StarWaves - The Black Witch 42

Chapter 42:

– Amara Black –

After taking a minute to calm down from the excitement, I still couldn't believe what had happened.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs, over the too-tight Gryffindor skirt, and stared at the tattoo running down my right forearm. The ankh was still warm and faintly glowing, the way a stovetop glows after you've switched it off. 

I fucking did it.

I killed that bastard James Potter…

I kept replaying it on a loop, like my brain didn't trust its own memory. The green light leaving my hand. His face as he realized the old Potter magic wasn't going to save him, because Morgana had burned every drop of Potter out of my blood months ago and there was no kin left in me for him to hide behind. 

Then he dropped like a sack of wet laundry onto the stone floor of the castle that had made him a golden boy.

He didn't get a speech. He just stopped.

And Lily screamed.

I'd expected to feel something about that. Guilt, maybe, or that awful tug I'd felt in the other world every time Lily Evans smiled at me with my mother's face. 

But all I'd felt watching this Lily collapse over his body was a cold, distant kind of fairness. She'd stood there while he cursed me in Sirius's house. She'd stood there while he dumped me in an alley like rubbish. She'd sat at a table and calmly haggled over my body with a rotting old man named McFinnegan. Now she knew what it was like to watch something you loved get taken away while you were powerless to stop it.

Good.

Sirius's face rose in my mind, the way it always did when I let my guard down. Not the young, cocky alternate Sirius who'd kissed me on a battlefield after I dragged his soul back from the other side. 

My Sirius—with his tired eyes, too-thin wrists, a laugh that always sounded a little surprised to exist. The man who'd found a broken eighteen-year-old squib in a shitty orphanage and decided, just like that, that she was his daughter. The man who'd given me his name and a home, then died for a son James Potter loved more than I'd ever been loved, while James stood over his grave ready to steal everything Sirius had left me.

Finally, I'd gotten vengeance for Sirius.

And some closure for myself.

The strangest part was the quiet. 

My Simmering Fury had been a constant hum under my skin ever since that night in the alley, banked coals that never fully went out. 

For the first time I could remember, part of it had gone silent. It wasn't all gone. Dumbledore was still breathing. Lily was still breathing. My precious twin was probably still in the hospital wing, nursing a scalded crotch. But one of the coals had finally gone cold, and the space it left behind felt almost like peace.

I let out a shaky breath that was half laugh and half something wetter, and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand before anyone could notice.

Heather would have cried. So I let myself, just a little, for her.

I was also shocked that, right afterwards, Merlin himself had shown up to attack me in person…

Merlin. The actual Merlin.

I hadn't even gotten to enjoy my victory for a full minute. 

He wore pristine white robes. He had silver hair, a face that looked 20 and 2 thousand years old at the same time, and grey eyes as calm and cold as a winter lake. 

I knew exactly who he was, because Morgana had drilled it into me.

In those first weeks in Gotham, she'd described him to me over and over. She'd made me repeat it back until I could recite it in my sleep. And every single time, she'd finished the lesson the same way— "If you ever see him, you do not fight. You run, and you keep running until you find me."

Morgana le Fay was afraid of exactly one person.

Suddenly so much made sense. 

The "Deputy" Hermione had told me about, in his spotless white robes with his hood always up. The new wards that sniffed out dark creatures. My shadow travel bouncing off the castle like a fly hitting a window, and my invisibility simply refusing to work. 

I pressed my hand over the spot where I'd stashed Morgana's wand, the one I'd taken from Dumbledore, and a cold thought settled in my gut. Merlin was awake. He was in Britain, standing at Dumbledore's side. 

I shook my head. There were more important things to focus on.

I glanced around the Batplane's interior. Dick had it set to autopilot. He, along with Raven, Kara, and Kori, was standing there waiting for me to say something.

None of them had sat down. They were just standing there in a loose half-circle in the narrow cabin, all four of them, like they were afraid that if they looked away for a second I'd disappear again.

Dick had pushed his mask up onto his forehead. There were dark smudges under his eyes that hadn't been there before, and his knuckles were scraped raw under the edges of his gloves, as if he'd been punching things a lot harder than he needed to. He was smiling, though. 

Kara wasn't even fully touching the floor. She was hovering an inch or two above the deck without seeming to notice, her hands balled into fists at her sides. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet, and her bottom lip was doing a determined little wobble. 

Kori had given up on composure entirely. Tears were streaming freely down her orange cheeks and she was beaming through them, bouncing slightly on her toes. She was clutching a small, wriggling, very confused puppy to her chest. 

I had absolutely no idea where the puppy had come from, and it was licking her chin.

Raven stood a little apart from the others, her hood up and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. The silver Veil Chain I'd given her glinted at her wrist. Even with her face half hidden in shadow, I could see that her violet eyes were fixed on me with something so raw it almost hurt to look at. 

