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athanasius-symposium-of-writings · 3 months

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Winterstorm

For @turbulentscrawl

Rated Mature | Warnings: Age difference between Reader and Ithaqaua, Manipulation, Rumors

A/N: ngl i was playing stardew while writing this lolol

It was a stormy winter night when his mother found him. It was a stormy winter night when you found him wounded after killing a group of hunters in the forest.

In the hazy of his hallucinating mind, he saw his mother calling out to him, for him to wake up. He reached out to that image not realizing he was reaching for his new savior.

When he woke up after the storm passed, he was under blankets that felt warm and in a room smelling of spice and wood. He jerked awake and got up, he touched his bare chest finding someone had patched him up. Cloth bandages and stitching for the deeper wounds. The Night Watch knows his body aches, his body protesting as he gets up carefully not to make too much noise. He wills himself to endure as he grabs his shirt and coat from the chair by the window, he swears to rest but not here—Not where he will be left further vulnerable!

He struggles to get his shirt on so ops for his coat only stop when the door opens. He grabs his weapon but stops as he hisses in pain.

You come in with a small bed tray of food, his stomach growls at the scent, “You're awake.” A bit surprised given his wounds, “Oh, if you want to leave I can help you dress.”

His eyes narrow as takes in the sight of you, his eyes sometimes glancing at the simple food you made. “Leave.” You move to go back out, “Food stays.” That made you happy though.

The boy, because to you he is a boy, was in bad shape when you found him. Malnourished, wounded, and you are surprised he did not succumb to hypothermia. You Luckily had your cart from gathering wood before the storm hit severely after you brought him home.

Listening with your ear against the door, you can hear him going to the bed and eating the simple porridge you made, shuffling after and you hear your bedroom window being opened then closed.

You do not expect to see him again, you did your good deed and that was that.

Until you see him again while you are foraging for some mushrooms and roots in the Icy Forest. There in the distance, he stands staring at you from a distance. Piercing blue irises watching your movements for who knows how long until you notice.

“Hello,” He stares silently, “Have you been taking care of yourself?” You step closer, “Do you need more food?”

A snap of twigs draws your attention from him to a deer roaming around. When you look back, the strangely dressed boy is dashing away.

“Wait!” But it is too late.

That will be the first of many interactions with the creature you have no clue is called the Night Watch.

“Good morning, Ithaqua.” He hums at you as you start preparing breakfast, “Going out?”

“Yes.” His arms wrap around your waist as he rests his head on your back, “You should stay home today.”

“The weather is nice today, we should go see if the store in town has any fabric.”

“Or we can go see the lake instead.” His hold squeezing slightly, “You like the lake better than the store.”

You sigh, he does not like you going to town. You figure it because he lived in the forest for so long alone that interacting with others is stressful.

It took a lot to gain his trust, you figure there is a reason for the way he is but never push to talk about it. Everyone has their past.

“Ithaqua, we need things around the house.” Reminding him both of you cannot survive by using the vegetables in your garden. Other things are needed. You worry about him, worry about how he is quick to isolate rather than try to, at least, see the use of being around others. The little town is not so bad… Even if the rumors about you can be cruel.

No one sees the real dynamic between you and the boy— Because they all see him as a boy rather than a man— Who lives in the woods, but now he practically lives with you, hunting and gathering for you to earn his keep— Though you told him he does not need to do so.

They think you are manipulating him, using him as he is young and lacking social experience…

He finds that amusing how little they think of him, a poor little sheep none realize is a wolf under the wool.

“I can get them.”

“Are you sure? I do not want to bother—

“You are not bothering me. I want you safe and you say we need supplies, I will get them.”

You stand there unsure but nod in the end, maybe you can finish your plowing of the garden while he is away, “Okay…” He hums at your agreement, his hands rubbing the fabric of your apon as you go back to food prep, “I'll make us something warm to eat.”

Ithaqua is young, not a child, but young. You are older, much older, old enough to be a parent to him.

At first, you treated him as such. He seems receptive to it as he soon became a part of your life.

But something changed, you did not notice it until it was too late and you are sheep held down by the wolf's paw.

Only a handful of times has Ithaqua been to the town, if you could call it a town as it is a bit bigger than a village but smaller than an actual town. The few folks that did see him feared him, he looked strange with the mask and the stilts. They kept their distance, and you had to assure them he was just a mountain man, not a creature.

Something about a Night Watch but no one has ever seen that thing.

The town's people already are wary of you, you who live alone on the outskirts of town. You try to socialize but they turn you away until they need something. The irony, Ithaqua finds this ridiculous, you are often looked to in times of need because of your garden. You always plant things that do well in wintertime, planting and growing bundles to give away on Sundays after church service.

He swears they are all idiots, at least the pastor is sensible and grateful for you.

The new problem the town has with you— Rather than the ones who act like pompous dogs— Is you are using this poor boy. Funny, in reality, Ithaqua is not using you but he is slowly having you become more and more isolated from those fools.

This problem did not start until he was approached by one of the young women in the town. The mill's owner's daughter. The annoying thing, he saw in the Icy Forest once and would have killed her if he was not busy bringing meat to you.

It was the spring festival and you asked him to help you with the decorations and to hopefully get him to be social.

All you asked of him was to not wear the usual outfit he wears. Instead, you gifted him your father's spring festival attire. He looked handsome as he wore your father's clothes, tailored to fit his thin frame. You thought this would be a great step for him!

You told him at any time he is welcome to go join in the festivities, especially the flower dance. He knew what you were trying to do, he only humored you.

You stayed at the stall talking to the town mayor as he complements the decorations you have made this year.

People are fools, Ithaqua hates them but likes you, he did not talk while wandering around the festival. A few tried interacting with him, he permitted it for the moment at that time for your sake. How stupid of them to assume so much about him when all they know about him is as much as he allows them to know.

A young man named Ithaqua, a wild man who sticks to you like a boy to his mothers— They assumed the relationship from the beginning. You did too.

“I love (Name), I don't want you.”

Cold as ice water.

The woman was bitter and the rumors had added to many others about you.

