The foyer brimmed with the low, anxious chattering of students queuing from the balustrade of the Grand Staircase to the sealed oak doors of the Great Hall; they quizzed their friends in hushed whispers, muttering incantations under their breath and rehearsing wand movements with trembling hands.
The doors to the Great Hall creaked open and the chatter died.
Professor Tofty's wispy white beard followed by his aged, wrinkled face poked through the gap. "Diggory, Cedric," he wheezed.
Diggory squared his shoulders and stepped from the pack of 'puffs, collecting a round of slaps on the back from his mates as he followed Professor Tofty into the Great Hall.
The doors swung shut behind them.
The noise picked back up, a relentless low hum that rose like the tide and swallowed everything in its depths.
Tristan blocked the chatter out until all he heard was the faint, distant pulse of his heart throbbing in his ears. 'One more week.' He bounced his knee in a swift rhythm, twirling his wand in time with the steady swing of the clocktower's pendulum. 'One more week and I'm finally done here...'
The sun sank lower and lower beyond that swinging pendulum in the courtyard, casting long shadows across his face; it shone bright and bold against the clear summer blue sky, bright as gold, bright as the emblem of crossed rapiers pinned to the musketeers' plain black robes.
'They are still out there.' The unease tugged at Tristan's nerves with each minute trickling by, gnawing away at him like rats and sinking sharp, hungry little teeth into his gut. 'They are out there plotting to murder my family while I'm in here, waiting and sitting bloody NEWTs.'
Some of that frustration bubbled over in slim flares of ink-black magic seeping from his wrist like serpents, chasing the swirls of his wand in flashes of frozen fury. 'I hate this. I just want to wipe them all away.'
"Peverell, Tristan!"
Tristan clawed his magic back with a shaky breath and shoved his wand up his sleeve, striding past the line of his peers. 'Fucking finally.'
Professor Tofty closed the doors shut behind himself. "Professor Marchbanks is free for you, Mr. Peverell." He pointed to the short, frail elderly witch in dark green robes squabbling with Umbridge and McGonagall at the far left of the Great Hall.
"Thank you, sir," Tristan said, walking along the four house tables and benches stacked by the wall and past the handful of other students performing spells under the watchful gazes of the examiners.
Professor Marchbanks flapped a lazy hand at Umbridge as he approached. "Yes, yes, thank you very much, Dolores, but my next pupil is here and I am sure your competency as Headmistress is needed elsewhere. Minerva, you're welcome to stay, of course."
"Very well," Umbridge simpered, her smile dripping with venom, and strutted off in her pink stilettos.
"What an insufferable woman," Professor Marchbanks muttered under her breath. "Ah, perhaps this day will not be a complete bore after all." Her pale gray eyes swept over Tristan from head to toe. "You have grown."
Tristan blinked. "It's been two years since my OWLs, Professor..."
"So what?" She snorted. "When you have lived for almost two hundred years and done this job for more than half as long you stop counting. There have only ever been a handful of students that truly impressed me; Albus Dumbledore was one of them – your father was, too. Both did things with their wands I had never seen before — that stunt he pulled in his Charms NEWTs still amuses me to this day."
"Stunt, Ma'am...?"
"Your father performed the Tale of the Three Brothers with puffs of smoke, Mr. Peverell," McGonagall supplied.
'The story of the Peverell brothers and the Deathly Hallows.' Tristan fought the urge to roll his eyes. 'How very subtle of you, Father...'
"Yes, well, I will not be giving marks for children's animations I have seen before today," Professor Marchbanks cackled, flipping the page of her clipboard and scribbling his surname to the top with her wand. "This is your Defense Against the Dark Arts examination; your chance to back up all the praise The Daily Prophet has been showering you with over the last two years, so let us get to it; show me your Shield Charm."
Tristan slipped his wand into his palm and drew a swift circle of radiant silver before his chest.
"Silently cast," Professor Marchbanks hummed, prodding the shield with the tip of her wand. "Sturdy as a damn brick wall; I doubt anything short of fiendfyre leaves even a scratch on that." She drew a checkmark on her clipboard, her eyes lingering on the runes carved into the handle of Tristan's wand. "Know a few more spells of that caliber, Mr. Peverell?"
