Chapter 31:
– Amara Black –
I've got to stop getting knocked out. This is getting annoying…
I came back to myself slowly.
My eyes blinked open to a ceiling of grey stone, and for a few seconds my mind was a blank slate. Then it hit me all at once.
Holy fuck. We did it. We actually fucking did it!
The desert, the gate, the demon army crawling over the sand like roaches. Raven tearing through them with four glowing eyes. Lucifer dropping out of the sky to lop Trigon's hand off at the wrist.
We stopped Trigon!I saved Raven. I saved the whole goddamn world!
…And then that piece of shit archdemon had reached out one last time, not for the planet, not for his daughter, but for me. A trap built just for Amara Black, a rainbow tear in reality that swallowed me whole while Raven screamed my name and her fingers closed on nothing.
I sat up fast.
Too fast. The room tilted, my head swam, and I gripped the edge of the mattress until it steadied.
When it did, I looked around, and my stomach dropped into my feet.
I didn't recognize a single thing. A hospital? Some kind of infirmary? Was that not a dream!? Am I in Hogwarts!? Was that really some kind of younger version of my 'birth mother', or was I just dreaming that up after smashing my head through a table?
Because if this was Hogwarts, then this was his house. Dumbledore's seat of power, the heart of everything he'd built, the castle where the manipulative old bastard sat at the top like a spider in the center of his web.
I forced a breath through my nose. Then I made myself take stock, the way Morgana had drilled into me.
Panic later. Take inventory first.
I was wearing a thin white shift, a hospital dress, the kind of shapeless thing they put unconscious people in.
I reached inward next, toward my core, and almost sobbed with relief when I felt it answer. My magic was right there, not suppressed, not bound, not strangled the way it had been my entire childhood.
My wings, horns, and tail were also all hidden away for now.
A door at the back of the ward opened and I went rigid.
A woman came out of a side room, an older woman, plump and brisk, her greying hair pinned up under a starched white cap, robes the muted blue-grey of a healer.
She caught sight of me sitting up and her whole face softened into a smile, warm and genuine, the kind of smile that had absolutely nothing to do with the people I'd learned to expect from this world. "Oh, good, you're awake," she said, her voice round with relief. "You gave us all quite the scare, dear."
She bustled toward me, and her hand dipped into her sleeve and came out with a wand.
I flinched. I couldn't help it. My own magic surging up hot and ready if this woman tried anything. I could roast her in an instant if I had to.
But the woman didn't so much as break stride. She just gave the wand a few gentle, practiced flicks in the air above me, murmuring under her breath, and a soft glow washed over my skin and faded.
Diagnostic charms.
"Mm. Heart rate's a touch high, but that's to be expected after a fright like the one you've had." She clicked her tongue. "No lingering concussion, that's good. Whatever you did to yourself, my dear, you've got the constitution of a dragon, I'll give you that. I've never seen anyone mend so quickly. Frankly it was a little alarming to watch."
I said nothing. My throat had gone dry. I was too busy clocking everything, the cadence of her voice, the cut of her robes, the wandwork, filing it all away, looking for the angle, the threat, the lie.
She lowered the wand at last and tucked it back into her sleeve, then folded her hands in front of her apron and looked at me with that same maddening kindness. "Now then," she said gently. "Can you tell me your name, dear? And do you have any idea at all how you came to fall straight through poor Miss Evans's table?"
"I would like to know as well." Another voice, this one from the entrance to the ward, dry and warm and unhurried. An old man came strolling in like he had all the time in the world, like he owned every stone of the place. Long silver beard. Half-moon spectacles.
"Dumbledore," I hissed. My hand snapped out and my soul-bound wand answered. "I'll kill you, you bastard." The words came out raw. The tip of my wand bloomed sickly green.
The healer gasped and stumbled back two steps, one hand flying to her chest. "No, no, please, child, don't cast that, don't you dare cast that evil curse in my ward."
Dumbledore went still. For just a flicker, something crossed that lined old face that I hadn't expected. Surprise. Real surprise. His pale eyes moved over me, over the wand, over the green light, and his white brows drew together.
"Have we met, my dear girl?" he asked. It was so smooth. So gentle and bewildered and harmless.
It made me want to scream.
"Don't pretend," I snarled. The wand didn't waver. "I am Amara Black. You sealed away my magic for eighteen years. You turned me into a squib, you made my whole life a fucking misery so I'd fail at everything I ever touched. And then you helped James Potter murder my father. You helped him kill Sirius Black so you could steal my inheritance out from under me. I know what you are. I know everything you've done." My voice cracked and I hated it, hated that it cracked. "And I am going to make you pay for every second of it."
The healer gasped again, a small wounded sound, her eyes darting between us like she'd wandered into something she couldn't begin to understand.
Dumbledore didn't reach for his own wand. He just stood there, and the bewilderment on his face only deepened, and when he spoke his voice had gone careful and quiet, the way you'd speak to someone standing on a ledge. "My dear, I think you are very badly mistaken." He raised one hand, slow, placating, empty. "I do not know what has happened to you, or what you believe has been done to you, and I promise you we will sort it out. But I must tell you. Sirius Black is not dead."
The green light guttered. Just slightly. "You're lying," I said.
"I am not." He held my gaze, steady and grave. "Sirius Black is alive and well. He is a student in this very castle, in his final year, and like every seventh year here he is eighteen years old and in perfect health. I saw him not two hours ago at breakfast, eating rather more sausages than Madam Pomfrey would approve of and arguing with his friends about Quidditch." Something almost like gentleness touched the corner of his mouth.
Dumbledore did the last thing I expected. He crossed the rest of the way to my bed and sat down on the edge of it.
He sat down. With a wand pointed at his chest and green light still flickering at the tip of it, with a girl who'd just sworn to kill him glaring murder at him from two feet away, he settled himself onto the mattress like an old man easing into a favorite armchair, his joints creaking, his blue robes pooling around him.
He folded his hands in his lap and looked at me, and there was nothing in his face but a patient, sorrowful sort of attention. "I do not think," he said slowly, "that you are mad. And I do not think you are lying. I think you believe every word you have told me, and I think those things happened to someone, somewhere." He paused. "I also think, my dear girl, that you are a very long way from home. Further, perhaps, than either of us yet understands."
I didn't answer. I couldn't.
But God help me, I thought the same thing.
