much of her face I can see. Makes her eyes more visible. Makes her insanity more visible.

Hot.

Bracing myself to the opposite side of the doorframe from Romilda, I press the tip of my wand against the door. She does the same, and I count down with my other hand from three. As my last finger goes down, I cast the strongest Banishing Charm that I can. My wand bucks, but I pull it along with me as I swing around the doorway and run along the same side of the house.

One out of cover, at the end of the walkway. He had been casting the spells they’d been using to knock. The door is still moving toward him, the combined force of mine and Romilda’s banishers is stronger than his rapid-fire spells, which he continues to fire.

Idiot.

Romilda’s Reducto hits the door and sending a hail of splinters and jagged planks of wood toward him. I put a Piercing Charm through both of his knees, and into the pavement beside him. He body pitches forward, right into the path of Romilda’s curse.

I have no idea what it is, but it’s fucking effective. An invisible force impacts his face and seems to almost send ripples through his skin, before I see the bones in his face collapse.

Blood flies from his mouth, along with a few teeth, and his mouth is open to scream just in time for one of the large planks of sharp wood from the door to impact his already destroyed face.

Oh, she wants to compete, does she? Fine.

The first person I see come around the car across the way was a sandy-haired woman. She blasts off a pair of spiraling violet hexes, which miss me entirely, though they dig into the side of the house, burning the outside of the building as well as puncturing quite a ways into the wall. Even as I observe the effects of her near-miss, my Cutting Curse is streaming toward her. My  aim is slightly off, but the spell still sends her tumbling to the ground bleeding profusely from her hip. More spells begin to fly as the others begin to cast, and I have no cover to get behind.

Slamming my wand straight down, a light blue V-shaped shield unfolds in front of me, and sinks into the ground. Not a moment too soon, either, as spells glance off of the shield and bury into the wall on either side of me.

The shield starts to dim, and I roll out from behind it, a spell burying into the grass inches from my hand. The man closest to me loses the use of his wand hand, as my Cannonball Hex blasts the back end of his wand through his hand.

Stumbling to my feet, I start to run when a feeling like a bag of potatoes shot out of a cannon hits my chest. Stars dance in my vision as I bounce off of the wall of the house and onto my back. Fragments of brick rain down on my face as a mass of spells that had been aimed for me hit the wall instead.

There is a veritable fucking firing squad across the way from me, and without any cover, they are all just firing whatever and hoping one of the spells hits me. Slashing my wand down again and creating another V-shaped shield, I hide behind it, using it to get to my feet again.

Panting breaths feel like breathing fire, and it feels like warm honey is running down the side of my face.

I sprint from behind the shield and dive behind the hedges that curve at the edge of the property. “Duro!” It won’t last long, but the hardening spell makes the plants at least as capable of keeping out spell-fire as anything I’d be able to conjure at the moment.

Peeking over the rock-hard shrubbery, I see the group that had been firing on me standing behind a neighbor’s large black SUV. He had been especially proud when he brought the thing, and showed it off constantly by leaving it on the street.

Shame I have to blow it up.

“Defodio! Expulso!”  The Gouging Spell burrows a hole into the side of the car, and the Explosion Spell follows it through.

“Duro.” I mutter at the shrubs again and then cover my head with my arms. The explosion doesn’t disappoint. The heat of the fireball that had once been the black SUV washes over me and I immediately feel sweat break out on my forehead. The sound of car alarms going off up and down the street spill out and wash over the sounds of the battle. Shattered glass rains down on me, even from my position, and pieces of metal are imbedded into the brick of the house.

I don’t get a chance to revel on how good I am, as my eyes scan for Romilda. She had taken the other side of the door, which led around the side of the house, and I couldn’t see her. She has to be in the back.

I’m up and scrambling across the property when pain flares up in my left calf. I stumble my way into the doorway to the house, aim and fire another Expulso at the car’s remains across the street for good measure. I hear spell-fire from the back of the house over the car alarms, and I know for sure where Romilda is.

Wait…if Romilda’s in the back…“Zabini! Where the fuck are you!”

“Back here!” He shouts, and I hop my way up to standing and look back at my leg. A cutting curse clipped me. More knocked off balance than injured, I still need to be more fucking careful. If whoever sent this had been a bit better with casting while in pain, I wouldn’t be walking.

Getting to the back of the house, I see Blaise crouching under one of the windows, giving Romilda occasional cover-fire. Romilda, for her part, is hiding behind one of the back sheds, popping out long enough to do some damage. The back garden of the house is littered with severed limbs and blood spatter.