McGonagall cleared her throat. "Griselda, perhaps we should—"
Professor Marchbanks flapped a lazy hand at her. "Anyone able to conjure a shield like that knows how to counter one, too, Minerva." She summoned the plain, black-robed dummy from the front of the Great Hall. "Time for some action; demonstrate three offensive spells for me."
Tristan dropped the shield and swept his wand up; his cutting curse severed the dummy's arm at the shoulder, a piercing hex burst through its chest, and an expulsion charm banished the legs out from underneath it.
The dummy struck the wall with a dull crunch and shattered on the stone.
"Magically resistant, my wrinkled old arse," Professor Marchbanks muttered, vanishing the broken bits with a flick of her wand and checking off another box on her clipboard. "I will give you an Outstanding right now if you promise to come to Diagon Alley with me and repeat that spell combination on the bloody vendor who sold me that damn dummy for ten galleons."
"Add impunity to it and we have a deal, Ma'am."
Professor Marchbanks cackled and perused her clipboard. "Let me see what else I need of you."
Fleur's locket flashed warm against Tristan's chest. 'Bad timing, petite Fleur.' He cupped the locket through his shirt and fed a little magic into it. 'I'll see you soon, I promise.'
"The Patronus Charm," Professor Marchbanks said. "I have witnessed you cast a corporeal patronus for your OWLs, Mr. Peverell, but I am afraid I will need to see it again to grant you any marks for your NEWTs."
'Perhaps not that bad of a timing after all, petite Fleur.' Tristan chuckled under his breath, closing his eyes and raising his wand.
Beyond closed lids, Fleur stood from the sea of spectators like a flower in coat of blue blossoming from harsh rock; her eyes shone with soft adoration, baring her whole heart as if offered in cupped palms, and that small, warm smile gracing her lips was just for him.
'So perfect.' A rush of longing ripped all the air from his lungs. 'Of course all of this is real. And so is she.'
Tristan opened his eyes.
Pale mist poured from the tip of his wand, swirling into a winged shape and swelling in size until its blinding light shone brighter than all the torches along the walls, brighter than the sun sinking towards the horizon beyond the tall windows. The raven flapped blazing wings of pure silver to the drum of his heart and took flight, soaring through the enchanted ceiling and out into the dusk.
A low murmur rippled through the Great Hall.
"Silently cast?" Professor Marchbanks gaped after the patronus, a faint frown on her wrinkled face. "I — I did not even know..."
"Was that it, Professor?" Tristan asked.
She closed her mouth and swallowed, checking off the second to last box on her clipboard. "Not quite, Mr. Peverell." With a flick of her wand, the sturdy wooden chest from the front of the Great Hall lowered itself in front of them. "For your last task, I'd like you to demonstrate the Boggart Banishing Charm."
'Face my greatest fear.' A crest of crossed golden rapiers on plain black robes loomed in Tristan's thoughts and a shiver of unease crawled down his spine, prickling like the lingering stares of his peers and the other examiners. 'I don't need everyone else to see that.'
"Are you ready, Mr. Peverell?"
"Yes." Tristan gripped his wand tight and smothered the anxiety. 'I'll just do it quickly before they have a chance to see.'
Professor Marchbanks tapped the lock of the box and the lid tipped back.
A shadow rose from within it, sweeping up into a twisting tangle of bottomless darkness; it split into two slim, tall silhouettes, still intertwined, veiled in wisps of smoke as they danced arm in arm to the distant cheers and whistles of a faceless crowd.
Tristan stared at the slimmer shape of the two and the bright white flowers woven into her braids of hair, trailing her like a halo. All the bustling in the Great Hall ground to a halt, stripped bare by dread.
'Of course it's not the Musketeers.' His heart seized at the brightness of her smile directed at another. 'It's not them I fear the most; it's what happens should they succeed, it's losing her.'
"Mr. Peverell?" Professor Marchbanks waved her arms. "Are you alright?"
'Just think of something funny.' The incantation hovered at the tip of Tristan's tongue and he clawed through the fog in his mind for some faint, distant speck of humor.
None came.