Because the longer I looked at him, the wronger it felt. The hate I'd been carrying for so long, the white-hot certainty of it, kept skidding off this man like water off glass. My Dumbledore would have had a counter-curse half-spoken before I finished summoning my wand.
My Dumbledore would have looked at the green light and calculated, the way he calculated everything, what it cost him and what it gained him. He would never in a thousand years have sat down on the bed of someone threatening to kill him with that mild, baffled patience, like the threat barely registered against his concern for whatever was wrong with me.
This wasn't him. Not the one who'd bound a baby's magic and called it the greater good. Not the one who'd left Sirius to rot. This was something else. Something I half remembered from a different life, from films and books read by a girl who didn't exist anymore.
The version everyone loved. The kind old man. The one who actually meant it when he said he wanted to help.
And I hated that I hoped it was. And I hoped it was, and hated that too, both at once, the two feelings grinding against each other in my chest until I felt sick with them. Because if this was the kind one, then he hadn't done any of it. Not yet. Maybe not ever, not to me, not in this world. Which meant the man I wanted to burn alive wasn't even here for me to burn. Which meant all my fury had nowhere to land, and I didn't know who I was if I couldn't be angry at him.
Sirius was alive?
I lowered the wand.
Not all the way. The green died, but I kept it loose in my fist, kept the weight of it grounding me, because letting go of it entirely felt like falling. Madam Pomfrey let out a long shaky breath from across the ward and pressed her hand harder against her chest.
"Where," I said, and my voice came out hoarse and stripped down to almost nothing. I swallowed and tried again. "What year is it?"
Dumbledore's eyes searched my face, and whatever he found there made the sorrow in them deepen. "Ah," he said softly. "I rather thought you might ask me that…"
– Lily –
Lily Evans had snuck out of the infirmary under the Invisibility Cloak she had stolen—borrowed—from James Potter, who didn't know it was missing yet and who would absolutely make it insufferable for everyone the moment he found out, so really it was a kindness to him that she'd taken it quietly.
She'd only wanted to get close to the strange young woman without Madam Pomfrey clucking and shooing her back toward the door, and the cloak was the easiest way to do that. She'd pressed herself into the shadow of a cabinet near the head of the bed, held her breath, and listened.
She had not expected to hear what she heard!
Time travel? Alternate universes? Whole other worlds folded somewhere just out of reach, worlds where Dumbledore was a monster, where James Potter was a thief and a murderer.
It was the sort of thing that should have been impossible, the sort of thing she'd have laughed off as a fever dream or a bad joke. But the woman in the bed had said it with such raw conviction, with that broken edge in her voice, that Lily believed her. You couldn't fake a voice that sounded like that.
The strangest part, though, the part that made Lily's head spin, was Sirius Black having a daughter.
Although, the more she turned it over, the less strange it became. Sirius was a known womanizer, the kind of boy who went through girls like other people went through sweets. A daughter somewhere down the line was hardly the most far-fetched thing about him. Lily had taken it upon herself, quietly and firmly, to keep him at arm's length from her own little group of friends, and she felt rather vindicated now.
Marlene mooned over him sometimes. Lily had always known better.
His time-travelling daughter was gorgeous, though. Lily could admit that much to herself in the privacy of her own head. Hard not to admit it, really, not after she'd seen the girl naked. They all had, the three of them, when she'd come crashing down through the dorm and Lily had been the one to kneel beside her and check whether she was even breathing before they'd bundled her up and gotten her to the hospital wing.
There'd been a lot of skin and a lot of blood and a lot of panic, but somewhere underneath the panic Lily's traitorous brain had still managed to register that the unconscious stranger was put together like something out of a painting.
And that wasn't even counting the horns, tail and wings that all seemed to vanish once the girl had passed out in Lily's arms. Some kind of metamorph transformation? Maybe a failed animagus experiment? There was no way Sirius Black's future daughter was actually some kind of demon right?
Lily arrived back in the Gryffindor common room and tossed James's cloak onto a random armchair near the fire. He misplaced the thing so constantly that he'd almost certainly assume he'd simply left it there himself, which was a comforting thought, because explaining why she'd had it would have been a conversation she had absolutely no intention of having.
Alice and Marlene were waiting for her, of course. They'd been waiting all morning so far, the two of them perched together on the worn red sofa with their heads bent close, and the second they spotted Lily they were on their feet.
"Well?" Marlene demanded, already crossing the room. "Is she awake? What did she say? Lily, you have to tell us everything, we've been sitting here going absolutely mad."
"Is she all right?" Alice asked, gentler, but no less eager, her round face tilted up anxiously. "She looked so dreadful when we brought her in. All that blood."
"Shh." Lily caught both their hands in hers. "Not here."
Because a few other students in the common room had perked up at the sound of urgent whispering, the way they always did. Hogwarts loved its gossip the way a fire loved dry wood, and three seventh-year girls clustered together looking secretive was practically an engraved invitation. A pair of fifth years by the window had stopped pretending to do their homework. Somebody near the stairs had gone suspiciously quiet. Lily felt at least four sets of ears swivel in her direction.
She tightened her grip and dragged her two best friends toward the girls' staircase before any of it could take root.
They tumbled into the dormitory in a heap, and Lily kicked the door shut behind them and cast a quick muffling charm over it for good measure, the same one she'd used a hundred times before to keep their late-night talks private. Then she sat them both down on Marlene's bed, because her own was still missing a table and littered with splinters they hadn't cleaned up yet, and she took a long breath.
A couple of minutes later, she told them everything she had heard.
She told them about the time travel. About the other worlds. She watched Marlene's mouth fall open and Alice's hands creep up to cover hers as she described the version of Dumbledore who was cruel, the version of James Potter who stole and killed. She told them, carefully, watching their faces, that the woman who'd fallen into their dorm had a name. Amara Black. And that Amara Black claimed to be the daughter of Sirius.
Marlene made a strangled noise. "Sirius has a kid?"
"In another world. From the future. Possibly?" Lily pressed her fingers to her temples. "I'm not entirely sure the tenses even work properly for this. Also, let's not forget something—she had wings," she said quietly. "And horns. And a tail…"
The dormitory went very still.
"Our summoning worked," Lily went on. "That stupid book. The candles. All of it. It wasn't nonsense. We actually called something through, and what came through was her."
"Lily. What did we do?" Alice asked. "Do we tell people we summoned Sirius Black's future daughter—who is also some kind of demon?"
"Fuck no we don't tell anyone!" Marlene cut in.
