Heaven's gates are close, but don't worry, Lucifer's arms are open.
The Nott garden glowed with the golden hush of late afternoon. Sunlight slipped through the pale birch canopy overhead, each tree quietly standing guard at the garden's edge. Strings of lanterns floated between branches, their glow shifting with the hour—pale gold softening to violet, then cooling into blue as the day exhaled into evening.
A paper banner near the entrance stirred with the breeze. Luna had painted it herself, silver ink catching the light in flickers. The letters curved in her gentle hand. Happy Birthday, Theo.
The tables were laid with intention. Crystal caught the light. Silver cutlery gleamed with hand-polished shine. Napkins fluttered at the corners when the breeze slipped by, brushing through hedges and lifting hair from foreheads damp with sun.
Children ran barefoot in the grass, chasing enchanted bubbles. Their laughter skipped through the garden like a melody someone half-remembered.
The grownups lounged in sun-warmed chairs, cheeks flushed from prosecco, fingers sticky with cake. Every now and then someone swayed to the swing music floating from the patio, half-dancing without standing.
For once, no one was waiting for the next bad thing.
It was a day stitched together from little comforts. A soft kind of joy, so ordinary it almost didn't know how to name itself. They were all just here. Eight friends. A handful of children. A garden that smelled like summer. The sky still open above them.
And for a few more moments, everything held.
Draco lounged in a garden chair like he had no plans to move unless the earth tipped over. Cassie was curled against his chest, small and soft, her tiny breaths rising and falling in the quiet space between them. She fit into his arm like she'd been born to rest there, like she'd always known the shape of him. He wasn't looking at her, though. His eyes tracked Hermione, who stood a few steps away, halfway through scolding Ginny over the ethics of magically relocating gnomes.
Hermione, hands moving sharply as if they could punctuate better than words, was mid-quote from some regulation she'd helped draft. Ginny, arms crossed, was unmoved. Her stance said she'd sooner bite the gnomes back than sit through another lecture.
"If they're nasty enough to nip at my ankles, they're lucky I'm just tossing them over the hedge," she said flatly.
A few feet off, Theo swayed where he stood, his attention split. His body was present, but something quieter had taken hold of him. Lysander was folded against his chest, his small fist clutched tightly in the fabric of Theo's shirt like he was holding onto a lifeline. The boy was half-asleep, head tucked beneath Theo's chin, their breathing tangled. Theo didn't seem aware of the slow, steady rhythm in his arms, the gentle rocking he'd fallen into. It was instinct, ancient and tender.
Just beside them, Luna sat in the grass with Seline bouncing on her lap, her cheeks sticky with tart and mischief. She babbled in a steady stream, a language all her own, mudged with blueberry and brilliance. Luna responded in the same low hum she always used, her voice soft and melodic, more feeling than words. Her gaze was dreamy, fixed on her daughter like she was the only thing worth paying attention to.
There was sunlight draped over everything, the kind that made time feel slow. The scent of crushed grass mingled with pastry sugar and something floral from the breeze. Someone nearby laughed, light and easy. The kind of laughter that only came when no one was worried about what came next.
In the shaded corner of the garden, Blaise reclined with Valerius curled up against him, fast asleep. The boy's cheek was pressed to his father's chest, his arms limp with trust. Blaise looked half-asleep himself, but his hand gave him away. It moved in slow, protective circles over his son's back, steady and reverent.
Across the lawn, Hermione sat cross-legged beside Lyra, both of them wrist-deep in magical paint that shimmered with every shift in emotion. Right now, everything was orange and bright and loud. The paper they painted on had already been claimed by chaos—swirls and handprints and something that might have been a duck if it hadn't melted in the sun.
Pansy lounged across from them, stretched like a cat in the grass. Her blouse was open enough to scandalize a few gnomes, marked by a red toddler handprint and a matching one of her own. She spoke with a glint in her eye and absolutely no shame.
"I'm just saying," she told one of the twins, handing over a paintbrush dripping with green, "if you're going to shag someone in the Astronomy Tower during a lightning storm, don't scream like you're performing at the Opera House. Echoes, my darling. People gossip."
Hermione blinked, halfway between horror and hilarity. "Please tell me that wasn't you."
Pansy pressed a hand to her chest. "Do I look like someone who climbs that many stairs for mediocre orgasms? Absolutely not. If there isn't a portkey or a driver involved, I'm out."
Neville, kneeling nearby with a pot of paint and a rapidly ruined shirt, gave her a long look. "Why do I feel like I'm going to get hexed just for hearing that?"
"Because you are," Pansy replied sweetly, her smile edged with mischief. "Eventually. Probably when you're half-naked and distracted. Also, you snore."
"I do not."
"You do."
The twins were unimpressed by all of it. Lyra began decorating Hermione's arm with orange streaks, her little mouth set in concentration, while Sia smeared blue down Pansy's knee without hesitation.
The gossip unraveled like ribbons, tangled in laughter and the occasional scandal. They passed stories back and forth with easy wickedness—exes, half-truths, one unforgettable tale involving a cursed corset that Hermione insisted had to be exaggerated.
The toddlers were sticky with tart and paint, shrieking in their own little world while the women kept talking, sun-warmed and unbothered, paint-smudged and halfway through their second round of prosecco.
For a breath of time, they weren't witches who had stood in rubble, weren't survivors or soldiers or mothers carrying the weight of old wars. They were just themselves. They were women, laughing too loudly, telling stories they shouldn't, drowning in too much dessert and not enough guilt.
It should have been perfect.
The whole family was here. Somehow, impossibly, they'd all made it. It felt like a spell. Like the universe had finally softened and let them have something for once.
Then the wind turned.
Only—it wasn't wind. It didn't brush past or whisper through the hedges. It hit. Thick and strange. It came all at once, a pressure that didn't belong. The garden went quiet. Not just quiet—still.
Utterly still.
The trees froze. The lanterns flickered in a strange, broken rhythm. Something had entered the space, though no one had seen it. They felt it. Something wrong had stepped into the clearing, and the world shrank back to make room.
Birds stopped mid-song. Shadows lengthened in directions they hadn't before. A fork hit a plate across the lawn with a clatter that cracked through the silence like a gunshot.
Everyone stopped moving. No one knew why yet.
But they would.
Draco's head turned fast. Too fast. His whole body shifted in a single breath, and all the warmth fell away like someone had pulled a thread loose in the center of him.
Blaise looked up next, still holding Valerius close, but his eyes were different now—flat, focused, something ancient behind them blinking awake.
Theo went still, unnaturally so, like a statue remembering how to breathe. His eyes narrowed, his fingers flexed, and some deep, muscle memory of danger began to rise through his chest like smoke through floorboards.
Hermione stood slowly. She didn't think, just moved. Her fingers found Lyra's curls and brushed them once, then closed tightly around her wand.
Her shoulders tensed. Her breath caught in her throat. She turned and scanned the garden. Her voice followed, low and deliberate, cutting straight through what was left of the quiet like shattered glass.
"Where are the children?"
The question hung there. No one answered.