Ithaqua could care less about what others think, they are the ones who beg you for help when someone is sick or needs extra food.

You are like a mother to them, yet they act ungrateful.

Winter is getting closer and closer, they will look to you for help and Ithaqua grins as soon they will find you gone by next spring.

When he returns with the wagon of supplies, you greet him with a hug. The Night Watch knows you are trying to be affectionate to him but you hold back, you never kiss him or allow him to indulge in your flesh. Just hugs and kisses on the cheek, you poor thing thinking he changed his stance on wanting you.

You accepted this relationship, and he knows you did it out of maybe some misplaced sense of guilt, he has you in his grasp. All you need to do is stop caring about what others think about you.

A problem soon to be solved.

Once everything is put away, he has you cornered in the bedroom pinned down on the bed with him above you with nothing but pants on. You stare up at him then look away.

“You don't need them.” Leaning down to kiss your cheek then moving down.

“Ithaqua, we talked about this.” You try pulling your wrists out of his grasp but it holds firm. For such a small build man, he is surprisingly strong. “They are just nervous people.”

“Nervous people? They are hateful people, (Name), stop making excuses for them.” His eyes narrow and he bites at the top exposed part of your neck. “They rather burn you at the stake than admit they are wrong about you.”

“Ithaqua…” That is not true! People are people but not all of them are cruel.

“Think about it,” Licking the mark as you had flinched from the pain at first. “The mayor doesn't help you yet you do so much for the town. The pastor preaches but no one listens. The doctor's monthly checkups are just to see if you sprouted horns and a tail.”

“Please. Not tonight.” Begging him. Those words are painful, he knows these talks are causing doubts as you are becoming more aware of the bitterness these people have towards you.

After the spring festival, you… You sat him down. Talk to Ithaqua as much as you could that evening. Your words twisted against you, you are too trusting with him. His metaphorical claws raked through your wool but never pierced the flesh of the sheep. You are trapped but loved.

Ithaqua enjoys this more than you ever will know.

It was too late to stop the rumors when those feelings were reciprocated, you… You are lonely and though Ithaqua is much younger than you… He is an adult, far more mature than the men at your age too.

Twenty-one winters, he told you, he should be married by now. He wants to marry you.

Guilt. A lot of guilt. You slip from under him when tries to grind his lower half against yours.

“How about I make your favorite tonight? I got some extra tomatoes–” Stand up beside the bed while Ithaqua sits there with his legs wide open.

“I'm not a child. We should leave before they hurt you, there is no need to put on a brave face for me.” He is going to devour you but you need to stop running from him! “We can leave. They are not grateful to you.” You shake your head at his words, he stands up and holds your face, “It will only be a matter of time before they hurt you.”

He smiles as you crumble, holding you as you fall to your knees and covering your face as you cry. This home your family built and lived in since you were born. The blood, sweat, and tears; the memories, the love within this home.

“Ithaqua.” He cradles you as you turn to cry into his bare chest.

A small crack, he chips away at you, the others were fools to think you were manipulating him.

Laughable given you had tried hard to get him to meet those of his age.

Why bother?

He likes you, older and experienced, you give him the care of a mother and the love of a partner. No one his age could give him that, they were all too free-spirited and reckless.

The Night Watch wants someone to greet him upon his return home, shower him with love, and if the mood strikes him— Lay with him as accustomed for partners to do.

“(Name),” Rubbing your back, “I love you.” You told him he is too young to understand the weight of those words. “I will take care of us.” Making promises of taking sole responsibility is not fair, you told him yet you do it all the time.

When winter came followed by another snowstorm and the people looked to you for your winter’s crop that Sunday, you were not there. Nor were there the many Sundays after that. The pastor with two other people went looking for you, only the pastor cared to check in on you.

The house was buried in the snow, the garden destroyed. There is no trace of you or the mysterious young man who came into your life. There are no bodies found, it is like you were there and are now suddenly gone.

Maybe you left, the pastor hopes you found a better place.

Or maybe the Night Watch claimed another victim.

#idv #reader insert #identity v x reader #idv x reader #identity v #identity v x you #idv x you #idv night watch #idv ithaqua #ithaqua x you #ithaqua x reader #identity v ithaqua #ithaqua #night watch #night watch x reader #night watch x you #identity v night watch

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pickwickwampus · 3 years

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The following is all spoilers for my fanfic. If I ever get around to writing the rest of it, then you'll spoil a lot of it for yourself by reading this.

from what I remember, the story leaves off with Mallory and her friends in the library, researching the Cracklewood Carver. They're too slow.

A few chapters ago, Mallory overheard the ghosts in the school saying:

"If the protections keep rotting—" "He believes it's dark magic, that the sacrifice is no longer necessary." "Preposterous! Dippet performed the sacrifice for many years, as did his predecessors, before him." Mallory and her friends stood frozen behind an ugly statue of a gargoyle, a statue which decided to move with a cringe-inducing grinding noise. Crap, she hoped no one heard that. "Indeed, yet it is what Albus believes." Except neither ghost looked over. The stone gargoyle finished scratching its arse, and went still. "Foolish. Darker things, beasts from beyond the—"

The ghosts in Hogwarts didn't start talking about the failing protections on the castle that week. They've been moaning about the failing protections for almost a year, since the last summoner of the Carver, Armando Dippet, died. The ghosts aren't allowed to directly tell anyone about the protections, but that doesn't prevent them from loudly talking about it where someone could overhear them.

And someone did overhear the ghosts, and figured out what they were talking about.

The protections around the castle were powered through the sacrifice of three children to the abomination Ithaqua, the beast Mallory & the Daily Prophet knows as "the Cracklewood Carver."

Previous headmasters made the sacrifice of three magical children every seven years to protect the school, but Dumbledore refused. Dumbledore also refused to go public with previous headmasters' crimes, or seek justice for the Carver's previous victims. Dumbledore wasn't interested in the ritual or what it summoned, or even the exact cost. He just understood that one of the rituals involved summoning an abomination and making a deal with it, and said, "no." He's meant to be a figure displaying cognitive dissonance and lazy thinking -- he'll paint large swaths of people with the same brush based on who their family is, and all that characterization is meant to paint him as someone who isn't even fundamentally well-meaning. He just likes to tell a story where he is, and refuses to self-reflect even up until it kills him.