As if she'd spent every hour I'd been gone replaying the moment her fingers brushed my wrist and couldn't hold on.

And they all looked so happy to see ME again.

Me.

I sat there on the edge of a seat in a ruined Gryffindor uniform that was two sizes too small. I was covered in mud from crash-landing on the lawn, with James Potter's death still practically humming on my fingertips and a passed-out phoenix in my bra. My wings were half folded behind me because I hadn't had the presence of mind to put them away, and my tail was coiled nervously around my own ankle like a cat's.

For eighteen years, nobody had looked at me like that. Not once. The only person who'd ever looked at me like I was something worth waiting for was Sirius, and the world had taken him away from me so fast I'd barely gotten used to it.

But the four of them had come looking for me. Kara had blasted Merlin into a wall for me. And now they were standing in a cramped jet, staring at me like I was the best thing they'd seen all week, like I mattered.

It made me sniffle even more.

I felt Dick’s strong hands touch my cheek. He crouched in front of my seat so we were eye to eye and cupped my face like it was something fragile. His thumb brushed slowly under my eye and wiped away the tear that had escaped, then went back for the next one.

“H-Hey,” he said softly. His voice cracked on that one tiny word. “Hey, you.”

“Hi,” I managed. It came out wobbly and pathetic.

“We thought—” He stopped and swallowed. His thumb kept moving, gently, over and over. “Doesn’t matter what we thought. You’re here. God, Amara, I’m so glad you’re back.”

Then his eyes drifted up to my horns, which curved higher now and darkened to glossy black at the tips. They traveled over my shoulders to the huge shadowy wings folded behind me, still shimmering faintly with silver fire and pinpricks of starlight. Something softened in his face.

“And you’re even more beautiful than ever,” he murmured. “Which honestly doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us.”

My face went hot. Of all the things to make me blush after the day I’d had, it was Dick Grayson being sincere at me from six inches away.

Kori couldn’t hold back any longer. She practically vibrated forward, the puppy still squirming in her arms, and leaned over Dick’s shoulder to stare at my wings with enormous, shining green eyes.

“Oh, Amara, your wings! They are magnificent!” she gushed. “Before, they were small and very cute, like a bat. But now they are like the night sky on Tamaran when all three moons are hidden and you can see every star! Did they grow? Do they feel different? May I touch them later?”

“I—maybe? Yes?” I said. I genuinely had no idea which question I was answering.

Kori’s gaze dropped lower, to my tail, which was still nervously wrapped around my ankle. Her eyes lit up even more. “And your tail!” she squealed. “It is even thicker now! That will make it so much more pleasurable when you put it inside Raven’s—”

Kara’s hand slapped over Kori’s mouth so fast I actually heard the air crack. “Kori!” Kara hissed, crimson from her collar to the roots of her hair. “We talked about this! Indoor thoughts! Those are indoor thoughts!”

“Mmph mrrph,” Kori protested against her palm. She sounded deeply wounded.

Behind them, Raven had made a small strangled noise and yanked her hood so far down that only her chin was visible. Even that had turned a vivid shade of purple. 

Dick closed his eyes and let his forehead drop against my knee with a long-suffering groan.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I gasped once I could breathe again, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I’m sorry I made you all worry. I’m sorry you had to wait for me, and come all the way out here, and—” My voice cracked. I took a breath. “I’m just so happy I’m back. I’m so fucking happy to see all of you.”

Kara’s hand slipped off Kori’s mouth, and her whole expression went soft. Raven peeked up from under her hood. Dick squeezed my knee.

Then the puppy sneezed, loudly and wetly, right in Kori’s face.

I blinked at it. “Okay, I have to ask. Who is the cute puppy?”

Kori lit up like I’d asked the single best question in the universe. She finally wriggled free of Kara’s slackened grip and thrust the puppy toward me proudly with both hands.

“This is Glorthax!” Kori announced. “I rescued him earlier tonight! Some very bad men were making dogs fight each other for money, so I threw them through a wall. Then I found many puppies, and this one bit my finger very bravely, so I chose him. On Tamaran, Glorthax means ‘small but fearsome warrior’!”

Glorthax yawned enormously and tried to eat my horn.

Around twenty minutes later, I had my sleeping familiar between my breasts and a puppy on my lap, which I petted gently. I had just finished giving them the entire story of everything that had happened in the other timeline, up until my rescue just a bit ago. 

I didn’t leave anything out. 

I didn’t leave out killing James Potter, or the fact that I’d fucked the other world’s versions of Lily and Sirius. 

I could have hidden everything about the other timeline, but I didn't want to hide anything from them.

That was the part that surprised me most. A few months ago, lying would have been my first instinct and my only one. 

Lies were armor, and I'd worn them so long they'd practically grown into my skin.