And then the silence got worse.
A waiting stillness.
Then it started.
Something shifted at the edge of the lawn. Small at first. Almost nothing. Almost.
One moment the garden was a sanctuary of golden light, and the next, it was being consumed by figures emerging from the very air itself.
Disillusionment Charms peeled away like dead skin falling from a corpse. What stood there bore no resemblance to the gold-trimmed authority of the Ministry or any recognizable force of law.
These figures were wrong, shaped by a malice that felt ancient and cold. Their robes hung like heavy smoke, cut from a fabric that seemed to swallow the light, threadbare at the hems and stained with the residue of old, quiet violence.
The masks were the worst part. They were bone-white and blank, devoid of any decorative flair or personal touch. There were no mouths. There were no expressions. Only the eyeholes existed, wide and perfectly round and utterly black.
Eight figures became ten. Ten became a dozen.
They appeared like phantoms in a coordinated nightmare, their arms raised and wands drawn. There was only a silence that felt rehearsed, professional, and terrifyingly sure of itself.
The attack hit with the force of a landslide.
There was no time to scream or speak. The event was an extraction, a kidnapping executed with military precision and monstrous speed. It bore no weight of a duel.
Spells cracked like thunder across the manicured lawn, green light slicing through the peonies and red bolts ricocheting off the stone patio. Wards exploded in the air with the muffled sound of glass shattering deep underwater.
Theo felt his arms torn open before his mind could even process the movement. Lysander was ripped from his chest like a limb being severed from his body.
The boy kicked and sobbed, his small hands grasping at the air as he was hauled away.
Theo lunged forward blindly, a roar erupting from his throat that sounded nothing like a human voice. It was a sound of pure, skin-tearing panic, the kind of noise that only exists when a child is taken and the world offers no way to stop it.
Hermione was a blur of motion, her hair wild and her wand flashing as she fired hexes into the encroaching dark.
Tears streaked her face while she fought to reach Lyra. The girl was being dragged away by gloved hands, her mouth open in a silent terror that seemed to have stolen her voice.
Draco twisted at the same time, throwing his entire body over Cassie to shield her. He fired curses over his shoulder while the girl clung to his shirt with white-knuckled fists, her sobs muffled against his chest as he tried to become a wall between her and the void.
Blaise's voice was low and furious, a cracked sound as he tried to protect Valerius. He shielded the boy with every inch of his frame, but the attackers came from the blind spots. A silent curse hit him in the small of his back, dropping him to his knees. He gasped for air, reaching out with trembling fingers even as Valerius was snatched from his grasp.
Neville and Pansy were swept into the chaos further down the line.
Neville fought with a grim, stoic desperation, trying to keep a barrier between the attackers and Seraphina.
Pansy was screaming, her usual composure shattered into a million jagged pieces as she reached for her daughter. The attackers moved around them like water around stones, relentless and impossible to grip.
Luna's scream was high and thin as she threw herself over Seline. She conjured a shield so dense it caused the stone beneath them to crack, but the numbers were too great. The shadows simply bypassed the strength and found the gaps. Ginny shouted for Lyra, her fingers inches away from the girl's arm, but the space between them widened as if the garden itself were stretching.
The light vanished all at once. It felt as though someone had reached up and torn the sun out of the sky. The warmth of the afternoon died instantly, replaced by a cold, heavy blackness.
In that final moment, right before the world fell away, the last thing Theo felt was the vibration of the air. The last thing he heard, searing itself into the inside of his skull, was Lysander's voice. It was shrill and broken, calling for him one last time.
After that, there was only the dark.
There was only the silence.
There was only the knowledge that something had finally found them, and it had taken everything they loved.
~~~~~~
The first thing Luna felt was the noise.
It was too sharp and deep inside her head. High and thin and constant, it sliced through the world without warning, like a wire drawn tight across bone.
Her body ached from it, even as she lay still.
For a long moment, she couldn't tell if it was real or imagined. Maybe it had come from the spell that dropped her. Maybe it was part of the aftermath. Or maybe it was just what happened when the world broke open and left you behind.
Whatever it was, it swallowed everything else. Thought disappeared first, then memory, then time itself. There was no past. No present. Just the unbearable hum and the hollow stillness that came with it.
She didn't remember falling. She didn't know where her arms were or why her chest hurt. She only knew something had gone terribly wrong. That deep-down, crawling feeling had settled in her bones, the one that came just before pain or panic, the one that always came when something precious had been taken.
Her eyes refused to open. Her body wouldn't move. But somewhere inside the ringing, behind the flood of white noise, she knew with perfect, terrifying clarity that something was missing.
Her head felt impossibly heavy, like it had been packed with stones, with pressure, with something dark and swelling that didn't belong.
Every throb was a pounding, each pulse of blood a fresh bloom of pain behind her eyes, in her jaw, down the side of her neck where her shoulder had struck the ground. The sensation of her own body was distorted and slow, like she'd been dropped into herself from a great height and hadn't quite landed yet.
Everything ached—her ribs, her spine, her fingers curled somewhere in the dark, but it wasn't just pain. It was bruised. Ravaged.
She couldn't tell if it had been seconds or hours since the attack—only that her limbs weren't moving, and her mind was too slow to tell them to try.
And then underneath the scream that wasn't a scream, beneath the iron-band ringing that wrapped her skull like a vice, she heard it.
A Small ragged familiar cry.
Seline.
The baby's voice cracked through the static like the thinnest line of light cutting across a blackout curtain, fragile, warbling, rising into the air like a terrified songbird who didn't know where the sky had gone.
It was close. Too close. Right beside her. Luna knew that, felt it deep in her bones, in the shift of the air, in the tiny hiccuped sobs breaking in that particular rhythm only a mother could know. But her eyes refused to open. Every muscle around them was swollen, tight, wrong.
She tried to lift her lashes, to peel them apart and see something, but her skull screamed in protest, pain cascading through her like an avalanche, forcing her down, pinning her in place like she was caught beneath rubble.
She tried to move her hand, to reach blindly toward the sound, to find Seline in the dark, to make some kind of contact, but even that felt impossible—like she was trapped in her own skin, locked inside a body that refused to obey, while just inches away, her daughter cried and she could do nothing. Just lie there in the dark, in the aftermath, in the buzzing, nauseating aftermath of magic too dark to name.
Somewhere inside her, a scream tried to rise, but it never reached her throat.
Then darkness came again.
°°°
Ginny could feel the tears as they traced slow, uneven paths down her cheeks, the kind that burned, that slipped silently down skin too numb to flinch, that carved through the grime and ash and dried blood like they were trying to make sense of a face that no longer belonged to her. She didn't even remember when they'd started.
Maybe it was when the screaming stopped. Maybe it was when she woke up in the dark and realized there were no children crying anymore. Maybe it was now, here, this awful, cavernous now, sitting in a cold stone room with the metallic taste of fear thick on her tongue and the sound of dripping water echoing somewhere far above, as though the world itself had become a tomb and they were the ones buried inside it.