For a while, the retired previous headmaster was doing the ritual without Dumbledore's permission or knowledge. But Dippet died that past February before the ritual could be completed, and now a new deal must be struck, and the ritual must be performed, otherwise Ithaqua will get its revenge on the castle and its inhabitants for breaking their bargain. (Alternatively, someone could kill Ithaqua, which is exactly what happens.) A Hogwarts student learned of the ritual and the consequences for not carrying it out, and sought to do the ritual, himself, believing Ithaqua was responsible for the visions his classmate Celeste was having of the school in smoking ruins. (Ithaqua wasn't the threat Celeste and the other seers saw.)

Few in the Wizarding World could harness the power of Divination, but all who could saw their impending doom. Hogwarts Castle was in grave danger. The portents were clear, both to the prophets and the cartomancers could see it. But the Ministry wasn't doing anything about it, claiming the diviners were all in league with Dumbledore. In this story, Voldemort stole the stone in Harry's first year, prompting Dumbledore to raise the alarm with Fudge several years early. Fudge reacted predictably, claiming Dumbledore was out for his job.

It terrified Terrence. Hogwarts was his home, a sanctuary that has stood for near a thousand years, and Celeste Avery said she saw a vision of it in ruins. And no one was doing anything about it.

If asked, Terrence would've told himself his motives were pure, to protect the school, but if he'd examined his feelings he would've realized he felt he couldn't leave the school behind. He wanted a tie to it, a means of being relevant to it, and on some level wanted recognition that he was necessary to the school.

The demon overpowered him. It preferred the deaths of wizard children liable to change the destiny of the magical world, but the wills of the previous summoners were too strong for it to get what it really wanted from them. That changed with Terrence Higgs. Ithaqua could see marks of fate around those three children — it wanted to destroy them and eat their potential. It wasn't attracted much to Rowle or Harper, but to Mallory, who drew the beast most of all, because of what she's willing to do.

The subtext around Mallory and her muggle parents is that they discovered the wizarding world, and immediately discovered that wizards had abrogated themselves of their duty to others. They had the cure to heart disease, could regrow organs and bones, prevent most kinds of illnesses, and yet muggles all around the world were still dying of those illnesses. "Secrecy" wasn't a good enough reason to them to allow the deaths of all those people. So Patricia, Tony, and Mallory agreed to use Hogwarts as a means of making potions available to muggles, Statute or no Statute.

That's a large part of why Mallory's afraid of people reading her mind, why she's tied her ability to be a "hero" to her access to the school. And that's the kind of plan Mallory thinks is a good idea when she's eleven. Within a year her plans will include the overthrow of the entire wizarding government and who knows what she'll be doing by the time she's 20.

So Ithaqua wants her dead. And Mallory's gift of revelation, the small part of herself that is actually a demon of revelation tied to the understanding of hidden things knows this, and is trying to tell her that:

A man formed out of wax loomed before her. She lit the wick and he burned with a Silver Flame. Pressure, like her ears were about to pop. Lipstick smeared across a girl's cheek. The taste of blood in her mouth. And now in her hands she wielded a blade of Silver Fire, and burned it burned it burned—

Things were going very badly for Higgs, who as rapidly deteriorating from the demon's deal. He kidnaps both Mallory and Harper, forcing them into a second confrontation with the beast. Gemma Farley, who had been independently investigating, is struck down trying to stop him. Mallory watches Gemma fall, and sees the girl's lipstick smeared across her face, like in her vision.

"Gemma?" Higgs choked, "how did you— you can't be here."

"Seriously?" she scoffed, "you seriously thought I wouldn't find out? I keep records, Terrence. A forged letter to the Headmaster. You made me help."

"For Hogwarts," he croaked, "for Hogwarts, if you knew you'd agree — you did agree —"

"Merlin, Terrence," Farley's face crumpled, "no, no — how could I agree? They're first years. I don't understand. This isn't about blood, I know you're not a blood purist," her mouth open, she shook her head, "I don't understand."

"The Dark Lord's back, you agreed. You heard what the ghosts said last year. Dumbledore wouldn't commit to the sacrifices needed to protect the castle. Three students to save hundreds, you know that makes sense."

She shook her head, "no."

And the last thing Mallory sees before she crosses through the fire is Farley's crumpled body, her cheek smeared with red lipstick.

(I didn't roll the dice yet on whether Gemma lives or dies.)

This time, the arena is a rapidly flooding basement in an abandoned house on the edge of the forbidden forest. Her wand is snapped, but that doesn't stop her.

Mallory asks him if he knows the unlocking spell. Harper says he can't accidentally-on-purpose do accidental magic.

"Yes you can," she says, annoyed that he was arguing this now, when it seemed self-evident that any witch or wizard could use magic without a wand.

"No, you can't. That's — just because you saw Dumbledore or some other wizard do it, doesn't mean you can— you're not bloody Merlin."

Mallory ignores him and keeps gathering what she needs, "I've done it before."

"No, you haven't. You've done it on accident, not on purpose — you need a wand. It's like Tonks, Hopkins, with the metamorphmagi. It's blood — you can't---"

"Yes, I can," she said, firmly.

He looks at her as though she's delusional, but she gets a flash of certainty, that he now believes she isn't a muggleborn at all, and finds herself off-balance and almost embarrassed for him, past the terror of the moment.

I ended up writing that she burns the lock off, or part of the door to get out, since the lock is magically locked and she can't do an unlocking spell.

When she can do it, it's like touching a live wire, almost. Half the time the feeling's so intense that she gets distracted and loses it. But when she doesn't lose her grip, the sensation feels a bit like ecstacy, like a synchronization up and through her body, sparking from the bottom of her spine to the crown of her head. And if she holds it there, makes a mental motion of clenching, but without pressure, then sometimes she can push it out through her hand. Right now, she was pushing out the concept of heat. Mallory felt quite familiar with fire, with hot objects and the way fire burned. She'd practiced this enough back in South Brent for her to expect this to work. It's easier here, she thinks. There's something in the air, a sick kind of pressure radiating cold, and the heat in her, an ever-burning brightness that she could never remember not feeling, lashed out in protest. This fire wanted out, and Mallory was more than happy to oblige it. [she heats up the metal of the handle until it's glowing red hot.] "Alright, now we just need to cool it off, but quickly." Harper just stared at her, eyes bugged out in stunned disbelief.