The tip of the elder wand dipped. 'There's nothing funny about this.' The taller shadow cupped the other's chin and leaned in, lips brushing, tongues tangling, and a slim flare of ink-black mist trickled from Tristan's wrist as the fear tightened to something sharp and cold and cruel, seizing his heart like a vice in iron clutches. 'It just hurts. And I'm so tired of it hurting.'
"Riddikulus," he hissed, sweeping his wand forth.
Ebony mist struck the shadows like a swarm of screaming, thrashing serpents, tearing them apart, devouring them in gaping jaws armed with thousands and thousands of razor-sharp, curved fangs.
Tristan clawed his magic back in; bits and scraps of color-shifting matter scattered into the air and drifted down onto the Great Hall's floor like settling snow.
Professor Marchbanks peeked into the open box with a frown. "As far as I could tell, you used the charm correctly, but this boggart usually just hides in its box once it's banished. Where did you send it to, Mr. Peverell?"
He forced the lingering image of the dancing shadows and all the dread down with a gulp of air and crushed it until it disappeared. "It's gone, Ma'am," Tristan said, smothering the storm of emotion in his heart back to that low, insistent murmur. 'And what it showed me will never come true. I will make sure of it.'
Professor Marchbanks scoffed. "What do you mean gone? Boggarts, like Lethifolds, Dementors, and Poltergeists can only be vanished, not destroyed."
A faint flicker passed across McGonagall's face. "Lethifolds can be destroyed too, Griselda, I saw Mr. Peverell do it last year."
Tristan cleared his throat. "Is there anything else you need from me, Professor?"
Professor Marchbanks scrutinized him with pale gray eyes, checking off the final box and scribbling something just below. "No, that was it. You're free to go. I am tempted to deduct points for destroying my training dummy and forcing me to scour the dungeons of this bloody castle for yet another boggart, but since you have made this day somewhat eventful, I shall be lenient."
"Have a good day, Ma'am." Tristan dipped his head to McGonagall. "You too, Professor."
"Mr. Peverell." She nodded tight-lipped.
Ignoring the staring and whispering behind him, he left the Great Hall and strode out into the sunset-lit courtyard, trudging through the tall grass down the slope towards the Great Lake and settling in a secluded, shaded spot by the shore.
Tristan fished the locket out from underneath his shirt and flipped the flower-adorned lid open. "Fleur Delacour," he told his reflection.
The mirror's smooth surface shifted into Aurelia's wide-eyed, curious face. "Hi, Tristan!" She flashed him a huge grin in a show of small white teeth and gave him a little wave. "Can you see me?"
Tristan chuckled. "Yeah, I can see you just fine, little lady."
"Look!" Aurelia angled the mirror down. "I changed my hair!"
He admired the two long blonde braids and the slim red rose petals woven through one of them. "It looks very pretty," Tristan murmured, ignoring the faint tug at his heart. "I take it Fleur came to visit you?"
"Yes. She'll do the other braid too, but Val's first." His sister pouted. "Here, I'll hand you back."
Aurelia vanished and Fleur appeared, a small, indulgent smile playing on her rose-pink lips. "Bonjour, mon Coeur." A soft light rose in the beautiful blue of her eyes. "Are you still busy with exams?"
Tristan swallowed a mouthful of butterflies. "You called right during my practical Defense exam." He grinned. "Aced my Patronus thanks to you."
A faint smirk fluttered across her lips. "I must have felt that you required some assistance through our special veela bond. Will you join us soon?"
"Should I book an appointment first?" Tristan quipped. "You seemed rather busy playing hairdresser for my little sisters."
"For you, mon Coeur, I will always make time." Fleur winked and blew him a kiss. "But do not make me wait too long. Je t'aime."
The mirror went cold and blank.
"I love you too, Fleur," he murmured and closed the lid shut, rising to his feet and glancing about. 'The fastest way would probably be to disillusion myself and fly to the edge of the wards again.'
Tristan contemplated it, wrestling with that little tug of temptation as he picked his way up the slope and back inside the Castle. 'But it's probably wiser to take the long route in case James or anyone else from the Ministry comes swooping again and notices I disappeared.'