Lily agreed. "We keep her secret," Lily said. "Whatever she is. Because here's the thing I noticed. She told Dumbledore plenty. But she didn't say a single word about not being entirely human." She looked between her two friends with an expression that was equal parts serious and pleading. Marlene nodded slowly. Alice did too. "And considering we're the ones who dragged her here in the first place with our stupid ritual, I think we owe her that much. We keep it between us. All of it. Her features, the summoning circle, everything."
A beat of silence passed. Then Alice tilted her head, a small crease forming between her brows as a new thought visibly took shape. "What kind of demon do you think Sirius Black had a child with?"
All three of them looked at each other. The answer formed simultaneously in three separate brains, traveled down three separate throats, and emerged from three separate mouths at the exact same moment.
"A sex demon!"
The words overlapped so perfectly it sounded rehearsed. A stunned pause followed, and then Marlene snorted so hard she nearly choked on her own spit.
"I mean, obviously," she said, recovering with a wicked smirk that spread across her face. "Of course Sirius bloody Black would father a child with a succubus. Of course he would. The man has shagged his way through half of Gryffindor and a decent chunk of Ravenclaw. It was only a matter of time before he upgraded to supernatural." She leaned back on her hands, her smirk deepening into something almost admiring. "No wonder she looked like that, though. If Amara really is part succubus, that explains why she was so..." She gestured vaguely in the air, tracing an hourglass shape with her fingers. "You know. Absolutely bloody stunning."
Lily felt heat creep up the back of her neck and settle firmly across both cheeks.
She opened her mouth to say something dismissive, something appropriately Head Girl-ish about not objectifying people who had just crash-landed through their ceiling in a state of severe magical distress, but what came out instead was a quiet, traitorous "Mmhm" of agreement that made Marlene's grin triple in size.
Because it was true.
Lily had carried that woman to the infirmary. She had seen every single inch of Amara Black's body, and the memory was lodged in her brain with a permanence that no amount of rational thought was going to dislodge.
Alice, who had been staring at the ceiling with a contemplative expression that Lily recognized as dangerous, suddenly spoke up in a tone of studied casualness. "Do you think she's single?"
Lily whipped her head around. "Alice!"
"What?" Alice blinked innocently. "It's a perfectly reasonable question."
"You are engaged!" Lily sputtered, jabbing a finger in Alice's direction. "To Frank! Frank Longbottom! The man you've been writing love letters to since sixth year! The man who gave you a ring!"
Alice's lips pushed out into a pout that was half petulance and half genuine hurt, and she folded her arms across her chest with a huff. "So what? I'm not married yet, am I?" she said flatly. "And I know for a fact that Frank has been hooking up with at least two girls in Hufflepuff behind my back. Abigail Marsh and that blonde one who's always hanging around the greenhouses." Her jaw tightened. "I'm not stupid, Lily. I've known for weeks. So forgive me if my fidelity feels a bit one-sided at the moment." The bitterness in her voice was sharp enough to cut glass.
Lily's righteous indignation deflated like a punctured balloon.
Before Lily could figure out what to say to that, Marlene steamrolled the silence with the subtlety of a charging Erumpent. "Speaking of opportunities," she said, swinging her legs off the bed and fixing Lily with a look that was pure mischief distilled into human form. "This might be a good chance for someone in this room to finally lose her virginity. Someone who is eighteen years old, the last one in our entire friend group who hasn't had her cherry popped, and who has been putting it off because..."
"Don't you dare," Lily warned.
"...because she's nervous around boys," Marlene continued, ignoring the warning completely, "which is completely understandable given that the two boys who have shown the most interest in her are James 'I don't understand what no means' Potter and Severus 'I called you a slur and then stalked you for two years' Snape."
Lily's mouth opened and closed several times without producing sound. The blush that had been simmering on her cheeks erupted into a full-faced inferno that probably could have been seen from the Astronomy Tower.
"But," Marlene continued, raising a finger with theatrical emphasis, "correct me if I'm wrong, Lily, but you've never had a problem with girls."
"That's... that is completely... I don't..." Lily stammered, her voice climbing several octaves in the span of a single sentence. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it against her chest like a shield, glaring at her supposed best friends with the righteous fury of a woman who was being thoroughly and accurately called out. "We haven't even had a conversation with her yet! She just got here! She's injured and displaced and dealing with trauma from an alternate universe and this entire line of discussion is wildly inappropriate!"
"She's blushing so hard I think her hair might actually catch fire," Alice observed to Marlene.
"It's doing that thing where her ears go red first," Marlene agreed, nodding sagely. "That's how you know it's serious."
Lily pressed the pillow against her face and let out a muffled groan of frustration. When she resurfaced, her expression was set in the rigid, dignified mask of a woman desperately clinging to her last shred of authority. "I am not shy," she said firmly. "I am the Head Girl of Hogwarts. I have responsibilities. I have standards. I have a reputation to maintain!"
"Perfect," Marlene said brightly. "Then when Amara gets out of the hospital wing, you'll be the first one to talk to her. Welcome her to Hogwarts properly. Show her around. Head Girl duties and all that."
Lily stared at her. Every instinct she had screamed that this was a trap.
But backing down now would mean admitting she was nervous.
And Lily Evans was not nervous. She was the Head Girl. She had told James Potter to sod off forty-seven times without flinching. She could handle one conversation with one absurdly beautiful time-displaced half-succubus!
"Fine," she said, lifting her chin with what she hoped was an air of unshakeable confidence. "I'll do it. I'll be the first to talk to her. Because it's the right thing to do. As Head Girl!"
Alice and Marlene exchanged a look that contained entire paragraphs of smug, gleeful commentary.
"As Head Girl," Marlene repeated, her voice dripping with exaggerated solemnity. "Of course."
Lily buried her face in the pillow again and wondered, not for the first time, why she had chosen these two specific humans as her best friends. Oh right, we've shared the same dorm since first year…
– Amara –
Dumbledore and I had a long talk, but now it was over because he had other business to attend to, despite finding my entire situation—fascinating.
I was at least allowed to stay in the castle.
The fabric slid over my skin settling against my body in a way that felt deeply, fundamentally wrong. I was putting on Gryffindor robes.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the small changing room mirror and almost laughed. The robes hugged my curves in ways they were absolutely not designed to, the fabric pulling tight across my chest and hips despite the self-adjusting charms working overtime. Hogwarts uniforms were not built for succubus proportions. My cleavage alone was threatening to turn the modest neckline into something that would get me detention on sight.