“It was more than 20. A lot more. She has cover back here, and I’ve been trying to help, since you were more than holding your own, but I had to transfigure the hinges away from the back fence, because more just kept streaming in.” He has a bit of blood on him, but for the most part, he looks fine.

“The front is clear…or as clear as it’s going to get. Get Daphne and get the hell out of here.”

“This isn’t a scouting group, Potter. There’s a lot of them, and more will keep coming. You two can’t hold this place by yourselves.” My Cutter hamstrings a man who had decided to charge toward Romilda, likely hoping to use his body to take up her spells while his comrades moved to better positions. He never got the chance, and I dropped him the second he came out from cover.

“We don’t exactly have much choice, now do we? You said you were going to leave once it was clear, well it’s fucking clear. So either get your bitch and get out of here, or shut up, aim your goddamned wand, and cover us.” He shuts up, and moves away from the window, firing a few potshots at the shimmering shields that were set up around the back garden. “Once Daphne’s safe, I’ll be back, Potter. Be alive when I get here.” He shouts out from the front room. I can hear Daphne’s groggy voice, before the pair’s hurried footsteps are rushing from the house.

“Well…It’s just me and you, Romilda.” I mutter to myself.

She’s pinned down in a corner, but she has them scared. The back fence is being banged into, as Blaise’s transfiguration is holding strong, along with whatever spells he might have layered on there to keep whatever is on the other side of the wall, out.

“Reducto.” I intone, and blow the window, along with a good deal of the wall around it, out. Firing Explosion Charms into each of the shields I see erected, I try and sprint as quickly as my body will take me, over toward Romilda. She sends one of her damned Sheep-Shearing Charms toward me, and I have to actually dive out of the way. The sound of a body falling to the ground makes me turn to see a headless man laying behind where I had been running. Romilda, however, collapses to the ground as well, and I can only guess that the spell the now dead man had been casting at me, she had taken instead.

I scramble to her side, turn my wand horizontally, and slam it down toward the ground, a wall of grayish-green energy shimmering into place in front of me.

I fucking hate shielding. I despise it. But I’m good at it, and Romilda is not looking good. Hopefully, a few moments of her feeling safe will do her some good. She’s panting heavily, and as soon as she sees spells are bouncing off of the shield, she drops her wand and holds both of her hands to her side, turning away from me.

Blood is covering her fingers, and her eyes are bright, but wet. She’s hurt, and she’s hurt badly. “Romilda…let me see.”

“No. I can fight, goddammit, get that shield down and let’s kill them.” Her voice is short, snappish. Angry. She turns her head from me, and looks down at the wound that I can just barely make out. I grab her chin and turn her face toward me, but she turns her head roughly to the side to look away from me.

…Wasn’t I on the other end of this not that long ago?

I grab both sides of her face and turn her head toward me, and finally get to look at her face clearly. Blood painting one side of her face. Eyes bright. Shining. Jaw set. Tears.

She’s hurt, and she’s hurt badly.

“Get your shirt off.”

“What?”

“Get your fucking shirt off, Vane, or I will strip you right here.” Her eyes show a flash of confusion, before she is attempting to peel her shirt off. She’s taking too long. I pull her shirt from her body and fire a Cutter at the bunch of fabric, and rip the remains of the shirt off of her. I move her so that her injured side is toward me.

…

Fuck.

The side of her body is fucking covered in blood.

“T…t-t.” My voice cracks, as I watch this woman who I had never seen anything less than psychotically apathetic, laid on her side, refusing to look at me. She wants to fight. I can see that as she reaches her hand out for her wand, though it is just out of her reach. But she’s hurt, worse than I am, and depending on how bad this is... “Tergeo.” The blood pulls away from her body, and relief floods through me. The large cut at her side is bad, but not as bad as it looked initially. The mass of blood was due, in part, to a series of smaller cuts and holes all around the largest one hemorrhaging blood at a steady pace.

“Romilda?” She stirs, her eyes looking up at me with a determination that somewhat shocks me. She’s looking right at me, but I don’t know if she sees me. “Romilda. Oi, Romi! Wake up!” Her eyes seem to finally settle on actually seeing me, and a faint smile slides across her lips. The blood near her eye has run from what I can only suspect are tears, and she seems to notice me looking, as she reaches up and wipes at her eyes frantically. This only serves to smear blood across her face more obviously, giving her eyes a sort of…mask of blood.

This girl finds a way to look wholly insane, even on accident. Amazing.

“Hold your shirt against it and keep pressure on it. If it doesn’t stop, what I have to do is going to hurt. Badly. Stay out of the way and don’t draw attention to yourself.” She opens her mouth to protest, but she stops and nods.