Professor McGonagall swept up the bottom steps of Giant Staircase, chased by Professor Trelawney tripping over the thick scarves draped about her neck. "Minerva. Minerva, wait for me, please!"
McGonagall continued her swift stride. "I'm afraid I do not have time for this right now, Sybill; with the end of the year approaching and our headmistress occupying herself with different tasks, much of the actual running of the school falls into my lap."
Tristan leaped up the stairs two steps at a time to catch up with them. "Professor?"
McGonagall spun on her heel. "What is it, Mr. Peverell?"
"Could I use your floo, please?" he asked.
She leveled him with a sharp look, then sighed. "Fine, I was just on my way to my office anyway." She strode on.
Trelawney spluttered, thrusting a thin, accusing finger at Tristan. "Ah, so for a student you make time, but for your colleague of eighteen years–"
"Mr. Peverell won't require any of my time–," McGonagall swept up the next flight of stairs unbothered, "–if he does, he'll find himself thrown out of my office immediately."
"Message received, Ma'am." Tristan offered her a thumbs up and followed.
Trelawney gathered her many scarves in her open arms as they waited for the staircase to the next floor. "Tristan Peverell, mhm?" The pair of glasses she stared at him through magnified her eyes to thrice their size. "I often wondered why one as deeply touched by fate herself as you are never stepped into my classroom."
Tristan caught McGonagall's roll of the eyes. "Unfortunately, I didn't manage to fit Divination into my schedule after already picking Runes and Arithmancy."
Trelawney tutted and shook her head with a dramatic sigh, sending the innumerable chains and beads clinging to her neck rustling. "My dear boy, for you, of all people in this castle, my subject is of the utmost importance. Why, only last night I dreamed of this very encounter."
'Apparently, she did make a true prophecy once.' Tristan recalled Dumbledore's words as they entered the third floor. "And? Anything interesting happen in your dream?"
"It will happen as the seventh month dies." The whisper came deep, too deep for Trelawney's voice, sending all the hairs prickling at the nape of his neck.
Tristan whirled, wand slipping into his palm.
She stood there rooted to the spot, rigid as a stick, moving not a single muscle save for her eyes rolling in their sockets behind thick glasses.
"Sybill?" McGonagall wove a hand before her face. "Sybill, are you alright— "
"It will happen as the seventh month dies," Trelawney whispered in that same deep voice, staring straight through Tristan. "Both bred in bitterness, both reaped in resentment. Both grown in grief, both forged in fear. Both terrible in power, both destined to consume, both willing to sacrifice, both welcome of doom. As the seventh month dies, so does either of them at the hand of the other. A final victory, a total defeat. A burning sunset, as equals they—"
Her chin slumped onto her chest and she swayed.
"Sybill—" McGonagall caught her by the shoulder.
At her touch, Trelawney's head snapped up again. "Oh, what? I'm so sorry, Minerva, the heat of the day, you know—" she massaged her temple, "—I must've drifted off for a moment…"
"Do you remember anything you said, Professor?" Tristan urged, slipping his wand back his sleeve. "About what happens as the seventh month dies? About the burning sunset?"
She flinched. "Burning sunset?" Trelawney screwed her face up for a long moment, staring him straight in the eye, then she shook her head. "No, my dear boy, the last thing I told you is that I dreamed of our encounter, no?"
'Was that another prophecy?' Tristan glimpsed at McGonagall and caught her frown. 'She doesn't seem to think so.'
"Heat of the day indeed," McGonagall said, unfazed. "Perhaps you should visit Poppy, Sybill; let her give you a pepper-up potion or something."
"Yes, you're probably right." Trelawney blinked a few times behind her huge glasses and fidgeted with her scarves. "But do not think this will be the last you hear from me, Minerva. We shall return to our conversation once I'm in the right state of mind again." She drifted off into the opposite direction, muttering under her breath.
"What was that, Professor?" Tristan asked, staring after her.
"Something I implore you not to waste too much thought on, Mr. Peverell," McGonagall said, carrying on towards her office. "Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic. I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it." She opened the door to her office with a flick of her wand, ushered him inside and pointed at the box of floo powder on her large mahogany desk. "Help yourself to some. I expect you'll be staying the night?"