Dumbledore had suggested this. Pose as a transfer student from an overseas institution while we worked together to find a way to send me home.
Keep a low profile. Avoid drawing attention.
I tugged at the robes and watched my breasts shift dangerously against the strained fabric. Low profile. Right.
But the old man had a point, much as it galled me to admit it. I was stranded in an alternate universe, with no allies.
Better to play nice. Wear the stupid lion costume. And work the problem from the inside while I figured out how to tear a hole in reality and go home.
Because I was going home. That was not in doubt. Not for a single second!
Morgana was waiting for me. Raven was waiting. Dick was waiting. Kara was waiting. Kori was waiting. Bellatrix was waiting. Daphne and Astoria were waiting. Nyx was waiting, probably chirping indignantly at anyone who came near his nest.
My family was waiting. And I would burn through every dimension between here and there to get back to them.
But first, I needed a plan.
My mind raced as I fastened the clasp at my throat.
The Justice League didn't exist in this world. That avenue was closed. I also doubted this reality had its own Morgana le Fay.
I was operating in a purely Potterverse setting, which meant purely Potterverse solutions.
So what did I have?
My [Cursed Knowledge] stirred, rifling through memories that weren't really memories, fragments of fiction absorbed from a life I had lived before this one. Most of it was useless here. Book lore, movie plots. But buried among the noise, something flickered.
A video game? A Hogwarts game. The details were frustratingly vague, but the core concept pulsed with promise.
Ancient magic. A form of magic so powerful and so rare that most witches and wizards couldn't even perceive it. The game had featured a protagonist who could see and wield this ancient magic, using it to accomplish things that normal magic simply couldn't. And beneath the castle, deep underground, there had been some kind of chamber. Pillars or columns filled with this raw, primordial power.
A reservoir of magic so ancient it predated Hogwarts itself.
The details were hazy. I couldn't remember the specifics of the game's plot or mechanics. But the chamber was real, or at least real enough in whatever version of reality had spawned the Cursed Knowledge. If something like it existed beneath this Hogwarts, if I could find it and tap into that kind of power, then maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to punch through the dimensional barrier and go home.
It was thin. It was speculative. It was the magical equivalent of hoping the spare key was still under the mat. It was also the only lead I had.
I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and pushed open the changing room door.
And walked face first into someone I was absolutely not ready for.
Lily Evans stood directly in my path, close enough that I nearly collided with her chest before I stumbled back a half step. She was smiling a warm, slightly nervous, almost hopeful smile that lit up her entire face and made her green eyes sparkle in the infirmary's soft light.
My green eyes. The same shade. The exact same shade. Looking into Lily Evans' eyes was like looking into a mirror that reflected back a version of myself that had never been broken.
She was beautiful. She was eighteen, a year under my age, with hair the color of dark autumn fire falling past her shoulders in thick, lustrous waves. Her skin was creamy and lightly freckled across the bridge of a delicate nose. She was shorter than me by several inches, with a slender body that still managed to curve in all the soft, pleasant places that my traitorous succubus senses immediately catalogued without my permission.
This was my true mother. Or rather, the alternate version of the woman…
"Hi," she said brightly. "I'm Lily Evans. I'm the Head Girl. Professor Dumbledore asked me to show you around the castle and help you get settled in." She extended her hand, and her smile widened just enough to dimple one cheek. "Welcome to Hogwarts."
It took everything I had not to slap her hand away.
The impulse surged through me like a bolt of electricity, immediate and violent and so strong that my fingers actually twitched at my side.
My Simmering Fury stirred in my gut, dredging up a highlight reel of every terrible thing Lily Potter had ever done to me.
Fuck off. Don't touch me. You lost the right to smile at me the moment you let them throw me away! The words were right there, loaded on my tongue like a curse ready to fire.
But I didn't say them. Because this wasn't her.
I knew that. Intellectually, logically, in the part of my brain that Morgana had spent months training to override the emotional inferno that was my default operating mode, I knew this was not the same woman. This Lily Evans was eighteen years old. She hadn't married James yet. She hadn't abandoned a baby yet. She hadn't done any of it yet, and in this timeline, there was a very real chance she never would.
Looking at her was easier than talking with the good Dumbledore had been, I could admit that much. The age difference helped enormously.
It wasn't easy. But it was easier.
Lily must have seen something in my expression, some flicker of the internal war I was barely keeping off my face, because her smile faltered and she stepped closer instead of pulling back. Her brow creased with genuine concern, and before I could react, she reached out and took my hand.
Her fingers were warm and soft and slightly damp, the way hands got when someone was nervous but trying not to show it. "What's wrong?" she asked quietly. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
The warmth of her hand against mine sent a traitorous ripple of sensation up my arm. My succubus nature, the traitorous bitch, didn't care about the complicated emotional minefield I was navigating. It just registered soft skin, gentle touch, pretty girl, and started purring like a cat being stroked.
I coughed roughly and pulled myself together with a force of will that probably should have earned me a medal. "It's nothing," I said. The lie tasted like ash, but I was getting dangerously good at telling them. I forced my mouth into something approximating a smile. "It's nice to meet you, Lily. And, um. Sorry about your dormitory table. I didn't exactly plan my entrance."
Lily blinked, and then laughed. "Oh, don't worry about that," she said, waving her free hand dismissively. "Nothing a Reparo couldn't fix. Marlene's been complaining about that table wobbling for months anyway. You actually did her a favor."
I huffed out something that was almost a genuine laugh. Almost.
An awkward silence settled between us. I became acutely aware of the sound of my own breathing, the distant clatter of something in Pomfrey's office, the soft whistle of wind against the infirmary windows.
And the fact that Lily was still holding my hand. Her fingers hadn't loosened. If anything, they had tightened slightly, her thumb resting against my knuckle in a way that felt less like a greeting and more like an anchor. She didn't seem to notice she was doing it, or maybe she did and was pretending not to. Either way, her palm was pressed warm against mine, and my succubus instincts were cataloguing every point of contact with inappropriate enthusiasm.
"So," I said, because the silence was starting to make my skin itch. "Do you have any questions for me? About, you know." I gestured vaguely at the ceiling with my free hand. "Randomly appearing naked in your dormitory in the middle of the night."
Lily's lips pressed together and a smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. "I have so many questions," she said, and the smirk deepened. "So, so many. You have no idea." Her eyes glittered with barely restrained curiosity. "But I'm not going to push. If you don't want to talk about any of it, I won't ask."