But sitting in that jet with the four of them watching me, I'd found I couldn't do it. I told them everything. The hospital wing, and the kind Dumbledore who turned out to be a stranger wearing a monster's face. Eating Voldemort's soul like an hors d'oeuvre. The basilisk, and Hagrid's heroic rooster. Hogsmeade, Sirius dying, and me dragging him back. Killing Voldemort in a cellar while his followers screamed around me. 

And I told them about the bathroom with Lily, and the room at the Three Broomsticks, and the Room of Requirement. A whole night of the other world's Lily and Sirius, tangled up with me in every combination three bodies could manage.

When I finally ran out of words, I set the sleeping puppy aside on the seat next to me. Glorthax grumbled and curled into a smaller ball. Nyx stayed nestled warm between my breasts, oblivious.

I rubbed my thighs together, both pleasurably and nervously. Telling the story had dragged the memories back up, and my newly evolved body never let a memory like that go to waste. Heat pooled low in my stomach, and my tail twitched against my ankle. My Sin of Lust purred like I'd just read it a bedtime story. 

At the same time, my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, because I'd just told the people I cared about most in this world that I'd slept with the alternate versions of my dead adoptive father and the mother who'd sold me.

I waited for the judgemental looks to come.

The looks did not come.

Kara was chewing her lip, more thoughtful than shocked, as if she were carefully filing everything away. Raven was looking at me with quiet, aching understanding. She'd probably felt every flicker of my fear from across the cabin. Kori just looked sad on my behalf, as if she wanted to scoop me up and wrap me in a blanket.

But Dick was the one I couldn't stop looking at. I knew the reason Dick had broken up with Kori in the first place was him walking in on her cheating on him. Or what had felt like cheating to him, anyway. I'd heard Kori's side since then, and I understood that on Tamaran it hadn't meant what it meant to him. But understanding didn't erase what Dick had felt in that doorway. If anyone in that jet had a reason to look at me and see a repeat of his worst heartbreak, it was him.

He didn't. He crouched down in front of me again, his forearms resting on his knees, and met my eyes. "Amara," he said quietly. "I know what you are."

My stomach dropped.

"I know you're a succubus," he went on, steady and certain. "I've known since London. I've read everything Bruce has on demonology, and believe me, it's a lot. I know you need sin. I know you need a lot of sex just to survive, and that it's not some character flaw you can fix by trying harder. It's what you are, like Kara needs sunlight and Raven needs to meditate. I'm not going to pretend I didn't feel a little jealous listening to some of that." He huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Okay, a lot jealous. But I knew all of that going in." He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, careful around my horn. "I know all of that," he said again, softer. "And... I love you anyway."

I gasped.

The sound left my lungs like he'd punched me. Love. He'd used that word after everything I'd just confessed. After killing James Potter, and Voldemort, and a dozen Death Eaters. After the soul-eating, and after admitting I'd fucked the other world's Lily and Sirius until sunrise. 

He'd heard every ugly, filthy, monstrous piece of it, and that was still the word he'd chosen.

I grabbed the front of his suit with both hands, pulled him down, and started passionately kissing him.

And I kept kissing Dick. I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried, and I didn't try very hard. 

I fisted my hands in the front of his suit and dragged him closer until he was half kneeling between my legs, and I licked into his mouth like I was starving. In a way, I was. 

When his tongue slid against mine, I caught it and sucked on it. The groan he made rumbled straight through my chest and settled hot between my thighs.

He got into it fast after that.

One hand stayed cupping my jaw, tilting my head so he could kiss me deeper. The other slid down my side and over my ribs, then up to cover my breast through the straining Gryffindor blouse. He squeezed, his thumb dragging firmly across my nipple through the thin cotton, and I moaned shamelessly into his mouth. 

My tail uncoiled from my ankle and wrapped around his calf all on its own.

Then his hand drifted toward the center of my chest and paused awkwardly. His fingers hovered and politely detoured around the small, warm, feathery lump nestled in my cleavage before settling on my other breast instead. 

Even with my brain melting, I felt a giggle bubble up. Dick Grayson, master detective and trained acrobat, was carefully navigating around a sleeping baby phoenix in my bra while feeling me up. 

It might have been the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me.

Suddenly a squeak stopped us. It was unmistakably Kara's. 

It broke us apart like a bucket of cold water. Dick pulled back so fast he nearly fell on his ass, and I was left panting with swollen lips, my blouse rumpled, my tail still clinging to his leg.

Kara stood frozen a few feet away. She had both hands clapped over her mouth as if the squeak had escaped without permission.

"Sorry," I said breathlessly. I unwound my tail from Dick's calf with as much dignity as I could manage, which wasn't much. "I got a bit carried away."

