Fred swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat and forced himself to continue reading the book Aunt Narcissa had provided: Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to the Benefits and Drawbacks of Memory Modification.
Love is beautiful, but heartbreak is unbearable. If you lack my exceptional talents... oh, wrong page...
Snapping the book shut, Fred tried to recall what he'd just memorized, but under the watchful gaze of that violet-robed, teeth-baring portrait on the cover, his mind went utterly blank.
He grimaced and forced down the bitter taste coating his tongue. The prisoner before him sat with his mouth twisted at an unnatural angle—the result of Fred's latest botched attempt at the Memory Charm. Fred stared at the man's increasingly contorted features and abandoned the spell entirely.
Though it felt inappropriate to admit it now, he was beginning to suspect that Lys had vastly overestimated his magical capabilities.
Fred simply couldn't grasp where memories resided in the mind, much less how to surgically remove specific ones. Worse, his mounting anxiety had seized control of his rational thought, making the complex magic seem even more impossible to master.
If only this played to my strengths, he thought desperately. Then maybe I wouldn't be so bloody useless.
During Lys's quieter moments—when she sat cradling Gabon and wasn't completely lost to delirium—Fred asked the same question with infinite patience: "What about Forgetfulness Potion? Would that work?"
He repeated it again and again until finally, Lys paused in her invisible knitting and gave him the faintest nod.
Fred commandeered Draco's private potions laboratory, brewing batch after careful batch of the delicate draught. To prevent Lys from accidentally overdosing in her confused state, he even procured smaller vials for precise portioning.
While the potions simmered, the manor's horrors unfolded around him. Bodies were dragged past windows and left motionless for hours—punishment for disappointing the Dark Lord, Draco explained with hollow eyes. Corpses appeared on display in the sitting room like grotesque art pieces, while strange wizards circled them, inhaling deeply and launching into excited dissertations on decomposition.
Terror became Fred's constant companion. He moved through the manor like a ghost, avoiding the increasing number of dangerous visitors who seemed to multiply daily. His conversations with Draco dwindled to hurried whispers in the potions room before he fled back to the relative safety of Lys's chamber.
The day his Forgetfulness Potion finally reached perfection, Fred clutched the precious vial and sprinted through the corridors, taking the most direct route to his sister.
He collided with Bellatrix Lestrange.
She materialized in the hallway like a nightmare given form, tilting her head with predatory curiosity as she circled him. Her wild eyes narrowed to slits.
"What's your name, little mouse?"
She knew her nephew had brought home a playmate, but something about this child's raven hair, storm-gray eyes, and angular features stirred a memory she couldn't quite grasp.
"Friedrich Rahm," Fred managed, his voice barely steady.
"Rahm?" Bellatrix's laugh was sharp as breaking glass. "Why does that sound so... wrong?"
She completed another lazy circle, positioning herself behind him like a predator savoring the hunt. Her voice dropped to a dangerous whisper:
"Shouldn't it be Black? But no... he's gone, isn't he? Really, truly gone." Her tone turned mournful, almost childlike. "Though the blood traitor deserved his fate, perhaps I should have preserved something before I killed him. The Black line could have continued serving our Lord..."
She trailed off into incoherent muttering, disappointment etching deep lines around her eyes as she drifted away like smoke.
"When did it all go so wrong?" she whispered to the shadows. "What did I miss?"
Fred remained frozen until her footsteps faded, every instinct screaming that those mad eyes had lingered on him far too long. When he finally moved, it was in a desperate sprint back to Lys's room.
He had no way of knowing this encounter was precisely what Lys had been preparing for since the prison break—or that her seemingly flawed precautions had just saved his life.
Under the gentle influence of Fred's potion, Lys's condition gradually stabilized. She described her attackers in fragmented whispers—strange hybrid creatures, neither fully alchemical construct nor natural beast, but something altogether more sinister.
"They poured... things into my head," she explained, pressing her palms against her temples. "Thousands of memory fragments. Emotions that aren't mine. They're all fighting for space, wanting to use my body to scream and rage and feel."