I stared at her. That was... not what I had expected.
I didn't know what to call it. It just made my chest hurt again.
"Instead," Lily continued, brightening as if she had just had the most brilliant idea in the history of Hogwarts, "why don't I show you around the castle before dinner?"
I blinked. Of all the things I had been bracing for, a casual tour of the castle had not been on the list. Not interrogation, not suspicion, not a demand for answers about the demonic features she may or may not have glimpsed before I lost consciousness. Just... a tour. A normal, mundane, everyday activity that normal, mundane, everyday students did.
Something in my chest loosened. Just a fraction. Just enough to let me breathe without it hurting. "Yeah," I said, and the word came out softer than I intended. "Okay. I'd like that."
Lily beamed. She still hadn't let go of my hand. And I still hadn't pulled away.
– Severus –
Severus Snape stalked through the fourth-floor corridor with the hunched, purposeful gait of someone who wanted the world to know he was not interested in being spoken to. His greasy black hair hung in limp curtains on either side of his sallow face, and his dark eyes were fixed on the middle distance with the intensity of a man engaged in two entirely separate lines of thought simultaneously.
The first line was productive. He had been turning over an idea for a new potion for the better part of a week, something that had sparked during a late-night reading session in the Restricted Section. The concept was elegant in its cruelty: a draught that would attack the drinker's nervous system and amplify every pain receptor in the body a hundredfold. A single stubbed toe would feel like a shattered leg. A paper cut would feel like a severing charm. The theoretical framework was sound, but the stabilizing agent was proving elusive.
It was a problem that demanded precision, patience, and the kind of methodical brilliance that Severus knew he possessed in abundance, even if no one else in this wretched school had the intelligence to recognize it.
The second line of thought was about Lily.
It was always about Lily.
Two years. Two full years since the word had fallen out of his mouth: Mudblood.
He hadn't meant to say it to her, to call her such a vulgar word. He had been humiliated, dangling upside down in front of half the school with Potter and his pack of sycophants and he took it out on her. It was a stupid, thoughtless, unforgivable reflex aimed at the one person in the world who didn't deserve it.
She still hadn't forgiven him.
It was their seventh year now, their final year, and she still turned away when he approached. Still walked a different route to class when she saw him coming. Still looked through him in the Great Hall as if he were a particularly uninteresting piece of furniture. Every cold shoulder was a knife slipped between his ribs, and the worst part was that he deserved every single one of them.
But he wouldn't give up.
He couldn't.
Lily Evans was the axis around which his entire world rotated, the only point of light in a life defined by darkness and mediocrity and his father's drunken fists.
He would earn her forgiveness. He would prove himself worthy. He was the man she was meant to be with. Not Potter. Not anyone else. Him!
At least she hadn't gotten any closer to Potter. That thought brought a thin, cold smile to Severus's lips as he rounded the corner. Whatever else was going wrong in his life, at least he could take comfort in the fact that Lily Evans still despised James Potter with a passion that bordered on allergic. Every time Potter opened his stupid mouth in her presence, Lily's expression curdled like milk left in the sun, and Severus treasured each of those moments like precious gems hoarded in the vault of his memory.
Speaking of Potter.
The four of them were clustered in an alcove just ahead, heads bent together in the conspiratorial huddle that usually preceded some act of spectacular cruelty disguised as schoolboy humor.
James Potter, with his perpetually disheveled hair and that arrogant tilt to his jaw that made Severus's wand hand itch. Remus Lupin, pale and tired as always, standing slightly apart with the resigned expression of a man who had long ago accepted his role as the conscience that nobody listened to. Peter Pettigrew, pudgy and nervous, hovering at the edge of the group like a barnacle clinging to the hull of a ship it didn't deserve to ride on.
And Sirius Black.
Black's head snapped up the moment Severus came into view. His nostrils flared and his lip curled back from his teeth in a way that was disturbingly canine. "Fuck off, Snivellus," he growled. "We're busy."
Severus stopped walking and folded his arms across his thin chest. He let the insult wash over him with practiced indifference, cataloguing it alongside the thousands of others he had filed away over the years.
Each one was a debt. Each one would be repaid eventually.
"Busy pulling another of your barely disguised hate crimes as pranks, I'm sure," he replied, his voice flat and venomous. "What is it this time? Hexing a first-year's legs together? Dangling someone from the Astronomy Tower? Or have you graduated to something that might actually warrant expulsion?"
Sirius scoffed and waved a dismissive hand.
He looked distracted, almost excited, which was somehow worse than his standard hostility because an excited Sirius Black was an unpredictable Sirius Black.
"It's not that," Sirius said, his scowl softening into something that could almost be described as a grin. "We're looking for the new transfer student! Haven't seen her yet ourselves, but other students have." He leaned forward. "And mate, the reports are unanimous. She is gorgeous. Like, unreasonably gorgeous. Perfect face, perfect body, long black hair, and..." He cupped both hands in front of his chest in an unmistakable gesture. "Massive tits."
James shifted uncomfortably beside him but said nothing.
Remus pinched the bridge of his nose.
Peter's watery eyes went wide and his mouth hung open slightly, which was his default expression for most situations.
Severus stared at Sirius. "I don't care," he said coldly.
Sirius held up a finger. "You should care, Snivellus. Because this girl? She might be a witches' witch, if you catch my meaning." He paused for effect, clearly savoring the moment. "And she was seen not twenty minutes ago walking through the hallways holding hands with Lily Evans."
The corridor went very quiet.
James's jaw tightened beside Sirius, his eyes darkening behind his round spectacles. His hands shoved deep into his pockets, and he stared at the floor with the fixed intensity of a man trying very hard to look like he didn't care about something that he obviously cared about enormously.
Severus's glare could have stripped paint from the walls. His fingers curled slowly at his sides, nails biting into his palms. "You're lying," he said flatly. "Like usual."
Sirius spread his hands wide, the picture of wounded innocence. "Don't shoot the messenger, Snivellus. I'm just reporting what half of Gryffindor saw with their own eyes. The new girl and Evans. Walking together. Hand in hand. Looking very cozy." His grin sharpened into something cruel. "I wonder which one made the first move..."
Severus held Sirius's gaze for three long, poisonous seconds. Then he turned on his heel and walked away without another word, his mind already churning through possibilities and dismissals and the bitter, familiar taste of jealousy that he would never, ever admit to feeling.