"No! No, it's—it's okay!" Kara squeaked again, her eyes darting everywhere except at me. "Totally okay! Completely normal! People kiss! I'm just gonna... be over here... not looking at anything."

Dick rubbed the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly.

I stood up and walked over to Kara first.

The cabin was cramped. My wings brushed a bank of screens and set off an alarmed little beep from the console, so I folded them tighter against my back. Kara watched me coming like a deer watching an extremely attractive pair of headlights. She was so tense she'd started hovering again without noticing.

I stopped right in front of her, close enough to feel the warmth rolling off her skin. Kryptonians ran hot, like sunlight bottled up in a person.

Kara gulped. Audibly.

"Thank you," I said softly. "For back there, with Merlin. If you hadn't hit him when you did—" I didn't let myself finish that thought. "You saved me, Kara."

"I—" Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "He was going to hurt you. I wasn't gonna let him."

She said it so simply, as if it were obvious, like the sky being blue.

I reached up, cupped her cheek, and kissed her. I didn't kiss her the way I'd kissed Dick. 

Kara had asked me, back in Black Manor, for something real and slow. So I gave her slow. I pressed my lips to hers gently, let her get used to it, and waited for her to breathe and soften against me before I deepened it. Then I kissed her properly. I took my time tasting her lower lip, and felt her hands come up and grip my waist like I was the only solid thing in the world. She made a tiny, helpless sound in the back of her throat that I wanted to hear again for the rest of my life.

When I finally pulled back, Kara looked completely lovestruck.

Her eyes were half-lidded and dazed, her lips parted and pink, and her hair was mussed where my hand had slid into it. She was floating a good six inches off the floor now, with a slightly goofy smile on her face. 

She looked absolutely adorable. I wanted to pinch her cheeks and then shove her against the wall, in that order.

I moved toward Kori next, but Kori moved first.

I'd barely turned my head before she pounced. 

She covered the distance in a blur of orange skin and purple swimsuit-adjacent armor, and her hands cupped my face as she smashed her mouth against mine. Kori didn't do anything halfway. She kissed with her whole body, the way she flew and fought and laughed, all enthusiasm and heat and complete lack of shame. She nipped my bottom lip, slid her tongue into my mouth and hummed happily against my lips, while her hands wandered freely down my back to squeeze my ass hard enough to lift me onto my toes. 

My wings flared out instinctively and knocked something off a shelf. I didn't care.

I was very pleased by the time we pulled away. Kori was beaming at me, her green eyes sparkling, absolutely delighted with herself. "Welcome home, Amara!" she declared. "That was a welcoming kiss. On Tamaran, they are mandatory."

"I'm starting to really like Tamaran," I said, slightly dazed.

Finally, I turned to Raven, and some of the warmth in my chest faltered.

She'd drifted further away while I was busy with the others. Of everyone in that jet, she looked the most nervous. Her violet eyes met mine for a single second, full of something raw and guilty and terrified, then dropped to the floor.

I walked over to Raven.

She didn't move as I came closer. She stood with her arms wrapped tight around her middle.

I didn't have to be an empath to know exactly what she was thinking. 

I tucked a finger under her chin and gently tipped her face up until she had to look at me.

"Raven," I said softly. "It wasn't your fault.” I stroked my thumb along her jaw. "Your dad is an ass. A giant, four-eyed, horned, genocidal ass. But you?" I held her gaze. "You're amazing. You cut his hand off, Raven. Well, Lucifer did, but you blew up his entire gate. You looked him in his stupid eyes and told him to go fuck himself in his own Hell. Do you know how incredible that was?"

Her eyes went glassy.

"And I get to say that about your dad," I added, my lips twitching, "because I just killed my own evil one. So I'm basically an expert on shitty fathers now."

It came out as a joke and I meant it as one. But my voice wobbled anyway, and to my absolute irritation I felt fresh tears prickling at the corners of my eyes again. 

Apparently I was one big leaking faucet today.

Saying it out loud made it real all over again. James Potter was lying on a stone floor in Scotland, and I'd put him there.

Behind me, Dick and Kara both coughed at exactly the same time. Bringing up James's death again probably wasn't the most tactful thing I could have done.

But Raven made a sound. It was small and wet, half a laugh and half a sob, and it cracked something open in her expression. "You always say the most outlandish things," she whispered, shaking her head. One tear slipped down her grey cheek. "The most outlandish and perfect things."

She unwound her arms from around herself at last, reached up with both hands, and cupped my face the way I'd cupped hers. 

"Welcome back, Amara."

"I'm glad to be back," I said, and finally kissed her.

Her lips were soft and cool and trembling slightly. It was a gentle, careful kiss at first, like we were both afraid one of us might break. Then she sighed against my mouth, melted into me and kissed me back properly. Her fingers slid up into my hair, brushing the base of my horns, and I tugged her flush against my body.