"More than likely." Tristan grabbed a handful of powder and stepped into the fireplace. "Thank you, Professor. Northdawn Manor."
Roaring green flames swallowed him whole, spitting him back out in his parents' living room; laughter and chatter rang through the open windows from the upstairs balcony.
Tristan wrenched the world past him and stepped onto the tiles.
On the large, blue-striped picnic blanket sprawled out in the warm rays of the setting sun, Aurelia leaned back against Fleur's chest, admiring her braided hair in her small hands, Valeria lay on her stomach reading a book next to them and Galahad polished the handle of his firebolt. Their parents watched on with small smiles, resting arm in arm against the marble railing of the balcony.
"Tristan!" Aurelia leaped up and darted across in a small blonde blur.
"Hey, little lady." Tristan caught her and heaved her up in his arms, spilling a handful of red rose petals from one half-done braid of golden curls. "My, you look even prettier in person."
She giggled, mashing her face into his chest and clinging to him. "I missed you."
His heart melted into a small, soft warm puddle. "I missed you, too. All of you."
"Do not spin her around too much, s'il te plaît." Fleur rose from the blanket with a soft chuckle, smoothing out the front of her short blue summer dress and drifting over. "It would ruin hours of progress, mon Coeur."
"We wouldn't want that." Tristan sat his sister back down and slipped an arm around Fleur's slim waist, drawing her into a soft, long kiss. "Bonjour, petite Fleur. You look a lot prettier in person, too."
She smiled against his lips, fingers curling into his shirt as she snuggled against him in a faint wash of sweet vanilla. "You made me wait, mon Coeur..."
"I had to take the long route." He chuckled, but some of that humor wilted at the memory of Trelawney's words. 'No. I'll tell her about that later.'
"How did your Defense NEWTs go?" Valeria asked, glancing up from her book. "Anything else they asked of you besides the Patronus?"
"A Shield Charm, some offensive spells, and a Boggart; nothing too difficult." Tristan squashed the image of those intertwined shadows back down as he felt Fleur's eyes flickering to him. "It honestly feels strange to be almost done with school; it's just my graduation left now. Speaking of which–" He turned to his parents and steered Fleur across the balcony. "Hello, Mother... Father."
"Welcome home, son," his mother murmured, offering him a small, strained smile. "If you want either of us to be at your graduation next week, then we will try to attend, but..."
"But you'd rather both stay and watch over my siblings," Tristan finished. "I know."
His father let out a deep breath. "We're sorry, Tristan, truly, but we mustn't take any risks. Not after everything that happened."
"That's fine honestly; I don't mind too much." He smothered a brief flare of satisfaction. 'It's better this way. With you absent, the Musketeers are more likely to attempt something.'
"I will be there for you of course, mon Coeur." Fleur pressed a kiss to his cheek and squeezed his hand. "And I promise to cheer extra loud to make up for it."
Tristan chuckled. "It'll probably be rather boring for you; nothing special happens during the ceremony, does it? We'll just be forced to listen to a few speeches before I receive some fancy document and be sent on my way—" he glanced at his parents, "—or was it any different for your graduation?"
They exchanged a look.
"We wouldn't know," his father admitted. "With the war going on, Dumbledore decided not to hold a public ceremony for our year back then."
"What about your real graduation?" Tristan lowered his voice. "The first time around?"
His father's eyes roamed over Tristan's shoulders to his sibling. "Not here, please. Let's talk inside; my office." His parents apparated with a soft snap.
Tristan drew Fleur in by the waist and forced the world past him, stepping out onto the polished floorboard of his father's office opposite his parents.
"To answer your question–" a brief grin quirked his father's lips as he pulled out a chair for himself and one for Tristan's mother, "–I didn't have a proper graduation the first time around either, because I didn't even attend Hogwarts during my seventh year; I had to catch up with NEWT work the summer after."
"Didn't take you for one to skip school."
"It wasn't voluntarily, but then again, none of my years at Hogwarts were ordinary."
Tristan walked along the wall and hopped onto the windowsill, hugging Fleur back against him. "Will you tell us about it?"