They had been arranged or maybe placed, into a circle, bodies pulled into position with precision and cruelty. The men had been shackled to their chairs, iron cuffs biting into wrists and ankles, heads slumped or tilted back, eyes wide and unseeing or clenched against the pain, blood crusting in delicate lines along their temples and jaws.
Draco's lip was split. Theo's fingers were twitching, as though they were still searching for the weight of Lysander in the air.
Blaise was silent, unmoving, dangerous even in stillness, had his head bowed, the muscle in his jaw twitching every time a scream echoed from down the corridor.
Hermione and Luna had not been given chairs. They'd been thrown, tossed like trash, onto the stone floor next to the corner, their limbs tangled, their bodies curled inward in instinctive attempts to protect their ribs, their faces, anything left unbroken.
Hermione's blouse was soaked in blood that wasn't all hers, and her wand arm hung at an angle Ginny didn't want to look at too long.
Luna lay beside her, eyes half-lidded, a smear of dirt across her forehead, her pale hair matted and wild like a halo of ruin. They weren't moving much. Just breathing. Barely.
Ginny had tried to move toward them once but someone had slammed her back down with the butt of a wand and told her if she did it again, they'd take another finger off one of the children. She hadn't moved since.
Beside her was a presence.
Pansy.
She was sitting, upright, unmoved, her back straight, her hands resting in her lap like she was waiting for tea. Her face was smeared with blood too, one eye already purpling, a cut tracing her jawline like a stroke of red ink, but none of it seemed to touch her.
Her expression was fixed, unreadable, but her eyes were alight with something terrifying. Readiness.
As though she had been waiting for this exact moment her entire life. As though she had written it into prophecy and carved it into stone and memorized the lines.
Ginny stared at her, throat burning, body shaking, and wanted to ask her how she was doing it—how she was holding herself together when everything had come apart at the seams.
But Pansy didn't turn to her. Didn't blink. Just sat there like a cursed queen on a crumbling throne, watching the door, waiting.
And still, the tears slipped down Ginny's cheeks. Because she couldn't stop them. Because there was no one left to protect. Because all she could think was please let them live. Over and over again. Like a prayer. Like a curse.
And somewhere deep inside, something began to splinter.
°°°
The door groaned open with a sound that scraped across their nerves like rusted metal, too loud in the silence, too final—and two of them stepped inside, those masked figures, faceless and mouthless and cloaked in that same silent shadow that had first swallowed the garden.
They moved with the slow, deliberate confidence of men who had done this before, who enjoyed doing this, and without speaking a single word, they crossed the cold stone floor toward where Hermione and Luna lay crumpled and broken.
The moment their boots stopped beside the women's bodies, something shifted in the room, a ripple of tension so thick it felt like the air had become water.
One of the captors bent low, gloved hand outstretched, and as his fingers closed around Luna's arm, rough, possessive, unthinking and immediately Theo moved.
He exploded, surging against the iron restraints of his chair like a man possessed, his body lurching forward with such violent desperation that the wooden legs of his chair scraped against the stone floor, the sound sharp and awful as he let out a muffled scream torn from the deepest pit of his chest.
His mouth couldn't form words through whatever they had stuffed between his teeth, but it didn't matter; the emotion behind it was clear, reverberating off the stone walls like a spell gone wrong. But still, he fought, still, he dared.
And for that, they punished him.
Without warning, without even a flicker of hesitation, the man nearest him turned and drove a short, wickedly curved blade deep into Theo's thigh.
The steel sank in with a sickening, wet crunch, and Theo's scream turned shrill behind the gag, his back arching, body convulsing as blood poured freely down the leg of his trousers and pooled beneath the chair.
His hands clenched into fists so tight the knuckles went white, wrists twisting against the manacles until the skin split open but he didn't stop thrashing. He couldn't stop looking at Luna.
Draco moved next. The second captor had crept behind him in the chaos, taking advantage of the distraction, and with the cold precision of a butcher, pressed a long, gleaming blade to the pale column of his throat.
For one terrifying moment, the room held its breath and then the blade slid forward, not deep, but enough to split the skin, to let a line of crimson bead and drip down the front of his collar.
Draco didn't move, but his hands twitched with restrained fury, and his eyes, burning silver, locked onto the attacker's mask with a look so lethal it could have ignited stone.
Just knives and blood and screams caught in throats.
And still—no one spoke.
Because silence, here, was the weapon they wielded best.
One of the masked captors spoke with a cold, sneering clarity that cut through the silence like a poisoned knife.
"Be grateful," he said, the words curling in the air like rot, deliberate and cruel, "that we don't like pregnant whores."
The sentence hung in the air, heavy and obscene, landing like a body dropped from a great height, shattering whatever brittle spell of hope had remained suspended between them all.
Pregnant.
The word echoed through the room like a detonation.
Pregnant.
Luna. Hermione.
Two syllables. Four lives. Four pulses.
Draco made a sound that was inhuman, guttural, broken, wrenched from some place deep in his chest that no one had ever heard before. It wasn't a shout, and it wasn't a scream.
It was raw and cracked and full of horror so vast it had no shape, a sound dragged through a throat stuffed with cloth and blood, muffled into a choked gasp that still rang louder than any scream could have.
He rocked forward in his chair, the chains pulling taut against his limbs, and he made that noise again, lower this time, like his soul was fracturing inside his ribcage and he couldn't stop it.
Pansy, who had sat still through beatings and blood and silence, who had kept her back straight and her expression carved from stone—broke.
Her sob erupted into the room like a gunshot. Shaking, sudden, no warning. Her shoulders crumpled inward and the first tear fell with such violence it left a line through the dirt on her cheek.
She tried to hold it in, tried to bury her face in her hands, but the sound kept escaping. It was harsh, cracked sobs that echoed off the stone walls, too loud, too real. Only grief and terror and the unbearable weight of what had just been said.
Because now they all knew. Now it was real. Now, in the twisted mouths of monsters, in the sneer of a captor who said "whore" like a curse, the truth had taken shape and turned sharp.
Luna was pregnant. Hermione was pregnant. And the captors knew.
And that unbearable fact loomed over them heavier than magic, than shackles, than blood on the floor. It wrapped around their throats and squeezed.
Theo went still, so still he could've been stone. His eyes never left the place where Luna had been dragged, and something in him visibly snapped, subtle but permanent, like a bone too badly set to heal right again.
°°°
Blaise sat there like the predator he truly was, posture loose and deceptively relaxed, his back against the cold iron of the chair as though he hadn't just been shackled, as though he weren't drenched in blood that wasn't entirely his.
His breathing was slow, measured. He was calculating the exact weight of it, parsing out every ounce of rage and turning it into math. Into precision. Into a kill plan.
His eyes scanned the room, flicking between targets, not men, just problems. Obstacles.
Human puzzles made of bone and weakness and too many blind spots. One of them was armed with a wand but held it like a bludgeon. Idiot.
The other was stronger but slower, left shoulder lower, favoring a leg. That one wouldn't last three full seconds if
Blaise got his hands around his throat. The knife in Theo's thigh was angled downward. Deep enough to bleed, not deep enough to kill. He noted the hilt's design.