It happened the moment our mouths opened to each other. I felt it deep. My demonic side started purring. And something answered it. 

Something inside Raven stirred and purred right back. 

My wings curled forward on instinct and wrapped around us both, cocooning us in shadow and starlight. Through my lashes, I caught a faint red glimmer flickering over Raven's closed eyelids, there and gone. 

When we finally broke apart, she was breathing hard, her forehead pressed against mine.

Somebody cleared their throat. Dick, of course.

"So," he said, with a slightly hoarse, very obviously flustered attempt at sounding businesslike. "The flight back to Gotham should take a few hours. That gives us time to get you caught up on everything you missed. A lot happened while you were gone. The League, Britain, the news..." He trailed off with a wince that suggested "a lot" was an understatement. "You missed a whole week."

I smiled, although a bit nervously.

Because in only a few hours, I'd be walking through the doors of Black Manor. Bellatrix would probably try to crush me to death with one of her hugs, or set something on fire to celebrate. Daphne and Astoria were going to cry, then scold me, then remind me about the virginities I'd promised to take from them before I vanished.

And Morgana was waiting for me…

– James Potter Jr –

James Potter Jr. was lying in the hospital wing, his crotch finally cooling down after Madam Pomfrey had healed him.

It had taken her nearly half an hour. Half an hour of him lying flat on his back with his trousers cut away and a sheet tented over his hips for modesty, while the old matron slathered stinking orange burn-paste over the most important part of his body. She kept tutting at him like he was a first-year who'd fallen off a broom. 

Yes, it was true his dick didn't work anymore, and he was still pissed about that. They never could find the reason. Pomfrey had poked and prodded and run every diagnostic charm she knew, and all she'd managed to say was that it was an old, dark curse like the one on the Greengrass family, ancient and powerful. 

As if that helped. As if knowing it was fancy made it better that he'd been lying in bed with Ginny Weasley naked on top of him and nothing had happened...

But he didn't want to lose the thing. It was his. Useless or not, a man had certain standards.

Madam Pomfrey bustled back between the beds with a fresh jar of paste and a face like a disappointed owl. "Honestly. Grown men, and you can't manage a simple cauldron without nearly boiling yourselves alive." She scolded both of them, him and Ron, who was propped up in the bed next to him with angry red splotches across his thighs and forearms. "You need to be more careful in Potions. If that brew had splashed any higher, Mr. Potter, I'd be regrowing more than skin."

"It wasn't us," Ron said hotly, his ears going red to match his burns. "We didn't touch the bloody thing! It was that bitch new girl. The one who sat down next to Hermione. She must have done something, I'm telling you. Cauldrons don't just tip over on their own!"

Pomfrey only sniffed and moved on to the next bed.

James stared at the ceiling.

That new blonde girl…

Merlin, she'd been incredibly hot. She'd swept into Snape's dungeon like she owned the place, all long golden hair and bright blue eyes, in a school uniform that had clearly been designed for someone with about half her curves. Her blouse had strained across her chest so tightly he'd been able to see the tops of her amazing breasts, and her skirt had barely covered anything. 

She'd smiled at Snape, Snape, and the greasy git had actually gone pink. Every boy in the room had stopped breathing when she walked past.

He would have absolutely seduced her and fucked her senseless if he could have. He'd have taken her on a tour of the castle, ending up somewhere quiet. Girls like that always wanted the Boy Who Lived, and once she'd learned who he was, she'd have been begging for it.

If I could have…

The thought curdled in his gut and soured into something ugly. He shifted on the mattress, winced and glared harder at the ceiling.

He was not so sure she'd done it himself. 

She'd been sitting all the way across the aisle. Maybe Ron had just bumped the potion? Ron was clumsy enough to trip over his own shadow….

But then again, maybe it had been Hermione, trying to get revenge against him? That would make sense, wouldn't it? Petty, jealous Hermione, sitting there all alone at her table looking smug…

It wasn't his fault he'd told the entire common room to stop talking to her. She'd started it! She was the one who didn't want to be his friend all of a sudden. One day she'd been there, the way she always had been, nagging him about essays and checking his homework. 

The next, she'd gone cold, with no explanation and no apology. She'd just stopped sitting with them and started looking at him like he was something stuck to her shoe.

He was the fucking Boy Who Lived! He'd defeated the Dark Lord as a baby. He'd faced Death Eaters at the Ministry, and his face was on Chocolate Frog cards. It should be her honor to be friends with him. Half the girls in the castle would kill to be in her place, and she'd thrown it away like it meant nothing.

Smart and pretty, she was supposed to be, at this point, his personal cockslave who did all his schoolwork for him. That was how it was supposed to go. That was how it went in all the stories. The clever, bookish friend finally realized she'd been in love with the hero all along and spent the rest of her life making his easier. 

He'd been patient, waiting for her to get there.