The kids escape as Higgs succumbs to the demon. Almost all of Blackthorn's devices fail, except for one:

And then something decidedly strange happened. The pocket mirror, so carelessly tossed into the muck, popped open. And like something out of the creepiest horror movies, a hand reached out of the mirror. Only it wasn't just a hand. The hand became an arm, then a torso, and then the towering figure of Professor Blackthorn, standing right on top of the tiny mirror.

Corvinus Blackthorn arrives with the sword, puts them in a circle of protection, and challenges the abomination.

She catches a glimpse of desiccated flesh and sharp, jagged bone through the trees. The space between the trees is narrow, light swallowed up by an oppressive, weighty darkness. A tail made of jagged broken bones lashes out, gouging blackthorn. Deep gouges in his chest and arm. Bones uneven and ugly, with rotting meat sloughing off with every movement.

Catches him across the chest and he slams into the trunk with all the grace of a ragdoll. Blackthorn is thrown, arm shattering and sword wrenched from his grip. Silver fire paints an arc where it fell, igniting pools of water and debris.

The circle was broken.

It floods the forest floor with ice water, and tries to mutilate Blackthorn, but it doesn't work because Blackthorn's body is made of clay, not flesh. Mallory picks up Blackthorn's sword, burning herself very badly, and enters a space between time where she can see it clearly, and strikes the monster down as it attempts to kill Blackthorn, then collapses. It's Mallory's strike that kills and damages the monster more so than Blackthorn's, for Blackthorn is more like the beast than Mallory.

I think I decided to have Narcissa's POV be the aftermath chapter, revealing that the aurors pursued Blackthorn to the forest, and suffered heavy losses. Their actions were why the abomination was so slow -- it's attention was split.

Tonks was injured badly, and Narcissa was secretly visiting Andromeda to offer hospital care and muse about the past:

"Is it dead?" Andy asked. Is Dora safe?

"I'm not sure," Narcissa wetted her lips, hesitating before she finally said, "Bella's old master was there. I think that's why they're holding their tongues. They'd have to reveal they let him back in the country." Andy almost flinched.

They never talked about Bella, never spoke about the third Black sister, not even in passing. The way Andy acted, it was though she wished to forget they even had an eldest sister, but Narcissa couldn't forget, not even if she wanted to. Bella was etched into her eyelids, carved into her flesh like a silver sickle-blade. Their sister, skin smeared with blood, coming home with gleaming eyes and a wicked sharp smile.

Andy used to smile to express comfort, joy, and wonder. But Bella's were a whole different matter.

Narcissa could make an entire catalog of Bella's smiles, and there'd still be more to file away. She had these sweet smiles, the sort she'd make when someone asked her a question they would regret ever asking. Then there were the moments she'd catch her sister reading some book on advanced meta-magical theory, taking notes in her scrawling script. Those smiles were relaxed and easy, like lounging in a chair warmed by the fire.

Most common, though, were the sharp and fleeting smiles of their youth. Mother never understood Bella. She couldn't understand Andy, either, but it was Bella she came down on the hardest. Bella, who had to be an example to her younger sisters, elegant and demur. Bella, who couldn't sit still for more than five minutes at a time, and was brighter than Andy and Narcissa put together.

She was gone, now. She'd been gone for years, found dead in her cell a week before Beltane, four years ago. But in truth, Narcissa knew she'd been gone for near a decade before she died. Bella's body just took its time catching up with her mind.

It was absurd how another person could become so necessary, like a part of yourself you didn't realize could go missing. She'd sometimes see some book on arithmancy and casually think to herself that Bella would enjoy it, only to remember that Bella was dead. Bella would never enjoy it, just like she'd never live to see Draco grow into an adult wizard or have her own children. It still felt like a bludger to the chest, even after all this time.

And once she started looking, Bella was everywhere. She found Bella in the smell of stale cigarettes and cheap muggle whiskey, found her in old records playing on the wireless, in powerful and complicated works of magic that she knew Bella would've found enthralling. Bella haunted her in the familiar scowl on that little girl's face, in the bright, quicksilver smile of her son. Narcissa saw the girl Bella used to be, before the Dark Lord twisted her into something ugly and seething.

No, neither she nor Andy could bear to speak of Bella, but their every interaction was defined by her absence.

Bella had blamed herself for Andy's departure, just as Andy blamed herself for Dora's decisions. In a sense, they were both a little right.

Bella was the one who introduced Andy to all that muggle nonsense. Cigarettes and the cinema, their teenage nights were spent drinking and partying. Bella, she knew, had drowned herself in booze and recreational potions to escape their family, escape the twists of her own mind, mutating all that was good and whole into sharp angles and magic. Andy, though, became enamoured by the muggles. It was their world that captured her imagination, and muggleness of any kind became the quickest way to provoke those warm summer-day smiles. The trifling distraction became her life. After Andy eloped, it seemed that Bella's smiles had vanished with her. Bella's mirror calls became flat and lifeless, the ever-present gleam in her eyes, gone. Even Blackthorn's antics weren't enough to move her to good humor.

But it was never Bella's fault, not really.

Yes, the subtext here is that Narcissa was infatuated with her sister, willing to excuse her violence, and that Mallory strongly resembles Bellatrix Black. The audience is supposed to be given the sense that this Bellatrix is a bit of a departure from canon Bellatrix.

(I wanted to write like, the most fucked up possible Family Black.)

Andromeda wants to be put in touch with Blackthorn, believing he will be able to heal here daughter, but Narcissa refuses, believing Blackthorn is a plague on their family.