The spells impacting the shield are getting stronger. I feel the shield groan, and the dull feel of drumming against my lower back, increases to an incessant thumping in tune with the spells’ rhythm. My back begins to spasm erratically, and with my chest still aching and breathing still burning, I know I don’t have long. As if hearing my thoughts on it, the shield flickers for a moment, and appears a much more dull gray than the grayish-green it had been.

…It won’t hold much longer.

Romilda groans and tries to shuffle herself up into a sitting position. In doing so, she squeezes the bottom of the bundled up shirt she had been applying pressure with, and a stream of her blood poured onto the ground.

…And Neither will she.

She needs medical attention, and we need to get out of here. We…Wait…what am I forgetting.

Not what. Who.

Fuck…Pansy!

“Duro.” The shield went from a flickering gray to the color of stone. It was a special shield, one of two that I had made myself. Banishing it sends it shooting across the yard…belying the fact that it was now several tons of moving rock. “Expulso! Expulso!”

The slab of rock that was once my shield exploded all over the back garden. I tossed up a somewhat narrow, but strong, physical shield that protected both myself and Romilda, before I dropped it and sprinted back across the yard toward the hole I had jumped out of to get to Romilda.

Blood covers the floor, and I find myself scrambling for footing. I slam into the far wall, just as another form comes through the empty doorframe. I recognize the man enough to not remove his head from his shoulders, but I barrel past him, even as he shouts out after me.

“Potter, where are you going!”

I kick the door to Pansy’s room in, and see her with blood utterly coating her torso, dripping slowly to the floor.

Something in me stops dead.

No.

Not both of them.

Everything moves slow, as I move around her bed as quickly as I can. Her eyes look up to me…there’s something hollow about them.

Empty.

I finally get around the bed so that I can see her, and I look down, following the blood dripping to the floor and see…a man’s body at her feet. My eyes shoot back up toward her, to see her eyes on me…there’s a light in there. Somewhere. A heavy thud sounds.

There, still teetering from its fall, is Pansy’s radio. Or what used to be Pansy’s radio.

It was a bright red color, a pool of the same color forming under it.

The handle was dry, and the same dark gray color that it had been, evidence of it having been in Pansy’s hand.

The cassette dock’s door hung from one hinge.

Many of the buttons were missing. Some scattered across the floor.

The antenna was snapped.

One side was severely dented in, so much so that the material of the casing had snapped entirely. And that entire side of the radio was decorated in what appeared to be brain matter.

A profound feeling of relief hits me so hard that my stomach seizes and I taste bile in my mouth. I pull Pansy toward me and hold her tightly again my body as she shakes. A blaring white noise fills my ears, and I can’t hear what I am sure is her bawling, and I am eternally grateful for that.

A hand touches my shoulder, and the next thing I know, I have my left hand wrapped around Blaise’s throat so hard that my fingernails have made puncture wounds through his skin. Lowering my wand and looking at the scared man, I release him and back away, the sound coming screaming back into my ears all at once.

“What the fuck, Potter?”

I don’t even have an answer for him.

“Whatever. Get your crazy ass, and your girls, out of here. It’s going to get very bad, very fucking fast, and if you are still in here when it does, there won’t be anything left of you bigger than your wand.”

Wait. This isn’t bad already?

“What do you mean it’s going to get very bad? It’s already fucking bad.”

Something in his eyes makes me believe him. I immediately release Pansy and run back, jumping down through the hole again and out to get to Romilda. She was looking pale, but conscious. I lift her up in my arms and head toward the hole again, when I feel it. A tremor under my feet.

Something isn’t right.

Blaise jumps down from the hole before turning and helping Pansy down. “Fuck the front, we need to get out of here and fast. Back this way.”

“Didn’t you seal a bunch of them out over there?” I ask, wondering why he’s heading toward the fence.

“Any of them still there, we can kill. The ones who are smart got away. Far away.” Something is stirring in my mind, even as the tremors get harsher, and increase in frequency. Romilda stirs in my arms, and I wrap her arms around my neck and hold her tighter. Something isn’t right.

Blaise has undone whatever he did to the fence and I’ve blasted a hole through it when it hits me. I know this feeling. But…

What looked like shimmering silver water sloshed out of the ground in front of us. Initially, it was pouring out like an underground pipe burst, but then it began to move upward. Something is very wrong.

“Jump. Get over it, and get clear.” Blaise listens, and helps Pansy over as the silver liquid begins to rise at an alarming pace. I reach over and hand Romilda to him, before backing up and getting a running start, diving over and just barely clearing it. Romilda had begun stirring in Blaise’s arms, but once I took her back, she calmed quickly.

