The Potion Princess

The Stanton Mansion

"The dark mark means something, Eliza." Her fathers voice is heavy with exasperation, and he leans against the counter in a way that makes her think they had been talking for a long time. "We always knew this was a possibility."

"But I didn't think it would be so soon!" Her mother draws the words out like a plea. Her silhouette reaches out towards Audra's father, grips onto her arm. "What are we going to do? What will he say when he comes back and sees what we've become?"

"What we've become? Don't talk like that." He pulls her close to him, but it is not a loving embrace, it is an action meant to convey that there is only one course of action that can be taken. "From here on out, we never changed. We follow the old ways. We make out presence known among certain circles, we buy certain items, all of it discreet, so when he comes back we can say that we never stopped waiting for his return. Do you understand?" She stayed silent, and he shook her, not hard enough to hurt but not gentle, either. "You have to understand."

"And what of our children?" The voice her mother spoke in was hollow and empty. "They don't know, John, they don't know what he's like or what they'll have to do."

"If they don't follow us, we'll all be killed." He lets her go, leading her gently to one of the stools on the counter. "Vance will know where he's meant to stand."

"And our daughter? Friends with blood traitors and mud-bloods alike?" Her mother's voice held a quiet kind of horror that she was trying hard to control. "We can't protect her from him. The Dark Lord is not a man you can hide from."

"Oh, Eliza." He pulls her in for a hug, and Audra creeps a bit closer so she can see them both through the crack in the door, both of them illuminated in the moonlight shining through the window. Her father has his hands twisted in her mother's hair, chin propped on her shoulder, looking at something very far away. Her mother had her face buried in his chest. "The Dark Lord isn't a man at all."

She feels a little lost after that, at least for a few hours, walking around the house without a destination in mind, finally ending back up in her room. The things she had heard last night hadn't been far from the front of her mind for a while now, and she was sure there had been similar conversations happening everywhere. She wondered if Emmeline had been called downstairs to take part in it, to make a plan, to be told in no uncertain terms that she was not to see Clary again. She wondered if Arthur and Molly had huddled together in their little kitchen over cups of tea and wondered if they would have to fight once more. She wondered if Clary had flipped through her old, battered text books until she found a picture of that damned mark and stared at it all night, reading the chapter about the Dark Lord and his followers over and over until she practically has it memorized.

It's the first time she had thought about the Dark Lord's return in association with what it might mean for her. This had been the whispered topic of conversation at many of her parents dinner parties, when half asleep children were being gathered into arms and the darkness cast a kind of quiet over the room. They had all known that he would return, that he could not die, and would soon rise again to show them the way. Audra had not thought about what that would mean for her, a child of two death eaters who, though they may have escaped Azkaban, could not outwit the one they had called Master for so long.

Audra sits at her desk and writes letters, dipping the quill into her inkwell again and again, watching the dark blue drops fall onto the carpet and stay there. She starts sentences, rereads them, and decides they do not sound right so she scribbles them out, until the parchment is full of scratches. And in the end, they do not say anything real, but it is something she can do, like playacting that everything is the same might make it so, and she has a stack of parchment at least a foot tall.

She has a thank you letter to Molly, full of gratitude and reassurances that she is okay and apologies for being such a bother. She writes one to Clary, each syllable dripping with concern and asking how she was, promising the next time that the three girls get together it won't be such a disaster. Hermione and Ginny get one, too, full of more speculation about the dresses and a few clippings from magazines, saying how much she missed them last night. Emmeline receives one the next day full of hidden questions, asking if she had been having the same worries that she has.

When it comes time to write Fred and George, she cannot find the words to explain any of what she was feeling to them, and could not bear to lie.

The parchment stays empty.

That night, when she actually listens to Vinnie and decides to come down for dinner, she meets her brother on the steps. He does not look any different, but this time he does not give her a smile and brush past her, but stops and stares, clutching onto the railing so hard his knuckles turn white. In an instant, she remembers the lone golden curl slipping out from behind his mask, so much like the patch of hair behind his ear that never does what he wants, and the blue of the masked man's eyes, full of worry and fear as he leans over her. When he speaks, any hope she had that it hadn't been him that night disappears. This is the angelic version of the voice she had heard.

"I'm sorry." He says, reaching out to her, touching the spot on her head where he knows that she had been hurt. The spot he knows could have killed her because he left her there for someone else to find, whether it be death eater or ministry. She tries not to flinch away under his touch, trying to remind herself that he is still her brother, that together they will fix whatever horrible thing he has done. "Truly."

"Yeah." She does not quite succeed in keeping the blame out of her voice, or in hiding the way she leans away from him. "Me too."

The days past much as they always do, her head healing and the events of the World Cup disappearing from everyone's memory. She writes Fred and George, and Emmeline comes over quite a lot, both of them trying not to feel strange that Clary is not with them. Audra would have almost been able to believe that nothing had changed, had it not been for her mother calling her down the night before she left for school.

"I wanted to talk to you about your friends." They are sorting through her potions equipment, as if she could have possibly forgotten anything for that class. "I think, maybe, it might be a good idea if you rethink a few of them."

"You mean Fred and George."

The air between them is charged, and this is one of the rare times that Audra can actually feel the magic inside of her, coiling up in her stomach like a snake ready to strike. Her mother does not look away from her. "And Clary."

"But not Emmeline."

"They're nice enough kids." Her mother reaches out to smooth her hair down, all the affection of a motherly gesture disguising the threat underneath. "But to certain people, it may look... bad, if you were to be seen with them more than you need to be."

"This is because of the mark. And the death eaters at the cup." She recoiled, stepping away so the table lay between them. "You want me to say I'll be all obsessed with being pureblood just like you and dad, just to save your own skins. Well guess what, mother, I won't, I know better than that. You're the one whose wrong."

"This isn't about wrong and right!" Her mother crossed the kitchen, grabbed onto her shoulders, trying to force Audra to look into her eyes and see the truth. "This is about living, or dying, and its that simple!"

"I'd rather die than give up Fred and George or any of the Weasley's." She spat the words out, relishing how they made her mother flinch.

"Fine. You love them. We all make mistakes when we're young, the Dark Lord will understand. But as of today, you can't be a child anymore, Audra. I can't protect you from this, you can see the signs for yourself. Things are happening, things we don't understand and the ministry won't look at close enough." Her mother was gripping onto her wrist so tight that it hurt, her nails digging deep enough to draw blood. "Serving the Dark Lord is a life long commitment, and don't make the mistake of thinking it doesn't extend to you and your brother. Mark my words Audra, he's on his way back, and you better make up your mind right now about what side you'll stand on when he does."