Instead, everything had been going wrong lately.

It had been one disaster after another, starting with that stupid curse. Then Ginny dumping him and telling half of Gryffindor why, humiliating him in front of everyone. Then his useless squib sister showing up out of nowhere, and it turned out she wasn't a squib at all. She'd beaten him on his own lawn like he was nothing, and let every last hippogriff go, and somehow the manor had burned to the ground. Now his family was living in Hogwarts, like charity cases. His dad was teaching Defense and his mum was teaching Muggle Studies, for Merlin's sake…

…Suddenly, there was a commotion outside the door.

Raised voices. Running footsteps. Somebody let out a shrill, broken sound that might have been a sob. Then the double doors of the hospital wing banged open so hard that one of them bounced off the wall and rattled on its hinges, and a group swept into the medical wing.

Pomfrey gasped and dropped her jar of burn paste. It shattered on the stone floor in a splatter of orange.

James pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing as the movement dragged his pyjamas across his tender groin. What now?

Then he saw his mum.

Lily Potter looked like she'd been dragged backwards through a hedge. Her red hair, usually pinned up perfectly for her classes, hung in a wild tangle around her face. Her robes were scorched along one sleeve and streaked with grey dust, as if she'd been caught under falling stone. Tears were running freely down her cheeks, cutting tracks through the grime. She was sniffling in gasps.

James had never seen her look like that. Not even the night the manor burned…

Dumbledore was right behind her. He looked... wrong. Old, in a way James had never noticed before. There was plaster dust in his long silver beard, and his face was grey and drawn above it. His robes were singed at the hem. He held his wand loosely at his side, and something about it looked off to James, though he couldn't have said what. It wasn't the wand he'd seen the headmaster use a hundred times at feasts and in duelling demonstrations. This one was plainer. Dumbledore's grip on it was tight.

Beside him stood the "Deputy."

For weeks, the man in white had glided through the castle like a ghost, his hood always up and his face always hidden in shadow. The whole school whispered about him. Some said he was horribly scarred, some said he was a vampire, and Seamus swore he had no face at all. 

James had secretly hoped for the scars. It would have served the creepy bastard right.

But now the hood was down, and he was an annoyingly handsome bloke.

He looked barely twenty, a few years older than James at most, and the kind of handsome that made girls stupid in the corridors. 

James instantly hated him.

And hovering behind all of them under a levitation charm, not moving, was James's dad.

For one long, stupid second, James didn't understand what he was looking at.

His father was stretched out flat in midair. His glasses were gone. His mouth was slightly open. His eyes were open too, staring at the vaulted ceiling, and they didn't blink.

He wasn't breathing.

James swung his legs out of bed and stood up. The pain flared white-hot as his pyjama trousers dragged across his healing skin, and he didn't even feel it. The stone floor was freezing under his bare feet.

"Mum?" His voice came out high and thin, like a kid's. "Mum, what's—what's wrong with Dad? Why isn't he—" He looked at Pomfrey, at Dumbledore, at the stranger in white, at anyone. "What's wrong with Dad?"

In the next bed, Ron had gone deathly pale under his freckles. "Bloody hell," he whispered.

His mum ran over. She crossed the ward in a stumbling rush and threw her arms around him so hard it knocked the breath out of him. She was shaking all over, and her fingers dug into his back like claws. She sobbed into his shoulder, great ugly heaving sobs that soaked through the thin cotton of his pyjamas.

"It's horrible," she choked. "James, it's horrible. Oh God, oh God, it was her."

"Who?" He gripped her arms, trying to make her look at him. "Mum, who? What happened?"

"Your sister." She said it like the word was poison. "Your demon of a sister. Heather! She's not—she's not a squib, she was never—she's a monster, James, she has wings and horns and a tail." Lily's voice cracked into something high and hysterical. "She snuck into Hogwarts. She was in disguise, dressed up as a blonde Gryffindor, walking around the castle like she belonged here. Right under our noses—"

A blonde Gryffindor…?

Long golden hair. Bright blue eyes. A school uniform that hadn't fit her, the blouse strained across her chest, the skirt riding up her thighs. The girl who'd smiled at Snape. The girl he'd lain in this bed half an hour ago imagining bending over a desk…

"We confronted her in the hallways," his mum sobbed. "Your father tried to stop her. He tried so hard, James, he was so brave. And she just—she—" Her voice broke completely. She pulled back just far enough to look at him. Her green eyes were drowning, and they were the same green as the eyes in that blonde girl's face had been before she'd changed them. James finally understood it. He'd been sitting across a classroom from his own sister, and he'd never known it. "She killed him," Lily whispered. "She killed your father."

The Deputy then spoke up. He hadn't raised his voice. He didn't need to. When he talked, the whole room seemed to lean toward him, even the portraits on the walls, which had gone silent and were craning out of their frames. 