I know this work.

“Run, take Pansy wherever you took Daphne, I’ll be right behind you.” Blaise looks at me for a long, loaded moment, before he takes off running. I adjust Romilda in my arms, before I move around the neighbor’s house and stare up to the front of the house.

Her brown hair has grown wild, catching on the wind as she danced with her spellwork. The bright glow that comes from her wand illuminates her in such a way that, even from here, I can see the early signs of wrinkles, and a few premature gray hairs. The years have not been kind to her. Not at all. Years of watching her life’s work slip away had to do that to a woman.

She weaved her wand to and fro, a rising and falling font of blood mimicking her actions as she commanded the flow of it.

Warding was dead…useless without ambient magic.

Unless you had enough blood to power the wards.

And considering the amount of blood that I had left flowing in the street in front of the house, she had more than enough to establish almost any kind of ward she wanted to. And once set, the wards could always feed off of the puddles of blood Romilda and I had left in the back…but that wouldn’t be necessary.

No.

Penelope Clearwater didn’t specialize in long-term wards. But the warding she did specialize in, required just as much, if not more, blood that long-term protection wards. It had been a major limiting factor on her ability to find anyone willing to utilize her…particular talents. Why bother with providing her the necessary magical fuel when, for the same amount, you could protect several homes for months?

It would seem, Narcissa had found a use for the woman.

There was a certain beauty in her ward-weaving. An…artful aesthetic to what she did. She’d often sway while preparing to cast, as if hearing music no one else could.

Penelope Clearwater would dance while building her wards.

I’ve seen enough, and I heft Romilda up in my arms and begin running, following bodies, as Blaise apparently had fought his way clear. I eventually found them waiting in an alleyway a few blocks away. Daphne was leaning against a dumpster at the far end, with Blaise checking on her, and Pansy staring up in the sky as the swirl of silver liquid continued to form a dome above her house. It was easily visible from where we stood, and it was just over three-quarters of the way complete.

“Zabini, get her and let’s go.”

“Daphne’s tired, and we should be alright out here…”

“I’m not asking you, Blaise. We aren’t ‘alright’ here, and Romilda needs medical attention, and soon. Get her, and let’s go, goddammit. Move!” I don’t mean to sound so harsh. So angry. Pansy flinches and Romilda stirs, rubbing her cheek against my neck and tightening her grip around my neck. She’s alright, the bleeding had to have slowed, but she’s low on blood, and needs help.

We run half a block before I see a beaten down old minivan parked on the street. Its night, and anyone on the street at the moment is staring up at the luminescent silver bubble nearing completion a ways away. Banging my elbow into the window, it shatters and I open the locks. I place Romilda gently on the passenger seat, which makes her claw at me, refusing to let go, but I get away and move over to the driver’s side. She reaches her hands out for me, and I reach over and hold onto her hand for a moment. Everyone else clamors in, and I fumble around in my pockets until I find it.

It had taken me quite a while to find another pocketknife like this. But times like these made me thankful I had.

Jamming it into the starter and turning the van on, I rev the engine and pull out as quickly as I can. The car is slow to accelerate, but we should make it. The bubble of silver liquid finally meets up at the top and solidifies. A bright twinkle comes from the top, so bright it is blinding, even with me facing the other direction. When I can see again, I see the van heading right for a stopped car in the middle of the street, as the driver had gotten out of his car to stare.

Everything is silent as I try and turn to avoid the mesmerized man and his parked Mercedes. Even the sound of the tires screeching on the road as I swerve, seems buried under the all-encompassing lack of sound. I avoid the idiot driver just enough to simply kiss the back bumper of the expensive car with the side of our stolen van and then, Light.

Everywhere. Everything, washed out in white.

It clears, and even with spots dancing in front of my eyes, I watch the rearview mirror. The silvery bubble bulges obscenely, before rippling in to the point where it looked even smaller than the house that it had been wrapped around. It bulges out one more time, and then, it pops.

There is utter silence, and then sound. Everywhere, screaming, alarming, loud sound.

From what I can only estimate is well over 15 blocks away, the shockwave of the utter destruction of Number 12, Grimmauld Place, is enough to knock the van we had stolen completely over.

As my vision darkens after my head impacts the ceiling of the van and then the pavement of the street, I see Romilda scrambling with her seatbelt, her eyes locked on mine as she scratches and claws at it to try and get to me, that beautiful fanaticism alight in her eyes.

I’m alright, Romi…

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