Chapter 1: Chapter One
Chapter Text
The story ended like this: two boys standing on the shore of a lake, the spring wind just starting to warm with a touch of summer heat. The weight of bad news curved their shoulders into protective shells, still reeling from the news of almost one hundred bodies strewn across ministry floors, the distrust etched onto the faces of classmates, shouts falling on deaf ears, empty space. Their minds still played flashbacks to the cemetery, to a silver chalice in between headstones, a shower of green and red sparks, bound hands and unending, searing pain. The words “I’m coming with you” and “you need me” and “I love you” ring in the air, echoing with fervor and softness in equal measure. A joint promise to leave all they know behind, away from quidditch fields, and tall towers, and secret passageways. To run away, leave that night, go with their mentor to somewhere safe. To wait until they were no longer under the effect of the Trace. To plan for something they would never be able to plan for. Two teenagers, standing on the precipice of saving the world.
Except it wasn’t the end of the story. Not really.
Because the story begins again like this: a hushed conversation in the headmaster’s office that leads to an early exit from Hogwarts before the year is over, the acrid green flash of floo powder and feet stumbling over unfamiliar kitchen tiling. Two weeks spent in London, avoiding Diagon Alley and visiting muggle shops where no one would recognize their faces from the papers, sulking around the house during the day and sneaking into each other’s rooms at night when one of them wakes up screaming from the nightmares about fog drifting between headstones. Two weeks spent trying to learn to forget the phantom pain of the Cruciatus Curse and how to say the words ‘I love you’ without stumbling over them. Two teenagers still standing on the precipice of saving the world.
Lance and Keith, side by side. The way it was always meant to be.
< < < > > >
Technically speaking, Keith was not supposed to know about the top-secret Blade of Marmora meeting. Not only was it highly classified information, but also because it was almost three in the morning and his mom had probably assumed he would be safely asleep by now. If the whispered conversations she and Shiro and Adam tended to have in the middle of the night were any inclination, anyways. Keith knew that they thought they were being subtle, that he and Lance wouldn’t notice. But they would have to be asleep in order to actually be as oblivious as they had both been pretending to be, and sleep hadn’t come easy for either of them lately. Not to mention, of course, it was pretty hard to keep a meeting taking place in Keith’s own dining room a complete secret from him.
Although, even after nearly a full month of living there, Keith was still struggling to think of Grimmauld Place as his.
He had been raised in the more traditional Kogane manor home, out in the countryside, but Keith had always known that when his parents first met they had lived together somewhere in muggle London. Those had been the days when his father was more ministry member than man, consumed by an intense drive to rise to the top of the auror ranks, and his mother had still been masquerading as the perfect Akira daughter who never questioned her family’s pureblood idealism. Keith couldn’t even imagine what they must have been like. Those versions of his parents were foreign to him. As foreign as the gray walls of this house with its Fidelius charm on the front stoop, the metal cabinets full of files containing information on almost every case his father ever worked, the dust-covered cork-board covered with clippings from twenty-year-old issues of The Daily Prophet detailing Galra attacks and known members and last locations and funeral arrangements and plans for missions undertaken by the Blade of Marmora.
A few weeks ago, Keith hadn’t even known that the Blade existed. He had heard the same stories as the rest of the Wizarding World, and read the same articles pushed by the Ministry. Krolia and Kenneth Kogane had taken the Dark Lord down single-handedly. That was Keith’s legacy.
Except that wasn’t the whole story at all.
His parents had been members of a secret organization that Keith’s Muggle Studies Professor, Kolivan Marmora, founded with Keith’s father and a couple other high-profile Ministry aurors who were afraid of Galra informants in the government as a way to plan secretive, sudden assaults aimed at crushing the Dark Rebellion. And yes, Krolia had defected from the Galra and her family and joined the Blade, giving them valuable information on… something, some weakness of Zarkon’s, and together Keith’s parents had saved the world. But the Blade had hidden their involvement from the outside world as well, letting the Koganes take all of the credit in order to keep the organization and its members as secret as possible. It was all different than Keith had always thought. He didn’t recognize the faces of his parents that he saw looking back at him from the photo of the Blade that was pinned to his father’s old mirror.
The people his parents had been before his birth were dead.
Kenneth Kogane had survived the Galra only to die in the field years later anyways, and Keith knew a part of his mother had died with him. It was hard for her to face the loss of him, Keith had always known that. What he hadn’t realized was how much she kept him in the dark.
How much she was still keeping him in the dark.
Because Keith hadn’t been invited to attend the top-secret Blade of Marmora meeting. And it was entirely his mother’s fault.
And possibly a tiny bit Shiro’s.
“Keith, babe, you’re making the face again.”
Keith started out of his thoughts, turning towards the one person who could always get his attention.
Lance leaned against Grimmauld Place’s hallway wall, his arms crossed and with that tiny furrow he got between his brows whenever he was worried about something. It was a look he had been wearing more and more, ever since that night at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. Ever since they left Hogwarts. Years ago, it used to mean an important quidditch match or when he lost a round in dueling club or an upcoming exam or being on the receiving end of a sneer from Professor Iverson. Then it meant a riddle to solve or buttons enchanted with personalized insults or a fight with Pidge or the immediate presence of James Griffin. Now it meant a bad Daily Prophet article or news of another Galra attack or another letter to his friends that he couldn’t send because it would jeopardize the safehouse location or more muggleborns going missing.
Keith hated that this time he was the one putting it there.
He pressed his lips into a line, trying to smother the irritation that had been rising in him at being left out once again. “Sorry,” he said. His arms were braced against Grimmauld Place’s second story balcony, but he tilted his head away from his direct line of sight down to the door of the dining room to focus on his boyfriend instead.
His boyfriend. Keith swallowed. He still wasn’t used to thinking it, let alone saying it. These last few days, weeks, months had been a whirlwind; worst nightmares and wildest daydreams all tied up and mixed together until it was impossible to separate them. He was angry and irritable and worried and upset. How could he even think about being happy at a time like this?
And yet…
When he looked at Lance, it was like everything else faded into background noise. Instead of counting the days since the world learned that Zarkon was back, he found himself counting the freckles dotted across Lance’s cheeks. Rather than obsess over mastering Shiro’s modified borderline dark magic curses he found himself sleepless at night preoccupied by the curve of Lance’s shoulder or the sharp jut of his collarbones or how soft the wavy tangle of hair at the base of his neck felt when Keith ran his fingers through it. It was distracting. It was disorienting. It was the only thing keeping Keith sane.
Lance was the only thing keeping Keith sane.
His third-year self never would have believed it. But they had come a long way from those early days of quidditch rivalry and antagonism over the last year, and probably long before that if Keith were being perfectly honest with himself. He had told Lance he hadn’t realized that he felt anything for the other boy until they were chosen for the tournament together and it was true but, in hindsight, Keith had come to understand that the dynamics of their relationship had been shifting and changing without his realizing. Somewhere along the line, Lance had gone from being an annoyance to his favorite person in the entire world.
Even if, sometimes, Keith still found it a little hard to vocalize that fact.
“You’re thinking about the Blade of Marmora again, aren’t you?” Lance said, pushing himself off of the wall and joining Keith at the balcony. There was a bite to Lance’s tone, a resentful sort of bitterness that didn’t match the sleep-rumpled softness of his appearance. He was wearing a pair of plaid blue pajama pants and a white ‘I love London’ t-shirt that they had picked up from one of the tourist shops outside of Islington, the borough of London that Keith’s dad had apparently once called home.
Except it wasn’t a home anymore. Not really. Keith knew that Lance felt that same acute pain. Perhaps even felt it stronger.
Keith angled his head back down towards the dining room, “How can I not?”
“Keith, I know this isn’t quite what we were expecting to find. I mean… with the Blade and all,” Lance said. He scowled briefly at the mention of the Blade, before shaking his head slightly. But when he spoke again, his tone was a little softer, and Keith found himself wondering how much effort that took. Lance’s shoulder was a steady presence against Keith’s own, though, and his long fingers brushed softly against Keith’s pale knuckles, “but isn’t it a good thing that Adam and Shiro took us here? I mean at least you can be with your mom.”
“Yeah,” Keith admitted, because in hindsight, he is glad that Lance talked some sense into him after that day by the lake. Convinced him to hold off on his half-assed plan to run off and face Zarkon completely on his own. That hadn’t been Keith’s brightest idea, not when he literally had a badass Ministry member for a mom and one of the best Defense Against the Dark Arts professors of the generation as his mentor. Keith was, when it came down to it, hot-headed and impulsive but he wasn’t stupid . Lance had some pretty convincing points towards waiting to at least meet with Adam and Shiro before they made any life-changing decisions. There was a reason he had been sorted into Ravenclaw, after all.
Now they just had to wait until Lance turned seventeen. Until the Trace wore off. Then the real work could begin.
“I know that you’re right,” Keith continued, “It’s just… Shiro and my mom… they’re still treating us like we’re children, you know? Like we aren’t old enough to hear what they’re talking about down in that room. Like we didn’t become adults the minute we touched that portkey.”
He really wished that his mom and Shiro and even Adam would stop pretending otherwise. He knew they were trying to protect him by keeping him out of the action but it still stung, being treated like a kid.
He hated it.
Hell, he had hated being treated like a kid when he was a kid.
He was eighteen years old. He should be starting his three years of Auror training in the fall.
It had been him to face Zarkon in that graveyard. It had been him to bring back the news of the Dark Lord’s return to a horrified crowd of students and faculty and Ministry employees. It had been him. Well, him and Lance. They hadn’t fought their way through hell and back only to be sidelined now. Keith would be damned if his family thought they could keep him away from a seat at the grown-up table.
“You want to join the Blade,” Lance said. It wasn’t a question but it still dangled in the air between them.
“You know I do. And I know you want to know what’s going on too, Lance. I see the way you look for the Prophet every morning.”
He’s expecting something sarcastic, maybe even flirty in response. One of Lance’s trademark eyebrow raises and a oh, have you been watching me, Mullet? Another deflection, something Lance had mastered long before Keith had learned to recognize them for what they are: his way of keeping all of his pain inside so that he doesn’t feel like anyone else’s problem.
But instead Lance just let out a long, bone-weary sigh. His fingers tapped the back of Keith’s knuckles once, twice, three times and then Lance was pulling away.
“I thought you were going to say something like that,” was what Lance said instead, his hand disappearing into the pocket of his pajama bottoms. “So I brought you this.”
“What is it?” Keith asked, eying the mess of gleaming metal in Lance’s hand.
There was a golden wire contraption that looked like it was meant to resemble a human ear with a long tangle of thin strings coming off of it, connected to a matching ear at the opposite end. He had never seen anything like it.
“Pidge calls it a set of extendable ears. It’s one of their technomancy designs. They designed them back in… second year, I think? They were trying to figure out a way to make muggle telephones work with magic but, well, things went a little haywire and this was the result. Basically whatever one ear hears, the other can hear as well. And the string is enchanted to, you guessed it, extend.” And here Lance did pause to give Keith a wide, wicked grin, his white teeth flashing. “They’re great for eavesdropping. Considering we can’t do anything about joining the Blade for another month, I figured this would be a good compromise.”
Keith felt an answering grin tug at his own lips, the last of his irritation fading away as it was replaced by something else - a feeling he had come to crave over the last year. The heady thrill of being in on a joke or plan or scheme with Lance.
Lance waited for Keith to nod in consent and then he leaned forward over the railing, letting the string wind down towards the first floor, the golden wires gleaming in the flickering lantern light. Keith leaned closer so he could hear the crackle of audio that began to emerge from its partner.
“- can no longer deny what they see with their own eyes,” a stern, unforgiving voice said. “The Ministry must be forced to take action.”
With a start, Keith realized that it was Kolivan speaking.
“The Ministry will not be forced to do anything,” a smoother voice interrupted. Adam. “And there are many in power who still refuse to believe that the dark days of the past are returning. It is ignorance and denial to be sure, but those are difficult things to fight against.”
“It is beginning the same as it did before. Targeted attacks against my operatives. Muggleborn families fleeing in the night or going missing with no trace. Owl communications interrupted… The Galra game plan is the same.” Keith closed his eyes at the sound of his mother’s voice, the pain lurking just below the surface when she spoke of her operatives. A hundred Ministry members, some of the best and brightest in the organization. Gone. Wiped out in an attack that Sendak had taken credit for.
“You think they’re planning a coup of the Ministry?” Adam again.
There was no hesitation in Krolia’s voice when she answered. “Yes.”
Keith felt Lance stiffen beside him and he reached over to curl his fingers around Lance’s own. He could feel the rough calluses from years spent riding brooms and wielding a beater’s bat.
“We still have time, there are others at the Ministry we might be able to sway. We can’t give up hope in our government. Not yet.”
“And we can’t wait for them either, Adam.” Shiro’s voice was soft as it broke over his fiancé’s. “Kolivan is right. The Blade has to act.”
“Our best course of action is to follow up on the lead concerning potential Galra activity at the Slytherin Manor. I’ll take a small team myself for reconnaissance,” an unfamiliar voice spoke.
“Oh shit,” Lance muttered. At first Keith thought that he was merely reacting in response to the Blade member’s words but then Lance leaned over the railing. “Hey, you… shoo! Scram!”
Keith followed Lance’s gaze down to the floor of the hallway below them. A small, rodent-like creature with a long snout and a thick coat of fluffy black fur was nosing at their extendable ear.
“Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” Keith muttered in complete disbelief.
“Shit, it definitely is,” Lance cursed, trying to wind up their extendable ear and pull it out of the creature’s reach. “I told you Shiro had a pet niffler!”
“And he brought it here!? Dammit, Lance, can’t these ear things go any faster?”
“I didn’t design it!” Lance hissed back. All they could do was watch in horror as the niffler stood on its back paws and started batting at the extendable ear, each collision of its paw with the golden wire sending a loud screech of feedback through the half of the device that Lance was still holding.
“Why, why, why, why,” Lance muttered under his breath, as he tried to tug on the cord to bring it up faster, “did Pidge design these in pure gold ? Didn’t they think to take thieving nifflers into account?”
Keith reached into his pocket, slipping his wand free. Surely Shiro wouldn’t mind too badly if he lightly stunned the niffler, right? Or maybe hit it with a freezing charm? He wasn’t as good with ice spells as Lance was, but he could probably figure it out.
But before Keith could so much as raise his wand, there was an audible pop as the enchanted extendable cord split in half. The stupid niffler had gotten its tiny paws curled around the ear and pulled hard enough to break Pidge’s fragile technomancy design. Apparently satisfied with its prize, the niffler shoved the golden piece of tech into its pouch and took off running…. Right towards the crack in the dining room door that Keith had been watching this whole time.
“Ah, Pidge is going to kill me,” Lance groaned, as overdramatic as always.
“Not if Shiro and my mom kill us first,” Keith said, grabbing onto the edge of Lance’s t-shirt and using it to yank his boyfriend down to the floor. “Quick, hide!”
Keith hated how stupid he felt, crouched on the floor, curled half over Lance’s shoulder while the younger boy tried to muffle his amused laughter into Keith’s shoulder. So not one of his finest moments but at least it didn’t seem like anyone had-
Shiro’s voice, trying for stern but clearly laced with a trace of amusement, rose up from the first floor. “You know we can see you through the balcony railing, right?”
Well shit.
< < < > > >
Keith slumped down into one of the chairs at the Grimmauld Place dining room table, crossing his arms defensively across his chest. There was the screech of metal as Lance pulled out the chair next to him, wincing at the sound. Shiro’s heavy footfalls followed them into the room.
Other than that, it was dead silent.
The whispered plans and debates had halted, broken with the chaos of the niffler’s surprise appearance. Where the antics would have been met with suppressed laughter and deducted house points and mild embarrassment at being caught if they were at Hogwarts… it was different here. Instead, half a dozen very serious pairs of eyes studied him, and Keith found himself squirming slightly under the weight of judgment that darkened their gazes.
Most of the figures in the room Keith recognized. Pulling out the seat on the other side of Lance and joining them at the table was Shiro, wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt bearing the logo for the Wizarding Wireless Network radio station in the muggle fashion despite the late hour. He pulled out the chair with one hand, his other still cupping the niffler to his chest. On Shiro’s other side was Adam, who had leaned forward to whisper something to Shiro that sounded suspiciously like “A niffler?! Seriously?” in an unimpressed tone. Sam Holt, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, was sitting quietly with a stack of cream-colored parchment on the table in front of him. Professor Kolivan was there as well, although Keith found himself taking in his former professor with new eyes now that he knew that Kolivan was the leader of the Blade. The fifth figure, however, was someone unknown to Keith, probably just another Ministry member.
But Keith could hardly focus on anyone else in the room because most of his attention had caught on the sixth person sitting at the table. His mother.
He had never seen her as pissed off as she clearly was right now, not even during last school year when the Triwizard Tournament was taking place and Keith had taken a thousand stupid risks in an attempt to prove himself worthy of the Kogane name. To prove the Kogane name worthy of respect in the Wizarding World again. Krolia’s lips were pressed together in a thin line, her hands clasped together tightly and resting on the table.
Her voice was frosty when it finally broke the uneasy silence that had settled across the dining room. “I don’t recall telling either of you about this meeting, Keith, Lance. Or inviting you to listen in on it.”
And a part of Keith longed to cry out that it just wasn’t fair but he knew that acting like a petulant child wasn’t going to help him here.
“Yes,” Shiro agreed, and while it seemed like he was still trying to hide some of his amusement as to how they found out, he was clearly not pleased. He placed his niffler on the table with one hand, holding it in place, and with the other he reached into its pouch and pulled out the remains of the extendable ear. Placing it on the table. “Spying? We’ve taught you better than this, Keith. It’s time for you to trust us.”
“Yes,” Krolia echoed. She reached across the table and rested her hand atop Keith’s own. “We’re just trying to keep you safe.”
Lance, who was sitting quietly beside him, uncharacteristically not saying a word, was clearly watching Keith from the corner of his eye. Waiting to take his lead, Keith assumed. Ready to have Keith’s back, if he needed to. As always.
“Safety is an illusion right now,” Keith argued, sliding his hand away from his mother’s. “As long as Zarkon is out there, none of us are safe. I’m not a kid. I’m not even a student anymore. I’m an adult. I want to join the Blade. This is my fight too.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for. You’re too young. You’ve never seen war, Keith. And your father and I never wanted you to.”
Keith flinched at the sudden mention of his father.
“You and dad were only a few years older than me when this happened the first time. You can’t sit here and tell me I’m too young !” Keith could hear his voice rising, could feel the way his heart was pounding against his ribcage. His instincts screamed within him to fight, fight, fight, fight . It was all he knew how to do.
Lance’s hand found his knee under the table, squeezing slightly. “All due respect, Mrs. Kogane,” Lance cut in, polite but firm, “but what Keith and I went through during the Triwizard Tournament prepared us for this. We’re ready.”
A mirage of images flashed through Keith’s mind. Red blood swirling through dark waters during the First Trial, the blue of Lance’s robes against the blue of the sky as he fell through the air, the flashes of green light streaming from Galra wands in a foggy graveyard. They had already seen too much. They had already seen war, even if Keith knew his mother didn’t like to think of it that way.
“Lance, you’re still underage. Entertaining the idea of Keith joining the Blade is one thing, and that is unlikely enough,” Shiro said, raising an eyebrow. “But you’re not going anywhere until the Trace wears off.”
For a moment Lance looked like he wanted to protest, but he merely slumped back in his seat. “That doesn’t mean I can’t even hear about what’s going on,” he muttered petulantly.
“Lance is right,” Keith said, jumping off of his boyfriend’s point, cutting off Shiro, who was clearly getting ready to rebuke Lance’s previous statement. “Even if you don’t want us participating in the missions, Lance and I deserve to know what’s going on. You can’t keep us in the dark. It’s driving us crazy.”
For a moment it seemed like Krolia was going to speak, her mouth open in protest, but someone else beat her to it.
“The boy is right.”
Keith jumped a little as the deep voice of Professor Kolivan Marmora rumbled through the room.
“I am?” He asked.
“He is?” Lance echoed almost simultaneously.
Keith had thought, while he was at Hogwarts, that he had a pretty good idea of who Professor Kolivan was. A gruff man who could never learn to take a joke but let his students call him by his first name, someone who would expect only the best amount of effort from his students but who would help take the time after class to explain muggle references to Keith when Lance confused him, not an easy man but a fair one. But he was starting to realize that he had severely underestimated his former Muggle Studies professor.
Because Professor Kolivan had apparently founded the Blade of Marmora back during the First Wizarding War with Keith’s father and a few other aurors who practically went rogue, and Keith hadn’t had a clue.
Though looking at Kolivan now, wearing a set of black auror protective leathers and robes, with the hint of stubble across his jaw from days gone without a shave and his ropey black braid draped across his shoulder, Keith thought that he could see a shadow of the rebel leader that Kolivan had once been. That he was becoming again.
“You wish to protect your son, Krolia,” Kolivan said, “and there is no shame in that. But Keith is a man now, and he has a responsibility to the wizarding world. Zarkon chose Keith’s future when he decided that your son would become the cost you paid in punishment for your betrayal. The fates of both boys are tied with the fate of the Wizarding World, which was sealed the moment the Goblet of Fire selected two names instead of one. Galra tampering or not, they must deal with the aftermath. Though the Galra have made no open moves since the attack that claimed the lives of your operatives, every day we lose contact with more muggleborn families, hear rumors of more pureblood families reverting to their former beliefs.”
Keith tightened his grip on the edge of the table, glancing over towards Lance. The younger boy’s mouth was pressed into a thin line and his eyes were shining. Keith knew his boyfriend well enough to know that he was trying not to cry. The disappearances of the muggleborn families had been a recurring feature in Lance’s nightmares lately.
But Kolivan was still speaking. “The Daily Prophet still refuses to publish anything that directly references the fact that Zarkon might be alive. Shiro’s interview in The Quibbler supporting Lance and Keith’s versions of events has only done so much. Those two are the only sources who know of Zarkon’s return, they are undoubtedly important to the cause. The time for talk is over. It is time for the Blade to act now. As Kenneth’s heir, Keith has a duty to the Blade.”
“You speak of duty like he is a soldier. He’s a child. He’s my child.”
“Stop it,” Keith said, slamming his hands on the table. His head was pounding, anger and frustration burning with a white-hot fury that seemed to fill his entire body. “I’m supposed to be in fucking auror training right now. I’m ready for this.”
“Babe,” Lance said softly, a note of warning in his voice. His hand reached out and wrapped around Keith’s elbow, and Keith felt himself flush in embarrassment as he realized that he was standing shouting at a room full of adults, full of his family, full of strangers, full of ghosts.
Defeated, Keith slumped back into his seat. “Just give me something, anything , to do. It doesn’t have to be dangerous. I don’t care what it is. I can’t just sit here doing nothing. I want to help.” His voice cracked on the last word.
The overly formal dining room of Grimmauld Place was silent, uncomfortably so.
Then, the only man that Keith couldn’t identify by sight, spoke up. “I’ll take him with me.”
Krolia and Kolivan both whipped their heads around to face him.
“Regris-” Krolia started to protest, but Kolivan cut her off.
“Yes, a reconnaissance mission should be safe enough.” Kolivan turned his attention towards Keith. “You will go with Regris. You will follow his orders. You will restrain your temper. And you will not engage. Your mission will be to observe and report. Do you understand?”
Keith nodded, his throat tight. He was sure the disbelief must be showing on his face. They were actually going to let him go?
He glanced over at his mom. The expression staring back at him was one he recognized from his own mirror, every time he was frustrated and words didn’t come out the way he wanted them to. For a moment it seemed like she was going to protest further, and Keith felt his heart plummet. This was it. But instead Krolia looked towards Kolivan and a silent conversation seemed to pass between them.
After a moment, still looking incredibly unhappy with the outcome, Krolia nodded slowly.
“Alright! So when do we leave?” Lance chimed in, fake cheer dripping from his voice. But Keith could tell that there was a current of something else running beneath it. Lance’s fingers were tight against his arm, as if Lance’s whole body was a curled spring waiting to snap.
“Lance,” Shiro said again, heavily. “Maybe we should step outside.”
“Nope,” Lance said, popping the ‘p’ like he always did when he was to act casual. “If Keith has a duty to the Blade, then so do I. I can help . Zarkon tried to kill me too.”
Keith flinched at the way the words grated against Lance’s casual tone.
“Lance,” Shiro repeated. Keith could hear the thin undercurrent of frustration in his mentor’s voice, the same as when a class of Defense Against the Dark Arts students were being particularly disruptive. He reached up to run a hand through his hair, the dyed locks faded. Dark circles were ringing his eyes.
He looked terrible, Keith realized. Shiro looked as terrible as Keith felt.
But Lance was still going. “Keith has a duty to the Blade because of his dad, sure. But that means I have a duty to the Blade because of my family, too. We already know that I’m in the Galra crosshairs. If that’s true… then it’s my family and friends on the line as well. If they’re in danger just for being associated with me… I deserve to be involved too. Especially if this ‘reconnaissance’ has to do with any of the missing muggleborns.”
“Unlike Keith, you are still underage for a month . You would be a liability on missions, Lance. Magic can still Trace you. Do you even understand what that means? You could lead Zarkon and his forces right to us. I’m sorry, Lance. But the answer is no.” Shiro pursed his lips. “You need to accept this.”
“No, no, no, no .” Lance cried. “You can’t be serious. Keith, tell them you aren’t going to go without me.”
Keith could feel the steady weight of Lance’s gaze, and felt his own cheeks flush slightly under the attention, a warm flood of embarrassment replacing the flood of indignation from earlier. He kept his gaze locked on the dark mahogany wood of the table, shifting uncomfortable in his seat. He didn’t want to look at Lance, to know what expression would be pinning him in place right now.