He remembered the weight of a similar blade in his own hand years ago. Seized assets from the Alps campaign. French steel. Decorative. Fragile.
If he moved, they'd die. That was fact.
Ginny first, because she was too loud when she cried. Pansy next, because they always took the strong ones.
Theo? Bleeding. Unstable. One more knife and he'd pass out, which would ruin the rhythm.
His mouth would betray the things his mind wanted to do. He would say too much. He would promise horrors. He would make them real. And then he'd die before he got to carry them out. That was unacceptable. So his silence became a weapon—razor-sharp, patient. A chamber with the bullet still waiting.
But if he died now, that might actually be the best possible outcome.
Because if he died now, he wouldn't have to keep pretending to be calm. He wouldn't have to keep pretending to breathe evenly while they touched his son. He wouldn't have to watch Ginny shake or Pansy weep or Draco bleed or Neville break.
If he died now, there would be nothing left to hold him back the next time he woke up.
Blaise did not believe in heaven. He believed in returning. In vengeance. In leaving pieces of himself in the hearts of men and then tearing them out when they least expected it.
He believed in balance, but his kind of balance came in the shape of graves and pyres and empty rooms soaked in red.
So he sat there. Still. Quiet.
And behind his eyes, the plan built itself.
Brick by brick. Bone by bone.
And when the time came, there would be nothing left but fire.
°°°
The door groaned open again, that same slow, deliberate drag of rusted iron on stone that had become a kind of harbinger, an announcement not of company, but cruelty.
The sound alone was enough to silence the already-ruined room, a noise that made every muscle lock, every breath still, as if the air itself held warning.
And then they saw her.
Seraphina.
She was in someone's arms. Carried like she weighed nothing, like she was just a bundle of limbs and curls, a thing to be transported.
The man who held her stepped into the light with the quiet arrogance of someone who had never been stopped before. One hand held her easily. The other stroked slowly over her curls, casual and possessive, like he was soothing a pet.
She was awake. Her cheek was pressed to his shoulder, sticky with dried sweat. Her tiny fingers curled loosely in the fabric of his cloak, just… holding. That instinct babies had, even when their minds didn't know what to do with fear.
Pansy's scream cracked the silence apart. Not a scream of anger, not even grief at first, but something more primal. A sound torn from bone. She surged against the chains so violently her knees slammed the floor. Her wrists twisted, metal biting skin, but she didn't stop. Her voice broke apart syllable by syllable. "Sia—Sia, please—no—give her—"
Neville's body shifted.
He hadn't moved in hours. Blood loss had drained the colour from his skin, his head hung low like he'd given in to whatever slow death they had planned. But the moment that man touched his daughter, something ancient stirred behind his eyes.
He lifted his head. The muscles in his neck strained as he pulled himself upright, spine rolling one vertebra at a time. His hands were still bound. His legs weak. But the energy that flooded his body wasn't survival. It was wrath.
He looked at the man and saw only a target.
"You touch her again," Neville said, his voice low, ragged, like gravel dragged across steel, "and I will fucking kill you."
The captor didn't react. He didn't speak. He only turned his masked face toward Pansy and ran his gloved hand through Sia's curls again, slower this time. Possessive. Mocking.
Seraphina stirred. Her lips parted, her little brows knit together. "Mamma…" she whispered, breathy, confused.
Neville lunged forward.
His chains held. They scraped across the floor, iron screaming as his whole weight pulled against them. His wrists bled. His shoulders cracked under the pressure. He didn't care.
"I said—give her back—don't touch her—" he roared, and this wasn't a father pleading anymore. It was a threat.
But the man holding Seraphina didn't stop. He turned and began to walk away. Slowly. Purposefully. As if daring someone to try.
And then she was gone.
And in her place, only Pansy's screams remained, louder than ever, broken into sobs, curses, pleas while Neville sat trembling beside her, staring at the door like if he blinked, the last part of him might disappear with it.
The silence after Seraphina was taken felt like a wound left open in the room, a sucking, gasping thing that had no shape but took up all the space anyway.
Pansy had quieted only because her body had begun to fail her, throat raw, arms slack, head bowed low and trembling, blood pooling beneath her where her wrists had rubbed themselves raw in the shackles. Neville hadn't moved since, frozen in his chair with the kind of stillness that didn't look like grief anymore, it looked like rage buried too deep to reach.
They all sat in it. Drenched in it.
Until the door creaked open again.
°°°
And something in the rhythm of the footsteps that followed made every hair on Blaise's arms stand up. It was wrong. Too soft. Too slow. Not the weight of a man.
And then they saw Valerius.
Small yet serious. Beautiful in that eerily still way children sometimes are before they learn what fear really means. He stood in the doorway with wide, dark eyes, his tiny arms wrapped tightly around something heavier than himself.
Seline.
The room inhaled all at once.
She was half-slumped in his grasp, not unconscious, but dazed—her tiny body sagging against his chest as if she didn't understand the rules of gravity anymore.
Her little legs dragged limply along the floor as he took a few determined steps into the room. She couldn't have weighed much more than a broomstick, but he was just three years old, and the strain of carrying her showed in the tremble of his limbs.
Still he didn't stop. His face was tight with concentration, lips pressed together like he'd been told not to speak and was trying very, very hard to obey.
And behind him, looming like a shadow, a captor followed.
Hands off. Watching.
It hadn't been his idea to bring them this way. They'd made Valerius carry her.
Blaise's entire body went still. Like a bomb in the space between ticks. His eyes locked on his son, his jaw clenched so tight the cords in his neck bulged visibly, and for a single, breathless second, the entire room felt the sharp, horrible crack of something ancient and cruel rising in him.
Ginny let out a sound halfway between a sob and a whisper, barely able to say his name. "Val...—"
Valerius paused. Turned his head slightly toward the voice. His eyes found her and his lip wobbled. "Mummy," he said, like a question. Then again, more confident. "Mummy."
That was when Seline stirred.
A soft noise escaped her lips, something almost like a giggle, hollow and unanchored, the kind that only came from children too young to understand danger. "Dadda," she murmured, her head lifting slightly, eyes glazed but open. "I found you."
Theo's entire body convulsed.
He thrashed against the chair, mouth gagged, breath wild, but it didn't matter, he was screaming. Screaming.
It didn't need sound. It was in his eyes. In the way he threw his body against the restraints, again and again, until the wood beneath him cracked and the veins in his arms stood out like iron bands.
Seline. His daughter. In the arms of someone else's child. His little girl, held like a doll, eyes dull, mouth sticky with dried tears.
The captor reached out then, just a fingertip—just enough to stroke Valerius's curls as if to say, you did well, and it was that precise movement, that touch, that nearly killed Blaise.
He lunged.
The chair rocked under the force, shackles digging into his skin as he threw every ounce of strength into getting just one inch closer. But it was no use. His legs were bound. His arms were locked down. And the only thing he could do was watch as his son, sweet Valerius with a torn shirt and dirt-smudged cheeks, stood in the center of the room holding someone else's child like a lamb for slaughter.