"I must confess," he said, "I honestly expected more from this place." His pale grey eyes drifted slowly around the hospital wing. They lingered on the cracked plaster in the ceiling, the shattered jar of burn paste, Pomfrey's trembling hands and Lily's tear-streaked face. He took in all of it with the vague, disappointed air of a man finding mould in a house he used to love. "When I walked these halls, Hogwarts was the finest magical institution in the world. The most prestigious, the most feared, the best defended. A thousand years later, a single girl strolls through its front doors in a borrowed uniform, makes fools of its staff, and leaves a corpse cooling in its corridors. Nobody stops her." His gaze slid sideways, without any hurry, to Dumbledore. "And its headmaster loses—his—wand."

Dumbledore's cringed beneath his beard, but he said nothing.

Then the grey eyes settled on James. James felt it like a physical weight pressing on his chest. The man looked at him for a long moment, studying the hospital pyjamas, the bare feet, the burn paste smeared down his thighs, and Ron's gaping face in the next bed. Something in his expression flattened, as if he'd opened a present he'd waited a thousand years for and found a lump of coal.

He looked disappointed. Not angry, or even contemptuous. Just disappointed, the way James's Herbology professor looked at a wilted Mandrake. 

Nobody had ever looked at James Potter like that. Not ever. 

He was the Boy Who Lived. 

People looked at him with awe, adoration, envy and hope. They did not look at him like this.

He shoved his mother off him roughly. Lily stumbled back a step with a startled little gasp and caught herself on the edge of Ron's bed. 

James barely noticed. "Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" he snapped.

"James!" Pomfrey squawked.

The man rolled his eyes. "I am Merlin," he said. Just that. Plainly and simply, the way someone else might say I'm from Devon.

That shocked James and everyone else except Dumbledore.

Pomfrey let out a tiny squeak and clutched her chest. In the next bed, Ron's mouth fell open so wide James could see his fillings. Even Lily, still sobbing, lifted her head and stared at the man through her tears like she'd never seen him before. Up in the portraits, someone dropped a teacup.

But Dumbledore didn't even blink. He just stood there with his plain, too-tight grip on his wand and his eyes on the floor. He'd known. All this time, all those weeks of the man in white gliding around the castle with his hood up, Dumbledore had known exactly who he was.

James laughed. It came out harsh and too loud in the silent ward. "Bullshit," he said. "Merlin's long dead. He's in, like, history books and on Chocolate Frog cards. That was like a thousand years ago."

"Closer to fifteen hundred, actually." Merlin didn't sound offended. If anything, he sounded faintly amused. "My constitution is—somewhat unusual. Let us simply say I live a great deal longer than the average wizard, and leave it at that. I assure you, it is not important." He clasped his hands behind his back. His white robes didn't make a single sound when he moved. "What is important is the prophecy hanging over our country."

James went still.

Prophecy. That was his word. The prophecy had always been about him—the Chosen One, the boy destined to defeat the Dark Lord. He'd grown up hearing it. Every interview and every article in the Prophet had been about it, and so had every hand anyone had ever shaken in his family's drawing room. A prophecy meant James Potter.

"A Dark Lord is currently building power in England," Merlin continued, as calmly as if he were reading a weather report. "And not only here, but across the rest of Europe. Families are being pressured into service. Ministries are being infiltrated. The old pure-blood houses are choosing sides. This war is not coming. It is here." His grey eyes narrowed fractionally. "And Morgana has returned."

The name dropped into the room like a stone into a well. James had heard it a hundred times. In History of Magic, in bedtime stories, on Chocolate Frog cards. Morgana le Fay. The evil sorceress who'd destroyed Camelot. A fairy-tale villain.

"Worse," Merlin said quietly, "she has taken an apprentice. A girl who wears her face and carries her magic, who apparently strolled into this castle this afternoon. The other half of the prophecy."

James stared at him. Then he whipped around to stare at his mother, still sagging against Ron's bed with one hand over her scarred throat. Then at Dumbledore, who still wouldn't look up from the floor. Then back at Merlin.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" His voice was rising, cracking. "What 'other half'? What does that even mean? The prophecy's about me. It's always been about me! Mum? Professor? What the fuck is he talking about?"

His dead father was barely crossing his mind at this point. All he could think about was that word.

Lily spoke up, looking ready to cry again. She'd pulled herself upright against Ron's bed, but her legs were shaking. 

Her green eyes were swimming with more tears. "James," she said thickly. "Sweetheart, please. We can talk about this later. All of it, I promise. But right now—" Her voice broke. She looked past him at the body drifting in the air behind Merlin, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. "Right now, your father is dead. He's dead, James. You need to say goodbye to him properly. Before they take him down to—" She couldn't finish.