“Keith,” Lance tried again, shaking Keith’s elbow slightly to get his attention.
As if he ever needed to do anything extra to get Keith’s attention.
A part of Keith wanted to open his mouth and say of course I’m not going to go anywhere without you, Lance. I’m never going to go anywhere without you.
But the other part of Keith, the flame within him that had always pushed him to run faster, fly higher, punch first, think later… that part of Keith burned to say you can’t stop me. Please don’t try to stop me. I have to do this. You don’t understand.
So instead of saying anything, he said nothing.
Lance’s face crumpled in response, betrayal flashing across it before Lance pressed his lips into a thin line and replaced the look with a cold, expressionless mask. It was an expression that Keith had never seen his boyfriend wear before, so unlike the open turmoil that had often plagued him during the trials or the hot, burning anger that had been their confrontations during the early days of their quidditch rivalry.
He dropped Keith’s elbow, shoving away from the table and standing so that he could stomp across the tile, agitation radiating from him. Keith couldn’t hear all the mumbled expletives and insults that then left his mouth as he paced, and even if he could have made them out, Keith could tell that Lance was clearly speaking in Spanish. “ Idiota obstinado ye de cabeza caliente, ” Lance muttered, before whipping around to face Keith once more.
“This is not okay. This isn’t what we-”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Shiro interrupted Lance before he could finish speaking. Shiro had stood, handing his niffler off to a disgruntled looking Adam, so that he could place one hand on Lance’s shoulder, one hand holding on to his elbow, and steer him from the room. “You and Keith can talk about this later.”
Lance shot Keith one last glare before Shiro pushed him through the door. Keith could barely see Lance whirl on Shiro through the crack in the door, poking a finger aggressively into Shiro’s chest and muttering angrily, before the door slammed shut.
Keith slid his gaze back towards the rest of the table. Sam Holt was looking distinctly uncomfortable, busying himself with cleaning his glasses on the fabric of his robes, and both Kolivan and Regris were stern-faced and serious, clearly unimpressed. Adam was frowning down at the niffler in his arms, as if unsure what, exactly, he was meant to do with it. Only Krolia looked sympathetic, frowning at her son with a mixture of concern and pity and worry.
Keith folded his hands on the table, tried to force the blush down and kept his voice steady as he said “Tell me about the mission.”
Kolivan looked towards Regris, inclining his head.
Regris’s serious expression never wavered as he said “The Blade of Marmora has received information from some civilians concerning what they believe to be Galra activity near the home of Hogwarts founder, Salazar Slytherin. We will go and observe whether or not these claims are true. If they are, we will send a message to the Blade using a form of the patronus charm and retreat. Other Blade members will then engage. If it is a false alarm, we will return here. Do you understand?”
Keith looked across the table at the man who had vouched for him. Regris was a tough-looking man, obviously hardened by his experiences in the first war. His black hair was worn in a close-cropped mohawk and the backs of his hands were covered in dozens of tiny scars that he had attempted to cover with dark inked muggle tattoos.
“Yes,” Keith vowed. “I understand.”
As the conversation moved on towards vague details and the outline of a plan Keith still didn’t fully understand, he found that his mind was wandering away from the dining hall of Grimmauld place and meandering through the halls, twisting up the stairs, hovering on the landing, where a nearby hallway hosted the two doors that led to both Lance’s bedroom and his own.
What was Lance doing now, as Keith poured over the witness reports, was he up pacing the floor waiting for Keith to return? Had he buried himself in an armchair to read? Had he simply given up and gone to bed?
Keith wasn’t sure what to expect from this Lance, a Lance who was wounded. Who Keith had wounded. Their time at Hogwarts had been filled with dozens, if not hundreds of fights. Childish squabbles over lost games on the Quidditch pitch or bickering over shared homework assignments in Charms class when the Ravenclaws had been paired with the Gryffindors back in Keith’s fourth year. In times like those, Keith would have met Lance’s anger and vitriol with his own, happily escalating the arguments and just begging Lance, or anyone really, to give him an excuse to give in to the rage that seemed a constant pressure within him.
Back then, Keith had thought that nothing he did, that none of the quips he spat or the insults tossed from one broomstick to another would really hurt Lance. Lance was invincible. Every barbed sentence had seemed to roll off Lance’s seemingly massively inflated ego. Keith had never truly been able to touch him. Or, at least, he thought he hadn’t.
Then, Keith had managed to look beyond the very confident facade Lance had carefully constructed. Saw the way all of those insults had chipped away at something far more vulnerable, a precious thing Lance had guarded against the cruelty of ignorance. When Keith saw Lance crying on the lakeshore mere days after the Goblet of Fire gave both of their names, Keith realised that his words and deeds held far more weight than he had ever thought.
Now Keith knew that he had a power over Lance he had never realized he did, that maybe he had all along from the very first day they met, but it was different now. Worse now. He loved Lance, he knew he loved Lance. And more than that, he truly knew him. That meant he could hurt Lance worse than anybody, because he knew now where the weak points were. He knew where the cracks in Lance’s walls were.
Keith… didn’t know what to do about that.
How could you hurt someone you loved so much? What did that say about Keith that he had been willing to do it? Maybe it meant he was as cold and callus as people sometimes accused him of being.
He tried to shove the thoughts down, forcing himself to focus on what Regris was saying. Maybe, if he could just bury every worry that was plaguing his mind deep enough within him, he wouldn’t have to confront the fact that he didn’t know if he was a person who was truly capable of love.
He had never really learned how, didn’t have much practice in it.
Lance deserved better. He deserved so much better than Keith’s aching silence and apologies that came too late. He deserved someone who wouldn’t have even thought about shouting at him the way Keith had all those months ago. Deserved far better than someone who was going to leave him behind to run off on a fucking suicide mission without a second thought, if Lance hadn’t shown up in time to stop him.
Keith knew that Lance deserved that at least, an apology was the least of what Keith owed Lance after everything that had gone down tonight.
He would apologise after the meeting ended.
He just had to hope that Lance would understand. This was worse than Hogwarts school fights but it was also about something bigger than anything they had ever fought about before.
This was about Keith’s legacy.
The Blade of Marmora was an inheritance that Keith hadn’t even known he had, but now he could feel the mantle of duty settling around his shoulders. Working for the Blade had consumed most of his father’s adult life.
This might be the only way Keith could ever learn to truly know the man his father had been. And that, more than stopping Zarkon even, was the only thing that convinced Keith that this would be worth it.
Lance would understand. He had to.
Chapter 2: Chapter Two
Summary:
Keith and Lance finally get their chance to talk about their argument the night before. Heart-to-hearts are had, N.E.W.T. results are delivered, and someone can’t stop themself from remembering their past.
Notes:
Hi all! Caitie sunnyjolras here :) When Kate and I decided to proceed with writing a sequel, 5 years later, we had no idea what reaction to expect. Volton certainly… didn’t end well… which is an understatement… and we knew the fandom we knew 5 years ago was going to be very different to the one there is now. However we have been blown away by the response to the announcement of ISYOTOSOTW and we already have 500 hits :D So thank you all for coming back and supporting us, we appreciate you all so much!!
So we hope you continue to read, post comments, give kudos etc. We would not be here 5 years later if we did not have such positive memories of you all loving our fic and supporting INSLYTLTL. And once again, a massive thank you must be given to Kate, without whom this fic would not exist as I am but a humble glorified beta reader (and lore organiser lmao). I am the archivist here (tma reference). Please comment your thoughts it is how we survive!!!!
Chapter Text
Keith paused with his hand hovering above Lance’s bedroom door.
He had checked his own room first, since that was where they spent most of their time together, but it was empty. Instead of his boyfriend sprawled across the bed, it had contained only the contents of his school trunk, still strewn across the floor, his dad’s invisibility cloak draped over the edge of an armchair, the photographs Lance’s family sent him carefully stacked on the right bedside table.
So instead he was here, at the Grimmauld Place guest bedroom that still felt stuffy and unused. He knew Lance hated it. And yet he had come here anyways. At least, Keith hoped he had. Otherwise, he had no idea where in the house Lance might be hiding out.
Keith rapped his knuckles against the wood.
There was a tightness clutching at his chest, curled around his heart. He and Lance had fought a dozen times, a hundred times. It had never felt as real as this. Keith had the distinct impression that he was handling something precious and if he wasn’t careful he would shatter it.
That frightened him more than the Galra did. Which didn’t even make any sense, but… it was true.
There was a long pause, and then the door cracked open, revealing Lance standing on the other side. He was still wearing his pajamas, though Keith suspected that it must be nearing dawn at this point. He and Regris had worked out some of the details of their mission after Kolivan and Sam left. Even just that had taken them hours and Keith was still confused on the specifics. Regardless, Keith had thrown himself into the work, in part because it was important and it mattered, and in part because… he was avoiding this.
“Oh,” Lance said, “I thought you were Shiro.” There was no emotion in his voice.
“Lance,” Keith said, “can I come in? Can we talk?”
“Oh, now you want to talk?” Lance snarked, and there was a bit of bite back to his tone. Keith was almost relieved to hear it. If Lance was angry at least that meant he still cared. “That’s funny, you didn’t seem to have any interest in talking during the Blade meeting. When they kicked me out .”
“I wasn’t… I didn’t-” Keith cut himself off with a frustrated huff. He reached up to push a hand through his hair, shoving his bangs out of his eyes with more force than necessary. “It’s complicated.”
“It's complicated?” Lance echoed, his eyebrows raising in disbelief. “This is ridiculous. I can’t deal with this right now.” He stepped back, shutting the door. Keith launched into motion, shoving his leg forward so that the door bounced off of his foot and following Lance into the room.
Lance crossed the room without saying anything, scooping up a book from where it had been resting on the small table beside an overstuffed armchair under a reading lamp. He tossed himself unceremoniously into the chair, draping his legs over the arm. He flipped the book open to a page in the middle and propped it on his chest.
“What are you doing?” Keith asked. He trailed forward into the room slowly, reluctant to invade Lance’s space while simultaneously finding that the prospect of heading to bed with this unsettled was leaving him feeling slightly nauseous.
Lance flipped another page without looking at him. The silence bubbled between them for a moment. “Reading,” he said at last, still not looking at Keith.
Obviously , Keith thought. But what he said was “Why?”
“I don’t know, Keith,” Lance sighed noisily. “It kind of seems like reading is the only thing I’m going to be able to do for a while.”
Keith toed the soft gray rug that was arranged at the edge of the bed Lance never slept in with one black-sock clad foot. He studied the dark wooden floorboards intently, reluctant to look at Lance when Lance was so obviously not looking at him. He didn’t have any… practice with this sort of thing. Any experience. It was hard enough to juggle his own emotions sometimes, which could still be confusing but at least he had a lifetime in which to learn how to master them. Trying to accommodate someone else’s emotions, Lance’s emotions, was like trying to learn to speak a foreign language.
Keith knew it wasn’t always like that for other people, but for him it was different. It always had been.
“Are we okay?” Keith asked the floor.
Lance let out another long huff of air and Keith felt his stomach drop. “I’m mad as hell right now, Keith. You made me a promise while we were standing by the lake that we were going to do this together . That you weren’t going to run off and do anything stupid .”
“I know. But you know how important this is to me, Lance. I can’t just… I can’t just say no.”
He risked a glance up at Lance from beneath the curtain of his hair.
Lance had let the book slump down so that it rested fully on his chest and his eyes were closed. If it weren’t for the tension in the brace of his shoulders against the arm of the chair, the way his pulse was jumping in his throat, he could have almost been asleep.
“Are you really so desperate to run off without me?”
The words hung in the air between them. And now Keith could pick out the tone that was running beneath the hot streak of Lance’s anger and frustration. It was the same emotion that had prickled within Keith the last time they truly fought like this - the day the Goblet of Fire chose two names instead of one and he had thought that Lance had betrayed their friendship and felt the flash of fear that maybe he wasn’t worthy to represent Hogwarts, that maybe the Goblet had made a mistake when it chose him after all.
Keith might be desperate to join the Blade, to prove that he was worthy of his parents’ legacy, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt Lance. He felt a familiar bubble of anger churning in his gut at the thought that Lance might think he was doing this, causing this, on purpose, but he forced himself to swallow it back down. It was mostly anger at himself, anyway. And he knew Lance, he loved Lance. Anger was the last thing the situation needed. So he took a deep breath, letting the memory of Shiro’s voice wash over him. “Patience yields focus.”
Once the quick burn of the anger had settled into low, burning embers that Keith could trust not to get the best of him, he sat on the edge of the bed. He uncurled his hands from where they had tightened into fists almost without his realizing and let them rest against his knees.
“Lance,” Keith said, his boyfriend’s name coming out a soft sigh. “That’s not what it… that isn’t what it’s about. Can you just… I don’t want to…” Keith cut himself off with a frustrated huff. He hated that he couldn’t read the emotions swirling in Lance’s ocean-blue eyes. He couldn’t tell what Lance was thinking, and he could almost always tell what Lance was thinking. “I don’t want to have this conversation if you won’t look at me.”
Lance stayed how he was for a few moments: eyes closed, head tipped towards the ceiling baring the long expanse of his throat, book still draped across his chest. Then he groaned and pulled his legs back from where they were draped over the arm of the chair, lifted the book from his chest and replaced it on the table, slowly sat upright so that he could angle himself towards the bed. He propped his elbows on his thighs and rested his chin on the bridge he made with his hands. For a moment he studied the space of floor between them before he finally lifted his gaze to meet Keith’s own. “Okay, fine,” Lance said at last. He still sounded hurt and frustrated and upset, but buried. Like he was trying. “Let’s talk then. Two weeks ago you made a promise to me, we made a promise to each other . We said together , Keith. That’s supposed to mean something. And now you’re just leaving me behind to go with the Blade?”
“It does mean something. This isn’t permanent. This isn’t forever. It’s one mission, maybe more if it goes okay, and only if Kolivan thinks it’s safe enough.”
Lance let out another shaky huff of air, muttered “maybe more” under his breath. He reached up to drag his hands across his eyes. “And you can’t wait?”
And Keith wished that he could say yes, of course I can wait. I’ll always wait for you. But the word that came out of his mouth was “No.”
Hurt flashed in Lance’s blue eyes again, so Keith rushed to add “Every day the Galra are making new moves, Lance. We don’t know what they’re planning, we don’t know how many of the old members have joined back up, we just… we just don’t know enough. The Blade is trying to learn as much as they can. Shouldn’t we try to learn as much as we can over this month too? If we want to have a plan in place for when you turn seventeen then I need to do this. I’m going on this mission.”
When it came again, Lance’s voice was very small. He was picking at a loose thread of his flannel pajama pants, wrapping it around his long, elegant fingers. “But what if something happens to you and I’m not there?”
Keith felt the words hit him like a jinx when his shield spells were down.
He closed his own eyes against the sudden onslaught of memories that followed: the bone-deep fear that had washed through him when he had thought that the killing curse had collided with Lance, the sight of Zarkon ruthlessly killing one of his own followers and the thud of the body as it fell to the ground, the pain that had arched through his entire body from the torture curse until he couldn’t think, couldn’t remember anything else, the streak of green and red lights colliding in a shower of sparks, the red-hot anger that had burned and caused his vision to black out with the words of an unforgivable curse on his own lips and Lance’s screams ringing in his ears, the pale blue and silver glow of the Triwizard Cup as it slammed into his waiting palm.
“You know as well as I do what happened in that graveyard,” Lance was still saying, likely reading the flash of the memories across Keith’s face. Maybe even seeing those memories behind his eyes as well. Keith could feel himself grimacing at the recollections. “We only made it out alive because we were both there. Because we had each other. And now you’re leaving me behind ?”
“I’m not-” Keith paused to swallow past a throat that was suddenly too dry. “I’m not leaving you behind.” The words came out fiercer than he expected them to.
“You are,” Lance protested. “Even if it’s only for this month… you are.”
Unable to bear the distance between them any longer, the way the expanse of the bedroom floor felt like a gaping chasm, Keith pushed himself up and crossed the room. He paused, a flicker of uncertainty passing through him once he stood in front of Lance. He wanted to… well, he wasn’t sure. He wanted to act, to do something, anything, that would thaw the tension that crackled between them.
He crouched down, resting on one knee in front of Lance. “But it is only for a month,” he promised. “And when that month is up, we’ll do what we said we would do. We’ll go. Together . Take up the fight. Leave everyone else behind, so they’ll be safe. Find a way to defeat Zarkon. But for now… I can do this. I can help. I have to go, Lance. I love you. I don’t want to leave you. But I have to go.”
Keith’s hands hovered awkwardly in the air between them, but Lance reached up to clutch them gently with his own. His skin was cold, clammy, and Keith felt too hot in comparison. “And what do I do?” Lance asked softly. “While you’re off running around with the Blade… what about me? You aren’t the only one that wants to help right now. You’re not the only one going crazy being cooped up here.”
“I…” Keith forced himself to consider the words. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
“Do you know what Shiro told me after he took me out of the room?” Lance asked. He didn’t even wait for Keith to finish shaking his head before pressing on. “He said I can’t even be at the table for Blade meetings while I still have the Trace on me. That it’s too much of a risk to trust me with information that I could leak if I’m not protected by magical means. I can’t even cast any defensive spells. I mean, I can’t cast any spells. He called me a fucking liability , Keith. You heard him. I wouldn’t even be allowed to know what you’re doing . Or where you are . Or… or anything.”
And Keith… he hadn’t thought about that.
It hit him, suddenly, how horrible this situation must be from Lance’s point of view. He tried to imagine what it would be like, how he would feel, if Lance suddenly announced that he was going to be throwing himself into danger, leaving Keith behind, and there was nothing he could do about it. It would have been like the First Trial, when Lance stayed behind in the lake when he didn’t have to just to help Keith and gotten hurt because of it, only a thousand times worse. It would even be worse than the dread he had felt in his stomach the moment Lance told him that he hadn’t tried to win, that he had been actively sabotaging himself in an attempt to help Keith win. Keith didn’t have a name for what emotion that would be, but he knew he would hate it. Which made him worse than a hypocrite. It also made him an asshole.
This time, the hot rush of emotion that flowed through him, that brought a flush to his cheeks and his ears and his neck was shame.
“I didn’t think of it like that,” Keith admitted. “I didn’t realize… I didn’t realize what I was asking you.”
Lance rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed.
“I’m sorry,” Keith said. He felt Lance’s hands squeeze tighter around his own.
“I know,” Lance said, shaking his head. “Hah,” he added, though without much humor to it, a sad smile on his face. “I just Han Solo-ed you.”
“That’s Star Wars, you told me about that one. But really, Lance. Are you going to be okay?”
Lance shrugged his shoulders, his eyes sliding shut. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, of course, it fucking matters,” Keith bit out. The words rang in his own ears for a moment and he realized that his pitch had risen much louder than the whisper-like tones that he and Lance had been using up to this point. “I need you to be okay, Lance. That’s more important than anything else.”
Lance sniffled and Keith had the horrifying realization that his boyfriend was crying. Lance pulled one of his hands free to wipe at his eyes. “Doesn’t exactly feel like it right now.”
At that, Keith leaned the rest of the way forward, pulling Lance down and crushing their bodies together in an embrace. He buried his face against the crook of Lance’s neck. “I am really sorry about this, Lance,” Keith whispered, his breath ghosting above Lance’s skin.
Lance shuddered slightly. “I-I know,” he said, the words shaky and tearstained. “And I do understand why you’re doing this. I mean, I’m massively pissed off at you right now… but I do understand.”
They stayed like that for a few moments, until Lance’s breathing turned even and he pulled away to wipe the last of the tears from his eyes. “So I guess you’ll be off on your Blade adventures,” he said at last, the familiar fake cheer dripping from his voice. “And I’ll be here. Fucking reading.”
And Keith knew it wouldn’t make anything better but he couldn’t help but reply automatically, “At least there’s a library here.”
The words startled a laugh out of Lance, a real one, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Yeah,” he echoed sarcastically, “at least there’s a library.”
Keith reached over and grabbed Lance’s book from the table. “What are you reading, anyways?”
“ Hogwarts: A History ,” Lance replied easily, and sure enough Keith recognized the familiar gray leather cover. It was a book most pureblooded Hogwarts students read well before their first year… if they could suffer through how boring it was, anyways.
Keith arched a brow. “Why?”
Lance shrugged again. “Nostalgia, I guess. And because I’ve been scared to touch any of your dad’s spooky black magic books. It’s worse than the Hogwarts’ Restricted Section in there.”
“Technically I think they’re anti-black magic books.”
“I think it’s more ‘know thy enemies.’” Lance shook his head. “Still spooky.”
Keith looked at the familiar cover once more, an ache settling in his chest at the thought of Hogwarts. At the thought of Lance locked up here in Grimmauld Place instead of being at Hogwarts. No, he shook his head to clear them of the thoughts. We’ll be out of here before school starts.
He set the book back down.
“Lance,” he said seriously. “Are we okay?”
There was a pause, but it felt less heavy than it did before. “You’re a fucking idiot.” Lance finally said. The words didn’t carry the harsh weight of antagonism like they used to, though. Instead, his voice still sounded dangerously close to wet. “I love you. You know that. You’re my… you mean the world to me, Keith. That’s why it hurts that I can’t be there to protect you. I don’t like to think about that. Bad things” Lance cut himself off with a grimace before continuing. “Bad things happen when we’re separated.”
Keith swallowed, his throat suddenly dry as he remembered the occamy attack during the second trial. “Bad things happen when we’re together, too.” He said.
“But at least I’m there to watch your back.”
“I’ll come…” Keith felt his throat close up the way it always did when he wanted to say something that his mind told him was too much, too soft, too stupid to say aloud in a world that was cold and hard and cruel. A world where his mom loved him and had to distance herself from him anyways, sending him off to spend holidays with Shiro and Adam because there was another threat against her life and Ministry members on duty watching their house again. A world where Keith’s dad had loved him and had left him anyways, disappearing on yet another auror mission to Europe that he wasn’t allowed to talk about and then he never came back and Keith was left to wonder why , wonder what could possibly be more important than family. A world where he was shipped off to boarding school when he was eleven and the other kids judged him because he didn’t know how to talk to them, didn’t know how to make himself goofy and likable when he was irritable and serious so he spent seven years sharing a dorm with a handful of boys he rarely said more than two words to.
But this was Lance . Lance, who was soft and bright and brilliant, with the soft curl of his hair coming in now that he was finally letting it grow out longer and a constellation of freckles dotted across the bridge of his nose. Lance who loved him. Lance who deserved better than a boyfriend who still stumbled over the weight of those words.
So Keith continued very slowly. “I’ll come home to you. I’ll keep my promise.”
And despite the severity of the moment, Keith watched the recognition of the words that he had used spark in Lance’s eye and the slightest upturn to the corner of his mouth as it fought to curl into a smile. Because they both knew that Keith didn’t mean home to Grimmauld Place, which wasn’t really a home at all, but instead meant home to Lance .
“Really, Lance,” Keith pressed, because he needed Lance to believe him. “When you’re seventeen… we’ll go. Just like we said.”
Lance pushed his lips back into a thin line, wiping the dopey smile off his face. Keith missed it as soon as it was gone. “Fine,” he agreed. “But I’m holding you to that.” He tipped his head down so that their foreheads were resting together and Keith’s vision swam, his mind flooded with corny, unhelpful words like cerulean and sapphire and cornflower as Lance blinked at him.
Keith finally felt like he could breathe again, the tightness in his chest vanishing at the realization that Lance was still here, that Lance still wanted to be close to him. He wasn’t used to people staying. He had only ever learned how to prepare himself for people leaving.
You’re the one leaving this time, the corner of Keith’s mind that he tried not to listen to anymore whispered. You’re just like your dad. Choosing the Blade over your family.
Keith closed his eyes against the thought, the familiar comfort of Lance’s features replaced by darkness. He saw a flash of green light again but this time instead of Lance’s prone form laying in the damp grass of the fog-covered graveyard, it was his father that he saw, falling to the killing curse again and again. The vision had haunted his nightmares since the dementor attack in April.
“Lance,” he said at last, very softly. He opened his eyes. “I really need to know before I go… are we going to be okay?”
“Yeah, baby,” Lance said. And the last bubble of tension in Keith’s chest burst with the relief of hearing one of Lance’s stupid pet names. “ We’re okay. It’s just a matter of making sure that you stay okay now.”
“I’ll be fine,” Keith promised. “It’s just reconnaissance. Kolivan wouldn’t be sending me if he didn’t think it was safe.”
Lance’s mouth twisted wryly, like he didn’t quite believe the words.
Keith honestly wasn’t sure whether he believed them himself. He hoped they weren’t a lie.
Instead of answering, Lance reached forward and swept a lock of Keith’s hair back behind his ear. His fingers lingering on the sensitive skin of Keith’s neck for a moment. “It’s late,” Lance said at last. “Let’s go to bed. We can talk about this more in the morning.”
Keith was pretty sure that it was already morning, but he wasn’t about to argue. Not when Lance was holding out such a fragile peace offering between them.
“Okay,” Keith agreed, and when he stood, Lance let him pull him up as well. Lance’s hand in his own was a familiar, comfortable weight.
Then, because he was Lance, and he always had to find a way to ruin a moment with his delightfully irritating attitude, his boyfriend grinned down at him and said “I had no idea you could be so cheesy, babe. I mean,” and here there was a Lance Á lvarez signature eyebrow wag thrown in for good measure. “I’m your home? Really?”
Even Keith, with his horrible social skills, can tell that there’s another undercurrent to the words. A sense of wonder, like Lance couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. So instead of shoving at Lance’s shoulder and telling him to shut up, Keith just tipped his head to the side.
“Yes,” he said. “Obviously.”
Lance’s blush started at the nape of his neck, working its way to his cheeks and eventually his ears, which Keith could tell even in the dark of the moonlit room were cherry-red. “Oh,” Lance said, a little softer. “Cool.”