And then, the captor behind them finally spoke.
"You should be proud," he said, voice low, amused. "The boy does what he's told."
And with that, he bent low and plucked Seline from Valerius's arms and turned toward the door once again, cradling her as if she were nothing more than a parcel to be shelved.
Valerius watched him go, blinking. He didn't cry, he was a brave boy. But his hands remained lifted long after she was gone, like he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to still be holding her.
And then he was led out too.
The door closed.
And Theo let out a sound that broke the spine of the silence.
°°°
The door opened again.
No build-up this time. Just the sudden, soundless swing of iron hinges and the cold rush of air that followed. But the silence that met the opening, that was worse than anything that had come before it. Because silence, in this place, didn't mean relief. It meant another name on the list. Another blade, hidden in softness.
Two captors stepped inside, each carrying a small bundle wrapped in pale blankets the color of cream turned grey by grime. Two babies. Tiny. Barely more than breath and softness.
Cassiopeia and Lyra.
The girls were quiet at first—startled, blinking against the change in light, heads lolling against their captors' shoulders with that baby-bewildered look that only came from being moved too many times, by hands that didn't know how to hold gently. Their tiny fingers twitched, reaching for nothing, grasping at air. They weren't crying yet. They were in that fragile, suspended state between confusion and full collapse.
And when Draco saw them, he broke.
He just… collapsed inward.
His body jerked, once, like he'd been punched in the gut.
His hands curled so tight around the arms of the chair that his knuckles went white, the chains digging deeper into already-bruised wrists.
His jaw clenched, hard enough that blood from his lip slid down over his chin, and his entire frame began to shake with the unbearable effort of not throwing himself at the captors who dared to hold his daughters like sacks of flour.
His eyes locked onto them with an intensity that scorched, and if his mouth hadn't been stuffed with cloth and blood, he would've been screaming.
The captors didn't stop.
They walked to the center of the room and lowered the girls to the cold floor—just like that.
Cassie gave a small, high-pitched cry as her tiny body hit the stone, more startled than hurt, and her arms flailed wildly, reaching for comfort that wasn't there. Lyra rolled halfway onto her side and began to wail, aching baby-cry that filled the room like sirens, cutting through every ounce of numbness.
Ginny started crying. She didn't even realize it at first. The sound of babies crying in a room full of blood and chains and grown men silenced into horror—it was too much. It scraped through her. It gutted her.
Draco shook his head over and over, mouthing their names behind the gag, eyes begging, lips trembling, his whole body bowed like something had been ripped out of him. He looked like he was trying to die with them right there. Just to shield them with his body even if it meant he never got back up.
And still, the captors said nothing.
One of them knelt, reached out with two gloved fingers and traced the edge of Lyra's jaw, watching her scream. Then turned, slowly, to stare directly into Draco's eyes.
It wasn't just cruelty.
Wanted to see you break.
And Draco did. He sagged in the chair, spine folding, eyes leaking now freely as he bowed his head, not in defeat, but in agony too large to contain.
The babies cried louder.
No one moved.
And the door closed again.
°°°
The door opened one final time.
Just silence splitting down the center, like the world had held its breath for too long and something had finally given out.
And then they came.
Two captors stepped forward, but there was no ceremony now. Just one brutal, raw offering.
They carried a boy between them.
Bloody.
His limbs dangled limp between their gloved hands, feet dragging behind him, head lolling to the side at an angle that was all wrong.
His curls, those soft, pale curls that had once bounced as he toddled across the grass—were matted thick with blood, dried and fresh, and his face was streaked with it, the delicate skin around his closed eyes blackened and bruised.
He wasn't breathing.
They didn't even lower him. They just tossed him.
Lysander hit the floor like a discarded doll, a sickening, wet thud echoing across the room as his small body sprawled in a heap of bones and silence, motionless, sightless, lifeless.
For a second the room didn't move.
And then Pansy and Theo screamed.
Sound that came from someplace so deep it wasn't human anymore. The kind of scream that rips through the throat and leaves blood behind. A scream with teeth, with claws. A scream that cracked the walls of the world.
Theo lunged forward first, the gag torn from his mouth by nothing but force, raw magic pouring out of him in a wave that lit the air with sparks.
His body convulsed with it, his wrists glowing where the shackles had been, breaking off, flying backward, turned to molten metal in an instant. His magic had never been that wild. Never that brutal. And it no longer answered to rules. It answered only to grief.
Pansy followed with him, in sync, as if their rage had found the same pulse. Her scream was higher, laced with fury and heartbreak, and as she pushed forward, her chains disintegrated, turning to ash in the air.
Her eyes were wild, glassy, her hands already sparking with raw, pink light that crackled like fire made of fury. She didn't care who was in her way. She didn't even see the captors anymore. She saw red.
And then—
Everything exploded.
The room shook. The stone beneath them cracked, the torches flickered violently, and from somewhere high above, dust rained down like ash from a volcano.
All the shackles fell.
Ginny gasped as her bindings slipped away in a single instant, the metal clattering to the ground like coins dropped on a tombstone.
Blaise was on his feet before his chair even stopped tipping over.
Draco staggered forward, blood pouring from his wrists, magic snapping around him like a thunderstorm as the gag fell away and he roared so loud it cracked the air.
Six parents who had just witnessed something unforgivable.
And magic crackled through the room like lightning hungry for flesh.
Ginny's hands were already ablaze, her hair snapping like fire as she raised her wand with a scream that didn't need words.
Draco's magic spilled from his mouth in a guttural growl, lashes of power whipping around him like a living storm.
Blaise didn't speak, he just raised his hand and shattered the nearest captor's mask with a blink, bones breaking from the inside out.
Pansy was on the floor beside Lysander, sobbing and shrieking, and Theo—
Theo touched his son's body with both hands, shaking, whispering, trying, even though he knew.
And then he stood.
And the magic pouring off of him made the walls bleed.
Through the chaos, through the blood and the fire and the sound of magic screaming against stone, Neville moved.
Neville rose like something ancient, like a mountain pulled from the earth by grief, slow and steady and final. His breath came in short, ragged gasps.
His body ached from days of captivity. But when Lysander's body hit the floor and the screams shattered the room into pieces, something inside Neville, something old and buried and trembling with fury, woke up.
He just opened his mouth and murmured.
Wordless. Low. Deadly.
And the magic answered.
His voice was barely audible, no real language, just the shape of murder forming behind clenched teeth.
The syllables came out in a hiss, soft and guttural, more breath than speech, and yet the effect was instant. The air around him turned cold, sharp and suffocating, like a storm had been summoned through him.
Shadow figures moved in the corner of the room, stepping forward to respond to the magical quake but they never reached them.
Neville lifted his hand and murmured again.
Two of them fell, dropped, actually, spines twisted mid-step, hearts stilled mid-beat, their limbs folding beneath them like puppets with cut strings. Their masks didn't even shatter. They just stopped living. And still Neville whispered, the words never fully forming, dark energy curling from his lips like smoke from a fire that had no source.
