Simon took a shaky breath, willing himself not to cry. All of his friends were probably being so strong right now. He couldn't be his usual, pitiful self. He had to at least lie to them that he was worth being among the DA. To act like he was worthy of being in the admirable group that represented the will of his school. A hand on his shoulder and a quiet reminder that there was help to be given gave him a chance to enact that lie. Even if he could never believe he was something like the others, just as the Obscura thought, he could at least try to make others think that he was strong.

   He stood and followed the owner of the hand to a small group of students crying as they raised their wands to carry their friends' bodies away from the rubble. Simon watched them a moment, giving them space to take their brothers and sisters away, and fell behind them with the remaining cadavers as the other students drifted down the corridor.

   Simon looked down at a curly-haired girl he recognized. Her name didn't come to him at that moment, but she had been someone who often cried and confessed that she did not believe she belonged in the school. She had been a Hufflepuff; born to non-magical parents just like him. She was only twelve years old. And she was dead.

   He swallowed around the welt in his throat and pointed his wand at her, taking in a breath to cast the charm that would allow him to carry her body. Carry it without carrying it. Simon bit his lower lip, realizing how impersonal magic could be. It divided people more than it brought them together. It seemed so much like... like a burden. 

   Now more than ever he felt like he didn't belong here. That he was unwelcome. All the years of hoping that feeling would go away, all the time he'd spent faking his smiles and trying to cover up his self loathing with friends and stupid birthday cards. All of his insecurities, his failure at being a wizard, his inability to keep up with his peers. For a fleeting moment he saw it all in this girl's freckled face. Her unmoving eyes still wide with fear... And then he did not see it in her. Instead, he felt as if he was looking up at the corner of the ceiling, body cold, as someone pitied him from above.

   A chill ran threw him all the way to his core, and he unwillingly shivered. The magical world was so sad and complicated. It was just like the real world. No matter how much he had prayed for it to be otherwise. It just was.

   Simon pushed the length of useless wood back into his pocket where it sat as a heavy weight. He took a knee and carefully, so as not to disturb her, shut her eyes and scooped her up in his arms like he would if he were carrying Emily back to her hospital bed after watching telly on the floor. He carried her the muggle way, the human way, all the way down to the infirmary where the rest of the dead and injured were to be taken. He held a little girl from Wales close to his heart the whole way, while others levitated witch and wizard children.

   Jon turned on his heel and began the jog to his classroom, where he could grab a few items that he hoped would help those in need of healing. As he came to the corner before the North Tower, he heard the high tap of a woman's heels. She sounded as if she were running. Concerned that one of his fellow professors could be in need of his help, Jon rounded the corner quickly to offer his aid but was surprised with a bright green glare headed his way.

   He deflected the spell quickly though had to regain his footing in doing so, and as he raised his wand back and behind him to throw a curse back, he suddenly stopped with his eyes wide and his jaw slack.

   She was dressed all in black with the majority of her hair pulled into a braid, though plenty of it had spilled out and was stuck to her glistening forehead. There was blood on her hands and her face, but she was only herself bleeding from a gash in her thigh. Her eyes were wild behind sweaty curls that had been thrown out of her usually perfect hair and tossed haphazardly about her head like a frazzled, broken halo. And even though her face seemed animal-like and bent in anger, she was still as beautiful to him as he recalled seeing her last.

   He couldn't understand why his disheveled sister was suddenly at Hogwarts, looking as if she had been around during the fight. He hoped that she hadn't come for him, only to get herself hurt. Worry met with the confusion that clouded him from seeing the obvious.

   "Kate, what the devil--"

   She shrieked and jerked her arm violently at him, sending bright emerald curses with the same fervor of a cornered animal. Startled, Jon did nothing more than deflect them as best as he could. She didn't stop hurling spells at him until the toe of her shoe caught on a felled bit of ceiling in her path. When she came down, she came down hard and bashed her chin into the rubble.

   Jon hurried forward out of instinct to pick up his younger sister, but again she let out a yell and blindly struck out with a vicious bought of Sectumsempra. He felt the invisible blade slice his ear and flinched, cupping the side of his head to stem the bleeding. It was then that it clicked. Why she was here, why she was injured, why she seemed half crazed. An ache took over Jon's chest, followed by a sharp pain worse than any cutting curse.