This time Keith did bump his shoulder into Lance’s, pushing him towards the direction of the door because they were not sleeping here , in this horrible, stuffy bedroom when Keith’s room was literally right across the hall. “You’re not allowed to make fun of me for this in the morning,” Keith warned.
“Make fun of you?!” Lance echoed, but the betrayal in his voice was so much better than it had been earlier, light and fluffy with exaggerated irritation and laughter. “I would have you know that I would never-”
Keith was still laughing as he followed Lance out into the hallway.
An hour ago, the thought of laughing with Lance again had felt impossible, like Keith had fucked up beyond repair.
I’m not Dad , he told himself, I’m coming back . I have something worth coming back to, now .
That something looked an awful lot like the curve of Lance’s shoulders as he braced them against the door to open it slowly so the creaking hinges wouldn’t wake up Krolia or Shiro or Adam. The conspiratorial grin, a flash of white in the darkness, that Lance shot over his shoulder. The soft cotton of Lance’s t-shirt clenched in Keith’s fists as he pressed Lance against the wood of the door and swallowed Lance’s lingering laughter with his own lips, kissing the other boy soundly. Like if he tried hard enough, he might forget that it was his fault Lance was upset in the first place.
< < < > > >
Shiro found him the next morning in the training room.
Clearly the training room had once been a basement cellar here in Grimmauld Place, probably where the house elves worked back when the Kogane family had lived half the year here in London and the other half in the countryside, but those days were long over even before Keith’s dad had been born. Besides, it was obvious that Kenneth Kogane had found a new purpose for the cold, stone chamber.
The room had been outfitted with enchanted training dummies, black metal machinery obviously designed through technomancy. They had been made to look like Galra members, black hoods and masks fitted over the blank mannequin-like faces, and bewitched to move and roll around on their own accord. They were similar to targets Keith recognized Shiro using in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, but more realistic. More efficient.
He was standing facing one of the targets, his wand held before him in a loose grip, positioned at the ready stance for dueling. There were scorch marks along the front of the training dummy, from the Incendio charms he had cast already, warming up with the fire-based magic that came so easily to him.
It was good practice, but it was also a way to work out the lingering tension that still hummed throughout his body from the night before and the nerves that were slowly building in his stomach when he thought about the fact that he would actually be leaving with Regris soon. That he would be officially in the field for the first time. That he might come face to face with the Galra again.
He heard Shiro coming so he tucked his wand back into the back pocket of the muggle jeans Lance made him buy and muttered the incantation that deactivated the training dummy. The creak of the door above was followed by heavy footsteps on the basement stairs and a muttered “ouch” when Shiro obviously forgot to jump over the stair that someone, long ago, had enchanted to bite at people’s toes.
Keith bit his lip to keep from laughing as Shiro all but hopped into the basement, shaking his foot slightly. Based on Shiro’s mood last night… he knew the laughter wouldn’t be appreciated. Not when Shiro was probably still upset about Keith and Lance crashing the Blade meeting.
Sure enough, as soon as Shiro saw that Keith was watching him, he schooled his expression back into blank impassiveness, setting his foot gingerly back down on the ground. He was still wearing the same Wizarding Wireless Network t-shirt that he had been wearing the night before and if it were possible, the dark circles under his eyes looked even darker.
Keith braced himself for a fresh wave of scolding. He still felt like the emotional equivalent of a wrung-out rag after his conversation with Lance during the early hours of the morning. And there was probably more to come, but, well, Lance had finally been sleeping soundly when Keith awoke and he hadn’t wanted to wake him so he had come here to the basement instead.
“I stopped by your room,” Shiro said in greeting. For a moment he kept his features expressionless but Keith thought he caught a flicker of amusement in his hazel eyes. “I was going to check on you after last night. But maybe I wasn’t the only one with that idea because Lance was right outside your door when I turned the corner.”
Keith felt his skin prickle and heat, and he knew that his cheeks must be bright red at the realization that Shiro had most likely caught Lance sneaking back to his own room. Not for the first time, he cursed his pale complexion. No matter how much he tried to keep a lid on his emotions, he always wore them painted across his face.
The teasing smirk that had been threatening to emerge finally broke through Shiro’s mock seriousness. “That’s what I thought,” Shiro said, reaching forward to ruffle Keith’s hair. “I’m guessing your mother doesn’t know about this.”
Keith scuffed the toe of his shoe against the stone floor. As he did, Lance’s excited voice echoed in his mind. “ Converse, Keith, ” Lance had practically vibrated with excitement when he found them at one of the muggle shops, “ these will fit with that beautiful emo personality of yours .” To which Keith had responded with an unimpressed stare.
“No,” Keith finally said, the word coming out as little more than a huff of air. “She doesn’t understand. It’s no-” He cut himself off, feeling himself growing warm with embarrassment again, because even though this was Shiro, this was his brother , Keith was still reluctant to explain the delicate dynamics of his relationship with Lance. So instead he just scuffed his toe at the ground again and said “We have nightmares. About the trials. It helps.”
The amusement faded from Shiro’s features as quickly as it had arrived, replaced with a frown and a furrowed brow. “Are you sleeping at all?”
Keith thought idly that if Lance were here, he would sense Keith’s discomfort at the turn that the conversation had taken, would wiggle his eyebrows and toss his head back and make a comment about how it’s not his fault he’s so distracting that he kept Keith awake all night. But Lance wasn’t here and Keith knew that Shiro could see the truth of the matter in the matching dark circles that had taken up a permanent residence on his own face.
“Are you?” He asked instead, because Shiro hardly looked much better. Deflecting questions with more questions when he didn’t want to answer them. Keith had always been good at that.
“No,” Shiro replied honestly. Keith blinked in surprise, taken aback by Shiro’s readiness to admit to such a weakness. “I didn’t mean to tease you about Lance,” he added after a moment, before the silence could stretch too long between them. “I don’t know how to make things… normal for you right now.”
Keith shrugged. “I don’t think you can. I don’t think anyone can.”
Shiro reached out and clapped a hand onto Keith’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to grow up too fast, Keith. Your life has been hard enough.”
Keith smiled grimly. “And yours hasn’t?”
Now it was Shiro’s turn to shrug. “I had to learn how to carve my own path. You will too. I just always hoped that if you could follow in my footsteps… maybe it wouldn’t be so hard.”
“You’re so cheesy, Shiro.”
“That is literally my job,” Shiro informed him, deadpan. Then he reached into the pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a letter, a sealed cream-colored envelope sealed with bright red wax. The Hogwarts crest had been pressed into the wax, sealing it closed. “Here, Sam brought this with him to the meeting last night. It’s your N.E.W.T. results. Normally they would mail them out, but, well, you already know we can’t get owls here at the safe house. And anyways, he thought I should be the one to deliver them.”
Keith took the letter and was impressed that his hand didn’t tremble. A few months ago, worry over these exams had consumed his thoughts. The fear and paranoia that if he didn’t pass, if he didn’t score high enough, that he would never get to be an auror like he had always dreamed.
Now, Keith found it hard to feel like the results really mattered.
A career, the future, they seemed like little more than faraway dreams. What did it matter if he didn’t pass his N.E.W.T. exams and couldn’t become an auror when Zarkon was likely making plans to overthrow the Ministry? When he could join the Blade in the field and be of use now , not three years from now?
But Shiro was watching him expectantly, so Keith dutifully broke the seal and slid the parchment inside free from the envelope. Written in someone’s neat calligraphy he could make out the names of the classes he had taken during his seventh year: Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Muggle Studies, Potions, and Transfiguration.
The results were a scattered mixture of Outstandings (Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Muggle Studies) and Exceeds Expectations (Charms, Herbology, and Transfiguration).
Keith let out a long slow breath. Not only had he passed his classes, but he had passed with flying colors. These grades would have ensured his entry into the auror program. He should feel… something, seeing the results. Instead, he felt strangely empty.
“Congratulations, Keith,” Shiro said, clapping Keith on the shoulder again. He was grinning with a happiness that Keith couldn’t quite bring himself to feel. “You earned those. I’m proud of you. Seems like you learned something in my class after all.”
For a moment the reminder that Shiro was his teacher surprised Keith. When they weren’t at Hogwarts, it was so easy to fall back into their usual dynamic, free from the prying eyes of other students or faculty members. He knew when Shiro had first started teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts his treatment of Keith had bewildered everyone, and that there had been a lot of speculation about why Keith received such special treatment from the school’s newest teacher. It wasn’t that Keith hadn’t worked to earn his top marks in his Defense Against the Dark Arts class, because he had, but the truth was that there was more to the story than most people realized.
Shiro wasn’t a Hogwarts alumni. He wasn’t known to the other students or even faculty the way that a family like the Holts were, so when he was announced as the new DADA instructor - and the youngest that Hogwarts had ever had - it had been met with a fair amount of speculation from Keith’s peers. But Keith had known Shiro for ages , since he was a child . Yes, Shiro was his professor who assigned them too much reading about werewolves and had them practice their spells against a real life boggart and brought in creatures not dissimilar to the new pet niffler to class on a regular basis, but he was also the shy fourteen year old kid his dad brought home one summer who hadn’t quite seemed to know what to do with a six year old Keith but who had done his best to entertain him anyways.
He had never gotten bothered by Keith’s childish attempts to copy and emulate him. He wasn’t bothered when Keith declared that he hoped his wand was a blackthorn wood wand when he finally got to claim one at Ollivander’s when he turned eleven because that was what Shiro used. It never bothered him when Keith trailed after him everywhere, insisting they spend nearly every free moment together. Instead he had patiently listened to all of Keith’s ramblings, ruffled his hair affectionately, and let Keith hold his wand and practice spells when Kenneth and Krolia weren’t paying attention.
That was why Keith considered Shiro to be his brother. It was also why it had been so weird to walk into class that first day and realize that everyone else was speaking overly formally and calling Shiro “Mr Shirogane, Sir.”
Keith hadn’t thought of that day in a long time. The first time that he had met Shiro. It seemed so long ago now. He closed his eyes for a moment, picturing the youth that Shiro had been against the black of his eyelids.
< < < > > >
“Mom! Mom! When is Dad coming home?” Keith had been bouncing with excitement, still sweaty from chasing garden gnomes through the Kogane Manor grounds in the early summer heat. He was standing in the Manor kitchen, tugging at his mother’s clothes and watching the large fireplace expectantly, waiting for the familiar flash of green that marked the floo being in-use.
Krolia laughed from where she was standing at the sink, waving her wand to set the pots and pans washing themselves, the smell of baking bread wafting from the oven. With her short, choppy hair tucked behind her ears and an obnoxiously floral pink apron tied around her waist, Keith had thought she looked extra pretty. “Any minute now.”
“He’s been gone so long,” Keith had sighed over-dramatically. “Scandinia can’t be as cool as here. I don’t know why he spends so much time there when he could be with us.”
“Scandin- avia ,” Krolia corrected his pronunciation, still laughing, but Keith could tell she was excited too. It had been a long time since he saw his mom’s eyes so bright or her cheeks so flushed. “And your father’s work is very important.”
“Can you read the letter again?” Keith asked. “Did he really say he was bringing someone?”
Krolia tucked a hand into the pocket of her apron, no doubt about to produce Kenneth’s letter for the third time in as many hours when there was a flash of bright green smoke from the fireplace and then Keith’s dad stumbled into the room.
Keith’s dad was his favorite person in the whole wide world. He was big and strong and he could carry Keith on his shoulders forever without getting tired. Keith thought he could probably carry the whole world on his shoulders without getting tired. He had a grin that was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds on a rainy day. Keith loved to bask in the warmth of its glow and listen to his dad laugh the deep, belly laugh that would cause his entire chest to rattle.
One of those sunshine grins broke over Keith’s dad’s face as he saw Keith, and he barely had time to brace himself against the mantle of the fireplace before Keith was running towards him.
“Dad!” Keith cried, launching himself into his father’s arms. Kenneth swung him through the air for a moment, before planting him back down on the kitchen floor and leaning over to echo the movement by planting a kiss on Krolia’s lips.
“Gross,” Keith said, poking at his dad’s stomach.
“Hi honey, I’m home” Kenneth had said, still looking at Krolia, which had made Keith’s mom roll her eyes in fond exasperation.
Then there was a second flash of that same green energy, the powdery scent of floo powder filling the air, and another figure stumbled from the fireplace.
Keith turned to the newcomer, curious to see who was so important that his father had brought them home with him. Would it be another Ministry member? Someone stuffy and boring that meant Keith would have to be on his best behavior? He hated when that happened, when all of a sudden his parents cared too much about whether his pants had rips in the knees or if he had dirt in his hair.
But it wasn’t a Ministry member that stepped out of the fireplace. It wasn’t even a grown-up.
It was a boy . Older than Keith, sure. But almost everybody was. A teenager rather than a child, but one still caught in the awkward, scraggly, long-limbed features of youth. So he couldn’t be that old. He had broad shoulders, though, like Keith’s dad. And a strong, square jaw. In fact, they were even dressed alike, in their dark wizard robes.
“Keith, Krolia,” Keith’s dad said, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Meet Takashi Shirogane.”
This… this wasn’t what Keith had expected. He didn’t quite know how to process this sudden twist of events. His stomach swooped unpleasantly. Surely his dad didn’t love this boy as much as he loved Keith, right? All the way to the moon and back?
The boy raised a hand, a half-hearted attempt at a wave. “Hi.”
For a moment, it was quiet, and Keith wondered if his mom was as surprised as he was. But then Krolia smiled her soft smile, the one that was usually reserved for Keith and said “It’s nice to meet you, Takashi.”
“If it’s alright with you guys,” Keith’s dad said, “I thought Takashi could stay with us for the summer. You might like having another kid in the house, Keith.” Then, more gently, like he could sense that maybe Keith needed a little convincing, he added “Someone to go on adventures with, like in your stories.”
The boy - Takashi - crossed his arms over his chest, like maybe he wanted to argue that he wasn’t a kid. Or maybe the movement was just because he was a little unsure. Which, maybe that was alright, Keith thought. Because he was a little unsure, too. He didn’t know if he liked the idea of having to share his dad with another kid. Another boy.
Takashi looked around uncomfortably, as if he couldn’t quite meet Keith’s gaze, and Keith watched as his attention snagged on the moving photographs his parents had arranged on the mantle above the fireplace. There was one of all three of them squished into view, a chubby baby Keith held up between his parents while his dad picked up one of his hands and waved in an endless loop. Takashi bit his lip as he watched it, and Keith thought it looked like he was maybe about to cry.
Keith didn’t know if he liked this other boy yet but he didn’t want to see him cry. Not to mention his dad was still looking at him expectantly, and he didn’t want to disappoint his favorite person in the whole wide world either. His mouth seemed to open of its own accord.
“Have you ever de-gnomed a garden?” He asked. “I can show you how. You just pick them up and swing them around by their head until they get really really dizzy and then toss them over the hedge. It’s kinda fun. Like a game.”
Even teenagers liked games, right?
The older boy cocked his head to the side. “I’ve never actually seen a gnome before. I’ve read about them in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, though.” He paused to look towards Keith’s dad, as if asking for permission.
Keith’s dad nodded. “Good idea, Keith!”
Keith felt his own smile make its way onto his face at the sound of his dad’s praise.
“Why don’t you boys go do just that while I help your mother finish dinner. Then Takashi and I will tell you all about our adventures in Scandinavia. How does that sound?”
“Okay,” Keith enthused, because he always loved listening to his dad’s stories. He raced forward to give his dad another hug around his legs. “Welcome home, Dad.” Then he turned towards Takashi and grabbed his hand, pulling him out back towards the garden. “Come on, I’ll show you the fort Dad built me while we’re outside too, it’s the best!”
Takashi had smiled at him, slow and hesitant, but still nice. Keith had thought that maybe Takashi’s grin was a little like the sun coming out from behind the clouds too. That maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if his little family got a tiny bit bigger.
Maybe… just maybe…
It would be nice to have a brother.
< < < > > >
Keith blinked his eyes back open, forcing the past to return where it belonged. He hadn’t thought about those early days in so long.
It was easier, less painful, not to think about them at all.
“You alright?” Shiro asked, frowning at him in concern, and Keith realized that he had been quiet for far too long.
“Yeah,” Keith said, clearing his throat. “Yeah, I’m good. Just… surprised about my N.E.W.T.s, I guess.”
“Well don’t be,” Shiro said, and he pulled Keith in for one of what Lance called Shiro’s ‘frat boy bro hugs.’ The kind where Shiro grabbed Keith’s hand and pulled him in and clapped him on the back, somehow all at the same time. “Your dad would be really proud of you, Keith.”
Keith frowned at the words, though he knew Shiro couldn’t see his face, wondering if Shiro had been able to tell what he had been thinking about somehow.
“Thanks, Shiro,” Keith said, and he meant the words. He did. He just wished he had more of an idea of what would have made his dad proud. If he could know whether or not it was true. It was weird to think that Shiro might remember Keith’s dad better than Keith did. They had never really talked about Kenneth after he… well, after. Shiro was just around and then he wasn’t and then he was again, and Keith knew that Shiro had felt like he needed to fill the impossible-to-fill void that Kenneth had left behind, but he had never thought to ask why .
He could ask now, he supposed, there wasn’t really anything stopping him, except…
The moment was already passing as Shiro pulled away. “Alright, I’m going to go find Adam,” he said, his voice back to normal. “I still have a lot of apologizing to do for adopting a niffler without telling him.”
“Yeah,” Keith said, distractedly. But he didn’t really care about Shiro’s pet niffler right now. Not when his mind was still running through memories of chasing after Shiro across the Kogane Manor Grounds, an angry gnome in his hands, its teeth snapping at his fingers. Sitting next to each other at the dining table and knocking elbows as they fought over the last pumpkin pastry and bickering over whose fault it was that pumpkin juice ended up spilled across the floor. Dragging all of their blankets out to Keith’s fort and planning an overnight camp out, Shiro casting a warming spell even though he wasn’t supposed to use magic outside of school and Kenneth being the coolest dad ever pretending to look the other way while Keith watched in awe, and then once it got dark, Kenneth had leaned back and pointed towards the dark sky, teaching them the names of the constellations over their heads. Keith had a million tiny memories of that first summer with Shiro, and the two summers that followed.
So why did he suddenly feel like he was missing something?
He crossed his arms over his chest, standing in the middle of the basement, and watched as Shiro turned his back to him and made his way back towards the stairs.
His mind ran through the memories again and again, all of the dusty, tiny details that he had always imagined as being bottled and tucked into the darkest recesses of his mind, where he had left them to collect dust and cobwebs in an effort to avoid tearing open the badly-healed wounds that still lacerated his heart even nine years later.
Something about that first day with Shiro kept bothering him. His thoughts catching on the one word he could distinctly remember both of his parents saying.
He tried to remember what else his father had talked about, the stories he had told about his job and why he spent so much time over on the continent when Krolia and Keith lived in Britain and where he went when he wasn’t home. But the details were gone, swallowed by time and space and grief.
Shiro had gone to Durmstrang, he had always known that. But until now, it had never occurred to Keith to question just how he and his father had met.
Or why Kenneth Kogane had been in Scandinavia , of all places. Scandinavia. The home of the group of dark wizards organized by Headmistress Haggar that had been responsible for the attacks on Lance during the second trial. The Druids.
“Dad,” Keith muttered softly. “What did you get yourself into?”
Chapter 3: Chapter Three
Summary:
Morning at Grimmauld Place continues with Keith learning more about his mission with Kolivan. Breakfast is had, the Daily Prophet is read, and a tentative plan is made.
Notes:
Hello Lovelies!
We are back again with the THIRD chapter! Third! Somehow we have been posting for three months already, which is absolutely crazy to think about. I hope everyone has been enjoying the ride so far. Cait and I have been having the most wonderful time ever coming up with all kinds of twists and turns to keep y’all on your toes and we promise there is only more to come! Thank you so much to everyone who has been motivating us to keep going (we are currently 75,000 words in and still just getting started!) whether through kudos or comments or even just clicking into the page. We are almost to 1000 hits and in a continual state of shock about just how well received our little tiny itty bitty sequel baby has been. So without further ado… let’s get a drumroll for chapter three please! We hope you enjoy <3
Kate (@slowklancing)
Chapter Text
Keith was still half distracted by thoughts of the past when he pushed through the cellar door a few moments later, following in Shiro’s footsteps. The cellar that his father had converted into the training room was attached to the other room that made up Grimmauld Place’s basement level: the kitchen, a cavernous workspace with a massive worked stone fireplace set into the wall near the door to the training room and a set of sturdy stairs on the opposite wall that climbed back up to the ground floor. The large space felt smaller thanks to the clutter: the long counter that spread through the length of the room, the rickety table often used for more informal meals, the old-fashioned wooden stovetop, the racks of iron pots and pans dangling from the ceiling, the containers of sugar, flour, and spices littering the floor-to-wall cherry red wood shelves. When Keith and Lance had first arrived a few weeks ago, the rooms had been dusty and decrepit, but now, despite the dreariness of its name, Grimmauld Place wasn’t so bad. His mom had cleaned it up with about a thousand cleaning spells and Keith thought he could make out the echo of what this place must have looked like when it was home to people who loved it.
Of course, Krolia standing hesitantly in front of the sink with her arms crossed over her chest helped to complete the image.
Keith’s feet slowed almost of their own accord, bringing him to a halt in the cellar doorway. His mom looked like she had barely slept. Her short, choppy hair was pulled back into a low ponytail that still stuck out in unruly tufts, like Keith knew his own often did, and her gray eyes were as hard as slate. She was still wearing a silk set of ‘Kogane’ monogrammed pajamas that she must have found in the ancient wardrobes here, though the fancy pureblood effect was slightly ruined by the fact that she had her black leather Blade holster strapped across her chest, where her wand could be strapped into the leather for easy access. But this morning the Blade holster was empty. Instead, Krolia’s wand was in her hand and she tapped it against her forearm absentmindedly.
For a moment, Keith just looked at her, waiting to see if she was going to scold him again for the night before. Wondering if she was mad that he had gone behind her back to listen in on the Blade meeting or if she would try to stop him from going on the mission with Regris. After a few moments passed in awkward silence, Keith cleared his throat.
“Morning,” he said at last.
Krolia let out a long sigh. “Good morning,” she replied. “Have you eaten yet?”
“No,” Keith said, “I haven’t.”
Krolia inclined her head towards the island counter in the center of the kitchen, and Keith’s body unfroze, crossing the room to meet his mom in the middle, the length of the wooden counter between them.
He braced his hip against the counter, mirroring her posture automatically and crossing his arms over his chest. Krolia flicked her wand and the pots and pans whirled around the room, setting them to work preparing breakfast of some kind. Keith thought he saw a few pieces of bread cut themselves off a loaf and start frying themselves in a pan on the stovetop.
“You need to eat,” Krolia said, though she kept her eyes on the food and not on him, her voice was warmer than Keith was afraid it might be. “You need to keep your strength up if you’re…” She trailed off slowly and then took a deep breath, “If you’re going to be working with the Blade.”
“Mom,” Keith said softly. The physical affection that had come so easily in childhood, the way he had tugged at Krolia’s clothes and launched himself into his father’s arms, was harder now. The grief had chewed both of them up, Keith knew, and spat them back out different and changed. Krolia was harder than she had been while his dad was alive, and Keith often wondered if that was what she had been like before she met Kenneth, when she served the Galra with her family. It wasn’t just her, though. Keith knew that he was harder too, that he had retreated into himself and built his walls up strong enough to ensure that the loss of someone would never be able to break him again. Those walls were crumbling now, having been slowly taken apart brick by brick by Shiro before being shattered completely by Lance. But it was still hard with Krolia in a way that Keith couldn’t always explain.
He loved his mom. He did. There was a distance between them, however, that even after all this time he still wasn’t sure how to close.
“I didn’t mean to… to hurt your feelings last night,” Keith continued, watching the side angle of his mother’s face, the tension in her jaw. “I know you don’t want me to join the Blade.”
And yes, physical affection was difficult between them, but Keith still wanted to try. So he reached across the counter top, placing a hand on the curve of Krolia’s shoulder.
She uncrossed her arms, and Keith almost removed his hand, thinking maybe it wasn’t welcome, but then Krolia settled one of her hands over Keith’s, holding him in place.
“I joined the Blade because I knew that I was doing what was right and I wanted to fight for it,” Krolia said, her voice so quiet that Keith had to strain to hear it. “But I stayed to protect a person that I loved. I know you think that I’m trying to keep you out of the action, Keith, but it’s only because you’re all that I have left. The kind of work that the Blade does, their mentality that nothing is more important than the mission… I already lost your father like that.” Krolia’s voice was fierce as she added “I refuse to lose you in the same way.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Mom,” Keith said, pitching his own voice low.
Krolia finally turned to look at him, and Keith was startled to see that her gray eyes were wet with tears, haunted by a sorrow that had festered for nine years.
“There is darkness coming that is unlike anything you can imagine,” Krolia said softly. “You think you are ready for it, but you’re not. I know because I once felt exactly as you did. So did your father. We were so sure of our own righteousness, so ready to throw ourselves headfirst into danger.” She let out another long slow breath. “I don’t think either of us truly knew what it meant to be afraid until you were born.”
Keith felt a pang of hurt shoot through him at the thought that his parents had felt anything other than happy about his birth, but it was soothed almost immediately as Krolia continued.
“We had a reason for our work unlike any we had known before, we wanted to leave you a world that was better than the one we had come of age in. We never wanted you to know that pain. But instead all of our best efforts came to nothing. Your father died for nothing . Zarkon is back,” she spat the name, bitterness twisting her pale features. “And you’re throwing yourself into a war that should have been over a long time ago. It just kills me that we failed. That we couldn’t protect you from this.”