And then he turned to Pansy.
She was on her knees beside Lysander, shaking, sobbing, her hands trembling as she tried to close the boy's eyes, even though they would not close, even though his skin was already cooling.
And Neville reached for her with a reverence so gentle it didn't belong in a place like this. He touched her hands.
And something passed between them.
Pansy's hands stopped trembling. Neville's eyes widened. And in the breath they shared, something ignited. The pain between them created a current of magic that pulsed like a heartbeat. And that was all it took.
The nearest captor stepped forward.
Neville didn't even look at him. He just breathed in and exhaled murder.
Ginny moved first.
Draco was on her heels in an instant, blood-streaked, shirt torn, eyes wild and silver and feral. He didn't speak. He didn't shout. He didn't need to. He was done waiting.
Blaise followed like a storm given form, long strides silent, his face expressionless, perfectly calm, too calm and that was what made it terrifying. The three of them didn't run like victims or even survivors.
They ran like executioners.
The corridor lit around them, torches flaring and gutters of flame racing along the floor as Ginny passed, her magic dripping from her in unstable bursts of raw power. They didn't dodge spells, they devoured them.
The first guard that stepped into their path was incinerated before he finished raising his wand, Ginny's curse hitting him so hard it blew the wall apart behind him.
Draco spun past the rubble, wand in one hand, the other lifted with a silent, wandless hex that shattered bone in mid-air. Someone screamed. Someone else ran. Blaise didn't give them the chance.
He just moved—fast, surgical, and with a kind of cold beauty that made it hard to tell when the killing began and when it stopped. One by one, they fell. Shadows. Monsters. Men. Anyone foolish enough to stand between them and the children.
The stone corridors turned red behind them.
And still—they ran.
Every turn was a graveyard. Every door opened into blood.
Until they found it.
The last door at the end of the hall. Reinforced. Closed. Whispering with wards that stank of containment magic. You could feel the energy pulsing through it—protection. The moment Draco reached it, he didn't hesitate, he just kicked.
The door exploded. Not metaphorically, actually. The wards shattered with a scream, the wood splintering inward with a blast of force so violent it sent shards of stone flying back down the corridor.
And what they saw inside stopped them cold.
There, huddled together, were the children.
Bloodied. Shaking. Alive.
And behind them—bruised, broken, but breathing—
Luna and Hermione.
Both bound. Both bleeding. But both here.
Ginny let out a sound that wasn't a sob and wasn't a scream, it was both, and she sprinted toward Valerius like the world had gone colorless without him.
Draco dropped to his knees in front of his girls, touching their faces with trembling hands, his mouth moving around their names like a prayer.
Blaise turned.
Stepped into the room.
"Who was watching them?"
Because someone had been.
And they weren't going to die clean.
There was a sound.
A flush. Then footsteps.
And from the far corner of the holding room, through a narrow doorway too small to matter in most prisons, he appeared.
One of them. The last one.
The sick fuck. Rolling his sleeves back down. Whistling as he stepped out from what passed as a loo, wiping his damp hands on his robes like this was any other day, like he hadn't been part of the nightmare, like he hadn't touched the children, like he hadn't watched them weep and walked away whole.
Draco just killed him, fast, bloody and final.
In the space between heartbeats, he crossed the room and snapped the man's neck with a vicious, practiced twist. Just raw, perfect violence, the kind that doesn't waste time on speeches. The captor dropped without ceremony, the sound of his body hitting the floor muffled by the thrum of gathering magic.
Draco turned to face them, breathing hard, blood in his teeth, in his hair, his shirt torn open at the collar, and for the first time since Lysander hit the floor—he looked calm.
"We go now," he said.
And they did.
The air filled with the sharp, hot crack of Apparition as they moved fast, fast, fast—Ginny grabbing up three children at once, cradling Valerius with one arm, and Lyra with the other, pressing them to her body as tightly as she could without hurting them, muttering their names under her breath like a shield. They disappeared in a blur of wind and light.
Draco turned to Pansy and Theo—both soaked in blood, both empty and shaking. He gripped them both by the arms, one hand on each, and with a force that split the air, tore them out of that hell and into the night.
Blaise was the last to leave.
He knelt before the remaining children, Cassiopeia, Seraphina, the other twin—touching each forehead briefly, checking for injuries not with fear but precision. Then, with practiced ease, he lifted them into his arms, three little bodies held close against his chest, and vanished without a sound.
Their hell fell quiet.
The room where Lysander had died lay still.
But in the garden of the Nott estate, a storm of survivors began to land one crack at a time, bleeding, shaking, but alive.
While the garden began to fill with the crack of Apparition, while children clung to parents, while sobs and shouts filled the air and Luna's name was cried out in waves, Neville turned his back to it all. And he returned where grief was calling him.
°°°
The prison was still, nearly silent now except for the slow creak of the broken door swaying on its hinge and the distant drip of blood still drying into the stones. The scent of it clung to everything—iron and sweat and death. But none of that mattered.
Lysander still lay there.
Small. Still. Left behind.
Neville found him exactly as they had last seen him—his body folded where it had landed, curls matted with blood, mouth slightly parted like he might still be trying to form a word.
And for a moment, Neville just stood there in the doorway, unmoving, staring down at the child who had once crawled into his lap with an armful of dragonfruit and demanded to know whether gillyweed could grow in the sky.
His godson. His brilliant, brilliant boy.
Neville's legs gave out before his tears did.
He dropped to his knees, the stone biting into him, his breath catching on a sob he hadn't meant to make. His hands reached forward with agonizing care, gathering Lysander's small body into his arms the way one might lift a relic, something sacred, something that should never have been touched by death.
His arms wrapped around him, curling the boy against his chest like he might still warm him, like he might still wake if only held tightly enough.
He rocked slightly, as if Lysander might feel it. As if his godson might curl into him the way he had during long afternoons in the greenhouse when Luna was working late and Theo was too restless to be still.
He remembered reading him stories. Letting him pick flowers with names he couldn't pronounce. Teaching him how to blow bubbles through a Hollowroot stem. Telling him that nothing bad would ever happen again.
Neville's fingers curled into the boy's shoulder and he pressed his face to Lysander's hair and whispered broken things. Half-spells. Half-prayers. His name over and over again like it might bring him back.
Somehow, he stood.
Still holding Lysander.
Still rocking, still weeping, but standing, because it was all he had left to offer. Because the boy deserved to be carried home in arms that loved him.
And when he stepped into the Apparition circle, the air pulsed around him, not with magic, but with something deeper. Something that watched. Something that knew.
Neville disappeared with Lysander in his arms.
Draco shortly returned to Hermione and Luna.
~~~~~~
Pansy's hands were shaking, blood dried under her nails, her eyes swollen from tears that hadn't stopped, but her wand was steady. Her breath came fast, shallow, as she looked across the garden where the children huddled together, some sobbing, some too shocked to move, all of them clinging to whatever adult was nearest.
Hermione was barely conscious, Luna sitting upright with vacant eyes, arms wrapped protectively around an invisible weight.