   "Kate, no... Please, tell me you aren't... that you haven't..." He couldn't form the words. His hand dropped from his ear and gripped his chest, closing into a fist around his shirt.

   She smiled wickedly at him and stood, tossing her hair away from her face. Somehow her dark eyes looked less whole to him now than when they had been shrouded.

   "That I'm not what, brother dear? Standing with the Obscura against your precious precious little pile of filth?"

   "What are you--?"

   "This place, this whole place is rubbish!" Kate threw her arms about in a wild gesture, shaking her hair back into a curtain over her creamy face. "Mixing the vermin with the wizards and the witches! Filthy little mudbloods that ought not to have ever been let into our world, let alone ever been born!"

   Jon furrowed his brow, taking a tentative step forward and reaching his hand out in front of him, as if he could close the space between them and repair whatever had crept between them without his notice. How could he not have even seen that she was in the Obscura? She had become odd, had drifted from him somehow... but he never would have dreamed his sweet sister could kill. Children, for that matter!

   "Katie, what are you talking about? People are people, and magic shouldn't be exclusive. We don't have control over who we're born to. You shouldn't be messing with these kinds of people, Kate, they're dangerous..." he took another set of slow steps toward her. "We're not even Purebloods. You know mum was--"

   "Don't you say it!" She erupted back into a fit of angry magic. Some of which he deflected and some of which he countered. He even managed to set her back and nearly disarmed her, though that seemed to only have pushed her further away, so to speak.

   If she had been angry then, she was purely livid now.

   "Don't you talk to me about her! Don't you even speak...! She's filth! She was always filth! He was wrong to marry her! She's beneath us! She was a worthless witch and a worthless mother!"

   "Kate!"

   "Diffindo! She never did love me. Not like she loved you. Not like I could ever hold a candle to her sweet Jonny, the apple of her bloody eye!" She began to advance on him as she hurled her spells, ranting as she pushed him back down the corridor.

   "Protego!"

   "I wasn't worth her time! I wasn't worth her attention! I wasn't even worth her shit!"

   "Stupify!"

   "Protego! I was a bleeding little nothing to her! She hated me! She never loved me! She never did!"

   "Don't be daft, she's our mother, Kate! She loves you!"

   "Your mother! Incendio!"

   The tapestries lying on the ground lit quickly and suddenly the dim corridor was awash in bright orange brilliance. Jon flinched from the heat and the light of the fire, shielding his eyes with his damaged arm. Long enough for Kate to hit him with a knockback jinx.

   He flew a good few meters before hitting the ground again and catching his shoulder on the corner of the broken stone littering the floor. He struggled to a sitting position, finding he had harmed his back and hip in the fall as well. He was getting to be a bit too old to be thrown about like a rag doll.

   Quickly he scrambled to take hold of his wand again, staggering back on his feet and throwing back a hex to keep her from coming closer. Whatever he was dealing with--whatever his sister herself was dealing with--he was starting to feel as if appealing to his memory of her was not an effective plan.

   "They understand, you know." She spat at him. "Understand how it is to have earned something, to be entitled to something, to have been born into it--and have to hand it over to someone useless. Someone who doesn't know anything. Someone who shouldn't even be able to wipe the dirt from your shoes!"

   She swung her wand and the walls seemed to shake. She had always been so brilliant, so unbelievably powerful. He could see know why her classmates and her professors had feared her so much as a child. She was gifted.

   But she was twisted and mad.

   "I was always better than you! You were pathetic! You couldn't even levitate your own quill without my help! And I hadn't even a wand then! I was always smarter too. Than you, than anyone else! And all you or mum or everyone ever did was hold. Me. Back!" She threw a harsh curse that he barely pushed aside. Had he not, he could have lost not only his wand but his whole wand arm.

   "Kate, stop it, you're going to kill me." The shock was clear in his voice, and it seemed to have the same effect as a shrieking mouse would to a hungry cat. Kate's lips spread and a sick smile took over her face.