Krolia’s fingers tightened on his own.
Keith closed his eyes, the familiar nightmare flashing through his mind once more. A streak of green light. His father’s pale face. Brown eyes open but unseeing, empty and lifeless.
There was a soft clatter of wood against wood as Krolia put her wand down and then Keith felt the cool touch of her other hand against his face, tucking his hair back behind his ears. “I know everyone always says you look like me, Keith, but the truth is… you are so very like your father.”
Keith thought back to every memory he had of his dad, pictured the strong cut of his dad’s jaw and the prickly stubble that would line it when he got back from a mission and the way his wide grin was all square, white teeth and the way the scar that bisected one of his eyebrows made him look rugged instead of frightening and the way his laugh rumbled through his entire frame and the easy way he would make Krolia laugh.
Keith remembered and remembered and remembered.
But he didn’t see it.
His father was brave and selfless and good, he burned with white fire like the sun, not this angry red heat that set Keith ablaze and tossed him into the action and spat words too quickly or held them too closely and threw fists or spells when he should have just walked away.
Keith tried to think of something to say in response. His mom so rarely mentioned his father, and now that she had, now that she had brought him up not just once but multiple times in the same conversation, Keith realized how much a part of him must have always longed for this. To be able to talk about Kenneth, not just shove the grief to the side and bury it and pretend it didn’t exist while it ate them whole. Keith wanted to… try.
He wanted to try.
So he opened his eyes and looked his mother in the face. He was the same height as her now, no longer a child. He forced himself to take in the redness of her eyes, evidence of the tears she would never shed in front of him, the pale complexion of her skin, the wrinkles that lined her forehead and her eyes that didn’t exist in his memory.
Then he took a moment to sort through what he wanted to say, because he wasn’t good at this sort of thing. Because the words he wanted to say always seemed to trip over his tongue until they came out wrong and he doesn’t want that to happen this time.
Then he said very carefully, “Dad didn’t die for nothing. The work he did, that both of you did, was important. He saved a lot of people. So his work did matter. To them. The people he saved. We shouldn’t… discredit that. Even if Zarkon is back now, you and Dad… you brought twenty years of peace. That wasn’t meaningless. That was important. Even if I wish… I wish we could have had longer as a family.”
Keith felt his own eyes stinging and he blinked quickly. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the thought of crying in front of Krolia, not when she always tried to be so strong in front of him.
His mom’s face did something complicated, a flurry of emotions passing over it too quickly for him to really catch. When it settled, her lips twitched into the barest hint of a smile, her eyes softening. “I wish we could have had that too,” she agreed. “I wish your father could see you now.”
They stayed still, quiet, for longer than Keith would have thought he would be comfortable in another’s company like this.
At least until the smell of smoke interrupted them. Krolia cursed under her breath, pulling away from him and waving her wand to salvage what breakfast food wasn’t blacked and burnt, and the moment was broken.
Keith watched her back as she worked, wand waving through the air, pieces of toast scraping off the worst of the burnt bits into the sink while they hovered in the air. “I’ll make something else,” Krolia said apologetically. “It will be another ten minutes or so. I wanted to check on you after last night, but… I have a message for you as well. Kolivan is here. In your father’s old study. He wants to speak to you later.”
A spike of adrenaline shot through Keith at the sound of his former professor’s name. At the knowledge that his work with the Blade was truly about to begin. “I guess I’ll go see him after breakfast, then,” Keith said, although a fresh stab of guilt struck him as he realized that he still hadn’t seen Lance this morning. Maybe he would be able to catch him after breakfast as well. Maybe he would already be walking down the stairs to come join him here in the kitchen.
Krolia kept her back to him, but nodded. Keith supposed, with her reluctance about the Blade, that that was the best that he could hope for from her. For now.
“Um…” Keith began unsurely, as he sat down at the table. “In the meantime though… We haven’t had a chance to talk properly in a few days so uh…”
Keith trailed off for a moment, searching for what he wanted to say “Maybe we could chat? I got my N.E.W.T. results back. Shiro just gave them to me. I could… tell you about them, if you want. ”
Even though he couldn’t see her face, Keith could sense the clear amusement that shook her body in a small laugh at his attempt for normalcy. Still, when she spoke she sounded grateful all the same. “Sure honey, I’d like that.”
< < < > > >
Of all the rooms in Grimmauld Place, Kenneth Kogane’s old office was the one that Keith found the most difficult to enter. He and Lance had thoroughly explored most of the other rooms, had stumbled into the training room their second day in the house and run their fingers over the leather-bound tomes of the library and claimed some of the various bedrooms they found as their own. This room, though, was different. Keith knew that even his mom and her cleaning spells hadn’t touched this room, that when he opened the door it would still look exactly as his father had left it. Exactly as it had looked their first night in the house when he had seen the racks of metal filing cabinets, the cork-board covered in red string and scrawled handwritten notes and clippings of The Daily Prophet, and promptly slammed the door closed.
It was stupid to leave this room untouched, he knew, when there was a wealth of knowledge buried inside.
He knew that.
He still couldn’t bring himself to take apart the space, to move anything that had once been placed carefully by his father’s hand. It burned and churned unpleasantly in his gut to think that his mom had allowed Kolivan into the space. Kolivan, with his sense of duty, who would think nothing of combing through his father’s papers, who would not think to make his own presence as invisible as possible in order to leave room for the echoing ghost of Kenneth Kogane, twenty years past.
If Keith were feeling polite, respectful, he would knock. But this was his family’s house even if it wasn’t his. This was his dad’s office, not Kolivan’s. So instead of knocking, he grasped onto the doorknob and twisted, swinging the door open.
His father’s office was a small chamber on Grimmauld Place’s fourth floor, opposite the master bedroom that his parents must have once occupied. It looked like an odd cross between a lavish private study and a Ministry workspace. Sturdy bookcases made of slabs of thick black wood lined one wall, while a pair of large frosted windows framed with thick maroon curtains lined the other. The far wall was home to the massive cork-board Keith’s dad must have hung up at the start of the First Wizarding War, those metal filing cabinets full of his old case notes arranged beneath it. And in the center of the room was a massive desk, where Kenneth Kogane had once sat to file his auror reports or read the morning’s Daily Prophet or try to plot Galra movements.
Pale, watery sunlight filtered through the glass of the windows to illuminate the space, making it seem warmer and more welcoming then when Keith had come at night, when the flickering flame sconces that wizards favored had cast the room in shadows and darkness.
The broad shouldered figure that stood behind the desk now had his hands clasped behind his back, his attention focused on the board in front of him. The figure that Kolivan cut, standing like that with his long ropey braids dangling down his back, was one familiar to Keith. He could picture his former professor standing in exactly the same pose in front of the green chalkboard of his classroom, watching the enchanted chalk scrawl out notes about important developments in the muggle world: tales of smoke and smog and iron, inventions that did what even magic could not, wars that painted the fields of Europe into seas of blood, and other things too, lighter things, artists whose works were considered masterpieces even in the wizarding world and songs that Keith had never heard on the Wizarding Wireless Network and badly described plots of the filmed television dramas that Lance loved so much.
That felt like a million years ago, now.
Still, Keith was pleased to see that it didn’t look like Kolivan had disrupted anything in the room. As far as he could tell, his father’s office looked exactly like it had been left. The anger faded from him almost as quickly as it had appeared.
“Professor,” he said in greeting, “Mom said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I do,” Kolivan said, in that low, no-nonsense tone of his. He turned. The sunlight caught on the edge of the man’s hardened features. His dark skin was bisected by a faded puckered pink of an old scar that ran along one side of his face, cutting through his eyebrow and continuing down the curve of his cheek until it reached his lips. Keith had never asked his professor about the accident or attack that had claimed his eye, although the students had loved to whisper about what properties the enchanted solid gold one he wore strapped to his face with leather might possess. Keith’s classmates had speculated that the magical eye, which seemed to move around independently without any seeming instruction from Kolivan, could see through objects and the back of his own head and even invisibility cloaks.
Keith hadn’t joined the gossip but he had been careful never to put that last theory to the test.
As he turned, Keith realized that Kolivan had disrupted something in his father’s office. A new edition of The Daily Prophet was sitting in the center of the desk. Kolivan inclined his head towards it. “I take it you have yet to see the morning news.”
Keith swallowed, forcing down the sudden taste of bile that rose in his throat as he wondered what new act of evil would be described across the pages today. The Daily Prophet didn’t seem to have any good news to report anymore. Only bad and worse.
A moving black and white photo on the front page showed the aftermath of some kind of attack, smoke and rubble littering the scene, civilians staggering out of the River Thames, their clothes dripping wet and shock etched on their pale faces. “Galra Terror Continues” screamed the headline of the Prophet, in dark bold print, “Dark Forces Torment Muggle London.”
Keith leaned forward, trying to take in as much information as he could while Kolivan watched him with that unblinking eye.
Last night the Millennium Bridge in Muggle London was attacked by what sources close to the Ministry believe to have been a small squad of Galra members, possibly led by escaped Azkaban convict Sendak, himself. One muggle witness has already come forward saying that they “saw plumes of smoke in the sky. Then it all went dark and suddenly everything was exploding.” Clearly, it sounds as though this muggle caught a glimpse of the dark smoke-like form of apparition that the Galra are known to prefer. The muggle bridge that was attacked was a pedestrian suspension bridge by the name of the Millennium Bridge, which crosses the River Thames here in London. It is current Ministry belief that the Galra members flew around the bridge in a spiral motion to create a twisting and buckling movement on the bridge walkway before they proceeded to cast multiple fire curses onto the bridge. The cables then snapped, causing the bridge to undulate and twist, pulling free of its piers, before it ultimately split in half and crashed violently into the Thames below. At this time, the Ministry has confirmed that several innocent muggle civilians who were crossing the bridge at the time lost their life in this attack. The muggle emergency service teams responded quickly and valiantly, beginning to pull survivors from the river immediately after the disaster, even when the bridge continued to crumble around them. Ministry emergency services arrived soon after, to wipe the minds of any muggles who might have seen anything revealing as to the truth of our world. This attack is further proof that Galra activities are on the rise and that the former Galra Commander, Sendak, may be restarting his master’s work. The fact that the attack can be so easily attributed to the Galra is a direct result of the Morsmordre charm that conjured the image of the Galra Mark in the sky over the wreckage of the bridge, which multiple Ministry aurors attested to seeing when they arrived upon the scene.
Keith tore his gaze away from the words, his throat as dry as sandpaper. “They went after muggles?” He said, his voice sounding faint and weak even to his own ears. The familiar flame of his fury burned through him at the idea, and he knew that it would be met and matched with the ice cold fury of Lance.
Oh, Lance.
The news of this attack would hit him harder than anything else had lately, and he had already been taking one punch after another.
At the thought of what Lance’s face would look like when he heard the news, all slack jawed with the wild flash of the white of his eyes and a cool pallor replacing the usual warm brown of his skin, Keith felt like he was going to be sick.
Then the last few lines properly register and he whips back towards Kolivan. “The Ministry still thinks that Sendak is acting alone?! Even after… after this?”
“There is still little direct evidence that the Dark Lord, himself, has returned and the Ministry will not report on that until they have to.” Kolivan returned evenly. “And, unfortunately, it is the Blade’s belief that the Galra likely have sympathizers amongst those highly placed in the Ministry, members of the old Pureblood families. They may be intentionally obscuring the details of the Dark Lord’s return from the public.”
Keith felt his lips twist into a familiar scowl. “Great,” he muttered bitterly.
“In the wake of this attack, the Blade’s work is more important than ever. You need to be prepared. I won’t send you into the field if I think you might pose a risk to my agents.”
“You can trust me,” Keith insisted. “I won’t let you down.”
Kolivan studied him evenly, and Keith forced himself to stand completely still, not fidgeting under that heavy, magical gaze. After a moment, Kolivan inclined his head back towards Kenneth Kogane’s wall of research. “Your father and I used to spend hours in this room.”
At the mention of his father, Keith felt the familiar bubble of curiosity that he had long ago learned to shove down and bury, knowing that his mom and Shiro wouldn’t tell him more than he already knew. But all those years sitting in Kolivan’s classroom… ever since third year… and he had never known. He felt himself ask the question before he made the conscious decision to, his impulsiveness getting the best of him as always.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you knew him? My father? You were my professor for years and you never said anything?!”
Kolivan grimaced. “It was… difficult for me. When your father died. I didn’t know how to tell you about him without mentioning the Blade, something your mother made it quite clear that she had no interest in you knowing about. I might be willing to go toe to toe with the Dark Lord, but even I know better than to risk Krolia’s wrath. Especially when she was grieving. You have to understand, Keith, we were all trying to spare you. In our own ways. Whether that was for the best or not.”
“Do… do you know what happened to him? That mission… Scandinavia? Do you know how he-” Keith cut himself off, swallowing thickly before he could push the words out. “Do you know how he died?”
For a moment he thought Kolivan was actually going to answer him, would give Keith the peace he had been seeking all his life so that he would finally be able to put the nightmares of open eyes and green light to rest at long last. Instead, Kolivan shook his head.
“No.” He said. It was only a moderate relief to hear the genuine regret in his tone. “After the defeat of the Dark Lord… your father’s work was his own. Whatever he had stumbled onto… whatever lead he was chasing, he never shared it with me. I wasn’t aware that Kenneth’s work had taken him to Scandinavia until the authorities contacted the Ministry to return his… remains.”
Keith’s fingers curled into fists as frustration burned through him at the thought that he had come so close to answers and they had slipped through his fingers. Yet again. But he pushed it down, burying it.
Just like he always did.
“Right,” he said.
Kolivan studied him for another moment and then, upon realizing that Keith wasn’t going to speak again, he nodded towards one of the thick bookcases and stepped towards it. “Come, if you’re going to join the Blade, then it is time that you are equipped in the manner befitting of one.”
Keith’s brow furrowed in confusion, but he followed a few steps behind Kolivan as the older man stepped up to the thick, sturdy bookcase. Kolivan slipped his wand free of the leather holster that he wore and tapped it against the spines of a series of books.
“It’s an interesting house, Grimmauld Place,” he said, almost casually, “like most ancient wizarding homes. It’s full of secrets. Your father let me in on this one.” He tapped his wand against one final book, and Keith tried to memorize the pattern that he had made. In the end, Kolivan had tapped a total of six books, making a ‘K’ formation. Three straight down, and then three spaced apart like a sideways letter ‘V.’
There was the grinding of something old and worn and heavy moving, and then the bookcase was pulling away from the wall, revealing a sliver of darkness that grew wider and wider as it swung towards where Kolivan and Keith stood. Kolivan put out an arm and gestured for Keith to back up a step so the revealed doorway could open completely.
“ Lumos ,” Kolivan said and the tip of his wand illuminated with a burst of light. He angled the light to reveal the space beyond the enchanted doorway.
It was a small storage cupboard. In all likelihood, Keith mused, his ancient ancestors had used it as a hiding place for dark magical artifacts and similar things they didn’t want the Ministry to find. His father had apparently given it a different purpose.
For now the storage cupboard was full of things that Blade members might need. A wooden shelf on the wall held extra sets of the protective leather armor pieces and dark robes that Blade members seemed to wear and hooks set into the wall above it held the leather harnesses and wand holsters that Keith had come to be familiar with over the last few days, as well as a series of small black messenger bags. The opposite wall was full of similar shelves that were covered in dozens upon dozens of small glass vials that were all carefully labeled in his father’s scrawling handwriting. Keith recognized the names of several of them as things that Professor Iverson had covered in Potions Class. There were several antidotes for different poisons, a couple Calming Draughts, common Pepperup Potions, Muffling Draughts, Healing Potions, and an entire shelf of prepared Polyjuice Potions. The corner of the room was filled with what looked like a collection of muggle camping tents, propped up against the wall.
Kolivan took one of the messenger bags and pressed it into Keith’s hands first. “Here,” he said gruffly, “open that up. It’s got an Undetectable Extension Charm on it so you can keep everything inside until you need it for the mission.”
Keith flipped the messenger bag open and peaked inside, sure enough, the space inside the bag was much larger than it should have been. Even in the wizarding world, Extension Charms were rare as the Ministry tried to keep pretty tight control but Keith had seen them used before as Hogwarts trunks were often enchanted with the same charm.
Kolivan had Keith hold the bag open while he filled it with an assortment of supplies that Keith might need: a set of the dark leathers and robes, one of the wand holsters, two Muffling Draughts and a Healing Potion. “There,” he said. “That should be more than enough for a simple reconnaissance mission.”
Keith flipped the messenger bag shut and swung it over his shoulder. “Thank you, Professor.”
Kolivan just nodded again, as stern and serious as ever. “Your father was one of the finest men I ever worked with,” he said. The emotion in his voice caught Keith off guard, hitting him like a physical blow. “Make him proud. Do as you’re told. Listen to Regris and trust his experience. Remember, the mission is more important than personal vendettas.”
“I understand, Sir,” Keith said. “I won’t let you down.”
Kolivan ushered Keith back into his father’s study and Keith watched as he tapped those same books and the door swung closed, sealing the secret room once more in darkness.
“You and Regris will be leaving tomorrow evening. Regris has never been to the Slytherin Ancestral Manor, but he’s been close. He can teleport you most of the way and then you’ll continue on foot.
Keith felt his stomach drop. He had known that the Blade didn’t like to waste time but… he wasn’t prepared for the mission to be quite so soon. “Already?” He heard himself ask.
“Unfortunately the attack on the muggle bridge has moved up our time table. It is more vital than ever that we get an understanding of the Galra plans.”
Which made sense, but Keith still felt a little like he was going to throw up. He needed more time. More training. More details and time to prepare. Sure, he and Regris had hammered out the details for hours in the one meeting they had already had. But that was just the basics, wasn’t it? Floor plans and protocols. Keith still had no real idea of what an actual Blade mission would be like. Keith still didn’t know where on earth this Manor even was. Even the little that he had been told was incredibly vague, wrapped in the mystery and secrecy that the Blade seemed to be obsessed with.
“Regris will fill you in on the details on site, but the two of you will connect with another team that will be apparating in from the opposite side of the Manor’s property. If all goes well, both teams should cover the entire Manor, get a thorough picture of Galra activities there, and then be out before they even know they were infiltrated. Remember, our purpose is to find out what they are planning. Not to engage. This shouldn’t come to combat.”
Keith nodded. “I understand.”
“Regris will probably want to speak to you at some point as well, but I leave that up to him. You’re dismissed, Keith.”
Keith turned to go, one hand resting on the new enchanted messenger bag, but he paused by his dad’s old desk. His fingers reached out and snagged against today’s Prophet. “Can I keep this, Professor? I want to finish reading the article.”
Kolivan barely looked over, stepping back up to Kenneth’s board of research. “Take it.”
Keith slipped the newspaper into his bag and then made his way to the door leading back to the rest of Grimmauld Place. He paused in the doorway, glancing over at his former professor one last time. For some reason, he felt like he was leaving the conversation with more questions than he had when he entered. That seemed to be a running theme in his life lately.
He let out a long, slow puff of air and then stepped forward, closing the door behind him, leaving Kolivan studying the past he had seemed to fight so hard to bury.
< < < > > >
Lance had never come down to breakfast and after his conversation with Kolivan, learning both the news of the Galra attack on the muggle bridge and the rapid turnaround in which he would be leaving for his first mission, Keith was starting to get a little worried.
He had thought that they were okay by the time they went to bed the night before, but now, a confusing mixture of guilt and nerves ate at him. He curled his hands into fists instinctively, rubbing his thumb back and forth across his fingers, soothing himself with the repeated motion the way he had for years after his dad died.
Starting from the fourth floor of Grimmauld Place and working his way down, he checked his room and Lance’s room first, although he wasn’t surprised to find them both empty after what Shiro had said earlier that morning in the training room. Once the steps spilled him back out onto the ground floor, Keith checked the kitchen first, just in case Lance had finally come down to breakfast, but even Krolia was gone, the dishes washing themselves clean in the sink. Even the drawing room was empty, although a pair of empty coffee mugs on the table beside the couch suggested that Adam and Shiro must have been there at some point. So Keith turned and made his way towards the only door on the ground floor that he hadn’t checked yet.
He knew he would find Lance inside. It seemed inevitable after their conversation last night.
The door swung open easily to reveal a library whose collection rivaled even Hogwarts’ own. In content, at least, if not quite in size. The room was small, and it felt smaller thanks to the looming bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling along each wall, no less than fourteen feet tall. The bookcases were so massive that they had thick bars of iron built into the wood, so that a pair of rolling ladders could be attached, although Keith supposed the use of magic probably ensured that they weren’t used very often. Still, not a single shelf was empty. Instead, they were crammed with all manner of leather-bound manuscripts, tightly rolled scrolls sealed with dark ribbon, and skeletal remains of small magical creatures arranged in anatomical poses. It was one of the cozier rooms, though, taxidermied dead things aside. A pair of large, comfortable armchairs were arranged before a mantlepiece where an enchanted fireplace roared with flame that Keith knew would never burn any of the delicate pages within the room and a low credenza bore an old fashioned muggle record player that Lance had been quite taken with.
Music spilled from the strange contraption now, a lone black record spinning slowly as the soft sighs of a piano filled the air. And standing near the right side of the room, cast in shades of shadow and gold from the flickering light of the fire, stood Lance. The side of his profile was turned toward Keith, and Keith could tell from Lance’s relaxed body language that he hadn’t heard the door open over the music. His face was tipped up towards the bookshelves, a stack of books clutched to his chest.
Keith paused in the doorway, watching for a moment as Lance pushed up on his toes and slipped one of the books back onto one of the higher shelves, where it slid neatly into an open gap.
Lance looked beautiful like this, his brows furrowed in concentration and the light of the fire warming the already warm brown of his skin, a tangle of dark hair just beginning to curl at the nape of his neck and where it hung over his eyes. He had traded his pajamas for a pair of muggle jeans not dissimilar to Keith’s own and he wore a clunky knit sweater in Ravenclaw navy blue with a silver ‘L’ on the front that had been handmade by his mom to protect him from the cold English chill before he had left Cuba for his sixth year the summer before. Keith felt a familiar pang in his chest as he saw it, the constant aching guilt at knowing he was the reason Lance wasn’t at home right now.
“Hey,” Keith finally said, the word pitched low but still loud enough for Lance to hear over the music. He stepped forward into the room, letting the library door swing shut behind him.
It was a testament to how in tune they were with each other that Lance didn’t jump in shock at his presence when both of their nerves were as shot to hell as they were from the build up of too many sleepless nights and the constant paranoia of waiting for more bad news every time someone opened their mouth.
Lance crouched down, slipping another book back into place on one of the lower shelves before he stood and turned, leaving him with only a single book that he tucked under the crook of his arm. He turned his head towards Keith, half a smile toying at his lips although it looked more uncertain than Keith would like.
“Morning,” Lance said. “You were gone early.”
“Yeah,” Keith fidgeted slightly under the steady weight of Lance’s dark gaze. “I was in the training room. I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake you.”
“The nightmare about your dad again?” Lance asked, some of his trepidation replaced with concern.
Keith shrugged his shoulders. “Not really. I just… I don’t like it when we fight.”
Lance softened, and he crossed the last few feet of distance between them, tucking his wand into his back pocket so he could take Keith’s hand with his own. He gently uncurled Keith’s fingers from the fist they had formed and swept his thumb across the back of Keith’s knuckles. “Then don’t be such an idiot,” Lance said, but there was a real smile playing at the edge of his lips now and the words were so heavy with affection that Keith didn’t take offense.
“Hey,” Lance said more seriously, when his remark didn’t stir a matching insult or a sarcastic "yeah, but I’m your idiot” response from Keith. “What’s going on?”
“Kolivan was here this morning, he wanted to speak to me.”
Lance arched a brow, making a show of looking Keith up and down. “And you decided that it would be a good idea to meet with him while wearing one of Shiro’s old Weird Sisters concert t-shirts?”
Keith felt himself flush slightly, glancing down at the oversized black t-shirt he was wearing before meeting Lance’s amused expression. “Shut up,” he said, shaking his head so that his black bangs fell over his forehead. “I don’t think Kolivan really gives a shit about my choice of t-shirts.”
“Your bad choice of t-shirts,” Lance groaned, wrinkling his nose. “How I ended up with someone who has terrible taste in fashion, I’ll never understand. I finally understand Adam’s pain.”
“You bought like more than half of this outfit for me.”
“Semantics,” Lance insisted.
Keith felt his own lips twitch upward into a grin, and was almost surprised at how easily Lance was able to pull it out of him after the morning he had just had.
At the sight of it, the exasperated amusement Keith was sure was practically dripping from him, Lance grinned. “Finally,” he said, shaking their conjoined hands. “A smile.”
A burst of warmth filled Keith, at the easy concern Lance had expressed, the way he was able to put their argument aside for the moment to prioritize Keith’s emotions over everything else. Keith wasn’t sure that he had ever really had that before. His mom and Shiro loved him, but they were factual, logical people… not emotional ones. They weren’t like Lance. No one was.
Lance studied Keith’s face for a long moment, his blue eyes almost black in the dim room, his pupils huge. “Okay,” he said at last. “What did Kolivan have to say?”
Keith shifted, pulling his hand free from Lance’s in order to slide the messenger bag around on his shoulder, gesturing towards it. “A couple of things. He was equipping me for the mission,” Keith paused, feeling the need to take a deep breath before he added the second part of the statement. “And he said that Regris and I are going to be leaving tomorrow evening.”
Lance reeled, rocking backwards on his heels and Keith saw a flash of white teeth as he bit his lip in shock. “Already?” The word was an echo of Keith’s own response to Kolivan.
“Yeah,” Keith said softly. “I guess the timeline had to get moved up because…”
Lance watched him with that same steady gaze, the furrow of worry back between his brows. “Because what, Keith? What happened?”
