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Morsmordre


Bellatrix Lestrange ran through the trees, sing-songing loudly enough that her voice echoed through the woods, a creepy little disturbance in the forest. “Killing a half-blood, killing a half-blood, doing the bidding of the Dark Lord!”

“Bella, hush,” grunted Rudolphus, “You’re making far too much noise.” Though his thick frame moving through the trees was just as much a disturbance as her shrill voice was.

She danced more than she ran, really, her feet only barely touching the ground as she leaped and spun about, her thick curls flying all about her joyously, as though she were on her way to a jolly holiday. She grinned at her husband, “Don’t be such a kill-joy,” she pouted at him, pirouetting over a fallen log gracefully. “The Dark Lord chose us for this! This is important. He trusts us! He trusts us!” She spun, jumping giddily about. “The Dark Lord trusts us for his important jobs!” With that, unable to contain herself, she started sing-songing again and Rudolphus let her go at it, aware that she was far too excited to keep quiet.

Truth be told, Rudolphus spent more time annoyed with Bella than he spent in love with her. He’d married her out of convenience more than anything else, after all. They’d both been purebloods and he’d married her because she was the only pureblood his age. She was too enamoured with the unattainable Dark Lord himself to be in love with anyone else. It was a good fit, one meant for breeding and continuing the blood lines than anything else.

When they were approaching the house, however, he held up his hand to silence her. “We’re nearly there,” he scolded, and she silenced immediately, a hungry look of a lioness on the prowl coming over her as they crouched through the last bits of brush to the edge of the property, where they looked over the short little fence toward the tiny yellow house. Lights were on in the downstairs, the upstairs lights off. Rudolphus grinned, and pointed, “That window there,” he said. There was a window with a tree outside whose branches nearly touched the side of the house. “That’s the one we go in through.”

Bellatrix was beside him, panting with excitement - or else recovering from her exertion of energetic dance through the trees, perhaps. She seethed with glee, “Let’s go.”

They rushed across the yard quickly through the moonlight.




The end of June had come, the dimming evening air was cooler than the heat of the summer day. The moon shone bright in the sky, full and silver. Remus Lupin was in the old bomb shelter, locked underground in the Lupin’s backyard. Lyall had had a long day at work fielding questions and concerns about the new Muggle Liaison Coalition and he had fallen asleep in the overstuffed chair in the living room, his feet up on an ottoman, newspaper laying, quite forgotten, across his chest. Low snores escaped the back of his throat.

Hope smiled over at him, at the way his tawny hair fell across his brow and the skin at his neck bunched and rippled beneath the tilt of his head. She stood up, balling the yarn she was using to knit her son a new jumper to replace the one he was no doubt tearing to utter shreds in the shelter at that very moment. She dropped the knitting into the basket beside her chair, and went over to her husband, taking the paper from his chest and folding it neatly onto the coffee table. Smoothing the hair on his forehead, she kissed him softly, before collecting their tea cups and the kettle and walking into the kitchen, leaving him to snooze in peace.

The sound of the running water and the clinking of dishes in the sink drowned out the thump above her head in the upstairs bedroom as Rudolphus Lestrange tripped over a pile of textbooks left in the middle of the floor. “Bloody hell,” he groaned, having hit his face against a desk.

“Episky,” hissed Bellatrix, pointing her wand at his face and stopping the bleeding.

They moved through the dark bedroom to the bed and Rudolphus motioned for Bella to go ‘round the other side. They approached the head of it, where the blankets were pulled up over a sleeping form. Bellatrix looked positively ecstatic, silently miming clapping with her tiny little hands, eager to please the Dark Lord. Rudolphus reached for the blanket and tore it down quickly, as they both whispered, “Avada Kedavra!” Green light struck the bed, shooting a pillow that had been pushed beneath the blankets, spraying feathers every which way. Bellatrix let out a shriek of surprise, stumbling backwards and tripping over the same books Rudolphus had moments before.

Hope looked up, having heard the shriek and the thump this time, and she turned off the hot water faucet. Thinking it an owl from one of Remus’s friends having flown in his window, Hope wiped her hands on her apron and went to collect the letter. “Told him to shut his window before he went out for the night, but does he listen? Oh no! Of course not… Hears only what he wants to, just like his father,” she complained to herself as she climbed the stairs, “Hearing of a wolf, too, so you know he hears it, but listening! Listening is an entirely impossible skill…” She reached the top of the stairs and turned to the bedroom, pushing open the door and --

“Avada Kedavra!”

Lyall Lupin woke up at the sound of a scream.

He looked around, disoriented. He’d been dreaming of an island vacation they’d taken when they’d first been married, of the way exotic flowers had looked strung through Hope’s curly blonde hair. He scratched his chest lazily and yawned, stretching his arms as he sat up, blinking about. The tea was cleared and he stood up, heading into the kitchen. “Hope? My Love?” He called, but she didn’t answer. She wasn’t in the kitchen. He looked around at the half-emptied sink, part of the wash still dripping in the strainer on the airing board. He turned back around, walking through the house, a sudden sense of unease. What had interrupted her? “Hope? Where are you, dear?”

