Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

The screaming. She did not understand the screaming – the moaning and sobbing of the Death Eaters as they returned to the great, tumbled-down manor where she had lived throughout her short life. Six years, she had been here. That was what her Master had told her, and she had no reason to disbelieve her Master. Never before in those six years had she heard such terrible sounds. Even when her Master had been angry and had shrieked and cursed and killed, the sounds should not have been so horrid. Those screams had brought her pleasure. These… these spoke to her the ending of an era. Her Master’s era.

She knew before the Death Eaters came into her cell that her Master was dead. He had lost his war with that man, the boy he called Harry Potter. He had always spoken that name with such loathing… she had no feeling towards this Harry Potter. He was a boy separate from her own world, older than she, distant from she. He held no meaning for her.

They came into her cell, screaming and cursing and whispering to her in foul words that she could not understand. The human tongue… her Master had taught her to disdain it. The words a serpent spoke were so much cleaner, more elegant than the corrupted language of humans. A serpent was pure. It desired only to kill and to survive, to continue its species through the destruction of its prey and the reproduction of its bloodline. That was what she should be. She should kill and she should continue the Pureblood line. That was her duty.

In a storm of frantic whispers and mourning the Death Eaters swept her away to hide. Where, she did not know, nor did she understand why. They would abandon her Master’s mission…?
But there was nothing she could do. Not yet. She was too small.




Harry Potter strode through the rubble of the broken, burnt-up house, staring around at the carnage. There were plenty of dead here, and plenty of dying. This was a larger mess than he had expected from what was meant to have been a simple raid. An anonymous tip – Death Eaters hiding in the cellar of an old farm house. Ten to one it had been a lie. That one had proven a large enough chance.

The faces were familiar to him, of course. Death Eaters who had escaped from Hogwarts, gone missing with Voldemort’s death. He’d been searching for them for years. There was every chance that this was the last pocket of resistance, that the final remnants of the war were finally gone. There had been so many of them left…
He sighed quietly and rubbed his hand through his thick black hair, staring around in search of something to do. Those who would be arrested had already been taken away, there were no enemies left standing. This was probably his favorite part of his job. It meant the fighting had stopped for the day.

“Percival,” he called to another auror on his team. The man looked up from the limp body of an unconscious Death Eater. “Have we looked through the back yet?”

“Nah,” Percival answered, dumping the Death Eater back against the ground. “’Aven’ go’en there yet.”

Harry nodded slightly and started towards the back, where the last Death Eaters left standing had gathered, desperately protecting something. Somehow, Harry was not concerned by what they might have been keeping from him. Anything of immediate and significant danger would have struck for itself. A cursed item, he could handle. He dug back through the rotting crates, peering through the gloom, curious. He was not prepared at all for what he found. No cursed items, no coffin holding the body of the Dark Lord. A child’s bed. And in it… a child. She watched him through eyes of glassy silver-blue, framed by pale hair so matted it seemed solid. There was no feeling in her eyes, no fear or pleasure. Skin-and-bone and perfectly still, she appeared more serpentine than human. Serpentine people never boded well with him…

Her lips opened, and he half expected to see a forked tongue there. What he heard was almost as bad.
A greeting in Parsletongue.





Celeste sat staring out the window at the sheeting gray of the rain, huddled up in the back corner of her compartment with a book cradled against her chest. Swaddled in dark robes, her thin frame made her look sickly and weak, combined with the incredible paleness of her entire physique. That did not matter to her. Let them think what they liked of her – she could hex their faces off if it pleased her. Kill them if she wanted.

No she stopped herself before she could continue down that path of thought. Master says that killing is bad. Killing is a terrible thing. I must not. I have to control myself…

She sighed quietly and shook her head. It had been years since she had moved in with Harry Potter, gained a name, learned to speak English, discovered morals, discovered love… and still, sometimes it seemed difficult to overcome Voldemort’s teachings. For so long being angry had meant killing. Now she was expected not even to shout. Just let it roll off her back. How simple it seemed when someone else said it…

Closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath, Celeste steadied herself. The train ride ahead was still long, she knew. They had only barely left the station half an hour before. And after that train ride came an even longer haul. It would be difficult to start out in a whole new life. Especially, or so Harry claimed, if she could not make friends. She would not know. She had never had any.