His father's eyes widened a fraction and flickered from Tristan's mother to Fleur and back to Tristan. "Of course… if you want me to. Are you sure?"
"It's not the world I live in so as far as I'm concerned, it's not real. This right here–" Tristan squeezed Fleur's hand and pressed a kiss into her hair, breathing in the soft, sweet fragrance clinging to her, "–this is real to me. But you're still my father; it was real to you, it made you who you are, so I'd like to know about it."
His father glanced at Fleur. "Have you told him anything of what you've learned yourself yet?"
She shook her head. "Non," Fleur murmured. "Tristan did not ask me and it was not my place to speak about it; I wanted to give you that chance first."
"Right, thank you, Fleur." His father ran a hand through his unruly hair. "Well, I should probably start at the beginning, despite you two knowing some parts of it already. Because of a prophecy that was made before I was born, Voldemort sought to kill me as a baby. My parents hid from him, but Peter Pettigrew, one of their closest friends, betrayed them. On Halloween 1981, Voldemort killed my parents, but because my mother begged him to take her life instead of mine and sacrificed herself for me, Voldemort's killing curse rebounded and struck him."
"So it was blood magic," Tristan murmured. "In its oldest form."
"I'm still not sure if she did it knowingly, and I'll probably never know, but my mother's protection would play a major role in the following years," his father said. "Dumbledore, trying to make use of her sacrifice, decided to have me raised with her muggle sister and husband–," shadows swirled through his father's cold green eyes and Tristan's mother took his hand in hers, "–since they were my last remaining blood relatives."
"You said the curse rebounded onto Voldemort," Tristan said. "Why did you still need protection at all?"
"Because Voldemort wasn't truly gone yet; he experimented with the kind of magicks that would let him survive such attacks."
Tristan felt Fleur twitch in his arms. 'Immortality.' Ekrizdis' mad cackling rang in his ears. 'Soul magic, maybe even a Horcrux.'
"Growing up with the Dursleys was... less than pleasant, especially since they didn't tell me I was a wizard or shared anything about my parents; my Hogwarts letter came as a huge surprise." A soft, warm light banished the cold shadows from those green eyes. "Hogwarts was like a dream coming true, despite the constant near-death experiences every year."
"Can't be much worse than what I've encountered there," Tristan snorted.
His parents exchanged a look and broke out into laughter.
"What's so funny?"
"In my first year, I stopped a professor possessed by Voldemort from stealing the Philosopher's Stone and resurrecting Voldemort with it," his father said. "In my second year, one of the objects Voldemort used to avoid death possessed an innocent girl and forced her to open the Chamber of Secrets. I went down there, killed Salazar Slytherin's Basilisk with a sword, and stopped the attacks."
'Objects... Voldemort must've made several Horcruxes then.' Tristan filed that piece of information away for later. "I saw the Basilisk's hide down there; it was at least sixty feet long. You're telling me twelve-year-old you slew that thing with a simple sword?"
"Yes." His father didn't so much as blink. "Although, the sword was goblin-forged and Fawkes helped me out a tad, but the rest was all me; I can show you the memory later if you want to?"
"Yeah… maybe just keep going for now."
"In my third year, I saved my godfather, the presumed mass murderer Sirius Black, from a hundred Dementors with a Patronus Charm. Everyone thought Sirius escaped Azkaban just to kill me, but he turned out to be innocent and had broken out to kill Pettigrew, the real traitor, instead." His father grinned. "In my fourth year, one of Voldemort's servants entered my name for the Triwizard Tournament."
Fleur shook with a little chuckle. "I do know this bit already."
Tristan buried his face in her soft hair. "Of course." He groaned. "And let me guess, you probably won, because why wouldn't you..."
The grin trickled off his father's face like cheap paint. "I only won because Voldemort's servant rigged the tasks in my favor. I touched the Cup first and Voldemort used my blood for his resurrection, something he came to regret later on."
"Because of your mother's protection," Fleur murmured.
"Just so." Tristan's father nodded. "In fifth year, no one believed me and Dumbledore that Voldemort had returned." He held out the back of his hand. "That was perhaps the worst year."