After Hogwarts, Bella ended up turning down the Lestranges to earn her Mastery, studying under Professor Blackthorn, instead. But from what Narcissa understood through various mirror-calls throughout the years, most of this "studying" was really them jaunting around the globe. Narcissa remembered reading about him in the paper, once. The Floating City of Mojipar had fallen from the sky, hundreds dead. And at the center of it all was the necromancer, Corvinus Blackthorn. The picture had been haunting, a city crumbling, flames eating through homes as it hurtled toward the ground. The worst part was, she could so easily imagine Bella there. Bella, with her sharp grin and gleaming eyes, laughing amidst the chaos.

Narcissa is unable to stop Andromeda from leaving to visit him, and despairs about how she wishes she could freeze the memories of her sisters in amber. It's all supposed to be very creepy.

I was considering writing the battle also from Tonks' POV instead, which would've let me throw in a number of conflicts between Dumbledore and Blackthorn, but I ended up rolling those ideas into a later chapter.

the story picks up again with Mallory recovering in a house outside Koldovstoretz, a wizarding school in Russia with Blackthorn's former mentor, and old wizard named Yegor. She learns picking up the sword badly injured her, because it was a cursed sword. That combined with the oath she broke took a heavy toll, and most of this time she spends recovering in bed.

(I hadn't decided when Andromeda visits, but it was supposed to be mildly revealing.)

Bored, she starts rummaging through the room she's staying in, and discovers it contains Blackthorn's effects from when he was Yegor's apprentice, as well as several shoeboxes worth of letters between Bellatrix Black, Narcissa, Blackthorn, etc. Most of these conversations are one-sided, because Mallory only has the letters Bellatrix received, not the ones she sent, aside from a few Bellatrix sent Blackthorn. There are also pictures, and Mallory notices that she looks a lot like Bellatrix and Andromeda.

I wasn't sure how I was going to present the letters. Probably as stand-alones. My notes for the letters look like:

The first letter comes from Andromeda, who has recently learned that Bellatrix has run away rather than become the fiance of Lestrange. Her parents may have mailed her too, but it is likely Bellatrix burnt those letters. Andromeda may reference letters from her parents. Discusses how Bellatrix's leaving has been taken by the family. Mentions how badly Narcissa's taking it.

The year is 1974, and Bellatrix Black is 23 years old, a journeyman headed to Ugadou to finish her education. Andromeda is 21 years old, and has a one year old baby with Ted Tonks. Narcissa is 19, already married to Lucius Malfoy. Sirius is 15, in the throws of rebellion. He might've already run away. Regulus is 13, and entering his third year at Hogwarts. One letter should mention some kind of awkward romantic encounter between Corvinus and Bella.

1976 — Flight from Britain Andromeda asks Bellatrix, in an oblique way, for help going into hiding. For a while she's been fine, staying in MACUSA territory with Ted and the baby, believing themselves outside the reach of the family. But she's recently gotten a letter from Narcissa, who is concerned that the family Head (Arcturus Black III, Orion's father) is being radicalized further by Voldemort. And Narcissa heard a rumor that the family knows where she's hiding.

1977 — The Last Days A letter from Narcissa, it's only two words: "Please don't." A letter from her mother or an aunt, saying something like: You have my greatest sympathies and I fully understand your dedication to this wizard, but given the challenges that are now facing this family, you don't feel you have a responsibility to return home?

It's implied that something happened after that, since there are no more letters. Later it would be revealed that Bellatrix was goaded into visiting her family home, where she was captured and presented to Voldemort as a sacrifice. This did not go how the Black family expected it to.

At this point, the audience is supposed to have drawn the obvious conclusion that Mallory is Bellatrix's daughter, otherwise I wouldn't have spent so many pages fleshing out Bellatrix's character.

Mallory learns that Bellatrix ran away from home after she graduated Hogwarts to study higher magics. This plan would've failed, except Blackthorn took an interest in her and made her his apprentice. Bellatrix and Blackthorn were at one point in a serious relationship. Bellatrix was Blackthorn's former apprentice, and he entered into a relationship with her as her apprenticeship concluded.

Blackthorn and Bellatrix's relationship provides some context for why Blackthorn came to Hogwarts at all (when he learned that it was Mallory who was attacked,) and why he contrived to have her stay at his mentor's house. Mallory learns a bit about wandlore and her own ability at divination when Blackthorn helps her select a new wand. He gives her gifts and other things which Mallory finds vaguely suspicious — she's not sure if it's about Bellatrix, or if he's interested in her in particular, but his generosity and willingness to advise her has her concerned. He finds out she snooped and read the letters, and talks to her about how her gifts are hereditary and mark her out as a target.

That night, she hears Dumbledore arrive, and overhears a conversation that terrifies her.

She's not a distant relation of a squib of the Black family. Andromeda Black was approached a few nights after Voldemort's "death" by a haggard Bellatrix, carrying a baby. Bellatrix demanded Andromeda take the baby, keep it secret, that she had something she needed to do. Then she went and tortured the Longbottoms.

Andromeda took the baby to Dumbledore, believing it to be Voldemort's heir. Dumbledore also drew that conclusion, named the baby "Mallory," for "bad," and left her with a squib family (Mallory's dad Hopkins is the son of a squib related to the wizarding family Hopkins,) who couldn't have children. He intended to use her in the war when Voldemort came back, either as bait or as a weapon.

Mallory also learns she's discovered hints about her parentage before, and every time she figures it out, Dumbledore erases her memory. Blackthorn is furious, and says she ought to know the truth.

Blackthorn also insists that Bellatrix was a double-agent, a spy who'd been imperius'd by Voldemort but broke the spell and decided to get revenge by spying on him for Blackthorn. Mallory finds Blackthorn's claims somewhat contradictory and confusing, but is distracted by Dumbledore:

Dumbledore plans to erase her mind again, so she quickly writes down everything important in her notebook, with the hope that Dumbledore won't find out she did this in her mind, or the notebook itself.

Her memory is erased, her note is found, but she wrote it in hard pencil and a ghost of it remained on the paper behind it. Mallory's gift of revelation means that two days later, she notices a page has been torn out of her notebook, and that the imprints remain, and bothers to get back some of the message.