The foreign memories lacked the coherent structure of genuine experience, she told him. They were scattered puzzle pieces that didn't fit together, easily identified and isolated if she concentrated. But maintaining that constant vigilance was exhausting beyond measure.
"I haven't slept properly in weeks," she admitted, and Fred could see the truth in her hollow cheeks and the bruised shadows beneath her eyes. "I'm terrified that if I stop fighting, I'll sink into those black depths like the witch in Herpo's tale—the one whose heart sprouted hair until she became something monstrous."
Sometimes she would pause mid-sentence and warn him to "watch behind you," though Fred never saw anything when he turned.
He simply assumed she wasn't fully recovered yet, gently wiping medicine from the corners of her mouth and brushing her tangled hair away from her face before administering another carefully measured dose.
"Lys," he said quietly, checking her pupils for signs of overdose, "the Death Eaters are saying Draco's going to take the Mark. Because Uncle Lucius failed his mission, this is how the Malfoys atone."
He pulled several pale golden strands from his pocket as evidence. "Draco hasn't told me directly, but I can see it in his eyes. He's terrified—literally shaking. And look, he's losing hair from stress."
Fred carefully tucked the strands away, missing the flash of weary exasperation that crossed Lys's features.
Settling against the bed with his arms wrapped around her elbow, he let his homesickness spill out: "I miss our real home, Lys. Coco's rearranged everything until it feels like a stranger's house. When will you come flying with me again? We never did add those protective charms to my Firebolt." His voice cracked slightly. "You still haven't said if I can attend Hogwarts."
Lys was lucid enough to hear every word, but she couldn't bring herself to respond to his innocent chatter. She had no promises to offer, and everything he said felt like a terrible omen.
Her recovery was painstakingly slow. Each foreign memory had to be carefully identified, separated from her genuine experiences, and methodically erased with precisely calculated doses of Forgetfulness Potion. One mistake could leave her believing someone else's life was her own.
But even in her weakened state, she kept a protective eye on her brother. She understood the dangers lurking in every shadow of Malfoy Manor, where the Dark Lord held court and his followers came and went like harbingers of death. She saw how Fred flinched at every unexpected sound, how his hands trembled when footsteps echoed in the corridors.
Most of all, she recognized the terrible vulnerability of being the last Black male in a world where that bloodline had become both precious and cursed.
When Fred read to her from the Daily Prophet, he tried to find cheerful stories among the headlines screaming of Dark Marks over burning homes, disappeared families, and Ministry officials discovered under the Imperius Curse. Eventually he gave up and pulled out a worn children's book instead.
Halfway through a tale about ancient magic and stormy seas, Lys suddenly spoke:
"Fred." Her voice was soft but clear. "I'm grateful I didn't let jealousy and fear drive me to reject your existence all those years ago."
She truly was grateful—for that long-ago decision to hide their mother's abortifacient herbs, to overturn the potion bottles, to fight tooth and nail against Senna and Noah's wishes. She had kept this unexpected child who had appeared in their family as suddenly as she had, naming him with a mixture of envy and desperate love.
For years she had crafted their family according to her vision, molding it into something worthy of protection.
Now, turning to look at Fred through the curtain of her disheveled hair, she felt something like wonder. Just as their mother had chosen their father against all odds, she finally had someone who would choose her despite every danger.
Fred paused in his reading when he heard her words, then continued: "Herpo cried out from his ship far from shore, thirsting for power, while in the thunderclouds above, mysterious beings—"
"Did you hear what I said?" Lys interrupted.
Fred sniffled. "Yes, I heard."
"Good. Then you'll understand why Friedrich needs to go home now. I'm well enough."
The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken truths—that she was far from well, that leaving meant abandoning her to face whatever came next alone, and that they both knew he would do exactly as she asked.
Because that was what family meant in the House of Black: sacrifice disguised as choice, love measured in the willingness to let go.
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