He glanced out the window. There were two forms running across the grass. Heart rate picking up, he hastened to the door and stepped into the backyard. “Stop!” He shouted after the forms, “Who are you? What are you doing in my yard?” He was running toward them. He could hear one of them cackling - a woman - her laughter light and airy as she reached the fence at the far end of the long yard and easily leaped over it, disappearing into the woods.

The second form stopped at the fence, turning around to face the house, and Lyall heard a shout. “Morsmordre!” The voice was deep and rough around the edges and the man, though his features were concealed in the darkness of the night and the edge of the forest, stopped and waved with just his fingertips before ducking away into the trees.

An eerie green-grey glow filled the night and Lyall turned, seeing a brilliant clouded light in the sky, hanging over his house. The form of a skull… and a snake, coiled through it. He felt his heart pick up. He’d seen that mark before. “Voldemort,” he whispered, and he ran back to the house, panic filling every fiber of his being, twisting its way through his veins as the snake had done to the figure of the skull. “No… No, no, no, please, no,” he muttered as he shoved his way back into the door of the house, the quietness of it now sickening him.

“Hope!!” He bellowed her name so loudly that no matter where in the house she was, she should have heard him. But no reply came. “HOPE!” Lyall, blindly desperate, ran up the stairs, begging the fates to have her be only asleep in their bedroom, too deeply rested to hear him. But as he reached the top of the stairs, his heart sank clear through to the very bottom of his gut.

Remus’s bedroom door was open, and coming out of it was her arm… still… a pearl bracelet about her wrist, her wedding band glinting in the shine of the green-grey light that filtered in through the window. “Hope,” he gasped, choking, and he rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside her.




James Potter was sitting at breakfast, eating his eggs, when Charlus came in the room, staring hard at the newspaper. “Well bloody hell,” he muttered, pale around the face.

“What is it, dear?” Dora asked, looking up from the stove, where she was overseeing the pan she’d magicked to fry Charlus’s bacon.

“A ministry official’s wife’s been killed,” Charlus said, looking up from the paper, a sort of dumbfounded expression on his face. “In their own house.” He frowned. “Alastor Moody thinks it was an attack because - because of that pamphlet we got the other day, about the Muggle Liaison Coalition.”

Dora’s brows knit together. “No.”

James looked up, “Moody taught us Defense Against the Dark Arts for our second half of term, after Tutman left,” he informed them, mouthful of toast and castup.

“Did he?” Asked Charlus, though he was clearly too distracted to actually listen to James, his eyes scanning the article in the Daily Prophet. “Damn shame,” he muttered, shaking his head, “And they have a son - about your age, James, do you know him?” He handed the paper to James, folded back to a picture of the family.

James dropped his fork with a loud clatter. “Remus!”

Dora looked ‘round, concerned, “You know him?”

He shouted, “That’s my mate, Remus!” His eyes were wide. “It was his mum?” He felt sick. “Blimey.”

Charlus frowned, his eyes apologetic.

James pushed his plate away - there was no way he was going to eat any more. He could barely stand the smell of the food. He stared down at the picture of Remus and his parents. In the photo, Remus looked a bit younger than he had at school - probably this was taken the summer before, James reckoned, and he stared up adoringly at his mum, grinning. It was taken, according to the caption, during a family holiday to Paris.

“I’m going upstairs,” said James, “I need to write him.”

Charlus nodded and took the paper back as James held it out to him.

James went up the stairs to his room and pulled out a bit of parchment, and sat staring at it for some time, unsure what to say. There weren’t really any words to say, he just felt awful. He wished feelings were something one could just spill out of themselves onto parchment, the way he could spill out ink on the page. It would be such a lot easier than trying to wrap it up neatly into words.

“James.”

He looked up at the sound of Sirius’s voice coming from the mirror and he got up, leaving the blank parchment on the desk, to collect the mirror from his bedside table. He turned it over and there was Sirius’s hair - longer and messier than ever. “Hullo,” James said with a sigh. He carried the mirror back to the desk, unsure how to approach the subject of what happened with Sirius.

“I’m going mad,” Sirius said, “That bloody little house elf of my brother’s keeps following me ‘round and acting the spy.” He scowled at something beyond the mirror - probably his bedroom door, James assumed. “I hate this ruddy house.”

James decided there was no use in tip-toeing around the subject. “Voldemort killed Remus’s mum.”

Sirius went still. “What?” He breathed.

James shifted uncomfortably. “Remus’s mother’s dead and Moody’s been in the paper, saying it’s because his dad’s head on the committee that’s pushing for Muggle rights.”

Sirius swallowed, bile climbing up from his stomach.

“I’ve been trying to write him - so he knows his friends are thinkin’ of him, you know?” James said, “But I haven’t any idea what to say.” He shrugged, “I’ve never known anyone whose mum had died before.”

Sirius suddenly looked very angry. “I hate the Dark Lord,” he hissed viciously, “I hate him! He ruins!” He had angry tears in his eyes, and James recognized the passionate hatred that Sirius had when he’d told James why he wanted to go into the Forbidden Forest.

“I know,” James said, nodding, “I hate him, too.”