When Mallory returns to Hogwarts, she discovers from a letter from her parents that Danny is in a coma. And Snape takes her to detention for breaking the statute of secrecy. They obliviated Danny's memories of magic, and because magic was such a large part of his life, it erased almost all of his memories.

I was planning to write out an arc where we follow Danny from when he got Mallory's phone call, to him stealing and conning his way all the way to Scotland to save her. He manages to get to Dufftown, and finds an alarming military occupation in town, one that becomes relevant later when the audience learns that more muggleborn families are disappearing -- it's not Voldemort, but muggles preparing to go to war against wizarding kind.

Danny almost gets to the castle, but is turned back by the wards repeatedly until eventually he attracts the attention of a teacher who inexpertly obliviates him.

Mallory attempts to smuggle him healing potions, but she's too late. And she doesn't understand why obliviation killed him, when so many get obliviated every day, even large obliviations, and are fine.

She declares revenge, but most of all won't accept that he's dead. She tries to get in contact with Blackthorn again, saying she'll do anything, contact anyone (implicitly threatening to contact voldemort, since he apparently returned from death) if it means bringing him back.

Blackthorn agrees to help her. He says he knows how to return a soul from death, but doesn't have the objects he needs. That he's also trying to return someone from the dead. Mallory takes that to mean Bellatrix, though she's wrong. He's trying to bring back his daughter who he murdered (without knowing she was his daughter), accidentally setting a bloodline curse on himself. If he brings her back, he's free of the curse. He tells her that she needs to learn how to protect her mind first, from obliviation and from legilimancy. And once they do that, he will teach her and help her. He expresses interest in having her check in with him frequently, because he's worried she's going insane.

This works well with Mallory's existing goals of learning to protect her mind, so she agrees, though remains suspicious.

After several months, Mallory begins to suspect that he's not interested in her because of Bellatrix, or because he thinks she'll be as smart as Bellatrix, but that she's most likely his daughter, not Voldemort's.

"Why..." Mallory trailed off, "why didn't you take me in, after Bellatrix... after what happened." Moreover, she wanted to know why she hadn't been placed with someone she was related to, since wizards seemed to care about blood so much.

"I was out of the country," a pause, "after, you were six years old, raised by muggles — raised by a family that cared for you." Another pause, "Andromeda refused to keep you. Too much danger. The danger passed only two years after she gave you away. And everyone — Andromeda, Bellatrix, myself, none of us wanted to see you with Druella or Cygnus. Your grandparents. Your other aunt, Narcissa, she wasn't an option, either. No." Shakes his head.

"But not you. That's everyone else, not you."

"I am not a fit parent. I travel to dangerous places, put myself in peril. Less, now, but" he breathed a sigh out his nose, "I'd rather no one know who you are — someone would hurt you. Right now you can walk down the street, draw no stares or whispers. You have time to learn as you will, face few who would wish you ill."

She wasn't stupid. Mallory might not be a super-genius like Felix or (apparently) Bellatrix, but she was bright enough to make the obvious connection. There were holes in this theory. Bellatrix shipped Mallory off to Andromeda's, instead of Blackthorn's. He said he'd been off on a sabbatical, slaying demons or whatever, and was unreachable. But Mallory thought that seemed unlikely. Surely he would've kept his magic mirror on him. He managed to find time to call her when he was in the middle of Death Valley, after all, while he was hunting down some kind of crazed demon-summoning cult. He called to give her a lecture on doxies. There was no way he wouldn't answer the magic mirror for Bellatrix. Kind of blew a huge hole in the side of that ship, though it wasn't sunk just yet. There could be another explanation. Perhaps he couldn't pick up the mirror for some other reason he wasn't telling her. Maybe he'd been captured by the free goblin army, made to summon demons for their plot to overthrow all wizardry and bathe in the blood of their long-hated enemies. Or he could've spent those four years in a Solomonari dungeon before finally escaping. And then he finds out his kid already has a family, and that she's happy there, so he leaves Mallory alone.

...or maybe he was busy getting avada kedavra'd out of his body, necessitating a new one being built out of clay.

In other words, Bellatrix's mother kidnapped her and delivered her to Lord Voldemort to be murdered by Lord Voldemort because Bellatrix was planning on marrying Lord Voldemort's alter-ego.

And Bellatrix didn't actually know Voldemort was Blackthorn's alter ego. (The fic "Tom Riddle's Grand Adventure" was meant to explain how Tom became Corvinus. The short version is he ends up being run out of Wizarding Britain and ends up in Grindelwald's warzone until he stumbles into Yegor, who advises him against making more horcruxes, so instead of an incompetent insane Voldemort, you get a competent insane Voldemort who spends a significant portion of his time teaching defense against the dark arts at a russian magic school. Both are extremely evil. This was never a redemption story.) until that day.

Mallory also can't help but notice that he's not a good person. At first she wants to believe he is, because facing the reality that her birth parents are monsters seems overwhelming to her. So she spends time around him, around his associates, and the more she does the less she finds herself able to make excuses for him or for her birth mother. What they did doesn't make sense. And they say it'll make sense when she's older, but she realizes that all they're doing is trying to get her to sell out to their values and become like them. And she won't.

And this ties in strongly with the way the wizarding world treats family -- how the text of the HP books says "family isn't important" but the subtext all but screams that it does, and how so much HP fanfic follows suit. It always bugged me, so I decided to invert that. While the characters and in-game universe all explicitly believe it matters who your family is, over and over the old families get hoisted by their own petards. The very magic they think makes them superior royally fucks them over and over again. And Mallory's birth family acts to screw her over or hurt her, even when they're saying they intend to help. More importantly, she starts seeing how there are lines she doesn't want to cross, things she won't do for power or even Danny.

Mallory begins to hate the wizarding world with a vengeful passion. The teachers are corrupt, the adults have tremendous power but use it for selfish and stupid purposes, and their entire world seems hell-bent on becoming as authoritarian as possible. She decides to bring down the British Wizarding government. And when she discovers the others are just as bad or worse, they become targets as well.