They didn't need to be awake for what came next.
And so—Pansy stepped forward.
Her voice was hoarse, but the spell rang clear.
"Stupefy."
Red light. A flash. One of the twins slumped softly into Blaise's arms.
One by one, she moved through them, her magic trembling but Hermione slumped into the grass with a soft sigh. Luna fell with a whisper of breath. Even Cassiopeia, even Seline—soft flashes of red and sleep. Pansy couldn't protect them from what they'd seen, but she could protect them from what came next.
She finished just as Neville disappeared into the air, Lysander still in his arms.
~~~~~~
Lysander's bedroom was quiet.
Neville landed hard on his feet, staggered forward, nearly falling to his knees from the weight of the boy in his arms. He crossed the room on instinct, ignoring the pristine white linens and sunlit windows, and laid Lysander down on the edge of the bed. The child's curls were still damp with blood. His little hands slipped from Neville's arm and landed with a thud that made him flinch.
"Please…" Neville whispered, though to who or what, he didn't know.
A gasp sounded at the door.
Bobsy.
The ancient house-elf, liver-spotted and trembling in a too-large apron, stood frozen in the doorway, eyes bulging, wrinkled hands clamped over his mouth.
"L-Little Master…" she choked, her knees buckling.
"Bobsy!" Neville snapped, voice low, cracked, trembling with command.
Bobsy blinked up at him, ears quivering.
"Bobsy… I need you to be strong right now. You hear me?" Neville stepped forward, gripping the elf's thin shoulders with shaking hands. "You're the only one I can trust with this."
The elf sniffled, nodding so fast his ears flapped.
"I need water. Clean. Cold. A sponge. And a white sheet. Not a blanket. A sheet."
Bobsy's chin quivered. "Y-Yes, Master Neville, sir—"
"Do not let Theodore inside this room." Neville's voice cracked as he said it. "No matter what. No matter what he says or does."
Bobsy nodded again, harder this time, wiping his nose on his apron before disappearing with a loud crack, leaving Neville alone.
Alone with the boy he couldn't save.
Alone with the blood and the quiet.
~~~~~~
Theo was on the grass, crumpled and shaking, knees buried in the earth as if he were trying to root himself to the spot where the world had ended.
He was sobbing, a sound so raw and unfiltered it seemed to split open the quiet night around them, the kind of noise that tore through the lungs and scraped out the soul.
His body rocked forward and back, arms wrapped around himself like he was trying to hold his ribs together, to keep his chest from caving in. But it was no use.
He was unraveling. Piece by piece, moment by moment, he was shattering. The air left his throat in broken screams, hoarse and wet, each one sharper than the last.
He clawed at the ground, dirt beneath his fingernails, tears mixing with blood and grass as he buried his face into his hands, howling. "He's gone. He's gone—he's gone—" Over and over again, like if he said it enough, it would undo itself. But it didn't. It only made it worse. It only drove the truth deeper into his chest like a knife.
His soul had cracked open. His mind had followed. And with Lysander's death, Theo's life had simply stopped.
And Draco couldn't watch it happen.
He knelt beside him, breath heavy, eyes glassy, blood still drying on his skin. He uncorked the vial with his teeth, wrapped one arm around Theo's shaking shoulders, and forced the rim to his lips.
"Drink," Draco commanded, voice low, tight, fierce with grief. "Theo. Drink it."
Theo shook his head violently, growling, thrashing—but Draco held firm, jaw clenched. "You'll choke on your own fucking pain if you don't."
The liquid slid into Theo's mouth between cries, bitter and cool, some of it spilling down his chin as he tried to resist. But his body, overwhelmed by loss and exhaustion, finally gave in. His muscles locked, then slackened. His screaming slowed into sobs. The potion dulled the edges of his despair, just enough to make him breathe. Not better. Not calm. But breathing.
Draco didn't let go.
He held him there in the grass, shaking, broken, still whispering his son's name, over and over again like a lullaby no one would ever sing back.
~~~~~~
The hallway outside Lysander's bedroom was dim, the sconces flickering low with soft, enchanted light that did nothing to ease the weight pressing in from all sides. The manor was quiet now—too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after a storm, when the wreckage is still fresh and the air tastes like blood and smoke and something you can't name.
Ginny approached the door with careful steps, barefoot, shoulders hunched slightly, her arms wrapped around herself like she could hold the ache in her chest still for just a few more seconds. She reached out and knocked—once, softly. Barely more than a tap.
"It's just me," she said gently, her voice thick and warm, like a whisper meant for lullabies.
The door opened slowly, creaking on ancient hinges. And there stood Neville.
His face was pale, drawn, the edges of his features blurred by the constant flow of tears that streamed down his cheeks like a river that refused to dry. They clung to his jaw, his lashes, his throat.
His shirt was wrinkled, stained, his hair mussed and sticking to his forehead. But it was his eyes that wrecked her—the raw, red, glassy look of a man holding a grief too wide to contain, a man who had run out of ways to cry but whose body refused to stop anyway.
Ginny stepped forward without a word and wrapped her arms around him, drawing him in with a slow, trembling tenderness that made him sag into her like he had forgotten how to hold himself upright.
He held her tightly, burying his face in her shoulder, his breath catching on a sob he didn't release. Just one long, broken exhale.
"I…" he began, voice cracked and hollow, the syllables barely forming. "I washed him. I—I did what I could. Bobsy…" He trailed off, shaking his head, eyes welling again. "Bobsy is… inconsolable."
Ginny pulled back just enough to look at him, her hands still firm on his arms. "Of course she is," she said softly. "She raised him right alongside them. She's grieving like we are."
Neville nodded, lip trembling.
She touched his face, brushed one of the endless tears away, and gave him a soft, sad smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Why don't I change the sweet boy into something more comfortable?" she offered gently, her voice the kind of kindness that breaks you when you're already cracked wide open. "And you… try to soothe Bobsy. She needs you now."
Neville just swallowed hard, blinked, and nodded again.
Then, silently, he stepped aside.
And Ginny entered the room where Lysander lay, small and still beneath the sheet, the air thick with lavender water and mourning, her hands steady even as her heart broke open all over again.
She stood there for a long time, just staring at him.
Lysander lay so still on the bed, tucked beneath a white sheet, the delicate curve of his face barely visible beneath the shadows.
The room was warm, and scented faintly with lavender water, but it felt cold anyway—cold in the way that sinks into your bones, the kind that comes with loss. Ginny didn't move. Couldn't. Her hands hung limply by her sides, clenched into useless fists, and her throat ached with unshed sobs that had settled behind her ribs like a second heartbeat.
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"God," she said, her voice cracking on the first syllable. "It's me."
She let out a soft, broken laugh—humorless and bitter.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," she whispered, eyes never leaving his tiny face. "I don't even know who I'm talking to. I haven't prayed in years. I don't know how. Maybe this isn't praying. Maybe I'm just… begging the sky."
Her voice wavered. She reached out, her fingertips brushing the edge of the sheet near his foot. So small. So still.