Behind him, he heard Sirius call out cheerfully, "Good talk, Snivellus! Always a pleasure!"
Once he was well clear of those four bastards and their grating, braying voices had faded into the stone corridors behind him, Severus slowed his pace and reached into the inner pocket of his robes. His fingers found the small glass vial by touch alone, worn smooth from how many times he had held it. He drew it out carefully, cradling it in his palm like something sacred.
Inside the vial, nestled against the glass like threads of captured flame, were three strands of perfect red hair.
They caught the torchlight as he tilted the vial, shimmering between copper and crimson, and the sight of them sent a pulse of warmth through his chest that was almost painful in its intensity. He had collected them over the course of sixth year. One from the back of a chair she had sat in during Potions. One from a library book she had returned. One from the common room floor near the fireplace where she liked to study.
Lily could never find out he had them.
She wouldn't understand.
She would call it creepy, or invasive, or some other word that people used when they didn't comprehend the depth of real devotion.
They didn't understand that love like his required proximity, required knowledge, required the ability to know where she was at all times so that he could protect her from the dangers she was too trusting to see for herself. Potter. Black. The growing darkness in the wizarding world that she, as a Muggleborn, was tragically vulnerable to. Severus was the only one who truly saw the threats closing in around her. The only one who cared enough to watch over her even when she didn't want him to.
That was love. Real love. Not the shallow, performative rubbish Potter paraded around the school.
He uncorked the vial and held his wand over the opening, murmuring an incantation he had crafted himself during one particularly sleepless night in the Slytherin dormitories.
It existed solely in his mind, born from a combination of advanced tracking theory, sympathetic magic principles, and the kind of obsessive ingenuity that professors would have called brilliant if they knew about it and deeply disturbing if they understood what it was for.
The hairs rose from the vial and dissolved into a faint, shimmering mist that spiraled around the tip of his wand before stretching outward like a compass needle finding north. It tugged gently but insistently toward the east, trailing through the corridor like a thread of gossamer light that only he could see.
Severus followed.
The trail led him through two corridors, down a flight of stairs, past a cluster of oblivious Hufflepuffs, and finally to a heavy oak door that opened onto one of the castle's outer courtyards. He eased the door open just enough to slip through, pressing himself against the cold stone wall where a buttress created a pocket of shadow deep enough to conceal him completely.
The courtyard overlooked the castle grounds in a sweeping panorama of green lawns rolling down toward the Black Lake.
It was the kind of view that probably inspired poetry in people who weren't Severus Snape.
He didn't see any of it.
Because there, on a stone bench near the courtyard's edge, was Lily.
His Lily.
She was sitting with her legs crossed at the ankle, her red hair spilling over one shoulder like liquid fire, her face tilted slightly upward and bathed in soft golden light that made her skin glow.
She was smiling. She was holding hands with someone.
A girl. Sitting beside her on the bench, turned toward Lily with an ease and comfort that suggested they had been talking for a while. Gryffindor robes, though they fit her in a way that Gryffindor robes had absolutely no business fitting anyone. Long black hair that fell past her shoulders in a glossy dark curtain. A profile that looked like it had been sculpted by someone who understood beauty as a mathematical equation and had solved it perfectly.
Even from this distance, even from this angle, even half-hidden in shadow with jealousy clouding his vision, Severus could see that the girl was exactly what Sirius had described.
He didn't care.
He didn't care about her face or her body or her hair or any of the superficial attributes that sent idiots like Black into a drooling frenzy. What he cared about was the way Lily was looking at her. The smile. The lean of her body, angled toward the new girl like a flower turning toward the sun. The way their fingers were laced together on the bench between them, Lily's pale hand threaded through the stranger's with a casual intimacy that suggested she had either forgotten she was doing it or didn't want to stop.
Severus had never seen Lily hold anyone's hand like that. Not her friends. Not her dormmates. Certainly not Potter.
She was a tactile person in general, always touching people's arms when she talked to them, always hugging her friends hello and goodbye. But this was different.
And Lily was smiling that smile. The one she used to give him, before he ruined everything. The one that meant she was happy and comfortable and had let her guard down completely.
She was giving it to a stranger.
His fingers tightened around his wand until the wood creaked. His breathing went shallow and controlled, the way it did when he was suppressing the urge to hex something.
Whoever this new girl was, she clearly didn't understand the situation. She didn't know that Lily Evans was spoken for. Not officially, not yet, but it was only a matter of time. Severus and Lily were inevitable. Their story had been written from the moment they met as children in that park in Cokeworth, two magical souls finding each other in a mundane world, and no amount of temporary estrangement was going to change the ending.
This girl was an obstacle. An interloper. A distraction that had wandered into a narrative she had no part in and mistakenly believed she had a claim on something that belonged to someone else.
Severus would have to teach her that lesson personally…
Nobody took Lily Evans away from him. Nobody!
– Voldemort –
The Gaunt shack was pure squalor.
Its walls sagged inward under the weight of decades of neglect, the floorboards were warped and blackened with mold, and the ceiling bowed so dramatically in places that it seemed to be actively trying to collapse on anyone foolish enough to stand beneath it. Every surface was coated in a thick layer of grime, dust, and the unmistakable stench of decay that clung to places where terrible things had happened and the walls had never forgotten.
Lord Voldemort stood in the middle of it and smiled.
He despised this place.
Every rotting plank and filthy window reminded him of the pathetic, inbred family that had squandered the bloodline of Salazar Slytherin himself until it had curdled into madness, poverty, and squalor.
His grandfather Marvolo had been a raving lunatic who wore his heritage like a crown while living in conditions that would have shamed a house elf.
His uncle Morfin had been worse, a slack-jawed brute with just enough magic to be dangerous and far too little intelligence to be anything else.
And his mother, the wretched, lovesick fool who had enslaved a Muggle with a love potion and then had the spectacular weakness to die giving birth to the result.
This was also the place where he had committed his first murders.
His father and grandparents, the Riddle family, had lived just up the hill in their pristine manor house, comfortable and wealthy and entirely unaware that the strange pale boy who had come knocking on their door carried their blood in his veins and hatred in his heart.
Tom Riddle Senior had looked at his son with the same revulsion he might have shown a cockroach crawling across his dinner plate.
The expression had lasted approximately four seconds before the Killing Curse wiped it off his face permanently.
Patricide. Such an ugly word for such a satisfying act.