Words stood from his skin as if carved into the bark of a tree.
"I must not tell lies," Tristan read. "Made friends with Umbridge, too, have we?"
His father's eyes drifted along the wall, lingering on a picture of three grinning, dark-haired boys in Gryffindor uniforms. "By the end of the year, we exposed Voldemort to the public, but because of my recklessness Sirius lost his life, the only family I had left at this point." He drew a deep breath and turned back around to Tristan. "In my sixth year, Dumbledore taught me about the objects Voldemort used to avoid death and how to destroy them. Unfortunately, Dumbledore was killed by the end of the year. Voldemort took over the Ministry and the school that summer, so instead of returning for our NEWTs we tracked down his objects one by one until he was finally mortal and could be killed."
"And you killed him?" Tristan inquired, his voice dripping with disbelief. "Seventeen-year-old, muggle-raised you killed Voldemort in a magical duel?"
His father snorted. "No, I never stood the slimmest of chances against him; I survived thanks to three reasons: because the wand Voldemort used to kill me chose me as its wielder, because my mother's sacrifice still protected me to some degree, and because when he struck me with the killing curse a second time, he destroyed not my soul, but the part of himself that latched itself onto me the night he first tried to kill me as a baby."
Tristan frowned, absorbing all that. "When you say a part of him, you mean–"
"A part of his soul, yes." His father nodded, fiddling with the ring on his finger. "Our souls shared a body for so long that some of Voldemort's – let's call them positive attributes – remained behind even once his soul piece was destroyed. That is why you and your siblings speak Parseltongue."
A bubble of dry humor burst in Tristan's throat. "Wow, and here I was thinking we absorbed Parseltongue thanks to some Slytherin marrying into our family decades ago." He shook his head. "It was just a ruse all along, probably so the Blacks and Potters won't grow suspicious about their wards recognizing us family, no?"
"They are your family, Tristan," his father murmured. "They just don't know how close."
'They don't behave like family.' The grave disappointment in Sirius' solemn gray eyes and the bitter malice in James' voice loomed from the back of his mind.
"All my family is in this room." Tristan hugged Fleur tight and stared out of the window. "And right out there."
Below them on the balcony, his siblings chatted and laughed together, wearing careless smiles as bright as the summer sun kissing the horizon by the edge of the world.
"Thank you for coming home, son," his mother whispered and pressed a kiss to his cheek, blinking fast as they watched Aurelia skip and twirl and dance across the tiles, sending her blonde braids spinning. "You as well, Fleur; my daughter is always so happy when you visit."
"She reminds me a lot of my little sister, Gabrielle," Fleur whispered, leaning back against Tristan's chest with a soft sigh and cradling both his hands over her stomach. "I used to braid her hair almost every day from the day she turned three years old until I went to Beauxbatons."
A little wrinkle appeared between Tristan's mother's slim brows as she watched Fleur. "I know that look too well. Please, dear... not yet."
Fleur gazed out at the balcony. "I do not know what you mean, Marlene."
She scoffed. "I mean that look you have right now. I have seen it before plenty of times when I caught sight of myself in a mirror; a few months later I usually had a huge baby bump."
Tristan coughed. "Mother, could we not–"
"No, you two listen to me now," his mother snapped. "You are way too young to have children."
"Really?" Fleur flattened her arms over her chest and turned her pretty nose up. "And just how old were you when you had Tristan?"
She turned a little pink. "That was a very different time back then, my dear, and unlike you two–" she raised her own and her husband's hands, "–Harry and I were married long before."
Fleur shrugged and tossed her hair over shoulder, catching Tristan in the face. "Your son knows how I feel about a ring," she said. "Maybe it is him you should talk to about this."
'Put a ring on my finger, and I will wear it with pride every day of my life.' Fleur's words and the unwavering resolve in her bright blue eyes as she said them sent the heat blossoming through Tristan's cheeks and his heart fluttering like a leaf in the breeze. 'She really meant that. She wants me to propose.' His stomach shrank into a tight trembling knot.
"Well, I am very glad you and my son are serious about this and not just messing around, but I am still much too young to become a grandmother," Tristan's mother said. "Look, Fleur, just because Harry and I were a little... impatient when we were your age does not mean–"
"Excuse me, love?" His father snorted. "Harry and I?"
