Vanessa wasnât moving. Ainsley barely saw the Malfoys â no, they were friends who were just wearing the faces of the Malfoys and she knew thatâŚbut no, that wasnât right either, was it? Not with Nessie crumpled at their feet, motionless. (Dead?) Their faces were not their own, no, but the faces they were wearing now might be more true than the ones waiting inside beneath their pallid skin and the uncanny reshaping powers of polyjuice â because if they had hurt (killed!?) Nessie, then they werenât Ainsleyâs friends.
She looked past the ash-pale hair and storm-pales eyes of the Malfoys and knew that she was looking at her familiar friends beneath those pretty blonde masks, but beneath those masks she saw the deeper truth: these people were her enemies now. Not just because of the Death Eaters and their threats; that was part of it, yes, but the rest was all Nessie. Or Vanessa Rosier, as she would be known soon enough â which meant she was someone whom the Order would consider a targetâŚan acceptable loss.
Ainsley looked at the motionless form of her little sister, long limbs akimbo and golden locks splayed from their intricate braiding across the floor, and saw the cold white body of Leina Nott instead. Jamesâs girlfriend had killed Leina and no one had cared â because she was their enemy too, if only by the crime of marrying the wrong man. Vanessa was their enemyâŚand Ainsley wouldnât, couldnât, let them do to her what they had done to Nott.
James was shouting at her with Luciusâs mouth but Ainsley heard the words only distantly, their definition turned strange and meaningless in the face of her fears. Stop? she thought. Explain? No, there was no explaining this away, no stopping â because they had hurt Nessie, and they would hurt her again if Ainsley let them. Something like ice but colder, more sour, spread through her limbs like an anchor, dragging her down below still dark waters. It was always going to come to this. She should have known from the start â but instead sheâd wasted years with the Order of the Phoenix, years pretending that she could fix the world with a few good intentions and some fools sheâd called friends. But the world wasnât an ancient Curse or a confusing puzzle of runes; the world was the world, and it couldnât be fixed. There was, had always been, only ever one way this was going to go.
The Rosiers werenât about to walk away from their Dark Lord, and Nessie was walking into their arms. That meant there was only one way to keep her sister safe â a calculation that on one hand took barely a heartbeat to finalize, and in others had taken her ten years. Both came down to the same answer now, though: the only way to keep her sister safe was to stop her friends. Ainsleyâs arm moved as though someone else were pulling it up by a string, but the hand curled around the wand it held was all hers â and so was the Curse that came off her lips. An old Curse, one that these days was more often found in the arsenal of Healers than hexers, its modern form adapted to cure instead of harm â but still applicable in its root form for those who knew its origins: âAdfrangossium!â she shouted, and flung the Bone Bashing Curse down the hallway.
She aimed high, well above where Nessie lay insensate (was she dead!?) on the ground; it was not a Curse that one cast with pinpoint finesse, which was one reason why it had fallen out of favor for so long until rediscovered by the Healer Tavashi Ahuja in the early 1800s and refined into its modern medical use. But Ainsley wasnât seeking pinpoint precision today; she just needed James and Mary out of her way. And the Bone Bashing Curse was a spell that hit like a miniature hurricane â or the aftereffects of a reducto, all packed-up together in an explosion of kinetic force and cracking that bypassed the buffers of skin and shields and went straight for the bone.
Ainsley ran forward on the heels of her spell, ignoring the way the fine hem of her delicate skirts ripped under her toes, pushing past both ersatz-Malfoys â both friends, both enemies. She didnât look, didnât brace for an answering hex; if her Curse wasnât enough to stop them, she would know soon enough and she didnât dare wait to check whether the damage she had done would be enough. Already she could hear the sounds of curious guests mounting the stairs in her wake and Ainsley didnât know if they were friends or foes â didnât know if she would be able to tell the one from the other, anymore. All that mattered was getting to Nessie (was she still breathing!?) and getting her out of there, getting her safeâŚ
Ainsley grabbed her sister by the arm, dragged her up, dangling limp from one shoulder, long legs trailing in their pale skirts like some cruel parody of a bridal train, and stagger-ran for the end of the hall. Behind her there were shouts, threats, cries to stop â from Mary? From James? From Jayesh? From Amelia, from Edgar? From the Death Eaters? Ainsley didnât know; Ainsley didnât know if it mattered anymore. âProtego!â she shouted, flinging a shield behind her and barging through the nearest door. She sealed it behind her and went for the window, Nessie bobbing insensate alongside her; if they could get to the gardens, Ainsley could Apparate them away, Apparate them home. She blasted the glass and wood out of her way with a snarled Reducto and tugged Nessie after her into the frigid hole of black air, bracing herself to slow their fall with a Levitation Charm so they could get out before anyone else could chase after. When Ainsley felt her sisterâs hot breath brush her ear on their clumsy way down, she sobbed in bitter relief.
Vanessa was alive; that was all that mattered.
Ainsley looked at him oddly - such an expression of pure hatred across her features. And perhaps it was his face that was doing it. She couldnât trust him because it wasnât really his face. The lips of Lucius Malfoy promising safety of her sister might not have sit well with her, but James knew that she knew who he was. She was smart - she would calm down and see him through Luciusâ icy eyes. The expression on Jamesâ face wasnât one of a Malfoy.
Trust me! he wanted to yell at her and almost died. But she wasnât listening and there wasnât time as the spell came rushing towards him. His wand was in his hand, yes, but he might as well have been defenseless, as it was raised in the air hopelessly. There wasnât any time for even a thought to pass his mind as he felt the curse hit him square in the chest, heard the bones break. Then heard nothing as -
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