   The two of them began to duel, and Jon soon realized he had engaged in a fight for his life. His own sister; the air in his lungs and the light of his life. And she was trying to kill him. They dueled in that hallway for what felt like an hour while he frantically began to pray that someone would come around the corner and relieve him from this craziness. He was tiring out, a problem that she didn't seem to share. The longer they opposed one another, the farther gone she seemed to be. She eventually seemed to lose the sense of speaking, and instead let out her spells in a series of aggressive wails and broken grunting. His best opposition became his only defense. She was right about one thing, at least, he had never been a match for her. She was a marvel of magic. So strong, it had taken them three appointments and hours of scouring the shelves at Olivander's to find a wand capable of keeping up with her. He remembered jeering her then that she had better take good care of that wand or else she might never find another match, and would lose her status as a witch.

   The thought became a stone that sunk in his gut and hollowed out his core. He realized what he had to do... and what would most likely result.

   Jon threw himself back into his spell-casting. Forcing himself to forget the lead in his limbs and ignore the ache in his bones. His heart was weary of the task at hand. But it would have to be done.

   His advance puzzled his sister, who disliked her brother's new found backbone. She became sloppy in her curses and left herself open; a fact that Jon took advantage of. He waited until he had drawn close enough until he was able to once again see her eyes fully. And then...

   "Expelliarmus!" With a gasp Kate was left empty-handed, her eyes following the path that her wand took through the air. "Accio wand!" It slowed it's backward rotation before shooting towards his outstretched hand, landing flat in his palm. He looked to the woman before him another time and realized with great pain that he could no longer recognize her as his sister. The devil she had become had eaten away at her and left behind only the worst of the world.

   Her expression was pitiful. She seemed so small and frail now. So unremarkable without her wand. Her pleading face and sightless eyes like a frightened bird's.

   "Jon no... Jonny, Please..." He took a breath in, holding her wand in both hands. Her rage returned, and she belted out another shrill. "Don't you dare, Jon! Don't you dare!"

   'I'm so sorry...'

   The sound of her wand snapping filled the hall, leaving behind two broken halves of wood and his hands and two broken spirits.

   She came at him like an animal, clawing at the air and then his face. But she was tiny now. She lacked his height and what little muscle he had was not gifted to her. It didn't take him long to wrestle with her, and once he had her turned around he pinned her arms around his and held them behind the base of her neck in a full nelson. He held onto her and rode out her rage until two sets of footfalls came. Most likely brought on by all the screaming, two Aurors rounded the corner and helped Jon secure his wild sister.

   They put her in a white belted jacket, still fighting like the devil was in her as she screamed at him how she hated him. How she would kill him. How he was nothing to her. Not a brother. How she would find him and hurt him back. And with an official on either side of her she was whisked away to Azkaban. At least, he could only assume. He had tuned out their talk once they had appeared, and had only nodded or muttered little nothings when asked twice to respond.

   He was tired. There was a strong weight now bearing down on top of him. His father's death had been a hard blow to Jon's psyche, he thought, but now all this with Kate...? He could hardly even force himself to think on it clearly for more than a second. Eventually he was left to himself, two halves of a broken wand in one hand and his own in the other.

"She suffocated, it was deliberate." He said in a simple, chilling tone. Hesitantly, Svetlana's mother covered her mouth with her spare, trembling hand to shut her eyes and sob. Reluctantly, her father's face trembled. Soon, he would burst into tears and Svetlana would lose all control.

The young Veela abruptly shut her eyes. Resisting the urge to ball out her tears, was quite difficult. Alone, she returned to the present, and wiped her emerald eyes with the back of her palm.

She sniffed and applied a generous amount of lip gloss when two female students entered the bathroom.

"They're here Grace!" One sobbed.

"What are we going to do?!" The other hyperventilated. Weak.

"Who's here?" Svetlana said in a rude, monotone voice. The girls ignored her, until one sobbed while violently trembling "Obscura".

Other than the gentle snores from a few of his fellow Lions, there was no noise, no movement. There was nothing to distract him from his thoughts consisting of the war, Dumbledore’s Army, his parents, the safety of his friends… All of which amalgamated into the throbbing headache he was presently afflicted with. Normally, Keane would immerse himself in training for Quidditch despite the minimal amount of solace it provided him – it achieved something at least.