James glanced over his shoulder at his father. He really looked at him this time. The great James Potter Sr—Auror captain, Marauder, war hero, head of an Ancient and Noble House. Floating there like a sack of laundry.

James felt... nothing much, honestly. Maybe a flicker of irritation, the way he felt when a Quaffle went through his hands and over his head.

"I don't care," he said.

Lily flinched like he'd slapped her.

"What? I don't." James turned back to face her, he was scowling. "If the useless old man got done in by her? By that magic-stealing little squib, Heather?" He spat the name. "She was nothing. She was a joke. She hid in Sirius's house like a rat until Sirius died, and then she ran off and stole magic from somewhere, or made some deal with a demon, or whatever the fuck she did. And Dad still couldn't beat her? Then he deserved it."

"James!" Pomfrey gasped.

In the next bed, Ron had gone a sickly shade of grey.

"He deserved it," James repeated, louder. He didn't care who was listening. His whole body was buzzing with something hot and angry. "I don't want to say goodbye. I want to know what the prophecy's about. The real prophecy. All of it." He jabbed a finger at Dumbledore. "Tell me."

Dumbledore finally lifted his eyes from the floor. For a long moment, the old man just looked at him. Something moved across his lined face, too fast for James to read. Then Dumbledore drew a slow breath, glanced once at Merlin, who gave the barest nod, and spoke up.

He told him the prophecy.

"Two shall be born of one womb as the seventh month dies. One shall be marked by the Dark Lord as his equal, and stand as the shield of wizardkind. The other shall go unmarked and unwanted, cast out into the dark, and the dark shall take them to its breast. One twin must fall by the hand of the other, for the light and the dark cannot both endure lest everything is destroyed..."

The silence afterward was so total that James could hear the drip of a tap somewhere at the far end of the ward.

Lily had covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders were shaking.

And James grinned. It spread slowly across his face, wide and wolfish and ugly. He felt it stretch his cheeks and couldn't have stopped it if he tried. He didn't want to stop it.

One twin must fall by the hand of the other.

Everything finally made sense. Why his parents had never mentioned her. Why Dad had looked at her with such hatred. Why Dumbledore had sealed her away and dumped her in an orphanage like rubbish. It hadn't been cruelty. It had been destiny. She'd been born to be his enemy, the way he'd been born to be the hero. His destiny wasn't just to destroy Voldemort again. It was also to kill his evil twin sister, the second coming of fucking Morgana le Fay.

The Boy Who Lived, slayer of the Dark Lord and of the Witch Queen reborn. That was a story. That was the kind of thing they'd carve on statues!

Across the room, Merlin sighed. He studied James's face for a long moment. One silvery eyebrow rose a fraction. "Well," Merlin said. "Perhaps there's something to work with after all." He turned to Dumbledore. "I had intended to remain in the background, Albus, an advisor and nothing more, and to let your generation fight its own war. But I have decided to take a more active role." His eyes slid back to James. "I will accept James Potter Jr. as my newest—apprentice."

Lily's head snapped up. Dumbledore went very still. Ron made a strangled noise.

"Things are changing," Merlin went on, as calmly as before. "Not just in the magical world but in the mundane world as well. Their Prime Minister has slipped free of the leash your Ministry put on him. Their costumed heroes have seen far too much. The Statute of Secrecy is cracking at every seam, and when it breaks, it will break all at once." His mouth thinned. "When that day comes, I want the light standing on firm ground. And I want the boy the prophecy calls its shield to actually be capable of shielding something."

James barely heard the last part.

He didn't give a shit about the Prime Minister or the Statute or any of it. All he heard was apprentice. MERLIN'S APPRENTICE.

He'd kill his sister. He'd find her wherever she was hiding, and he'd make her pay for every single humiliation. He'd make her beg. And if those Muggles started getting uppity, if they thought they could stand up to wizards just because some flying alien in a cape had given them confidence, he'd kill them as well, as many as it took!

He'd learn everything he could from Merlin. Every spell, every secret, every trick a fifteen-hundred-year-old wizard had squirreled away. Maybe the old bastard even knew how to fix whatever was wrong with his dick. 

Once he'd squeezed Merlin dry, he'd kill him too.

Because no one was going to remember this pretty boy's name for the next thousand years.

James looked up at Merlin, standing there in his spotless white robes, looking down his perfect nose at all of them, and kept smiling.

They'd remember one name, and they'd worship it. The Boy Who Lived.

And he hadn’t forgotten about Hermione either. 

Was that coincidence, or had she known that Amara was sitting next to each other? Did Hermione know who Amara was? Either way, the girl was in for even more suffering in the future!

XXX

Someone has a bit of an ego, don’t they? Also, poor Hermione really needs to take Amara’s offer and leave that dumpster fire version of Hogwarts… Maybe take Ginny with her.

Written: 10/25/2026