"I just—" she choked, "—I need you to take him. Please. Please, whoever's out there. If you're listening. If you're real. If there's anything good left in this fucking universe, take our little prince in your loving arms. Wrap him up in something better than this. Something warm. Something that doesn't hurt."
Her voice cracked again. She bit her lip. Swallowed. Tried to keep going.
"Please, I'm begging you," she whispered. "Don't let him be alone. Don't let him wonder why no one came for him."
And then—her voice broke completely.
"Oh for fuck's sake—" she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand as the tears began to fall in earnest. She turned away from the bed for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut, pressing the heels of her palms into her sockets until her vision danced with color.
She couldn't finish it. Couldn't find the words. Couldn't offer up anything more than that.
This was about a little boy who should've never known pain.
A boy who deserved birthday cakes and bedtime stories and muddy knees and dragon plushies. A boy who liked blueberries and slept with his head tucked under Luna's chin. A boy who was supposed to grow old.
She turned back toward him with shaking hands.
The only thing she had left to do was getting him dressed.
That final kindness.
That last act of love.
So she stepped forward, fingers trembling, and began to undress him gently, her hands brushing over bruises she refused to cry over again. And she whispered to him as she did, voice soft and breaking, like a lullaby meant only for his ears.
~~~~~~
Ginny stepped back into the garden, her feet dragging against the grass like she was moving through wet clay, each step heavier than the last. The warmth of the day had disappeared, leaving a coldness that seemed to seep through her bones. She had hoped—no, wished—for some small moment of peace, but the air was thick with grief, with guilt, with unanswered questions that gnawed at the edges of everything.
And there, by the stone bench, was Theo.
His leg was wrapped up now, neatly and firmly, by Blaise—who, despite the chaos, seemed to be operating on automatic, his hands steady in a way that only came when you had already seen too much blood.
Theo was still crying, sobbing, in that deep, broken way that comes when the soul itself has shattered. His body shook with every breath, the kind of sobbing that makes the chest tighten until you can't breathe, until you feel like you're suffocating on the sheer weight of everything that's been taken.
Ginny watched him for a moment. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know how to make it better. The pain in his eyes was too much to bear—too much to fix. He was looking at the ground, his hands gripping at his hair as if trying to hold himself together, as if he could stop the pieces from falling apart.
"How…" His voice cracked, barely audible above his cries. "How the hell do you stop this? How… how in this fucking life am I ever going to get over this?" His words were a raw, guttural sound, his face contorted in agony. "My baby. My only son… gone." He let out another sob, deep and unbearable. "Gone."
Ginny's throat tightened, but there were no words to offer. She wanted to say something—anything—that would make him feel just a little less hollow, a little less like the world had torn apart beneath him, but there was nothing. Nothing she could say that would change what had happened.
Theo's chest heaved with the weight of it, his voice growing more desperate with each word. "This isn't how it's supposed to be. I should be the one burying them when they get older, not this. Not this." His face was wet with tears, his eyes red and swollen. "I'm supposed to bury them... not watch him be taken like this..."
Ginny knelt beside him, just sat there, her hand resting on his back as he continued to shake, the sobs ripping through him.
And then, through the haze of Theo's brokenness, one name cut through, a whispered prayer laced with terror.
"Luna…" Theo's voice faltered, cracking under the weight of it. "Oh my moon... she's going to—she's going to kill herself. She's going to… oh god..."
Pansy's voice broke through the heavy silence, her tone flat, too calm for what she was saying. It was as if her own grief had turned to something colder, something more dangerous. "She will," Pansy said, her voice empty. "That is a fact. You need to Obliviate her."
Neville flinched, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, but he didn't speak. The words were stuck somewhere deep in his throat, the enormity of the loss leaving him paralyzed, like he couldn't breathe with the weight of it all. "Bloom…" he whispered, like a prayer.
"Neville!" Pansy snapped, her voice suddenly sharp, biting. "If Seraphina dies, I will kill myself. Point blank. There will be no joy in my life anymore. Nothing. Matter of fact, Obliviate me too." She shook her head, the wildness in her eyes evident. "I'm not living with this. Not without him. My godson... He was... an angel."
"Pansy…" Blaise spoke quietly, but his voice was a strained whisper, as if he could barely bring himself to speak the words. "Pansy, don't say that—"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Pansy's voice was like a whip crack in the quiet garden, her rage cutting through the sorrow like a hot knife. She spun toward Blaise, eyes wide, frantic, desperate for an outlet. "WHAT WOULD YOU DO, HUH, ZABINI?" Her hands were trembling, her voice rising in volume and pitch with each word.
"What would you do if it were your child? What would you do if it was Valerius? You can stand there, all quiet and cold, all calm, but you don't fucking understand! You don't get it!"
Ginny couldn't stop the tears that fell then, her chest tight with the suffocating weight of everything they'd lost. This was about everything. The children. The disgusting world that they built. The pieces of themselves that had been taken one by one. And now—now Pansy was right. If any of their children would die, there was nothing left.
Not even them.
"Okay," Theo said.
Just that.
A single word.
Surrender, soft and low and trembling, spoken in a voice that used to command armies and cast curses without blinking. But now—it sounded like someone whispering to a grave.
He sat still in the grass, arms resting on his knees, body hollowed out by something too deep for spells, too ancient for healing. His eyes were red-rimmed, too dry to cry anymore, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter, like it didn't want to be heard.
"I didn't even know she was pregnant," he said, barely managing the syllables. "She hadn't told me yet… I…" He broke off, shaking his head slowly, like the words couldn't even survive in the air. "I was going to surprise her next week with a charm for the garden. For her birthday. I was… going to ask her to marry me for real this time."
Draco's voice came next, just as low, just as broken. "Me neither."
It wasn't a confession. It was an admission. A shared, quiet devastation between men who had been too wrapped in war and survival and repair to see the small miracles growing around them. And now they were gone—those moments. Stolen.
Neville's voice, when it came, was flat. "We need to Obliviate the children too."
The words dropped into the center of the garden like a stone into water, spreading silence outward in waves. No one interrupted. No one disagreed. The horror of it was too obvious to even name.
Theo nodded slowly, blinking hard. "We need to Obliviate Luna," he said, the name cracking in his throat. "And Hermione. They can't… they won't survive this. Luna…" His voice broke again, and he pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, digging hard, as if he could force the image of Lysander's broken body out of his skull. "She'll drown in it."
Pansy, still kneeling in the dirt, blood on her hands and face, raised her head. Her voice was strange—clear, sure, like someone who had already made peace with madness.
"And we need to Obliviate the whole house," she said. "Every wall. Every floorboard. Every drawer."
A beat of silence.
"The animals too," she added.
Pansy, too, had stepped over a line no one returned from. She wasn't speaking metaphorically. Because grief had made her surgical. Tactical. Deadly.
There was no argument. Because there was no such thing anymore.
They had seen the worst thing that could happen to a child. They had watched someone they loved die in a way no one ever should. And now, the only mercy left was forgetting.
Because if they remembered, they would never be able to live again.