Keith reached into his bag and pulled out the Daily Prophet that he had taken from Kolivan, slamming it down on one of the end tables to his left. The moving picture across the front showed the smoke and rubble and the slog of the River Thames. “The Galra attacked a bridge in London. It was… they caused the entire thing to collapse. People… people were hurt. They… they died.”
Lance swallowed thickly, his eyes skimming the front page. “They attacked muggles? Not wizards?”
“It’s like it was before,” Keith whispered. “It’s starting again. Britain isn’t safe anymore. Not for anyone.”
“He won’t stop at Britain, either,” Lance said back, his tone low as well, as if neither of them wanted to give real life to the words they were saying. “If he isn’t stopped… with magic, I mean, he could be anywhere right now and how would we know? What does this mean for my family, Keith?”
Keith shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, they’re in Havana and as far as we know, there hasn't been any evidence of Galra activity anywhere outside of Britain. Well, I guess parts of Scandinavia too, as the Druids are still working with the Galra as far as anyone in the Blade can tell. But no activity anywhere near the Americas. They should be safe.”
The for now passed silent and unspoken between them.
There was a long pause that followed though, and Keith watched a dozen different expressions play out over Lance’s face, his boyfriend obviously deep in thought concerning everything that Keith had just thrown at him. Keith was content to let the silence linger. His own mind was still whirling with everything that Kolivan had told him. He could only imagine how Lance felt.
Keith meant it, as he said it. Lance’s family should be safe. But what if they weren’t?
He pictured the photographs that Lance had shown him, his sisters and brothers and niece and nephew. What if something happened to one of them? To all of them? Keith had heard of it happening, back in the dark days. The Before days. When Zarkon was at the height of his power, whole families were killed. Surely, after everything that Lance had done during the Triwizard Tournament, at the graveyard, his family was a target.
Maybe the Blade was stupid for thinking that just because there was an ocean between the Dark Lord and Lance’s family that they were safe from harm.
Nausea swelled in Keith’s stomach. The realization swept through him that this must be how Lance felt every second of every day.
It was horrible.
It made his heart ache.
“Listen, Keith, um… just a thought,” Lance continued, unaware of the dark twist that Keith’s mind had taken. Lance’s voice was still low and the words tripped over themselves as they spilled out of his mouth. “Why don’t we go? To Cuba, I mean. Once I’m allowed to use magic.”
Keith studied Lance, seriously considering the words. It wasn’t impossible. Not by a long shot. He didn’t know why neither of them had thought about it before, not when he knew how homesick Lance had been all throughout the last year.
And yet…
“But Lance,” Keith said, “don’t you think that… if your family is safe… we might be bringing more danger with us? You’ve been too afraid to write any letters to them in case they’re intercepted, but now you want to go visit them?”
It was so tempting.
“But what if they aren’t safe?” Lance burst out, the emotions seeming to spill from him. Keith could see his knuckles turn white with how tight he was gripping the book in his hands. “What if the Galra are already tracking them? What if they are already there? I could apparate us there and then we could check on them. Just to make sure that everything is okay. It wouldn’t even have to be for very long. Thinking about it is driving me crazy, Keith. I just… I need to know.”
The earnest plea in Lance’s voice was all too clear, although Keith thought that he knew Lance well enough to know that there was something else, an undercurrent of tension maybe, running through what Lance was saying. Keith cocked his head to the side, taking in Lance’s wide eyes, the way he clutched the book he was holding tight to his chest as if it were able to shield him like armor, like a child’s blanket. Lance was obviously upset, and maybe there was more to it, but if there was… Keith didn’t understand. His own relationship with Krolia was so different from the relationship that Lance had with his family, with where he was from. Keith might have been raised in the Kogane Manor but he knew he didn’t miss it like Lance missed Cuba. Lance missed Cuba like it was an open, gaping wound that he was forced to walk around with, never allowed to fully heal.
Maybe… maybe this was the best that Keith could give him.
Selfishly, Keith wanted it too. He had imagined it so many times, what this place must be like to be so loved by the most wonderful person he had ever met. Lance had promised seaside strolls down a walkway Keith had never heard of before but knew as soon as the name left Lance’s lip that he had never wanted anything more. Even now, despite everything, he still wanted that.
What would it be like? To walk with Lance down a beach in a world that was untouched by the Galra?
What would it be like? To see Lance’s family’s restaurant and learn their laughter and trace the freckles on Lance’s shoulder under a burnt orange sunset while his niece and nephew sat in the shade nearby eating ice cream cones?
He has been silent for so long, imagining, and Lance has rushed to fill the silence. Just like he always does.
“You know, letters are so easily traced,” Lance was still spitballing, and Keith knew him well enough to tell when Lance was just firing words off in the hope of hitting a target. “And we know that the Galra are everywhere in the U.K. And we know the Druids are Scandinavian, and apparently no one knew they were working with the Galra! It would actually be so much more safe if we went there, especially if we use your Invisibility Cloak to make sure no one sees us-”
“Okay,” Keith said, cutting Lance off. “Okay, we can talk about it. We can figure something out. But we have to be smart about this, Lance. If we’re the reason the Galra end up on your parents’ doorstep…”
Lance let out a heavy sigh of relief before pasting a small smile on his face, though it looked wane and weak compared to his usual bright expressions. “I know,” he agreed. “I would never forgive myself. But… we’ll be careful, Keith. I wouldn’t be careless about it. And we wouldn’t have to just run off without telling anybody. Maybe Shiro or your mom could help.”
Keith grimaced. “I don’t know if they would love the idea of us apparating across the ocean right now,” he said honestly. “My mom… I don’t know. Shiro, we might be able to convince. He understands the… importance of family.”
“Okay, cool,” Lance said and some of the tension seemed to drain from his shoulders now that he had Keith fully on board, although there was still a look in his eyes, a wildness, that Keith wasn’t sure how to read. He looked like he was thinking too many thoughts for him to even complete one. “I need to do everything I can to keep them safe, and, uh, I know a bunch of protection charms, and once we go there I won’t have the trace on me anymore. Maybe that means I’ll even be able to put some protections around their house, similar to the protections the Blade has done here, you know? Yeah... yeah that could work. I-”
Lance’s ramblings cut off as suddenly as they had started. His gaze had caught on something over Keith’s shoulder, and Keith glanced behind him wondering what Lance was looking at. But the only thing behind him was a shelf full of what looked like some pretty serious magical textbooks, so he relaxed, pulling his hand back from Lance when his boyfriend made no obvious move to return it.
“I’ll uh… I’ll research some more protection charms to keep them safe. To keep us safe. You know, while you’re away and stuff. Give myself something to do and all.” Lance said, with feigned nonchalance. Keith didn’t know why, but he had been around Lance enough in the last year to know when he was hiding something.
“Lance,” Keith said, cutting off his boyfriend. “What’s-”
Before he could even get the words out, though, Lance slumped forward. “I’m sorry for just, like, throwing that on you. But… Thank you. For agreeing. I’ll… I’ll come up with a proper plan for it. Um… do some brainstorming for the best way to go about it. Figure some stuff out while you’re… gone. I just need to make sure that they’re safe. So, yeah, thanks.”
“Hey,” Keith said, reaching out and grabbing Lance’s hand with his own. “I’m here for you. Always, Lance. You know that.”
“Yeah,” the word was a small puff of air. Lance lifted Keith’s hand and pressed a soft kiss to the skin of his palm.
There was still that furrow between Lance’s brows though. Keith instinctively reached up to smooth it away.
“Lance, I know there’s more than you’re-” Keith’s words were cut off, however, by a soft knock at the library door followed by the familiar creak of the wood.
Shiro poked his head into the room, and Keith was shocked at the change in his appearance than what Keith had seen him in earlier that morning. He had traded his Wizarding Wireless Network t-shirt for a dark muggle dress-shirt. He was even wearing shoes. Dress shoes. “Oh, good, you’re both here,” he said. “Adam and I wanted to talk to you.”
Keith shoved his hands into his pockets, afraid that Shiro would somehow be able to tell that Lance’s lips had been on his skin only seconds before. “What? Now?”
“If you don’t mind,” Shiro said, and Keith thought there was a teasing smile playing at his lips, as if he knew something they didn’t. “He’s just in the drawing room, so could you meet us in there?”
Keith looked over to Lance, who had gone back to staring at the bookshelf with narrowed eyes, “Lance?”
Lance blinked at him, jumping a little, and then he looked over towards Shiro, giving their former professor a bright grin and the muggle finger guns gesture that Keith recognized from their Quidditch days. “No worries, Shiro! Just give me, like, five minutes to go put these books in my room. We’ll be right down.”
He pulled away from Keith, bee-lining for the end table where Keith had left the Daily Prophet and scooping it up, adding it to the book he already held in his arms. That didn’t surprise Keith in the slightest, he knew Lance would want to read the entire article for himself, front to back.
Then Lance made his way towards the doorway, although he did pause for a moment beside the bookcase against the wall. He reached up, grabbing one of the thicker textbooks, with a bright lavender-colored leather binding, and added it to the stack of stuff he held. “I’ll be right down!” He said, ducking under Shiro’s arm as he slipped out into the hallway.
“You just said that…” Keith muttered, watching as Lance disappeared.
He felt like he was missing something. He just wasn’t sure what it was.
“Everything alright, kiddo?” Shiro asked Keith, turning to watch Lance disappear.
Keith scowled at the nickname. “Yeah, it’s fine.” He said. “We can talk about it later. Let’s hear what you and Adam have to say, first.”
Shiro held the door open and Keith stepped forward, making his way back down towards the drawing room. He could feel a coil of anxiety forming in his gut at the thought of whatever it was Shiro and Adam had to say.
He didn’t know if he could take much more today… and it was barely past breakfast.
Chapter 4: Chapter Four
Summary:
Keith prepares for his first mission with the Blade. Shiro’s big news is heard, a mentor is encountered, and the boys have a moment of peace.
Notes:
Hiyaaaa! Caitie here back with Chapter Four of ISYOTOSOTW!! Thank you all so much for your support. We are now almost at 100 kudos and 1500 views for a work we thought no one would be excited about, so thank you so so much. We would like to remind you all that Kate and I are both busy adults now, so this fic doesn't particularly have a set upload schedule, rather a loose plan to upload every month or so. We do tend to upload on Wednesdays though lmao. So if you are worried about us not uploading at a certain time, just know chapters are coming. We’ve got a ton of chapters prewritten, and a bunch more planned out. In return for the irregular posting, our chapters are suuuuper long, and we hope you enjoy this one. Welcome to the calm before the storm people. Thank you all again, we are so happy you are all reading our not-so-little fic. Please leave a comment if you enjoy and we’ll see you all soon! <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Shiro had a ring box in his hand.
Keith’s eyes were glued to it, watching as Shiro snapped it open and closed repetitively while they waited for Lance to join them. He didn’t really know what was taking the other boy so long, not when Lance was just supposed to be dropping off a couple of the books he had taken from the library. Keith curled his fingers around the edge of the drawing room loveseat’s arm, debating whether to go look for Lance or not, when Lance finally skidded around the corner and practically threw himself down onto the loveseat beside Keith.
“Okay, sorry, I’m here,” he said, sounding slightly out of breath, as if he had run all the way down the stairs. His leg pressed against Keith’s and he reclined against the cushions, resting one of his arms along the back of the small couch behind Keith.
Keith turned to arch a brow towards Lance, who just blinked innocently at him.
“Well then,” Shiro said, interrupting the silent conversation that Keith was attempting to have with Lance using only his eyes, “Now that we have everyone’s attention… we have some news.”
Keith tried not to wince at how Shiro trailed off dramatically. He could tell that there was a thread of laughter running through Shiro’s voice, and Shiro’s lips were still doing that all-too-familiar-not-so-subtle smirk. Keith had come to associate the expression with Shiro knowing something that Keith didn’t. It was the expression that Shiro had on his face the first time he told Keith about Adam. Again when they both told Keith about the proposal. The same look Shiro had on his face after the Yule Ball when he had stumbled upon the… moment Keith had been having with Lance down by the lake. Keith’s mind knew Shiro well enough to read between the lines and he could tell that it wasn’t bad news, but he had to remind his body of that. It was too easy to jump to that assumption these days.
Not to mention, he reminded himself, Shiro was still holding that ring box in his hand. So Keith was pretty sure that he had a good idea as to what this conversation might be about.
Shiro looked to his side, where Adam was sitting pressed close beside him. They were arranged on the matching loveseat opposite Keith and Lance. Adam had one leg crossed over the other, so his foot could tap against Shiro’s thigh.
The pair shared a conspiratorial glance before Shiro turned his attention back to Keith and Lance and grinned broadly. “We’re getting married!” He said loudly, his voice echoing through the ancient Grimmauld Place drawing room.
Keith stared at him blankly. “Um, yeah. We all knew that. You’ve been engaged for over a year. I was there the first time we had this conversation. Were you inventing spells again? Did one backfire? You know that you aren’t supposed to mess around with memory charms.”
He glanced over towards Lance to see if his boyfriend was as confused as he was, but Lance was just studying Shiro with a frown on his face, a muscle twitching in his jaw. Almost like he was clenching his teeth.
“Are you done?” Shiro’s voice was playful as he responded, and Keith could feel an answering smirk rising to his own lips as he fell back into the habit of playing the annoying younger brother.
“What Takashi and I mean to say,” Adam interrupted, leaning forward and resting a hand on Shiro’s knee, “is that we are going to be getting married sooner than we had originally been planning. We were going to wait until next year, but now… we decided it would be best if we held the wedding before the summer ends.”
The words took a moment to stick.
“You mean, like, next month?!” Lance asked, finally snapping back into motion. His voice was pitched just a little too loud, his words a little too fast, and Keith didn’t miss the slightly wild glance that Lance shot him from the corner of his eye.
He and Lance had planned to be long gone a month from now. For so long, July 28th had felt like a deadline, a date they were working to get to before they were finally able to disappear and do exactly what Keith had said they would do at the end of the school year. Now Keith felt like everything they had talked about had just gone up in smoke.
Because if Shiro and Adam were getting married… he and Lance couldn’t just leave.
This changed everything.
“Yeah,” Shiro was saying, still looking happier than Keith had seen him look in weeks. “The third of August.”
Keith did the math, working through the dates in his head. That would put the wedding at a full week after Lance’s birthday. It was just so much time. Too much time. When they had so little of it.
Yet, when Keith saw the pleased smile on Shiro’s face, the warm glow in Adam’s eyes, he found it hard to even think about denying them this. These were two of the people who mattered most to him in the world, and they deserved to have a reason to be happy, now more than ever.
So Keith shrugged his shoulder that was pressed to Lance’s side, hoping that his boyfriend would be able to read the silent we’ll figure it out message, before smiling at Shiro and Adam.
“Congratulations,” he said, pouring as much warmth and affection into the words as he could. Then he glanced towards Adam and arched a brow, “it’s about time you made an honest man out of Shiro.”
The quip made Shiro sputter and Adam laugh and for a minute Keith felt like some of the tension he had been carrying around since the Triwizard Tournament began had loosened its hold on his chest.
Lance’s fingers tapped against the curl of Keith’s shoulder from where he still had his arm draped across the back of the couch, but he had allowed himself to smile too and Keith could tell that he looked generally pleased. Keith knew that Lance didn’t know Shiro and Adam in the same way that he did, from Lance’s perspective Shiro was still an idolized teacher and a mentor more than anything else, and Adam the Ministry member who had their back when everything went wrong during the trials. Still, the last two weeks of living all together in Grimmauld Place had already helped Lance to be more comfortable around Keith’s family.
As Keith sat back watching, Lance leaned forward and began discussing where the wedding would be held and what the first song would be and what kinds of flowers the tables would be decorated with. As he did, Keith realized that he was excited to get his own glimpse into what it might be like to be this comfortable around Lance’s family. For the first time since Lance had brought it up, Keith let himself really imagine what it might be like to get to know the place and the people who had shaped Lance into the person that Keith loved.
He was content to listen for a while, watching Lance’s hands wave animatedly through the air as he recalled the highlights from his older brother, Luis’s, wedding, until the sound of his name brought him more fully to attention.
“I was hoping to talk to Keith about that, actually,” Shiro said, the ring box in his hand snapping open and shut again.
Keith blinked and focused on Shiro, trying to follow the thread of conversation that Lance had been rambling on about. He thought that Lance had been saying something about his brother Marco giving a speech…
“What?” Keith asked, confused by the knowing look that Lance was giving Shiro.
“Well,” Shiro started speaking, but paused to swallow, and Keith realized that Shiro was nervous again. “Adam and I were talking about who we wanted to stand up with us during the ceremony… and, Keith, I was wondering if you would be my best man.”
Keith felt a sharp sting in his eyes and was horrified to realize that the sentiment lacing Shiro’s words had drawn tears to his eyes, and he blinked rapidly to prevent them from falling. “I…”
For a moment, words failed him, and Keith could only stare at Shiro, hoping his eyes conveyed the weight of the emotions swirling through him, the flood of warmth and affection and love that tempered the bitter bite of jealousy and frustration and resentment that Keith had always tried so hard to bury. It felt… good. To be chosen by Shiro in this moment. To know that Shiro saw him not only as a child he had to protect or a student to take under his wing, but that Shiro saw in Keith what Keith had always been looking for from him. That they really were brothers , in every way that mattered, even if they didn’t share the same blood.
And for maybe the first time in their entire relationship, Keith finally felt like he and Shiro stood on equal ground.
“I would be honored,” Keith said. His voice was thick with emotion and he could feel his face burning, knew his cheeks must be bright red and hot to the touch, but the embarrassment didn’t bother him as much as it normally would. Not here. Not with these people.
Shiro’s grin seemed to grow impossibly wider, and then he was reaching forward, ruffling Keith’s hair.
Keith scowled at him, batting at Shiro’s hand and then trying to smooth his bangs back into place. “Don’t ruin the moment.”
Adam hid his grin behind his hand at the pair’s antics, and Keith thought he could feel Lance shaking with silent laughter beside him. When was the last time that Lance had laughed? Really, truly laughed? Suddenly, Keith found that he didn’t mind his messy hair or Shiro’s overwhelming need to be as annoying as possible if it meant that Lance would always look like he did now, with crinkles around his eyes and a dimple that Keith wanted to press his thumb to.
“Does this mean Keith has to give a big, emotional speech?” Lance asked, “Because I really want to see that.”
“Shut up,” Keith said, shoving at his boyfriend’s shoulder.
“I mean he’s so eloquent,” Lance continued undeterred.
“I hate you.”
“Actually you love me,” Lance corrected, and Keith was forcibly reminded that Lance is a younger sibling too, well versed in the language of mockery, as Lance fell back into the taunting but flirtatious tone that Keith had now come to recognize. The same one that had colored most of their interactions on the Quidditch pitch during Keith’s sixth year, long before he had even understood the change that was occurring between them. Before the Triwizard Tournament. Before their lives had both changed forever.
“I regret everything,” Keith said deadpan.
“Really, you regret everything ?” Lance echoed. “Even our date in the Astronomy Tower? And our first night here?”
“Please tell me that we were never this embarrassing to watch,” Shiro interrupted, clearly addressing Adam. The words came out fast and rushed, like he was trying to cut Lance off before Lance could go into more detail about whatever their ‘first night here’ had contained.
Which… it wasn’t what Keith knew Shiro was thinking it was. But it had come close enough that he was still grateful to Shiro for suddenly diverting the question. That was definitely something Keith wouldn’t be answering in front of this particular audience.
“We weren’t,” Adam said, and Shiro looked mollified for a moment before he continued, “You were much worse.”
But Keith was hardly paying attention to them, because he was watching a steady red flush creep up Lance’s neck towards his ears as Lance realized that they weren’t alone and that Shiro and Adam had just witnessed his public declaration of love and… everything else.
Lance brought a hand up to his face, shielding himself from Shiro and Adam while still allowing him to look over towards Keith. “I forgot we weren’t alone,” he whispered, pouting overdramatically.
If they really were alone, Keith probably would have leaned forward and pressed his lips to the corner of Lance’s mouth until the pout vanished, but they weren’t so he didn’t.
Instead he forcibly dragged his gaze away from Lance’s lips and met Shiro’s knowing gaze. “I really don’t have to give a speech, do I?” He asked, returning all of them to the previous topic of conversation.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Shiro said. His voice was gentler now. “But if you do want to give one, then that would also be…” he paused, searching for the right word. “Cool.”
“I’ll… think about it,” Keith said, although the thought of standing in front of a collection of people and having to talk about his feelings made him feel slightly nauseous.
As if he could sense that Keith needed a moment to process what this would mean, Lance jumped back in to take control of the conversation. He was good at that. He could always fill the silences Keith left when he needed to mull something over. “Hey, so, what made you guys decide to move up the wedding date?”
The look that Shiro and Adam shared was heavy and significant, and Keith knew instantly what it meant. Lance seemed to realize it too, a moment later, because before either of them could say anything, he winced slightly. “Oh. Right.”
“We want it to be official,” Adam said slowly, weighing his words with care the way that he always did, “just in case. Things are getting worse, especially for people like us.” Adam gestured between himself and Lance. “Takashi and I thought it seemed more important now than it had been before.”
Lance blinked at him, “Wait. You're a muggleborn, too?”
Adam nodded. “Why do you think I was rooting for you to win the Triwizard Tournament? A Ravenclaw muggleborn underdog? I guess you reminded me of myself when I was your age.”
“Wow,” Lance said softly, sounding slightly winded. “I had no idea.”
The smile on Adam’s face was small and soft. “My family lives up in Manchester. My parents are dentists.”
“I bet you had fun explaining that to everyone at Hogwarts,” Lance laughed. “My parents run a paladar out of our house in Havana. Um, it’s like a restaurant. At least the wizarding world still has those . But the food is nothing like it is here. I can’t wait to see Keith’s face when he tries-”
Lance trailed off, seeming to realize that he had said too much, when Shiro cocked his head at the pair of them in confusion. He shot a panicked glance towards Keith.
“Okay, listen,” Keith said, spreading his hands forward in a placating gesture. “Lance and I wanted to talk to you about something, and you probably won’t like it a lot, but it feels important. We want to go to Havana. If you guys aren’t getting married until the third, then we have plenty of time to travel there and back after Lance’s birthday. We know that it’s dangerous, but we’ll be careful. Lance really needs to check on his family and they need to know that he’s alright too and…”
“Keith,” Shiro interrupted him. “Breathe.”
Keith immediately stopped his rambling. At some point during his little tirade, Lance’s hand had crept from the back of the couch to wrap around Keith’s shoulders completely, and Keith could feel his long fingers curl around his bicep. He thought Lance might have been holding his breath.
If Shiro didn’t want to help them… this could be it. He would make sure they never set foot outside of Grimmauld Place and its protective wards.
“Truthfully,” Shiro shrugged. “I’m not surprised. I figured that you guys would probably want to do something like that.”
“You did?” Keith heard himself ask. It was kind of amazing to him that Shiro had predicted it, when Lance had only mentioned it today and Keith had never even thought to offer it.
“Sure,” Shiro said easily. “Of course you would be worried about your family, Lance, with everything that has happened. And, yes, there’s a risk involved, but to be honest, I think that it would make me feel better to know that you were far away from here, even if it is just temporary.”
“The Ministry has been in touch with the Magical Congress of the United States concerning Sendak’s escape. Of course they are still denying the return of Zarkon and the Galra, but even a fugitive like Sendak has caused global alarm,” Adam added. “Since Cuba doesn’t have a wizarding government of their own, that’s the closest source of information that we have access to. But everything in their reports confirms that there is no evidence of Galra activity, related to Sendak or otherwise, anywhere in America, Mexico, or Cuba.”
Lance let out the breath he had been holding, a long exhalation of relief. Then he sat up a little straighter, like the weight that had been curving his shoulders had finally lessened.
“So you’ll let us go?” He asked, his voice very small. “I can apparate home?”
Keith realized as he looked at the tentative hope blooming in Lance’s eyes just how much Lance must have been afraid that Shiro would put a halt to any possibility of even planning such a venture.
“Wait, apparate ?” Shiro replied incredulously. He looked horrified, his jaw hanging open in shock. “Lance you can’t apparate to a different continent. You would die.”
“What?!” Lance shrieked in response, his voice shrill enough that Keith swore he felt his eardrums burst as Lance leaned forward. “They definitely didn’t mention that in apparition lessons.”
“Because most wizards already know this, Lance, hell even apparating the length of the UK is pushing the limit.”
“Oh-”
“You’ll have to use the floo network instead.”
“Okay.” Lance looked slightly confused by the sudden turn of the conversation, as if he was slightly in shock that they were still being allowed to go.
“You won’t be permitted to go until the Trace has worn off of you,” Shiro said, a little more sternly, but then he softened. “And you have to promise that you’ll be back in time for our wedding.”
“We wouldn’t miss it,” Lance promised solemnly. From beside him, Keith nodded his assent.
Lance turned to Keith and flashed him one of his easy grins. “See, I told you months ago that I would take you home this summer. Look at me, keeping my promises.”
Even though Keith knew that this was probably not how Lance had envisioned the circumstances of that first meeting going, even though things in the world were horrible and awful, in the little bubble of this room, still wrapped in the warmth of Shiro and Adam’s obvious excitement over the wedding and the curl of anticipation in his own chest at the thought of seeing Lance walking barefoot on a beach of white sand backlit by a Cuban sunset…
Keith felt more hopeful than he had in a long time.
He knew it wouldn’t last. That as soon as he left this room, he would have to start packing for his first mission with the Blade and return to the reality where he might very well be risking his life again in less than forty-eight hours, but for now…
For now, Keith was just going to enjoy it.