But Voldemort had not returned to this miserable hovel to reminisce about family history. He had come here for something far more important, and the reason for his smile rested in his long, pale fingers.
The Gaunt family ring. A heavy band of tarnished gold set with a black stone carved with a strange triangular symbol that none of his ancestors had possessed the intellect to identify. Voldemort didn't care about the symbol. He didn't care about the ring's history or its supposed connection to the Peverell line or any of the other genealogical trivia that pureblood families hoarded like dragons sitting on piles of useless knowledge.
What he cared about was what the ring now contained.
A piece of his soul.
He held it up between thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly, admiring the way the black stone seemed to drink in the light rather than reflect it.
The creation of a Horcrux was an act of supreme magical violence, a ritual so dark and so fundamentally transgressive that most wizards couldn't even conceive of performing it once.
Voldemort had now done it multiple times. Each fragment of his soul, carved away and sealed inside a worthy vessel, was another chain binding him to the mortal plane. Another guarantee that Lord Voldemort would endure long after every pathetic, mortal witch and wizard currently drawing breath had crumbled to dust and been forgotten.
Immortality was not a gift. It was an achievement.
He was just about to place the final protective enchantment on the ring, a particularly vicious curse of his own design that would kill anyone who touched the object with their bare skin, a necrotic hex that would wither flesh and blacken bone and spread through the victim's body like poison through a river.
It was exactly the kind of welcome he wanted to extend to any fool stupid enough to lay hands on his property.
His wand was raised.
But suddenly, the ring vibrated.
Voldemort paused. His crimson eyes narrowed as he stared at the object in his hand.
The vibration intensified.
"What is this?" he hissed.
The ring lurched sideways in his grip. His fingers tightened instinctively, but the pull grew stronger. The black stone was glowing now, pulsing with a light that was not his magic, not any magic he recognized.
Something that wanted the ring more than he did.
His eyes went wide.
The ring ripped itself free from his grasp with a force that nearly dislocated his index finger. It shot across the shack like a bullet, and smashed through one of the filthy windows in an explosion of shattered glass and splintered wood.
The ring rocketed upward, arcing over the treeline and disappearing into the distance with a speed that no summoning charm could match.
What…? What just happened?
Voldemort stood motionless for three full seconds…
His hand remained outstretched, fingers still curled around the shape of an object that was no longer there.
His brain refused to process what had just happened. Horcruxes did not resist their creator. Horcruxes sat where they were placed and waited to be found or not found, and they certainly, certainly did not launch themselves through windows and fly away like startled owls!
Someone had just stolen his Horcrux!
The realization detonated inside him like Fiendfyre in a sealed room.
"WHOEVER DID THIS IS DEAD!" he screamed, and his voice was no longer cold or controlled or carefully modulated. It was raw, unhinged, a sound ripped from the deepest, most primal part of him where the fear of death lived coiled like a serpent. "I WILL RENDER FLESH FROM BONE! I WILL BURN THEIR BLOODLINE FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH! I WILL MAKE THEM BEG FOR A DEATH I WILL NEVER GRANT!"
His magic erupted outward in a shockwave of pure rage. What remained of the gaunt shack exploded around him!
– Amara Black –
Fuck.
The word echoed through my skull like a gong as I climbed the staircase to the Gryffindor common room, my borrowed robes swishing against my legs with every step.
The Fat Lady's portrait swung shut behind me, and the warmth of the common room washed over my skin with crackling firelight and worn velvet and the low murmur of students scattered across armchairs and floor cushions.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I had not been expecting to like Hogwarts.
I had been expecting to hate it.
I had been fully prepared to hate it, had practically pre-loaded my hatred like ammunition in a chamber, ready to fire at the first provocation.
This was the castle that belonged to Dumbledore.
Instead, I had spent the afternoon wandering through a genuinely magical castle with a genuinely nice girl, and I had enjoyed myself so much that the realization made me want to set something on fire out of sheer self-directed frustration.
The castle itself was partly to blame. Hogwarts was, objectively, incredible. The staircases moved with a groan of ancient stone that vibrated through my bones. The portraits bickered and gossiped and catcalled me as I passed, one particularly bold knight offering to slay a dragon in my honor while his painted horse ate the flowers in a neighboring frame. The corridors shifted subtly when you weren't paying attention, stretching or shortening depending on some unknowable architectural whim, and twice I could have sworn the castle itself was guiding us away from dead ends and toward the next interesting thing to see.
But the castle was secondary. The real problem was Lily Evans.
I had not been expecting to like her.
I had been bracing for tolerance at best, polite distance at worst, and a constant, low-grade battle against the urge to scream at a face that looked too much like the woman who had ruined my life.
What I had not accounted for was the fact that Lily Evans was an extreme extrovert with absolutely no respect for personal boundaries and the social persistence of a battering ram.
She talked constantly. She asked questions without being intrusive, offered observations without being preachy, and somehow managed to fill every silence before it had a chance to become uncomfortable, as if she had a sixth sense for conversational dead zones and an instinctive compulsion to fill them with warmth.
My usual introverted defenses, the walls of sarcasm and standoffishness and carefully cultivated don't-talk-to-me energy that kept most people at a comfortable distance unless I wanted to talk to them first, simply did not work on her.
She walked right through them.
Every time I tried to retreat into monosyllabic responses, she pulled me back out with a question so genuinely curious I couldn't help but answer it.
Every time I went quiet, she matched the silence for exactly long enough to make it comfortable before seamlessly picking up a new thread of conversation.
It also helped, and I hated admitting this even to myself, that she was really beautiful. Up close, spending hours in her company, the resemblance to my mother faded into something more manageable.
And she smelled nice. My succubus senses drank it in greedily, cataloguing the notes of her natural scent beneath the soap and shampoo, filing them away in that instinctive, predatory part of my brain that assessed everyone I met on criteria that polite society pretended didn't exist.
And she kept touching me. Constantly. A hand on my arm when she was making a point. Fingers brushing my elbow to steer me around a corner. Her shoulder bumping mine as we walked side by side through corridors too narrow for two people to walk comfortably abreast, except she never fell behind or moved ahead. She just stayed close, close enough that her warmth bled through the wool of our matching robes, and my skin hummed with low-level lustful awareness at every single point of contact.
It was maddening. It was disarming. It was working.
Fuck.
I followed Lily and her two friends up the spiraling staircase to the girls' dormitory. Alice and Marlene.