"Well, I remember the night very well, darling, and I do not recall you complaining during the act..."
"Urgh, Mother." Tristan groaned. "Can we please talk about literally anything else?"
His parents were locked in a long, serious look.
"You know exactly how I felt about it," Tristan's father whispered. "You knew back then too."
Guilt flickered through his mother's cool blue eyes and she took his hands in hers, raising them to her lips. "You came back to me like you promised, Harry. That is all that matters to us."
"And what if I hadn't?" he murmured.
"Hold on, came back?" Tristan asked. "What do you mean came back?"
Silence hung in the office as his father stared at the ring on his finger.
"Father?" Tristan probed again. "What exactly does she mean?"
His father swallowed hard. "I knew I might not be able to kill Voldemort without all the lucky circumstances I had before," he whispered, "-but I also knew I couldn't lose, because if I lost, Voldemort would've gone after you next." He stared into his wife's eyes and drew back his hand, pulling off his wedding ring with trembling fingers and placing it onto his open palm. "So I made sure I would always return to your mother, to protect her."
Fleur sucked in a sharp breath and went stiff as a board in Tristan's arms.
'Always return.' He stared at the slim band of gold. 'I know what that is.'
Tristan curled his fingers and tugged with a little magic, catching the ring between his forefinger and thumb; ebony mist bled from his skin like thick, dark tar, swirling about the ring in flashes of ice and seeping back into his wrist.
"There's a piece of you in here," he murmured, shivering at the faint echo of some distant, distorted scream. "It can feel it; it– it feels so familiar."
"In the months after you were born, before—" his mother's voice shook, "—before your father returned to me, his ring was the only thing that calmed you when you were really upset." She dabbled at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. "At first, I was afraid you might swallow it, but you never tried to even nibble at it, you always just clutched the ring to your heart in your tiny little fist and fell asleep soon after."
"You've never told me about that," Tristan's father murmured, brows furrowing as his eyes dipped from Tristan to the ring and back up. "Your patronus, is it still a raven?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Just wondering," he mumbled, taking the ring back and slipping it onto his fingers. "It's probably nothing."
"Right then." Tristan's mother breathed. "Now that we have cleared the air on all that—" she fixed Tristan and Fleur with a stern look, "—back to the much more important topic at hand."
"No. Not again, please." Tristan pinched the bridge of his nose.
His mother planted her hands on her hips. "Fleur, I fully respect that you do not want to take any potions, but can you at least promise me to be... careful."
"I am always careful." Fleur crossed her arms, a faint touch of pink creeping up her neck. "Besides, it takes two to make a baby."
Tristan's mother rolled her eyes. "I am well aware of that, but I doubt Tristan thinks straight the moment you take your top off, so I put my trust in you to be the responsible one."
"You know that I am standing right here?" he blurted.
She silenced him with a snap of her fingers and tapped her foot. "Fleur, I am waiting..."
"D'accord," Fleur murmured. "I will be responsible. Je te le promets."
"Good," Tristan's mother said, shooing them away. "Now go and have some fun, you two, just not too much fun, please."
Fleur's fingers closed around Tristan's wrist and he stumbled onto grating pebbles.
A gentle breeze skimmed across the surface of the lake, playing in his hair and rustling through the orchard of the apple trees, and the setting sun sparkled in the small, steady ripples lapping at the shore.
Fleur slipped out of her flats and tipped one red-painted toenail into the shallow water. "Will you join me for a swim?"
"Depends on what you're wearing," Tristan chuckled, kicking off his shoes. "Apparently, I don't think straight as soon as you take your top off, so perhaps I should stay out of deep waters."
She reached down and gathered the hem of her dress in her hands, lifting it over her head in one slow, fluent motion and tossing it at him. "Do not worry, mon Coeur." Fleur clasped one arm across her bare breasts and held his eye with a small smirk as she drifted backwards into the water, naked from her slim shoulders all the way to her smooth, fair-skinned legs save for the thin piece of dark blue lace riding on the curve of her hips. "You are in the best of hands with me."