< < < > > >
After the conversation with Shiro and Adam had naturally winded down, and Adam had left to return to the Ministry for a meeting with someone from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement about possibly pulling staff from the Department of Games and Sports to help in the Improper Use of Magic offices until things settled back down, Lance had excused himself to go back to his room, saying something about wanting to read the latest Daily Prophet article for himself.
Guessing that Lance would probably want to be alone while he read, so that he could process the information without feeling like he was being watched, Keith had decided to head back down to the training room. The feelings of hope that the conversation with Shiro and Adam had filled him with was already fading, as Keith felt the thoughts of his upcoming Blade mission begin to intrude any sort of temporary peace that he had found. Before he could visit Cuba with Lance, before he could watch Shiro and Adam exchange their vows, Keith had to go toe-to-toe with the Galra. He had to come back alive, again . He and Lance had practically lucked into survival, weeks ago in the graveyard, when Keith summoned the portkey to his hand not knowing if it was active or not. What were the chances he could be so stupidly lucky twice in his life?
Keith shook his head, trying to chase the thoughts away with the motion. This would be different. He and Regris were doing reconnaissance work. Nothing more. He wouldn’t be staring down the dark wood of Zarkon’s wand again. Likely they would be creeping through undergrowth spying on distant robed figures as they moved around the yard surrounding Salazar Slytherin’s ancient ancestral estate. That is, if there were even any Galra there. From the conversation Keith had already had with Kolivan and Regris, it seemed like the Blade considered it a high probability that this intel was a false alarm.
Or a trap, part of Keith’s mind whispered, the Galra could be intentionally trying to draw Blade members out.
Keith paused at the bottom of the steps leading down to the training room, remembering to hop over the one that had bit Shiro’s toe earlier. That had been only a few hours ago. It already felt like it had been days.
The door to the training room opened easily under his hand, swinging open to reveal the now-familiar chamber, though Keith paused with his hand still half in the air as he realized that the room wasn’t empty.
The sight of Regris’s lean, broad-shouldered back greeted him. A flash of red sparks filled the air and Regris cast a stunning spell that ricocheted off of the training dummy in front of him, sending it skidding back several feet across the floor. Clearly the middle-aged man had similar ideas about how to prepare for their mission.
Unsure if he should continue with his original goal of getting in some practice of his own, or if he should leave Regris be, Keith hovered uncertainty in the doorway.
He watched as Regris switched formation swiftly, following up his initial stunning spell with the Impedimenta jinx, which froze the dummy where it was, locking its wheel in place and preventing it from closing the distance that Regrist had formed between them. Then Regris pulled his arm back, positioning his wand in the air over his head before he flicked it in a quick, looping movement. Thick, dark rope cords materialized around the dummy, binding its arms tightly to its sides. The Incarcerous spell. Keith stiffened at the sight of the ropes, remembering all too clearly how he and Lance had been similarly restrained at the hands of the Galra.
“ Flipendo ,” Regris said, the only spell he had announced aloud. A loud bang followed his casting, echoing through the air, and across the room the training dummy dropped to the ground. It lay helplessly on its back, its wheel still trying and failing to spin. Between the Impediment Jinx and the ropes binding it, it had clearly been defeated.
“Well, are you going to come in or are you just going to stand there and watch?”
Keith jumped a little, surprised that Regris had heard him approaching over the noises that the training dummy had been making. Keith was quieter than most, he knew. He was light on his feet in a way that only long nights spent roaming the Hogwarts corridors under an invisibility cloak could make you.
Hesitantly, he stepped forward into the room. “I didn’t know you were still-”
“Staying at Grimmauld Place?” Regris cut him off. “I know it's your home, but it’s also a Blade safe house, kid. I’ll be here until we leave.”
Keith bristled at the flippant tone Regris spoke with, the dismissal that wrapped around the nickname in a way that was different from the warmth that Shiro colored it with.
“This isn’t my home,” Keith muttered petulantly, immediately, and then bit his tongue before he could say any more. Before he could act like the child that everyone in the Blade seemed to expect him to be.
Regris slid his wand back into the holster strapped across his chest and turned to face Keith, shoving his hands into his pockets. As he did so, Keith realized that he wasn’t wearing Blade robes but was instead dressed like a muggle, in a pair of dark jeans and thick, sturdy boots and a white t-shirt. The ink muggle tattoos that Keith had noticed on the backs of his hands climbed all the way up his arms, although he reached over and grabbed a leather jacket from where it was tossed carelessly over another one of the training dummies and slid it on before Keith could get a good look at what the symbols and sigils appeared to be.
“I assume you’ve already been briefed about the change in our timeline,” Regris said, clearly not one to waste time. “You’re aware we will be leaving tomorrow night?”
Keith nodded his head.
“We’ll leave right after dark. I’ll apparate us to Dún a Rí. It’s a forest in northern Ireland where the Slytherin family originated from before the school was built… and where Salazar Slytherin slunk back to after he left Hogwarts. The estate itself is located within the forest, and like Hogwarts it is enchanted with a variety of magical protections, including the Muggle-Repelling Charm which prevents any muggles from stumbling upon or noticing the estate. Any time a muggle gets too close, they are filled with the urgent need to be elsewhere. And if they still linger longer, it fills them with intense fear and despair. Some say that is why muggles believe the forest is haunted.”
“We’re going to Ireland?” Keith blinked in shock. Now that Regris had mentioned it, he thought he might have remembered learning that Salazar Slytherin was from Ireland in History of Magic. There had been a lesson on each of the founders, and how they came together from the four countries of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England to found Hogwarts and open its doors to students from each. But History of Magic had been taught by Professor Binns. The ghost professor had fallen asleep in front of the staff-room fire one night and then rose again the next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Keith had always thought that perhaps he had died of boredom, for his lectures had been amongst some of the least interesting that Keith had ever listened to.
He couldn’t help wondering if his mother or Shiro had realized that the mission would have him leaving the country, though surely they must have. No wonder Shiro had agreed to the Cuba trip so easily.
“Yes,” Regris said. “And despite what Kolivan told you, that is all you need to know. I will fill you in on the details of our mission once we arrive.”
“Wait. What?” Keith felt like someone had dumped a cold bucket of water over him. He knew that the Blade was secretive, but this was beyond that. This was ridiculous. “That’s all I’m going to get?”
“You already know the pertinent information.”
“Don’t you think it would be better for me to be fully prepared than to be wandering half blind?” Keith snapped.
Regris was largely unmoved, but he did seem to acquiesce slightly. “We have gone over the floorplans of the house. You and I will apparate to a predetermined location in Dún a Rí. We will proceed on foot until we reach the property of the estate. We will find a good vantage point in the gardens from which we can watch the house to determine if there is indeed Galra activity inside while a secondary team approaches from the opposite side. Depending on the relative safety or severity of the situation, we may infiltrate the house as a means to gain information while avoiding detection. After the intel has been gathered or if our position is compromised, we will retreat outside the magical boundaries of the Slytherin Estate. From there, if the Galra are indeed present, we will send a patronus message to Kolivan and the Blade which will give them the order to engage in combat. Are you following?”
Keith nodded. Some of what Regris was telling him was familiar from Keith’s previous conversation with him, but some of it was new as well. Keith had thought that a reconnaissance mission would be all about waiting and watching, but apparently there was a little more to it than that.
“We will apparate back to a pre-approved location located in muggle Islington,” Regris continued, “we will discuss the exact location when we leave. It has been set as our rendezvous point for this mission as the protections around Grimmauld Place prevent us from apparating directly. There we will be able to safely return without compromising the safe house’s integrity. If the house is empty and there is no sign of Galra activity, then we will return to Grimmauld Place through these same means immediately.”
Regris spoke the details of the plan in a clear, monotonous monotone, no trace of any anticipation or anxiety in his tone. Keith found himself hanging on every word, forcing himself to commit all of them to memory even though it was barely more detail than he had received already. If this was the little he was going to get, he needed to memorize every word choice so he could analyze them later.
The details of the plan were efficient, but Keith still felt like there were still too many factors that he didn’t know.
“What sort of Galra activity was reported in the house?” He pressed, unable to stop himself, “Did any of the witnesses say anything about what they saw?”
Regris narrowed his eyes, “Blade protocol dictates that I am not to share any more information with you while your allegiances are… conflicted.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Keith felt the familiar flicker of the red-hot flames of his anger coiling within him at the thought that the Blade didn’t trust him for some reason. All he had ever done his whole life was try to prove himself and it still wasn’t enough.
Regris cocked his head to the side, raising an eyebrow which Keith noticed for the first time was studded with a silver muggle piercing. “Your partner is an underage non-combatant who is currently vulnerable to mental magical assaults and tracking. The Blade must, for the sake of precaution, assume that anything we tell you could possibly be leaked to your partner while you are under the same roof. So until we leave, that is the most I can tell you.”
“So you can’t tell me anything because you think I’ll go running to tell Lance?” Keith asked, feeling his hands curl into fists at his side. “That’s ridiculous.”
Although, a tiny part of Keith, the soft, quiet part that was hard to hear when his blood was pounding and his anger curled inside him like a living thing, whispered wouldn’t you, though? That soft part of him that had grown larger and larger the longer he was around Lance, smoothing out his rough edges. Keith paused to take a breath because… Regris was probably right. Even if Keith knew he wasn’t supposed to, he would end up telling Lance everything he knew anyways.
They didn’t keep secrets from each other.
“It’s protocol,” Regris said unapologetically. “The same protocol that your parents occasionally had to adhere to when one of them was working on something classified. It’s not personal, Keith.”
Keith wanted to push back, reluctant to back down from the argument, but he supposed there was little point when he already knew that Regris was right. That the Blade protocol had clearly been put in place for a reason.
Then his brain snagged on the rest of what Regris had said.
He felt his brow furrow. “You knew my parents? During the first Wizarding War?”
It made sense, he supposed. Regris had obviously been with the Blade for a while and anyone that was deeply entrenched in the Blade must have known Kenneth. Though it was still surreal to be surrounded by so many people who possessed memories of a time that Keith could never know.
“Of course. I worked with both of them a number of times. Went to school with them as well. Though I confess I knew your father far better than your mother. Anyone associated with the pureblood mania was someone I generally tried to avoid. I knew… thought I knew… what they all thought of a filthy mudblood like me.”
Keith instantly stiffened at the word. There were a fair share of swears and curses in the wizarding world and Keith had grown up hearing all of them, mostly from Shiro before he became a respectable teacher, but they were usually colorful and detailed explanations of what Merlin’s underpants might have been like. Mudblood was different, though. It was unforgivable. That Keith had learned not from Shiro but from overheard conversations between his classmates. The word had rankled Keith even before he had gotten to know Lance, before he started paying full attention to how that name followed Lance down corridors and across the Great Hall, but now it infuriated him. Hearing it drop so casually from Regris’s mouth, in reference to himself , caused Keith’s mouth to drop open in shock.
Regris let out a sharp, bitter chuckle at whatever he read on Keith’s face. “A Gryffindor through and through, I see. Just like your father. Don’t worry, kid, you don’t need to go fighting any battles on my behalf. I laid my demons to rest a long time ago.”
Keith… Keith wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, so he focused on another piece of information that Regris had revealed.
“You… you knew my dad back in school?” Keith said, his breath catching in his throat.
“Sure,” Regris snorted. “Didn’t like him much though. The Slytherin quidditch team’s biggest competition was Gryffindor and your father was the best keeper I’ve ever had the privilege to watch.”
The way that Regris dropped what house he had been in was so casual that Keith could tell it was practiced, though he thought he detected a stiffness to Regris’s posture that hadn’t been there before.
It couldn’t have been easy, being a muggleborn in Slytherin House. Not when Salazar Slytherin had been known to have the fiercest obsession with blood purity that there ever was. At least until Zarkon. Slytherin had left Hogwarts and abandoned being one of the founders when the other three decided that they would let muggleborn students into the school. Even now, a muggleborn being sorted into Slytherin was something that rarely occurred. A rarity. When it did happen, it was always a topic of conversation. It would even make headlines in less reputable tabloids.
Keith wondered how Regris felt about the fact that their mission would take them to the ancestral home of his house’s founder, someone who would have hated everything that he fought for. But from the polished look that Regris was wearing on his face, Keith knew better than to ask.
So instead, Keith pivoted the conversation back to safer ground. “What was he like back in school? My dad?”
“Stubborn,” Regris answered easily, his lips quirking into what was almost a smile. “Just like you. That was some show you put on for Kolivan, demanding you be allowed to join the Blade. That fire, that drive, that fight… it can be useful, Keith, but only if you learn how to control it. You have to forge your anger into a tool. You can’t let your emotions get the best of you.” Regris paused to place a heavy hand on Keith’s shoulder.
It was a gesture that Shiro had done a thousand times before, but coming from Regris it was alien and unfamiliar. Keith wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
“That was a lesson Kenneth never learned,” Regris continued slowly. The words were gentle but they hit Keith like a physical blow. “If he hadn’t let emotional attachments get in the way of the mission, he would have returned from Scandinavia and you would still have a father. Do me a favor and learn from his mistakes.”
With that, Regris clapped Keith hard on the shoulder and brushed past him.
Keith whirled around after him, a thousand more questions rising on his lips. “What… what do you know about Scandinavia?” He called after Regris’s retreating back.
Regris paused, one hand on the doorframe. For a moment Keith thought he would answer, but then the mysterious Blade member merely shook his head and pushed through the doorway. “We leave tomorrow right after dusk,” was the only reply that Keith got.
“Be ready.”
< < < > > >
Keith’s new messenger bag with its Undetectable Extension Charm that Kolivan had given him lay near the foot of his bed, propped open so that Keith could pack the meager supplies he had gathered for the Blade mission. Which so far had mostly consisted of going back through what Kolivan had already given him, familiarizing himself with the potions he had been supplied, and making sure that the Blade leathers and wand halter fit. Unsurprisingly, the unofficial Blade uniform was enchanted to change sizes depending on who wore it, so Keith had added the leathers to the bag and now had an array of his clothes laid out on the bed, unsure what - if anything - he should pack.
He let out a frustrated sigh, annoyed with Regris again for the lack of details about what he would need. What does one even bring on a reconnaissance mission?
The noise was enough to draw Lance’s attention. He had tucked himself into the corner where Keith’s bedroom walls met, the double bed pressed flush to the wall in order to preserve space in the room. Once, this had been the room that his parents had intended to raise a child together in, and Keith could still tell from the layout where his crib must have once rested before Kenneth and Krolia had moved their young family out to the Kogane Manor. The room still contained relics of this early childhood, and although Keith had been too young for any of it to seem familiar to him he recognized bits of himself in what he saw. The discarded toy broomstick that someone had propped up in the corner of the room, a red dragon plush toy that had been kicked beneath the bed and apparently forgotten about until it's enchanted snoring had woken Lance suddenly in the middle of the night, the Kogane family tree tapestry that hung across the eastern wall and was littered with the likenesses of relatives that Keith had never known beyond their talking portraits in the Kogane Manor’s portrait gallery.
“You okay?” Lance asked, looking up slowly from the book he was reading. He had drawn his long legs tight to his chest, the book balanced delicately along the backs of his thighs.
“Yeah,” Keith set his black school robes back down, deciding that it would probably be too stupid to pack those, “I just… what do you bring on a mission like this, you know?”
“Maybe some pajamas?” Lance offered, quirking a brow. He laughed at whatever he saw in Keith’s face.
“It’s not funny,” Keith scowled, but he couldn’t help from picturing staking out the Slytherin Manor with Regris while wearing his Gryffindor red striped pajama set and he felt his own lips twitch in amusement.
“You’re right,” Lance allowed. “Blade members probably sleep in those stupid leathers.”
“Shut up,” Keith said, though there was no heat behind it. Lance was probably right, he supposed. Other than the leathers and his supplies, he probably didn’t need much else. So he ignored the clothes he had scattered around their room in favor of retrieving his dad’s old Invisibility Cloak from his school trunk.
“So Kolivan gave you all that fancy stuff today, huh?” Lance asked, watching Keith’s poor attempts at packing. “Man, I’ve always wanted a bag like that. I mean, that has to have a pretty powerful extendable charm on it? Think of how much stuff you could carry around Hogwarts. Pidge would be so jealous.”
Now it was Keith’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Pidge has probably already figured out how to get around the Ministry restrictions. Knowing them.”
“Yeah, fair.” But Lance barely seemed to be paying attention, instead a sense of melancholia stole over his features. “Man, I miss them. I wonder what they’re up to right now. And Hunk. Romelle. They probably haven’t even left school yet.”
Keith paused in his packing, turning more fully to look at Lance. He wracked his brain. Aside from the scattered mention of Pidge having designed the extendable ears, he was pretty sure this was the first time either he or Lance had really brought up their friends since they left Hogwarts. At first, Keith hadn’t really given proper thought to the idea that Lance might be missing them, not being super familiar with the concept of friends himself, but as time went on and Lance continued to avoid the topic… Keith found himself reluctant to bring them up as well. It was an open wound that both of them knew full well was there, and they had both been content to ignore it for the two, almost three weeks since they had run away. He knew Lance was already hurting. The last thing he had wanted to do was remind his boyfriend of everything that he had given up to be here, to be with Keith , knowing that it was his fault that Lance wasn’t still with them right now.
“No,” Keith said slowly, like Lance was a skittish horse who would bolt if he said the wrong thing. Or at least suddenly change the topic as he was prone to do whenever he was uncomfortable. “At least we know they’re safe.”
“I guess,” Lance said, wrinkling his nose. His eyes were shiny in the flickering light. Keith didn’t need to be an expert in Lance’s mannerisms to know that he was on the verge of tears. “It’s just… weird. Like, is Hunk going to go visit the Holts this summer like we always do? Are Romelle and Allura going to see each other? Are they happy? Are they as scared as us? I feel like there’s just so much that we’re missing out on. I mean we can’t even write to them! And I get it, you know, we can’t jeopardize the location of the safe house, and I don’t want them to end up with some kind of target on their back just because they had the misfortune to get a letter from me, but like-” Lance cut himself off with a gasp, and when his voice came again it was wet and thick. “We didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
“I know,” Keith said, and he blinked back his own rush of tears at seeing Lance so distraught. It was true. That night by the lake they had raced away to tell Shiro they needed to leave, that it was only a matter of time before the Galra came for retribution, and by the time Shiro had helped them with the plan to leave Hogwarts and stay at Grimmauld Place, it was the middle of the night. They had packed under the cover of darkness and they were gone by dawn. All of their friends would have woken up with no idea where either of them were. Keith reached over and grabbed one of Lance’s hands with his own, squeezing it tightly. “But they’ll understand why, Lance. They know you love them, they know you miss them. Even if you can’t write to them and tell them… they know.”
“I just wish I knew they were safe and happy. I just wish I knew everyone would be safe and happy.” Lance sniffled. “That shouldn’t be too much to ask for.”
“No,” Keith agreed, his voice quiet. “It shouldn’t be. But we’ll take down Zarkon once and for all,” he said, willing himself to sound as light and carefree as possible, shaking Lance’s hand lightly to distract him from his tears, “and then you can be the vanquishing hero, returning triumphantly. Think about how cool you’ll be.”
Lance grimaced. It might have been an attempt at a smile, but it wasn’t a great one.
Keith dipped his head to meet Lance’s eyes, and made the most solemn vow he could. “We will see them all again, Lance.”
Keith could tell as soon as he said the words that Lance was done with the topic. He leaned back, tugging his hand away from Keith’s, his face breaking into the widest smile he could muster as he blatantly changed the topic, fake cheer seeping through his tone. “Yeah… Uh. Um. Anyways! You can’t just show me the super cool spy bag with a bunch of super cool spy items in and not let me rummage around so-”
With that, Lance snatched the bag out of Keith’s hands and started ooh’ing and aah’ing over the fairly mundane items he could see. Leaning forward to peer into the bag, at the enchanted space inside, he suddenly froze as he reached into the bag and pulled out one of the potions that Keith had already carefully packed away. “Healing potions?” He asked, his voice smaller again, just like it had been a minute before. “I thought Kolivan said that this mission wouldn’t be dangerous.”
“It’s just a precaution. I’m sure all Blade members are required to carry them. I’ll be okay, Lance.”
Lance ran his fingers over the cool glass of the potion bottle, leaning back against the wall. “I’ve been reading a little about Slytherin, you know?”
Keith narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Regris’s words of warning flashed through his mind, and Keith ran back through everything that he had said to Lance in regards to his joining the mission. Mostly they had argued about Keith going in the first place, about the fact that Lance wouldn’t be going. But Keith knew he had never mentioned exactly what kind of reconnaissance the mission would entail. Or where he and Regris were going to be going.
Lance just rolled his eyes at him. “You don’t have to play dumb. I remember what everyone was talking about at the meeting before we interrupted them. Hell, Regris was the one talking about Slytherin Manor in the first place. It doesn’t exactly take a Ravenclaw to put two and two together, Keith.”
There was a bitter twist to Lance’s lips, a harsh tone in his voice that Keith couldn’t stand hearing, so he reached across the space between them to snag one of Lance’s hands from where it was still running across the surface of the potion vial.
“Hey,” he said softly, threading his fingers through Lance’s, “I don’t know much more than you do. Promise. Regris won’t tell me anything while we’re in the same house.” Keith couldn’t keep the faintly amused smirk from his face if he tried. “I guess he knew before I did that I would end up telling you anything the Blade told me.”
“Well sure,” Lance’s voice was almost the over-the-top flirty tone that Keith had first been annoyed by years ago, then grown to be fondly exasperated by, and now found himself looking forward to hearing. “What else are we going to use as pillow talk?”
Without dropping Lance’s hand, Keith reached past him with his other arm and grabbed one of said pillows from where it was resting against the headboard, smacking it lightly into Lance’s shoulder.
That finally earned a proper laugh from Lance, who pulled away to tuck himself back into the corner, letting go of Keith as he brought his arms up to protect himself.
“We don’t have…” Keith had to pause for a moment, dropping the pillow back down onto the bed and trying to keep his face from flushing with the same bright red that was currently creeping up his neck, “Pillow talk.”
Lance reached forward to snag his hand and pressed a loud, obnoxiously wet kiss to the back of Keith’s hand. “Keep telling yourself that, babe,” he said smugly. Then he pushed himself back against the wall and straightened his shoulders, the light-hearted teasing slipping away like water as it was replaced by that all-too-familiar furrow between his brows. “Seriously, though,” Lance said. “Do you want to hear what I’ve been reading?”
Keith craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the book that Lance still had pressed between his torso and his knees. He couldn’t see much of the cover from this angle, but he could tell it wasn’t Hogwarts: A History anymore. “What are you doing all this reading for anyways, when you know that you won’t be able to come?”
“It’s like when we were prepping for the trials, right?” Lance said, fierce determination flashing in his blue eyes. “I might not be competing this time, but I can still help you. Even if you can’t tell me what the Blade tells you and if Shiro tries to keep me out of the conversation… well, no one can stop me from trying to learn what I can on my own.”
That made sense. In a way, Keith supposed that the Blade mission did feel similar to one of the trials from the Triwizard Tournament. It was almost a relief to know that Lance had been carrying on with the same kind of research they had always done.
“So what did you find out?” He asked, perching on the edge of the bed and angling himself towards his boyfriend.
“Not surprisingly, since he is one of the founders of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin is pretty well known,” Lance started. “There are loads of different theoretical studies and histories and mythologies surrounding the founders. Some of it is presented as fact, some of it is clearly fiction… a lot of it is so old that it’s hard to know what to believe. I started with Hogwarts: A History because I knew I remembered reading something crazy about him there years ago. And I was right! Since it’s a textbook, it doesn’t go into detail but… did you know that before Slytherin went crazy over blood purity and abandoned the other founders, it was rumored that he had created a secret hideout in Hogwarts?”
Keith bit his lip. He thought maybe he had heard a story like that at Hogwarts during his first or second year, but he had assumed it was just something the seventh years told the new students to mess with them. He hadn’t considered that it might be serious. Which, frankly, was a gross oversight on his part considering how many secret passageways he had discovered over the years. “I heard rumors, yeah. You think they’re true?”
Lance shrugged, but he flipped his book closed and held it up for Keith to see the cover. “The author of The Four Founders seems to think so,” he said. “Maybe it is just a crazy legend, or maybe pureblood fanatics like the Galra started the rumor to advance their own ideals, but this text says that the hideout, or rather… the ‘chamber’ - that’s what it is referred to as here - was built to contain ‘a horror that would purge the school of those whom Slytherin believed were unworthy of studying magic.’ Muggleborns, Keith. And this author seems to think that the ‘horror’ is some kind of monster.”
Keith felt his stomach churn at the thought, at the idea that there could be some danger lurking beneath the school that Shiro, Headmaster Holt, no one had ever found.
And Lance was still going.
“If that’s what people think he left at the school… who knows what could be at his house. What kind of monsters do you think Slytherin, like, utilized ?”
Keith shook his head. “I don’t know, Lance. Care of Magical Creatures was always your specialty.”
“Yeah, too bad I can’t call up Coran and ask him,” Lance said grimly, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Just… It got me thinking, that’s all. We have no idea what kinds of traps or secrets this house might be hiding. Promise me that you’ll be careful, Keith. I know it’s reconnaissance or whatever, and I know that Regris is going to be with you and Kolivan obviously trusts him, but we don’t know anything about him, and that house could be filled with all manner of dark artifacts. So, like, don’t touch anything and just… come back to me.”
Lance’s eyes were wide, bright and blue and shimmering with a level of concern that Keith didn’t feel like he was worthy of. Not after how he had been acting the last few days, not when he was asking Lance to watch him pack up and send him away to war with nothing more than a kiss farewell and a mouth full of promises they both know he might not be able to keep.
Like they were in one of those historical novels that Kolivan had them read for Muggle Studies homework.