Dumbledore eventually learns about Mallory's connection to Blackthorn and some of her plans, resulting in a renewed attempt to obliviate her. Mallory keeps her memories and flees, this time successfully, to her muggle parents. They board a plane and attempt to head to the US, where some relatives live. Once off the plane they're accosted by security. It turns out the muggle government knows Mallory's a witch, and is actively hunting down any muggleborn families to study them and then murder them, believing wizardkind to be a threat to their control. They've figured out a way to get around wizarding mindwipes using the power of being able to write things down on a computer and send files with that information to any location in the world, including locations the writer doesn't know, themselves.

Blackthorn comes to the rescue, though only as she's already escaping, having decided there is another government she must destroy, and that's around when Mallory learns he's Voldemort. She's repulsed and terrified for her parents, who she fears he'll kill. He assures her he won't. She realizes the only reason why she should believe him is that he is cursed to not completely fuck her over by a bloodline curse.

I had some text from these scenes but I lost some of the word docs in 2015 when I switched computers. It's laid out that he can't kill Mallory because their ancestor put a bloodline curse on the family that makes it suicide to kill or weaken your descendants. Most of his family went mad because they did lots of child abuse.

Mallory finds all of this disgusting. Like, his main motive for not murdering her parents is that he is restricted by a curse. He knows she'll grow up strong and take revenge on him if he kills her loved ones. She realizes she can never trust him, because he's doing "good" things for the wrong reasons. And she realizes that one day she'll have to destroy him.

She at various points confronts him about how he murdered people, about how he took on the role of Voldemort. He says things like, "Voldemort wasn't me, it was a mask" or "it was all for a greater purpose," but to Mallory, those are poor excuses. It's more or less meant to parody and mock a lot of stories that seriously use those excuses as a reason for the main character to get along with Voldemort.

Voldemort reveals that he'd planned for Dumbledore, but had hesitated with carrying out his plan -- he was going to pass off Blackthorn as Voldemort's distant cousin. That would explain Mallory's parseltongue (the lisp from chapter 1, how she has blanks and a headache after encountering salazar slytherin's portrait and snakes in the common room, etc are supposed to be after-effects of obliviation.) and Blackthorn-as-a-parent prevented Dumbledore from more memory wipes.

If he just took her to Koldovstoretz, Dumbledore would pursue her. And they couldn't keep her presence a secret forever. Mallory decides she wants to go back to Hogwarts anyway, because she doesn't want to be near him.

Mallory returns to Hogwarts, and desperately wishes the lie they were telling was true, that she really only was Voldemort's distant cousin and that Blackthorn really was a wizard on the side of making the world better. But he isn't, and she knows it. And she can't pretend they aren't her birth parents, because she has the same bloodline curses and problems they do. But she can take everything they know and use it to kill every abomination, every source of power for the old families, including her own. And that causes her to almost implode, because those sources of power are a part of her, and she spends a lot of time battling herself. The central question of this fight being how do you destroy something when part of you is that something? Not "how" as in "how could you?" but "how" as a technical question. The demons in her mind are all enemies, and she plays them off one another and tricks most of them into fighting one another. Except for the part of her that is the demon of revelation, which I didn't get around to figuring out how she'd destroy before I stopped working on this project.

Her demons were:

Yig ◆◆◆ A god of //Revelation//. Reveals itself as a great serpent of knowledge, promising communication and power for worship. Should you break a covenant with it, you will become deformed and snake-like, your wits addled and determination sapped. The gift of parseltongue comes at the cost of a loss in eloquence in human tongues. Words do not come to you easily. The power of parselmagic and the command of snakes becomes yours. Yig took special interest in the Gaunt family and cursed them to not betray their children, and no member of the family has failed to betray their children, so they are very cursed. **Enyo (Death) ◆◆◆** A god of //Domination //inherited from the **House of Peverell** before 1214//, //after the brothers tricked it. They gained the three Deathly Hallows, and later used the three Hallows in a ritual to take on a measure of the god's power, into themselves. While the brothers succeeded, they found that death and sorrow follows those who bear the mark of Enyo, no matter that they gained some authority over the magic of life and death. **Gath ◆◆** A greater demon of //Revelation, //inherited from **House of Gaunt** in the middle ages. The Keeper of the Secrets, The Guardian of the Knowledge, is a slimy shape-shifting mass, which can be summoned with mud and the blood of the invoker. When summoned will reveal much-needed information, but at a great cost. Another, lesser ritual was invoked by the **House of Gaunt,** many years ago. Gives the supplicant a talent for legilimency, to pry secrets from the minds of others, understanding. But in every generation, a member of the family must look into the mind of another, //know them,// and then sacrifice that person and their secrets to Volgna-Gath. If the chain breaks, the knowledge is used to hurt you: you see the least charitable thoughts about you when you look into another's mind. You're overwhelmed with sensation. **Golothess** A lesser demon of //Obliteration //inherited from the **Black** **family, **through **Ella Max** before 1829. A piece of the 10 pieces of Golothess was imbued into each bloodline. Of those lines, three have withered- Clagg, Muldoon, and Bragge, their pieces lost to the world forever. The lost shards weaken the overall power of the ritual. In battle, they are strengthened with confidence, boldness, and power. This effect is strengthened the more they are impaired by drink or other substances. The effect does stack. **Ngyr-Korath** A greater demon of //Obliteration, //inherited from the **Black family **through **Licorus Black** in the 1850's. The **Flint family** also made this pact, but effects from the same pact are not additive. A 20% luck to all actions in the name of chaos and destruction of intelligent life. She has an increased chance of dying young. If the Family refuses to sacrifice a human or other intelligent species once per year, they all become squibs. If the family doesn't remain extant, all with the blood become squibs. **Nyarlathotep** A lesser demon of //Liberation, //inherited through the **Bulstrode Family. **One in every generation of family blood shall have the power to shapeshift. One in every generation will go mad. The exact ritual is a closely guarded secret. Mallory, Draco, Millicent or Nymphadora will go insane. Nymphadora gained the power to shapeshift.

Those are the monsters Mallory must defeat within herself in order to be able to carry out her will.