Doing so at such a late hour, however, would undoubtedly raise suspicion, possibly even alarm from the Aurors that typically guarded the grounds at night; it was why he usually settled for wandering the castle’s halls. Still, he remained undeterred by the possibility, and after taking a moment to weigh his options, he failed to see a reason why not.

The Lion quickly dressed himself, slipping on a shirt and jumper over his bare torso whilst he switched his pajama bottoms for a proper pair of trousers. As he did so, he noticed a slip of paper fall out of his pants’ pocket. Creased and somewhat aged, he recognized it immediately and displayed no hesitation in picking it up. Following a careful glance at the sleeping Gryffindors, he unfolded the photograph, opening it to the happy couple whose fate he knew all too well.

Their smiles were wide just as their gazes were loving – it was almost as if they recognized the young man who held their photograph. Of course, Keane knew they did not. They were just portrayals of the real thing, a captured memory. It had been years since he had last seen his parents, and even then, it was not a sight worth sharing. His visits to the Mirror of Erised simply cemented that fact, no matter how real it seemed to see them.

Folding the photograph back into its original state, he tucked it back into his pocket – dwelling on his parents’ fate merely augmented the throbbing of his head, but he found it difficult not to. Especially in regards to whoever had been behind such an act. He wanted to know the truth… He wanted them to pay.

And along with the rise of the Obscura, he began to wonder if there was a connection between the group and his parents’ deaths, if there was a reason for why he was left to live, and if there was a much more sinister plan behind it all.

Keane clenched his jaw at his last thought as he grabbed his broomstick from underneath his bed and made his way out of the boys’ dormitories. He had done enough thinking. In fact, he had done eighteen years’ worth of it. But he had no leads. The murderer left none, and rummaging through anything and everything his uncle had on his case only validated that assumption. Perhaps he was not looking hard enough. Maybe, just maybe, he was looking in all the wrong places, and all he needed was to ask the right question.

Before long, he found himself walking out into the Viaduct Courtyard, the chill of the morning air stung his face along with any and all of his exposed skin, eliciting a shiver from the tall brunet. Several meters ahead of him, there were a pair of Aurors, their backs turned away from him but they both were very much awake as they discussed something pertaining to the strange amount of snogging they have witnessed from the Third years. It seemed like dumb luck was on the Lion’s side as the Aurors seemed too occupied with their complaining to have noticed him, allowing Keane to mount his broomstick and launch himself into the air before they had a chance to turn around.

Practicing Quidditch was no longer in his mind – he wanted to fly, to go away for a little while. His thoughts went back to the photograph, to his parents, and he knew where he would go. His hands gripped his broomstick’s handle tightly as his speed increased; he was flying higher and higher, farther and farther. For anyone back at Hogwarts, he was a shrinking dot, gradually disappearing as the seconds turned into minutes.

Hogsmeade soon came into view. The small village still appeared to be recovering from the attack; buildings along its periphery remained badly damaged while those situated at its epicenter seemed almost fully rebuilt. There was no one walking its streets though, especially not that late. Sighting the path to the Shrieking Shack, Keane flew towards it as he began to make his descent prior to his smooth landing. His arrival in Hogsmeade meant that he was no longer within Hogwarts’ protective boundaries and that he no longer needed to fly. Broomstick in hand, Keane focused on his destination, feeding the thought so it eclipsed the rest of his mind…

And then following a loud crack, everything turned dark. His vision swirled along with the pit of his stomach as a sort of pressure assaulted him from all directions, pushing and compressing his entire form, before he heard the sound again just as his feet met with a stable ground. He had arrived.

The familiar sound of waves crashing sounded in the distance as he sensed the tinge of salt in the air, the slight breeze that greeted him only enhanced that feeling. He stood at the base of a grassy knoll, his jaw clenched once more as he walked up the small hill. As he reached the top, he was met with the sight of a lone Oak tree, the very same one he and his uncle had planted the day of the funeral. Lying at its base was a headstone with two names etched into the granite. Seeing it again and how much the tree had grown merely reminded the young man of how long it had been.

With a flick of his wand, a small bouquet of flowers manifested out of thin air before he settled them on their graves and smiled weakly at it, “Mum… Dad…”

Today is, today is