Keith leaned forward, pressing himself into Lance’s space and silencing him with a fierce kiss. He pulled back just far enough to watch the shades of cerulean darken in Lance’s eyes as his pupils dilated. “I will. And once I’m back… once you’re seventeen, we’ll work with Adam to have the Ministry set up a floo route for us to get to Cuba.”
Lance licked his lips. “There’s a… magical embassy in Havana,” he said, and Keith felt slightly proud at the catch in his breath. “Cuba doesn’t have a wizarding government of its own, but MACUSA still has a building for wizards to use. There’s a collection of floo fireplaces there, that’s how I get back and forth to England for the school year.”
“Okay good,” Keith pried The Four Founders from Lance’s hands, setting the book carefully atop the nightstand behind him that was already piled high with Lance’s other books before turning to drop his hand to Lance’s waist. His fingertips skimmed the thin line of skin that was exposed from how low Lance’s jeans had ridden up and he smoothed his palm over the taut muscles of Lance’s stomach beneath his sweater. “So we’ll check on your family, make it back in time to be here with mine for the wedding.”
It felt weird, thinking of it like that. Like he was a part of Lance’s family, like Lance was a part of his. Like Keith actually had a family that was worth being a part of again.
He dipped his head lower, his lips hovering over the sensitive skin of Lance’s neck, his breath ghosting across the shell of Lance’s ear. “And then we’ll go, just the two of us. I am coming back for you, Lance. How could I not?”
“That better be a promise, Kogane,” Lance all but growled, as he reached forward to curl his own fingers into the front of Keith’s shirt. “Because I’m holding you to it.”
Lance tugged Keith forward, locking their lips together once more.
There wasn’t anything else left for them to say, so as the hours trickled away until he would be leaving, Keith was content to lose himself in Lance’s arms.
Notes:
Plot time next chapter babyyyyy
Chapter 5: Chapter Five
Summary:
The Blade mission begins, and Keith has no idea what is in store for him. Goodbyes are made, a trek is long, and a stakeout yields some clues.
Notes:
Greetings y’all! Welcome to the next installment of ISYOTOSOTW. We are so glad to hear that everyone has been enjoying our sequel so far. We have been living for all of your AMAZING comments and feedback. Truly this fic would not exist without dedicated fans like yourselves so thank you. And an especially big thank you to everyone who is just now discovering INSLYTLTL for the first time! The fact that the fic is still connecting with people years later means the world to us.
On a slightly more serious note, I did want to address that while this is a HP AU, our version of the HP universe always has been and always will be a safe space for members of the LGBTQ community. We do not support JK Rowling or her opinions in any way. INSLYTLTL is so special to us and the spirit of the Klance community is what has us returning to what we always felt was an unfinished story. Thank you for believing in us.
As always, if you enjoy the fic, make sure to comment and let us know what you think, we love and encourage conspiracy theories.
Katie
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The forest of Dún a Rí was dark. Dusk had fallen some hours ago, during the time in which Regris and Keith slipped from Grimmauld Place and taken long, meandering strolls through the dark alleys of London to ensure that they were both far enough away from Grimmauld Place for its protections to not interfere with their apparition. Also, more importantly, to ensure that they were not being followed by anyone. Regris had seemed far more concerned about the latter issue than the former, and Keith had heard him muttering under his breath about the Galra having eyes everywhere. Which was… unsettling, to say the least.
Now, Keith trudged along behind Regris, trying to mirror the silent way that Regris seemed to glide across the forest ground, unimpeded by the broken branches and protruding roots that seemed to clutch at Keith’s ankles. An expertly cast quieting charm swallowed most of the noise that they were making as Regris led Keith deeper into the heart of the ancient Irish forest, but Keith still found himself wishing that he were traipsing the familiar terrain of Hogwarts with his father’s Invisibility Cloak tossed over his shoulders. He felt like a first-year again, paranoid that Peeves was hiding behind every suit of armor and utterly out of his depths.
It didn’t help that he was distracted wondering how things were back at Grimmauld Place. Before, when Keith had snuck around the castle or when he had been a part of the Trials, he had never had anything to worry about except what was right in front of him. But now, when danger seemed to be lurking in every shadow across Britain…
For weeks all he had wanted was to leave Grimmauld Place and do something. Yet now that he had, all he could think about were the thousand of ways in which things might go wrong. What if another attack happened at the Ministry? To his mom? To Adam? He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about the destruction of the muggle bridge. What if whole London neighborhoods were next? What if he returned and found Islington nothing more than a pile of rubble? What would he do if something happened to Lance while he wasn’t there ?
There laid the crux of the matter. The real reason that Keith was driven to distraction instead of being focused on the mission before him. Here he was walking head first into danger, possibly throwing himself in front of the Galra again when he had barely survived last time, and he couldn’t stop himself from worrying about Lance.
It was making Keith regret asking to come alone in the first place. Lance was right. He should have waited.
It didn’t help that his heart was still aching with how hard it had been to leave Grimmauld Place. He hadn’t expected that. After weeks of insisting that the Blade safe house wasn’t his home, Keith had assumed it would be easy to walk away. He should have known better.
His and Regris’s exit had been a somber affair in the entrance hall of Grimmauld Place, the small space overly crowded in an attempt to fit not only Keith and Regris, but also Krolia, Shiro, Adam, and Lance.
Krolia had cupped Keith’s cheek gently in her hand, her thumb rubbing across his cheekbone while her eyes scanned every inch of him. He was no longer a child in school robes that were still completely black, yet to be claimed by a house, or a gangly teen whose quidditch robes didn’t quite fit. For the first time, wearing the dark set of Blade leathers with a black cloak clasped over his shoulders, the hood pushed back for now to reveal his face to his loved ones, Keith had felt as brave and selfless as a Gryffindor was supposed to be. “You look so much like your father,” she had said softly, quiet enough that Keith knew the words were only for him.
Shiro had ruffled his hair the way that he knew that Keith hated, before pulling him in tight to his chest. “Remember what we’ve practiced,” Shiro had muttered and Keith felt the weight of something being pressed into his hands, his fingers curling automatically around soft leather. The feel of the worn cover was instantly familiar to Keith. Shiro’s journal of spells he had designed himself. “Take it. It will make me feel better to know you have them with you in case you need them.”
Then Shiro had passed him off to Adam, who smoothed Keith’s hair back down from how Shiro had ruffled it. It brought to mind the dozens of times that Adam had done the same thing when Keith was younger, hanging out in Godric’s Hollow on school breaks instead of going home, sitting on the kitchen counter and watching as Adam cooked, the house warm with the scent of masala and chai and homey in a way that Kogane Manor hadn’t been since before his dad died. “Be safe, Keith,” Adam had said, never one to waste words.
And then there was Lance. Lance, whose long fingers worked at the leather straps of Keith’s armor, redoing a bit he had got wrong near the shoulder and tucking it back into place. His hand lingered against Keith’s chest for a moment, his palm directly over Keith’s heart. His eyes bored into Keith’s intently, and Keith knew that it was Lance’s way of reminding him of the promises that Keith had made without speaking them in front of the others. That his warm hand against Keith’s chest was code for stay safe and come home and don’t go where I can’t follow again. Keith had reached up, covering Lance’s hand with his own, his other hand resting lightly against the back of Lance’s neck, and then, uncaring of all of the eyes on them, of the fact that Adam, Shiro, his mom, and Regris all stood in the room watching them, Keith had surged forward and pressed his lips to Lance’s. His eyes had fluttered shut and he willed himself to memorize the exact feeling of this moment, tried to press a thousand answers to the corner of Lance’s mouth. Then all-too-quickly, because the kiss was brief and chaste and over far too soon, he pulled back. “Stay safe, Samurai,” Lance whispered, his fingers running over the leather armor once more, checking for any weak points before he was willing to let Keith go. Lance had leaned forward just enough to close the gap between them once more and press their foreheads together.
Keith had thought I love you but he hadn’t trusted himself to say it out loud.
He was kicking himself over it, now. How stupid was it to be afraid of words that he had already said to almost everyone in the room? His mom knew he loved her. Shiro and Adam knew he loved them. Lance knew he was in love with him. But he hadn’t wanted it to feel too much like a goodbye, so Keith had merely forced his best approximation of a smile onto his face and hefted his bag onto his shoulder, following Regris out of the door. He had paused, once, on the front steps of Grimmauld Place and looked over his shoulder, his hand half raised in farewell to the backlit figures of his family in the doorway behind him. Then Regris reached over and nudged him in the direction of a quiet street running through the neighborhood and they were off. The streets of muggle London flashed by in a blur and then Keith had the ground disappear from underneath him as Regris reached back and grabbed him, apparating with silent efficiency. His stomach had rolled at the nauseating sensation and then they had landed in damp grass outside of a muggle town Keith had never heard of before. Carrickmacross, not far from a row of candy-colored row houses. Then the walking had begun.
It had taken them ages to even reach the edge of the woods, and they had been traipsing through the shaded darkness for nearly three hours now. Apparently, Regris hadn’t been kidding when he had said that they wouldn’t be able to apparate directly to the Slytherin Manor. Keith was sure that dawn would be here well before they finally met up with the other Blade members. His chest heaved with exertion at the unforgiving pace that Regris was setting.
The atmosphere of Dún a Rí was oppressive after the quiet solitude of Grimmauld Place or the busy bustle of the Hogwarts hallways. The canopy of leaves above his head blocked out any moonlight that might have otherwise helped to illuminate the pitch black of the forest, and the branches and limbs of the trees seemed to curl inward as if they were drawn to his presence. The only light came from a small Lumos charm at the end of Regris’s wand.
Regris paused abruptly and held up a hand, motioning Keith forward. Keith crept up to his side and joined Regris near a small copse of trees that seemed to mark the beginning of a large clearing here in the heart of the forest. Regris muttered under his breath and the light from his wand disappeared, replaced for only a moment by a flash of purple arcane energy. Some kind of Blade signal to the other members that they had arrived.
“ Lumos ,” Regris muttered once the signal spell faded, and Keith watched as from the shadows of the forest, two other Blade members peeled themselves away from the trees and closed the remaining distance until they were close enough for Regris’s wand-light to illuminate their faces.
These Blade members had their hoods up, pulled low to cover most of their features from any unwanted prying eyes, although Keith was close enough that he would have been able to make out the Blade member’s identities if they were familiar to him. These two weren’t. The figure on the left was a man, and Keith could make out dark skin and a clean-shaven jaw beneath the shadows of the hood. The figure on the right was a young woman, maybe only a few years older than Keith, with large doe-like eyes and thick chestnut hair that hung over her shoulder in a practical braid.
“Regris,” the man said in a low voice. He nodded his head towards Keith. “This is the new recruit that Kolivan mentioned?”
Regris placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “It is. This is code name Yurak.”
Keith felt himself stiffen with shock. It took everything in him not to whip his head around and level Regris with the best withering glare that he could muster under the circumstances because what the actual fuck was that?
The other Blade member let out a low chuckle at the myriad of expressions that flashed across Keith’s face. “Guess you decided not to give any warnings that the Blade uses code names, huh? Don’t worry, kid. Regris does this to all of us. He’ll choose your name on a whim and then you’re stuck with it. Consider it a right of passage.”
Keith felt another hot flash of irritation at yet another thing that had been concealed from him beforehand, a growing distrust of just how many secrets the Blade had still been keeping from him beginning to prick at the back of his mind. Keith forced himself to shove those thoughts down. They wouldn’t help him now.
“You can refer to us by the same measure. I’m Spirit, and this is Mystic,” the man said, gesturing towards himself and then his partner.
Keith inclined his head in greeting, “Hi.” He felt awkward as soon as he said it. If Lance were here he would be able to cut through the tension with some self-deprecating joke or that smile and wink that always seemed to get him out of trouble. Keith could almost hear him: What, we don’t even get to pick our own super badass Blade names? Lame.
The female Blade member, Mystic, took a step forward and pitched her voice low even though Keith was sure that the pair were covered in as many noise-suppression charms as Regris was. “We arrived before you did and scouted out the terrain surrounding the house. We got close enough to see the grounds of the manor. It’s clearly not what it used to be. Doesn’t look like anyone has lived here in a long time and the house is falling to ruins. It isn’t abandoned, though. We saw a few flashes of light from inside one of the windows. It looked like firelight. Maybe a lantern. But there is no way that any muggles made it past the repulsion charms so it’s definitely someone magical.”
“Or something,” Spirit added darkly. “These woods are crawling with magical creatures. It’s possible one of them simply wandered into the manor.”
“With the way our luck has been going?” Mystic shook her head. “No. It’s the Galra. I’m not a gambling woman, but I would wager more than a few galleons on that.”
“No use speculating,” Regris said harshly, hiking his pack further onto his shoulder. “We’ll get there and see for ourselves soon enough. Spirit, I want you to lead the way since you know where we’re going. Mystic, stay in the rear and make sure nothing sneaks up on us from behind. Yurak, you’re behind me. Stay there and do as I say. If I give you an order, I expect you to listen, even if you don’t like it.”
Keith nodded once, firm and fast, barely a jerk of his head.
“Okay,” Regris said, and his grin flashed like a streak of lightning in the dark. “Then let’s go.”
< < < > > >
Keith had been crouching in the brush for hours . It was the start of his third day on recon duty with the Blade. The anxiety and anticipation that had been burning hot and fast in his gut since they had left Grimmauld Place had finally faded. His stomach no longer churned with nerves and his nails were bitten down to the quick more out of boredom than anxiety. He wondered how Lance was doing, if he was as bored as he was, or if Keith had left him too stressed out to think.
Regris had instructed them on where to keep watch from. The whole group was positioned so that they could stare out across a large clearing that had clearly been intentionally created here in the deep heart of the ancient forest. A few feet away from the trees, a wrought-iron fence had been erected to surround the lush lawns of an ancient wizarding manor house. They were close enough that Keith could make out the elegant detailing that ancient hands had transfigured into the metal: snakes curled up the vertical spires and the sharp ornamental finials each bore a distinctive family crest - the familiar swooping ‘S’ of House Slytherin. That was basically all that Keith could see. Beyond the fence, the gardens that must have once been elegant and well-tended had been allowed to grow wild and untamed. Massive bushes dripping with half-bloomed white roses and prickly with thorns pressed against the fence, making it all but impossible to see what was obscured on the other side.
Keith glanced upward once more. Regris had concealed himself so well with the branches of the tree that he was difficult to locate, but Keith could just barely make out the Blade member’s form where he was propped against the trunk of the tree, one hand on the branch to steady him while he watched for any sign of movement from the house that Keith knew was hidden somewhere in the maze before him. He turned his attention back to the offending plants, scowling at them. The wild growth reminded him of the maze from the Third Trial of the Triwizard Tournament. The memory didn’t bring him any comfort. If anything, it set him further on edge, and Keith had to unclench his jaw to stop himself from grinding his teeth. His restlessness wasn’t helping anybody. Least of all himself.
It had been dark and dim beneath the trees of Dún a Rí but now the world seemed to lighten as the sun rose, though it couldn’t quite pierce the thick canopy of oak and ash trees that stretched up overhead. Another whole night had come and gone, and they still weren’t doing anything . They hadn’t eaten anything besides field rations for three whole days now. Hunger gnawed at Keith’s belly, but Regris hadn’t said anything about preparing food this morning and Keith knew they couldn’t risk a fire. His eyes were heavy too. He had pulled several all-nighters at Hogwarts, but he was running on nearly twenty-eight hours with no sleep and Keith could feel it dragging on him. As the low man in the Blade’s hierarchy, it had largely fallen on him to cover guard duty while one of the Blade members slept and the other two patrolled. They alternated shifts every couple of hours, but Keith managed to keep drawing the short straw. He had gotten only an hour here and an hour there of rest, since the first day where he had gotten the first sleep shift, and it was starting to show. He tipped his head back towards Regris, who still showed no sign of moving and then arranged himself against the trunk of the tree. He stretched his legs out in front of him and let his eyes flutter closed. Maybe he could grab a few hours of sleep since there didn’t seem to be much for him to do.
But Keith felt like his eyes had barely closed when someone was shaking his shoulder. He blinked his eyes open, shocked to realize that the sunlight had grown even brighter while he was asleep. It must be past midday. Mystic was crouched down beside him, her fingers still curled around his shoulder, pale against the dark leathers he wore.
He hadn’t spent much time solely in Mystic’s presence. So far, he had been taking patrol shifts with Regris or Spirit, whilst Mystic had either been asleep or otherwise occupied. Up close, Keith could see that she was older than he had thought initially. Maybe somewhere around Shiro’s age, though clearly she was still lingering on the cusp of adulthood. Dark circles ringed her eyes, although they were the only indication that she must have been nearly exhausted as Keith. “Come on,” she whispered, “Regris and Spirit are trying to get a better vantage point. We haven’t seen anything recently even though we had previously spotted some activity and there’s no evidence that whoever, or whatever, it was left. You and I are going to do another full sweep of the perimeter fence. Make sure there isn’t any sign that a creature has torn part of it down or anything in the past few hours.”
“You don’t really think that the light you saw a few days ago was because of a creature, do you?” Keith asked, but he wiped the sleep from his eyes and pushed himself off the ground dutifully.
“No,” Mystic said seriously. “But it’s our duty to rule out any possibilities.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Keith allowed.
Mystic rose in one fluid motion and led the way towards the fence that marked the perimeter of the grounds. “Stay far enough in the underbrush that if there is something on the other side, they won’t be able to see us. And cast your silencing charms.”
Keith nodded and then took a few minutes to do so, waving his wand in front of himself and muttering the familiar incantations under his breath. Mystic did the same, although Keith noticed that she cast her protections nonverbally. Then, without looking back to make sure that Keith was following her, she set off.
They made it to the far side of the grounds before she spoke again. It took them about fifteen minutes to follow the line of the fence and in that time, Keith watched as the overgrown rose bushes gave way to an apple orchard, the trees wild and scraggly but laden with small yellow crab apples despite the fact that it was early summer, clearly enchanted to bear fruit year round.
“Okay, we’ve reached the back of the property,” Mystic whispered, and the low pitch of her voice didn’t match the brightness of the day or the cheerful sight of the apple orchard. “Crouch down and look through the trees. Can you make out the house?”
Keith did as she instructed, and he was slightly shocked to realize that he could from this angle. The sight that greeted him was not a stately manor home like the Kogane Manor, however, but was instead a small castle with stone walls and four massive corner towers. Ivy crawled up the sides of the stonework, nearly covering it completely, and Keith could make out massive glass-paned windows with decorative white lattice. The windows were dark, however, and the castle was much too far away in order to make out anything of significance.
Mystic reached into her satchel and pulled out a spyglass, lifting it to one eye while squinting the other closed. “Fence has looked fine this whole way ‘round,” she said, “and I don’t see any obvious signs that entrances or windows have been smashed.”
“So we’re dealing with people,” Keith muttered darkly.
“Probably.” Mystic nodded. “But it’s best to be sure. Let’s circle around the rest of the way and see if we can get a better sight of the entrance.”
Keith nodded, standing up from the crouched position he had been in and turned to follow Mystic once more. “Mystic,” he said after a moment, keeping his voice quiet, “Why did you join the Blade?”
“The secrecy stuff is getting to you, huh?” Mystic said, ducking her head, though Keith thought he could see the hint of a smile playing on her lips. “Not me. I loved that stuff. I was always chasing after answers and biting off more than I could chew. Let’s just say I fell in with the wrong crowd back in the day and realized that things were worse than I thought. I got out and took what I knew to the Ministry. I thought I’d get a slap on the wrist and turned away as punishment for what I did, instead they made me a junior auror. Said you have to know real evil in order to fight it.” She paused and added “Your mom is basically my hero, you know?”
Keith wasn’t even shocked by the realization that Mystic had figured out who he was. His name and face had been all over the Prophet during the last year.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Mine too.”
Mystic smiled although it didn’t quite seem to add any light to the dark of her eyes, reaching up to brush the loose tendrils escaping from her brunette braid away from her face. “Did it really happen like they say it did? You… saw him?”
Keith nodded. “Yes,” he said, never one to pull punches. “He really is back.”
Mystic bit her lip. “The Ministry is a bunch of cowards for refusing to report that. For not wanting to believe you. We can’t just ignore the truth because we don’t want to accept it. So many of us are already feeling the consequences of our government’s willful blindness…”
After a moment, Mystic trailed off, seeming to realize that she wasn’t just talking to herself. “But that’s my problem, not yours. Come on, I think I see something up ahead.”
She led the way forward in silence for a few more minutes and Keith was content to let it linger, turning over her words in his mind. She still hadn’t given the exact reason that she had joined the Blade but, then again, Keith supposed that for many members the reasons might be personal and private. Her comments about the Ministry were interesting, however, and he considered them alongside the fractured hints he had gotten as to the Ministry’s attitude from Adam and his mom. Adam seemed convinced that they could still win Ministry officials over to their cause, but Mystic and Krolia both seemed certain that the Ministry would keep their head in the sand until it was too late. Keith… Keith wasn’t sure what he thought. He wanted to believe that the wizarding world would unite and come together in the face of this threat, but his thoughts kept returning to the article that Rita Skeeter had written when he and Lance returned from the Third Trial.
It had been easier for the wizarding world to believe that he and Lance were mad and shell-shocked than to admit that there was a possibility of Zarkon’s return.
Mystic held up a hand, drawing Keith to a halt. He blinked out of his thoughts, startled to realize they had circled around the other side of the property and were now positioned to see the front gate that interrupted the sea of overgrown foliage. The path around the front grate was clear compared to how overgrown the rest of the garden was, exposing a pathway that must wind through the gardens before arriving at the front of the house. Maybe the garden was enchanted to stay away from the path, but it was odd that it hadn’t grown atop it when the wild rose bushes spilled across everything else and seemed to almost climb up the wrought iron posts of the fence.
Keith slipped away from Mystic, who had paused to study something on the ground to creep closer to the front gate. Something was bothering him about the garden, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. The pathway that curled through the remains of the gardens didn’t seem quite right. It wasn’t as aesthetic or natural as Keith would have expected from a pureblood family like House Slytherin if it truly was an enchantment that simply had lasted over the long years. There was something off about the whole scene too.
Keith could have sworn it hadn’t looked like that yesterday.
The iron gate loomed over Keith, a pair of massive metal snakes curling together to hold up a shield-shaped metal design that depicted a mockery of the Hogwarts crest - although instead of the divided space for four founders, there was only the design of House Slytherin and its curling snake. The tails of the snakes holding the crest aloft continued down the center of the gate, making the division down the center where the two doors would open if someone knew the proper enchantment or passkey. There was no evidence of any lock that Keith could see.
He put his hand to the bars and pushed gently, though he knew it was unlikely that the gates would open. Salazar Slytherin had likely covered this place with intensive protective magic and wards. A crackle of energy confirmed Keith’s suspicions and he saw the briefest flash of red energy pulse around his hand, his skin tingling and goosebumps rising on his arms. Yes. There was powerful and ancient magic here.
Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to make it past the wards on his own, Keith set about investigating the dirt in front of the gate for any signs of tracks that might signify people had been coming or going from the manor. The ground here in the forest was mossy and green, but there were patches of soft dirt and mud from recent rains. Keith saw a smudge near one of the muddy patches and crouched down, brushing his fingers against what was clearly the unmistakable outline of the pointed boots that were considered fashionable among pureblood wizarding families. Staying low, he followed the direction the print had been pointing in until he found another, and then a third, clearly leading in the direction of the gate.
Well, someone had clearly been here recently. These weren’t here when he patrolled the manor previously. Clearly Regris and Spirit hadn’t spotted them on their last patrol either.
He crouched near the gate, trying to peer through the iron bars and see if he could tell whether the footsteps continued on the other side. Whoever it was these footprints belonged to… they likely knew of a way past the wards.
Unfortunately the combination of the thick bars of the gate and the leafy foliage of the surrounding rose bushes prevented Keith from being able to make out any of the foot prints, but something else caught his eye.
He reached out gently, brushing his fingers lightly against a tangle of ivy that had grown over the edge of the gate. The edges of the leaf were charred black, curling slightly as if trying to pull away from whatever intense blast of heat had scorched them. An incendio spell. It had to be.
No wonder the path through the garden didn’t look like a well-tended natural path. Someone had burned their way to the heart of the grounds in order to reach the manor.
Keith glanced up, looking around for Mystic and nearly jumped out of his skin when he realized she had already crept close enough to peer over his shoulder.
She nodded, confirming that she noticed the same thing about his find that he had and then slunk away back to the woods, clearly expecting Keith to follow her.
Once Mystic was certain they were far enough to prevent being overheard, she slipped her wand free and pointed it towards the ground in front of her. “ Expecto Patronum.”
A silvery-blue light streamed from Mystic’s wand, solidifying into the shape of a small house cat. A patronus charm. Shiro had taught Keith and Lance how to cast them the year before, when the presence of dementors at Hogwarts had made it necessary to learn. They were meant for repelling dark magic, but Keith couldn’t imagine what Mystic would want with one now. Maybe she thought it would be able to get past the wards?
However, Mystic pointed her wand towards her own mouth, speaking to it softly. “Regris, Yurak and I have found evidence that someone has indeed passed us unnoticed, entered through the front gate, and made it through the wards. It seems to be a wizard who was capable of casting an incendio charm to carve a path through the gardens. Footprints suggest the presence of at least five targets within.”
Keith stiffened at her words. He had found only one set of footprints. Mystic had apparently found at least four more sets he hadn’t noticed.
“We will wait here for you and Spirit to join us. Infiltration seems necessary.”
As she finished speaking, Mystic lowered her wand and her patronus raced off into the forest, back in the direction of where she and Keith had left Regris and Spirit almost an hour ago. Keith watched it go. Clearly the patronus was carrying a message, although he hadn’t known they were capable of that. It wasn’t detailed in any of the textbooks he had ever read or even Shiro’s private journals. Maybe it was a special invention of the Blade?