Shortly after Mallory returns, Hogwarts gets bombed by the muggle military with Mallory and her classmates in it. This sparks a war. I didn't have a lot of the war written out, but the idea was to introduce in all the previous chapters most of the major factions that would be fighting. And they're all fighting each other while fighting the larger threat.

Then there are the threats from other wizarding communities that want to do war.

And there's a cosmic being encroaching on their reality, one that'll destroy muggle and wizarding civilization, and everyone is too busy killing each other to try to stop it. (A kind of written scream about how people won't work together that I didn't understand so well why that happened at the time.)

It all goes very badly.

...

They resurrect Danny and Lily Potter using the three Deathly Hallows. Mallory demands Blackthorn do this for her gratis. He does because he needs her help to be free of a bloodline curse, but the result is less than what she hoped for. Danny's spirit returns, and is put in a clay body, and will not age, much like Lily. He hopes that bringing them back will not only free him of the bloodline curse, but earn both Mallory and Harry's loyalty. It is not enough for either Mallory and Harry, because Blackthorn/Riddle's actions didn't just impact Mallory and Harry. And one of the arcs was going to be them teaming up to murder Tom/Blackthorn. I never got around to figuring out the third person they'd get to resurrect. I made the rule they were only able to resurrect three people. (Three Hallows, three casters, three people brought back from the dead; the ring to summon the soul, the cloak to hide them from death, and the wand to open a gate. Mostly to prevent it from raising the question, "why aren't wizards raising the dead left and right?")

The resurrection was to involve a an arc where they go and enter the realm of death together to bring back the souls of Lily and Danny. I had a few ideas -- one was a completely static world where all time was in form-shapes, the other was a whimsical-but-stereotypical eternal train station, and the third was a sewer that morphs you into deathly things the longer you stay in it. Never worked out which I was going to go with.

...

An important piece of lore in the story was that Mallory was cursed. A lot of descendants of "old families" are cursed. Every person with a gift for divination, or special power has gotten it from a deal their family made with a demon a long time ago. And that demon has cursed their entire line to have a power at a cost. This power is achieved by ripping out a piece of their soul and replacing it with a piece of the demon.

Mallory, due to the number of demons both sides of her family has made compacts with, has a soul that is mostly made out of demon parts. She is barely human, but decides to fight them anyway.

...

This story was specifically designed so that the setting and environment would be geared towards "the world is made up of domination and powerful families." Even magic is written as giving more power to authority. But my main characters reject all of it, and decide to destroy that power through whatever means necessary. But the main way I did this was tying any "family" power to the destruction of all sentient life. So choosing "family" always meant choosing the illusion of "family" for the price of killing everyone a bit, including that family. And that power systematically destroys every family who deals in it, revealing everyone who uses it as someone who doesn't love their families at all, doesn't love anyone.

Mallory doesn't find herself curious about the power "she is owed" by society, because she wants to destroy that society. She does not try to get its approval, or use that information to impress her classmates, nor does she see herself as a reformist or muggle apologist or pureblood apologist or whatever. If at some point the purebloods in the school were to find out her identity and try to make friends with her, she would've roundly rejected them. Her refrain that she would never be friends with these people in the beginning of the story is a decision she keeps throughout the whole story.

(The "exception" is Castor Avery, who betrays his family and joins her team.)

There are a lot of stories about how once someone finds out they're really a member of the Black family, or related to Voldemort, they become inherently aligned with them out of some sense that family trumps all, and in doing so end up becoming like the badguys themselves, though they make token attempts at resistance. This was not that story. Any time Mallory interacts with structures of power, she's gathering information on how to destroy them. She understands that the dark side will offer her gifts and comforts, and even save her friend Danny for the sake of buying her loyalty. She'll accept any gifts without explicit strings, and immediately use that gift or tool to subvert them with no guilt or second thoughts.

Often, those stories also identify the purebloods as literally more powerful than everyone else. And while this story has many characters buying into that frame of view, and the reality of the story buys into it, Mallory doesn't. And that makes them all a bit weaker. Her willingness to deep-down refuse to believe in their authority literally damages their authority, and their ability to do magic around her.

I wanted to show what it feels like for one to feel like the whole world is telling them they have to accept something sick as true, that they even half-believe its true, and then reject it anyway not because reality doesn't look that way, but because you've decided you're going to change it. I wanted to show that as possible.

That was the whole point of making magic such that "authority" makes your magic stronger. I intended to deconstruct the reactionary themes in HP that lead to so many reactionary fics. Mallory explicitly chooses her muggle family. Explicitly chooses to condemn both the wizarding governments and muggle governments. And no matter how hard Dumbledore and others anticipate that she'll become a dark witch, she refuses the path they attempt to pigeonhole her into.

A part of this is how her name is handled. Riddle and Black named her "Carina Rose" and Mallory never changes her name to reflect that. Throughout the whole story, she goes by Mallory Hopkins, and thinks of herself as Mallory Hopkins. When she learns her name was meant as a joke by Dumbledore, she starts thinking of herself as "Hopkins" more so than Mallory, because the Hopkins were the people she chose, and throughout the story she works to keep them safe and away from her birth family.

A major theme was going to be found family vs anticipated loyalty to hereditary family. Mallory's muggle parents were set up as (to Mallory) "good people," in contrast to her biological family, who were blatantly and obviously bad people, no matter how they tried to excuse their behavior with claims that it's "tradition," or that what they were doing was "necessary" for the "betterment of the world." Mallory's biological family was going to give her gifts, attention, etc., all in the hopes of converting her to their side. And the tension in these stories usually is that the main character is tempted, or becomes corrupted, or otherwise falls in with the bad people and starts making excuses for them.

My focus on identifying everything as "bullying" at the time was that this story was planned out in 2014, after I'd endured some pretty severe bullying. Writing this story was part therapy for me, to work out my feelings about feeling as helpless and angry as Mallory did. And to me it felt like the whole world was set up in such a way that the "authority" wins, and the only thing to do was to hide and plot. So I poured out my anger and disgust into this story, made it reflect the lack of care I saw in people.

I no longer think things are hopeless like that, so the world of Mallory is less appealing to me to write in.

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