Lily walked beside me, her hand ghosting against the small of my back as we rounded the final curve, the touch so light it might have been accidental if it weren't the fourteenth time she had touched me in the last hour.
"Here we are," Lily announced, pushing open the dormitory door with a flourish and stepping aside to wave me through. "Home sweet home. Or, well, home sweet home minus one study table."
The room was spacious and circular, as most tower rooms in Hogwarts tended to be, with four large four-poster beds arranged around the curved walls. Three of them were clearly lived in, personalized with the distinct signatures of their occupants.
The fourth bed was freshly made with clean sheets and a folded blanket, sitting empty and waiting against the wall nearest the window.
My bed, apparently.
"These dormitories were always designed for four," Lily explained, settling onto the edge of her own bed and pulling her legs up beneath her. "But we don't have a lot of girls in our year. Gryffindor especially. So it's just been the three of us since first year." She smiled and gestured around the room. "Plenty of space, though. And the bathroom is through that door on the left. Unlimited hot water, which is honestly the best thing about this entire castle."
Marlene threw herself backward onto her own bed with enough force to make the frame creak in protest. "The hot water and the food," she corrected. "Don't undersell the food."
Alice sat on her bed with considerably more grace, folding her hands in her lap and giving me a warm, tentative smile. "We hope you'll be comfortable here. And we're sorry again about, well." She glanced at the floor where the shattered table had been. A faint scorch mark still darkened the stone despite what must have been considerable cleaning efforts. "The dramatic welcome…"
I looked around the room slowly, taking it all in.
I had never had this. While kids like James Potter Jr. and his friends were sleeping in rooms exactly like this one, making friendships and memories and all the stupid, precious, irreplaceable things that came with growing up somewhere you were wanted, I had been lying on a lumpy mattress in an orphanage with peeling paint and cold radiators, staring at a water-stained ceiling and wondering why nobody had ever come for me.
I almost regretted not being able to attend this place when I was younger.
But it was tangled up with the knowledge that even if I had received a letter, even if Dumbledore hadn't sealed my magic, the version of Hogwarts waiting for me would have been my Hogwarts. The one run by a manipulative old monster, filled with people who would have despised me for no reason.
This Hogwarts wasn't mine either. But for the time I was here until I went home, I could pretend.
"It's nice," I said quietly, and meant it more than any of them could possibly know.
"So," Marlene said, rolling onto her stomach and propping her chin in both hands. "What do we want to do before bed? We could eat candy and gossip about what a tremendous bastard Alice's fiance Frank is. I've been workshopping some truly devastating insults and I need a test audience."
"I'm down for that," Alice said immediately. She pulled a bag of Honeydukes chocolates from her nightstand drawer and tossed it to Marlene. "I'll start. Did you know he's a total freaking mama's boy! I bet he can't even wipe his dick after pissing without her approval!"
"Ewww," Marlene declared through a mouthful of chocolate frog.
Lily shook her head in genuine disgust, then turned to me and patted the spot next to her on the bed. Her green eyes found mine and she smiled, warm and expectant and completely unaware of the storm of complicated emotions that simple invitation triggered.
I only hesitated for a moment.
Then I sat down next to her and told those instincts to shut the fuck up.
The mattress dipped under my weight, and Lily scooted closer immediately, closing the gap between us until her thigh pressed firmly against mine from hip to knee. Her shoulder brushed against my arm and she settled there like she had found the exact spot she wanted to be in and had no intention of moving.
Across the room, Alice and Marlene exchanged a look and giggled at us for some reason.
I opened my mouth to ask what was so funny?
Suddenly, the window exploded!
Marlene screamed and rolled off her bed in a tangle of limbs and chocolate frogs. Alice threw herself flat with the reflexes of someone whose parents were Aurors. Lily grabbed my arm with both hands, her nails digging into my skin through the robe sleeve.
Something small and dark rocketed through the shattered window, trailing wisps of black energy that hissed and crackled against the air.
It crossed the room in a blur, weaving between the floating candles, and stopped.
Right in front of my face.
A ring? It hovered there, rotating slowly, six inches from my nose.
"What the hell was that!?" Marlene shrieked from the floor.
"How did it get through the wards!?" Alice demanded, already on her feet with her wand drawn.
I should have hesitated. I should have run diagnostics, checked for curses, done any one of the dozen sensible precautionary things that Morgana had spent months beating into my skull. Instead, driven by an instinct, I reached out and touched it.
The moment my fingers closed around the ring, the world lurched.
Black mist erupted from the stone like blood from a severed artery, thick and viscous and screaming!
"DAMN YOU! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE! YOU WILL REGRET THIS—"
My mouth watered. My lips parted on their own. My jaw dropped open and my throat relaxed.
The black mist changed direction. It stopped thrashing and screaming and trying to escape, because it couldn't escape, because I was pulling it in with a force that was beyond physical, beyond magical, a gravitational hunger that had nothing to do with choice and everything to do with what I was.
It shot down my throat like smoke inhaled through a pipe.
"Mmmmh, delicious," I moaned, and the sound that came out of me was obscene and involuntary and dripping with a satisfaction so deep it bordered on sexual.
The mist tasted like power.
My body shuddered once and curled my toes and drew a second, softer moan from my throat before I could stop it.
I stared at the ring in my hand.
A System screen materialized in front of my eyes, visible only to me.
[CONGRATULATIONS! You have acquired the Resurrection Stone, your THIRD Deathly Hallow! The set is now COMPLETE! Further details will be provided when all three Hallows are equipped simultaneously. I was honestly expecting you to get the one in your own universe but this works too!]
And then, in smaller text beneath, almost as an afterthought:
[NOTE: You have also just consumed a soul fragment belonging to Tom Marvolo Riddle (Lord Voldemort). As the Horcrux was his property and you have destroyed it without his consent, you have initiated a BLOOD FEUD between yourself and the Dark Lord Voldemort. Good luck!]
I blinked at the screen.
I blinked at it again.
I pocketed the ring.
And then my brain finally caught up to what had just happened and the words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. "...I just ate part of Voldemort's soul?"
The silence that followed lasted approximately half a second.
"EHHHHHH!?" Lily shrieked directly into my ear at a volume that would have made a Mandrake wince. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ATE PART OF VOLDEMORT'S SOUL!? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!? HOW DO YOU EAT A SOUL!? WHY WOULD YOU EAT A SOUL!? AMARA, WHAT THE FUCK!?"
XXX
Look at Amara! Already making new 'friends'… and enemies.