“Alright, Yurak,” Mystic said, leaning back against a tree trunk and crossing her arms over her chest. “Now we wait.”
Notes:
we made a last minute decision to split the original chapter 5 into two parts as it was 10k words by itself so we hope you enjoyed part 1 of the infiltration <33
Chapter 6: Chapter Six
Summary:
Keith and the Blade finally find their way into Salazar Slytherin’s Manor. The group splits up, some mysterious books are found, and a page is translated.
Notes:
Hey y’all! Caitie sunnyjolras here. You won’t know this, because this chapter is only coming out after the fact, but we are holding this chapter hostage until INSLYTLTL hits 100,000 hits. I am writing this author’s note before we cross that number, at 99.991 hits, but as we’re publishing the chapter after we hit 100k, the goal will already be hit. So WE CELEBRATING BABY LETS GOOO 100K HITS WTF AAAA!!!!!!!!! So thank you all, so so much. We started writing INSLYTLTL back in 2017, posting it in 2018. We returned 5 years after finishing it to write this sequel. The support, the art, the music, all the comments and kudos’ that you guys have given us made this possible. If I remember correctly, when we started posting this sequel INSLYTLTL was on ~75k hits, so the jump in interest because of this sequel has been crazyyyy. So once again, Kate and I can’t thank you enough. We hope you enjoy this chapter. Next chapter we will see some crazy shit, so enjoy the final calm before the storm. Please remember to leave a comment letting us know what you think! Love, caitie sunnyjolras <33
Chapter Text
Mystic wasn’t kidding about the waiting part.
Even after Regris and Spirit had arrived and done their own investigation of the footprints that Mystic had found and the charred plant life that Keith pointed out, Regris still wouldn’t order them inside the property.
“We can’t just go charging into those wards,” he had said, frowning at them. “And anyways, how do we know that this spellwork isn’t just the handiwork of the wizards who logged the complaint with us initially? We need more information.”
So Regris had all of them climb high into the branches of the surrounding trees, ensuring that no one would be able to see them from the ground but they would still be able to have a clear line of sight on the gate.
That had been hours ago. Night had nearly fallen once more, a blood-red light creeping across the horizon as the sun sank lower in the sky and Keith’s tailbone hurt from how one of the branches was digging into his lower spine. His whole body thrummed with anticipation and he wanted nothing more than to push himself down from the branch and throw himself against those wards until he found a way to burst through. But that wasn’t how magic worked and Keith knew it wouldn’t be effective so he forced himself to turn his wand over and over in his hand, this thumb rubbing the wood smooth as he watched for any sign of the light that Mystic and Spirit had claimed to see.
The noise reached him first. The whisper of fabric sliding against the ground, a sturdy fall of heavy boots unconcerned that there might be anyone around to notice them, a muttered curse as someone tripped over the roots of the forest in the darkness. An unfamiliar voice.
Keith was instantly alert. He stilled his fidgeting, clutching his wand in one hand and turning his head just slightly. It was enough to catch a glimpse of a black-robed figure in his peripheral vision. Keith couldn’t make out their details, although they were tall and lean and had a dark cloak pulled low to cover their face. They seemed to glide over the forest ground, their long robe covering their feet, although occasionally it seemed as though the fabric got twisted underfoot and nearly sent them sprawling across the forest floor. That was the problem with the traditional Pureblood wizarding fashions… they weren’t always very practical.
The wizard straightened themself with a frustrated huff, smoothing down their robes again and then stepped in front of the massive gate. They were positioned now so that Keith could only see the back of their cloak, and he couldn’t make out their face or what they were doing at all, but a low hissing noise began to emanate from within their hood. It sounded like a snake, but also like no snake that Keith had ever heard and it caused the hair on the back of his neck to raise despite the warmth of the summer air.
In response to the cold, slithering sounds, the energy of the wards crackled across the gate again, sparking like crimson lightning. An audible creaking of metal filled the air and the gates began to hiss open, parting like the maws of a massive serpent creature to allow the robed figure to slip inside. Keith glanced a quick look towards Regris, wondering if the senior Blade member would give a signal for them to race after the wizard and slip through the gates before they closed. But no such signal came.
Keith clenched his hands into fists against the tree trunk as he watched Regris do nothing and the gates swung closed once more, effectively sealing their infiltration team on the wrong side. They were wasting time. They could be inside the grounds, figuring out what was going on, right now!
Finally, after several more minutes, Regris dropped down to the ground, landing perfectly on his feet in near silence and Mystic and Spirit followed suit. Keith scrambled down his own tree and joined them in front of the gate, frustration bubbling in him at Regris’s casual unbothered stance.
“Why didn’t we follow them?” Keith hissed. “We could be past these wards right now!”
“And whoever that was would surely know they were being followed,” Regris said flatly. “Patience, Keith.”
Patience yields focus , Shiro’s voice echoed in Keith’s mind. He forced himself to uncurl his fists.
Regris barely spared him another glance, turning his attention to Spirit. “Did you get that?” He asked.
Spirit nodded. “I did.”
The older man stepped forward until he stood directly before the gate, in the same position that the mysterious hooded figure had. He tipped his head backwards and looked directly up at the two snakes curled across the top of the decorative design, almost like he was planning on addressing them. He opened his mouth and the same strange hissing noise that the figure had made began to spill forth from Spirit’s mouth. The noises made no sense coming from a human mouth, hissing and spitting without seemingly any need for Spirit to draw breath.
Now that he was ground level, Keith could make out details that he hadn’t noticed from the trees above. The pair of iron snakes atop the gate moved, their metal eyes blinking open. One of them began to move its tail, sliding it upward along the central edge of the gate and as it moved, the crimson energy of the wards flared to life, flashing brightly and then dissipating in response to the serpent’s movements. Only once the tail had retracted completely to the top of the gate did the hinge begin to swing open, filling the air with that same cold metallic creak.
“Good work,” Regris clapped Spirit on the shoulder and stepped forward. “Quick, everybody get in before it closes.”
Keith gaped at the pair of them. There was only one explanation for what had just occurred. Spirit was a Parselmouth, someone who could innately speak to serpents. Such a skill wasn’t entirely unknown within the wizarding world but it was rare. It was a hereditary trait, passed down through the old pureblood families of Slytherin House and as such it had a thick association with wizards who had gone Dark. Keith had never heard of anyone in the Ministry being able to speak it.
Regris was already moving forward quickly but silently, prowling like a large cat. Spirit and Mystic were close behind as everyone rushed to get through the gate before it closed and Keith didn’t want to risk being left behind so he forced himself to remember how to move. He slid through the gate just before it started to close, the iron squealing behind him. The wards brushed against him, invisible but still clearly there. Keith could feel them. They felt slimy and smooth against his mind, like he was brushing snakeskin. They didn’t prevent him from entering, though, and Keith stepped forward and knew he had just crossed the ancient threshold of Salazar Slytherin’s own power.
Regris and Mystic were investigating some of the charred plantlife while Spirit waved his wand through the air, likely trying to identify the wards.
“Mystic was right,” Regris confirmed, straightening. “We definitely have company here and I don’t think it’s friendly. I want everyone to be extra cautious. We are in enemy territory and we don’t know who these wizards are or what they are up to. Yurak.”
Keith stiffened at being addressed by Regris. “Yes?”
“Pull out that invisibility cloak of yours and put it on. I want that thing on you until I tell you otherwise. Understand?”
Keith nodded and then moved quickly to do as he was told, taking his father’s invisibility cloak out of his bag and swinging it over his shoulders. He pulled it over himself until he was completely covered from view and then watched as Regris, Mystic, and Spirit began casting their own various enchantments. None of them disappeared from Keith’s vision entirely, although it seemed as though the shadows clung to them and helped obscure them from view unless Keith knew exactly where to look.
Regris waited until everyone was ready and then he turned in the direction of the manor. “Stay close,” he said in a low voice. Keith wasn’t sure whether the words were meant for just him or all of them. “Let’s go see what these Galra bastards are up to.”
< < < > > >
Despite the precautions that Regris, Spirit, and Mystic took - moving forward slowly, creeping from one patch of foliage to the next and then calling the others forward once they were sure the path ahead was clear - their efforts proved unnecessary. There was no sight of anyone else in the grounds, not even the wizard whom they had followed. All they passed were never-ending rose gardens and a path of flattened grass and dirt that had been scorched black by magic. Luckily, the path through the overgrown property led pretty directly to the manor itself, so clearly whoever had cleared out the trail had a good idea of where they wanted to go. It was almost suspicious how easily they were able to arrive at the front door of the ancient house of Salazar Slytherin. Keith felt like the air was crackling with tension, the massive castle looming above them like a trap that was just waiting to be sprung.
The castle was no less intimidating from up close as it had been from afar. A short cobblestone walkway led to an arched door crafted from fine and ancient oak, ivy creeping along the side of the stone. Lattice windows lined the stone on the second and third story above the ground floor and the two towers positioned to look down at the door were lined with archer’s arrowslits. It was too dark inside the tower for there to be any way of knowing if there were more dark wizards watching them from those tiny gaps in the stonework, but Keith knew that was a chance that Regris was going to have to take if they wanted to get inside. And he was well aware that Regris wanted to get inside.
Keith could see the anticipation in the straight line of the older Blade member’s shoulders and the steely glint that the pale rising moonlight lit in his eyes. Night had well and truly fallen now, and that would give them more cover than anything. They could be walking directly into an ambush, but they would never learn what the Galra were up to otherwise.
Mystic stepped directly in front of the door, waving her wand a few times as she sliced through the protective enchantments that had been placed there, undoing the spellwork with ease. Keith had never seen someone do anything of the sort and he wondered if it was a spell of her own design. Despite her young age, Mystic was clearly as much of a Defense Against the Dark Arts prodigy as Shiro. Finally, once she seemed certain that there weren’t any lingering nasty surprises waiting for them, Mystic tapped her wand against the thick iron lock set into the dark wood. There was a soft click, the result of a silently cast alohomora charm, and then she reached forward and put her hand to the door, pushing it open near silently.
The interior of the castle was dark, a massive entry hall gaping open like the jaw of some ancient monster. The only source of light came from the thin stream of moonlight that spilled in from the open door, which only served to cast dark and looming shadows across the cracked marble floor. Black and white tiles spilled out until they reached the base of a stone staircase in the center of the hall, though Keith could see the dark outlines of doors that must lead further into the first floor as well. The walls were lined with giant tapestries depicting members of the Slytherin family. There was even one of Salazar Slytherin himself and another of a fair-haired woman who must have been his wife. While the tapestries must have once been beautiful, now age and abandonment had weathered and ruined them until they hung in tatters. Iron sconces jutted from the stone, long empty of the candles they would have once held. Remains of long rotted wooden furniture rested in partially crumbled heaps. Whatever protective enchantments Salazar Slytherin had used to protect this place, he clearly hadn’t worried about the items in this chamber.
Mystic stepped forward into the room, Spirit close behind her, and they slowly began to carefully comb through the rubble. Regris put his hand on Keith’s back, between his shoulder blades, and pushed him forward gently. Keith was so shocked by the gesture, he barely had time to wonder how Regris knew where he was with the invisibility cloak on.
“Come on, kid,” he said, his voice low and rough, “into the belly of the beast.”
Keith crept forward, blinking against the sudden shock of light as Mystic lit up the room with a lumos charm.
“There are three different directions,” she whispered to Regris. “An Eastern and Western wing here on the ground floor, and the stairs leading to the upper stories.”
“We split up,” Regris said decisively. “Mystic, you take the East Wing. Spirit, you take the West Wing. Yurak and I will head up to the upper floors. Keep an eye out for any evidence of these Galra bastards. You know what to do if you get in trouble.”
Keith whipped his head around to look at Regris, squinting his eyes in confusion. Regris had never told him what the plan was if something happened, if they were discovered by the Galra or trapped in the house or… or worse.
But Mystic just nodded.
“And douse that wand light,” Regris added. “We don’t need to let them know that we’re coming.”
Instantly the room went dark once more as Mystic followed Regris’s order without question. Now that the light was gone, the dark seemed worse than it had before. The room felt oppressive and ominous. Keith couldn’t track where the other two Blade members seemed to have disappeared to, it was like the shadows had instantly reached out and swallowed Mystic and Spirit whole.
He suppressed a shudder, straining his eyes to keep his focus on Regris’s form, which was also difficult to pick out thanks to the enchantments he had cast on himself. Even though Keith knew Regris was standing right beside him, he only caught flickers of movement, the sudden pale flash of Regris’s face as he turned to look in Keith’s general direction or the dark flicker of his wand raising through the air.
“Stick close to me and don’t get lost. We’ll climb to the third floor first and then check the second on our way back down. But watch my back. We don’t want any nasty surprises.” With that, Regris crept forward towards the base of the stairs.
Keith trailed after him, keeping his own wand held in a light grip in front of him, peeking over his shoulder periodically to ensure that he didn’t see any signs of movement. His senses felt like they were on high alert, the light sound of every padded footfall and the brush of his cloak behind him nearly making him jump. He forced himself to remain calm and cool, trying to mask his emotions like he had seen Regris do. He glanced down occasionally, in case one of the stairs had been enchanted to bite like the one at Grimmauld Place or turn into a sudden slide to send any intruders skidding down to the bottom like some of the stairs at Hogwarts, but nothing happened. It had almost been too easy to get inside.
It made Keith’s skin crawl.
There was no evidence of any Galra at all, though the thick layer of dust on the floor seemed to have been disturbed by… something.
Regris paused at the second landing, but then gestured up towards the third floor and continued climbing the massive stairs. Keith glanced out towards the second floor, but he couldn’t pick out any details in the darkness. He tried to remember the plans that he and Regris had gone over. The first floor was full of public meeting spaces: the entry hall, a formal dining room, and an elegant ballroom, but it also possessed the servants quarters and the kitchen. The second floor was made up of several more rooms that would have been open to the public during Salazar Slytherin’s lifetime: a portrait gallery, a drawing room, a music room, an enchanted conservatory. The third floor was the domestic floor, consisting of private bedrooms and studies. Yes, Keith could see why Regris would want to start there.
If the Galra were up to something here… surely it had to do with Salazar Slytherin, himself.
Regris held up a hand to stop Keith before they could spill out onto the third floor proper, waiting near the top of the staircase. At this floor, the hallway led to both the left and the right, and Keith could make out a seemingly unending row of doors extending in either direction. The dark wood of the floors was clearly scuffed with marks of recent passage, in both directions and leading back down the stairs.
“Whoever was up here is gone now,” Regris said, crouching to brush his fingers against the thick layer of dust and grime. “Which might mean that they got what they came for. But let’s hope not. Check the left passageway, I’ll go right. Meet me back here in twenty minutes. It should be safe but… we’re in Salazar Slytherin’s manor and I don’t trust that anything is as easy as it looks. Don’t be stupid.”
Keith scowled, though he knew Regris couldn’t see him. “I won’t.”
Without another word, Regris turned and climbed up the last few steps, sliding down the passageway to the right and disappearing into the shadows.
Keith gripped one hand against the banister, the splintered wood digging into his hand even through the gloves he wore.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself. “Time to prove yourself.”
Trying to fill himself with the Gryffindor bravery that had come so naturally to him just a year ago but seemed so far away after everything that had happened in the graveyard, Keith pushed himself off the banister and turned to the left.
If he closed his eyes, Keith wondered if he could almost pretend that he was back in the dark corridors of Hogwarts, sneaking around after hours and jumping into an alcove any time he thought he heard Peeves even though he was wearing an invisibility cloak, but Keith didn’t dare close his eyes to even try to pretend. Not here. Not now.
Regris seemed to think they were alone up here, so Keith risked a lumos charm so that he could actually see where he was going, the sudden flare of white light from his wand revealing a lavish hallway with painted portraits of sleeping Slytherin family members hanging in ornate frames on the walls. The figures shifted and stirred at the light, but remained sleeping, and Keith found himself wondering if the age of the paintings had anything to do with how little they seemed to react to the light. Several of the figures in the painting shared the same light blonde hair as the woman from the tapestry downstairs, although others had dark curls and sharp, angular features. Keith tried his best to ignore them as he stepped up to the first door.
The cool metal of the knob gave way easily under his hand, and Keith opened the door only wide enough for him to place his eye to the crack and peer inside. A lavish bedchamber greeted his view, though clearly one that had been designed for a child, with a miniature four-poster bed covered by moth-eaten emerald curtains, and an old fashioned chess set arranged on a table in the corner, black and white marble pieces waiting for their owner to return and play another game. The sight struck Keith as strangely painful, so he closed the door and resumed his search.
The next several rooms he encountered were bedchambers as well, though clearly for adults. They were stiff and formal, reminiscent of the Hogwarts dormitories in some ways, the way the spaces had been before the students personalized them and claimed them as their own. Barren. Formal. Lifeless. It is a never-ending sea of once flowing curtains torn to tatters, dark ebony wood carved into swirling snakes, marble busts of figures who all shared the same sharp nose and narrow jaw. And the green. Keith didn’t know how someone could have lived amongst all this never-ending green. It was disorienting and made each room feel the same, so that the entire hall felt like one long unending labyrinth.
For the precious minutes it took Keith to comb through each of the rooms searching for some sign of… anything, he became certain that there was nothing to find. Slytherin Manor felt empty of anything of real importance. It was like a museum. Or a tomb. A facade that had been carefully cultivated to hide the true treasures within. They were missing something.
He was missing something.
He doubled back once he reached the dead end, giving each of the bedchambers a more thorough once-over, searching for signs of which one might have once been the master, the bedchamber occupied by Salazar Slytherin, himself. Now that he knew what he was looking for, Keith forced himself to pay more attention to the marble busts lining each mantle, the paintings that clung desperately to the walls.
In the adult bedchamber attached to the child’s room, glanced over so quickly in his initial search, Keith finally found something that made him hesitate. A portrait of Salazar himself hung on the wall, the figure inside the frame dozing lightly but his fingers curled around the pommel of the sword he wore at his waist. The scene behind him showed a room lined with bookshelves and a work table covered by a collection of taxidermied magical creatures: pixies and miniature dragons and even a stuffed Phoenix.
Salazar Slytherin had been one of the founders of Hogwarts, a castle littered with secret passageways and hidden rooms. Keith had lost hours upon hours of sleepless nights to discovering the secrets this man had left for him. So why had he assumed that everything in this house would be as it appeared on the surface?
If he was right, this portrait was using one of the oldest tricks in the book, the backdrop secretly a hint to the concealed room beyond…
The study of Salazar Slytherin.
Surely that would be of interest to the Galra.
Keith reached out and curled his fingers around the edge of the portrait frame. He gave the frame a sharp tug, and swung open under his hands, the large portrait functioning like a door as it revealed an archway set into the wall behind it.
The light from Keith’s wand illuminated the newly revealed space, which was far more spacious than the layout of the house would have had one believe, clearly magically enchanted. Like the library at Grimmauld Place, the walls were lined with wooden bookshelves. But where Grimmauld Place held mostly bound leather volumes, here the shelves were mostly full of parchment. Some loose leaf pages rested scattered across the shelves, some were bound into bundles with leather, and several hundreds of scrolls were stacked in piles, everything arranged by some organizational system that had been long lost to time. Keith swept his wand through the air, the light catching on the large remains of a skeletal hippogriff that was arranged with museum-like precision on display, a bronze placard in front of it with text in an ancient language that Keith couldn’t read, though he thought it was Latin. As he had seen in the portrait, there was a large work table although it was mostly free of any taxidermied magical beasts, save the handful of stuffed pixies that someone had enchanted to hover in the air three feet above it. Keith spun, taking in the rest of the room, the half that the portrait hadn’t shown.
There was a massive desk, carved from a pale white wood that looked almost like bone. The drawers had been pulled free and their contents now littered the floor, parchment yellowed with age but surprisingly intact, a scrawled small script in black ink marking every page. The paper crunched beneath Keith’s feet as he made his way forward. There was something made even stranger by the mess around it: a very careful and particular arrangement of parchment on the surface of the desk, sitting in a neat stack beside a thickly-bound leather manuscript. Someone had been here.
Someone had been here.
The tip off that the Blade had received was right. It had to be the Galra, Keith felt it in his gut.
He raced across the room, anticipation and excitement thrumming through him at the find. If this was what the Galra had come for, maybe there was some clue as to what they were working on!
The placement of both the single leather manuscript and the neat stack of parchment beside it clearly seemed intentional, so Keith delicately reached out and flipped the book open, pausing before he dared to pick it up. He had heard of books in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts that screamed when you picked them up or were tainted with dark magic curses. That was the last thing that he needed to risk encountering right now.
But the book didn’t seem to react to his touch except to fall open limply. Now that he was closer, Keith’s wand illuminated the dark green leather of the cover, the color was so dark that it seemed nearly black in the dark of the room, but a hint of Salazar Slytherin’s house color was there all the same. The parchment inside the book was a pale ivory white, unlike the curling pages of many of the loose-leaf notes, having clearly been enchanted to be preserved through the passage of time. That same neat, small handwriting filled the pages in a nearly illegible old-English script, although someone had come through later and re-copied each paragraph in the margins, their script swooping and clearly written by a more modern hand. The title page answered any of his lingering doubts.
The Spellbook of Salazar Slytherin
Transcribed in 1890 by Sebastian Sallow
Keith flipped through the first few pages, skimming the contents quickly. Had the Galra been looking for this? Salazar Slytherin’s private Spellbook would be a valuable magical artifact and certainly something prized and idolized by dark wizards everywhere. But was there more to it than that? Was there actually something of use hidden in its pages?
Keith’s eyes skipped over passage after passage detailing spell etymology and precise wand movement instructions for various spells. Many of them were spells that Keith recognised, having been taught them over the years in Defense Against the Dark Arts or Charms class though Keith hadn’t realized that Slytherin was credited with their invention. Other spells were ones that Keith knew had become obsolete in light of improved incantations over the years, possessing elements of familiarity but in ways that seemed almost… rudimentary compared to how far wizarding society had come. The most interesting ones by far were the ones that Keith did not recognize at all. Questions bubbled in his mind as he processed each one in turn. Was he looking at spells that Salazar Slytherin had designed himself and then guarded in secret? Spells that no one but the scarce handful of people who might have once retained possession of this book might have knowledge of?
It reminded Keith of Shiro’s journal, the spells his brother had designed and shared with him, and eventually Lance, as well, that had helped them come back from the Triwizard Tournament alive. Shiro’s spells had changed the course of several of the trials, like when Keith fought the Baku. Shiro was a master of the Dark Arts, he had to be, in order to teach their opposition, but he was nowhere near on the level of Salazar Slytherin himself.
He had seen the devastation of the sectumsempra curse first hand. If that spell was even a fraction as powerful as what Slytherin designed… the spells in this book could be strong enough to change the course of the entire war .
Keith knew he should be looking at these new spells, memorizing them as quickly as he could. He flipped past several pages, trying to comprehend Slytherin's various remarks on historical artifacts, spells, and rituals, searching for something that seemed familiar enough for Keith to understand. So much of it felt alien and unfamiliar, like whatever the fuck a horcrux was. Finally, he turned one of the pages, an entry for a curse he knew all too well caught Keith’s eye. He paused on the page, unable to stop himself from taking the time to read even though he was unsure if anyone would be returning to this room.
Imperius
School of Magic: Curse
Incantation: Imperio
Wand Movement: Pointed directly at the intended target
Effect: Total Control
Keith blinked hard against the unwelcome memories that suddenly flooded his thoughts: Allura’s face, slack jawed, her eyes unseeing and yellow flashed through his mind. He closed his eyes briefly, trying instead to picture Allura as he had last seen her, hugging her friends goodbye and smiling with cheer despite the horror of what had been done to her, the Beauxbatons carriage behind her. He let the memory of his friend fill him with resolve before he forced himself to continue reading.
The paragraph beneath the heading for the Imperius Curse was illuminating. Salazar Slytherin’s penchant for the Dark Arts was well known, but it was much different to see it laid out so cleanly in his own handwriting, the script in the margins not always necessary to translate in cases where the Old English resembled the modern tongue close enough for Keith to make out what was said. Slytherin clearly advocated for the use of the Imperius Curse, carefully detailing the specific intonation one must use when speaking the incantation and the wand movements needed to have the tightest grasp possible on the victim’s mind. Keith felt his stomach roll. He knew, logically, even without the notes in the margins pointing it out to him, that when Salazar Slytherin had been alive, the Unforgivable Curses had not yet been deemed legally unforgivable… but the content in the spellbook was still unsettling.
Trying his best to shrug off the odd feeling that had settled over him at such obvious encouragement of an unforgivable curse, Keith’s eyes skipped to the next page and he felt his breath catch in his throat. Until now the pages had been pristine, but the page following the Imperius Curse was marred, the corner folded over itself as if to mark the spot for a reader to return to later.
It was not the entry for a single spell but instead seemed to be several spells grouped under a collective heading:
Inferius
The word was unfamiliar to Keith and he turned it over in his mind as he read the margin notes explaining what Salazar Slytherin had collected here.
An assortment of ritualistic spells of the Darkest Art , wrote the long dead Sebastian Sallow, capable of reanimating corpses in various states of decay. This is not true resurrection, something which has long been deemed impossible even through such avenues of necromancy, and does not bring life to the reanimated corpses, instead offering only a semblance of it. These corpses, hence deemed inferi in Slytherin’s text, act like puppets for the spellcaster to command. They possess no will or mind of their own. The spells are of a complex manner, and must be performed in a specific order that always begins with a blood sacrifice from the caster. Once completed, the rituals allow for the inferi to be preserved indefinitely, with unwavering loyalty to the spellcaster. Immune to the pains of bodily harms, as they lack the blood and consciousness necessary to feel pain, these creatures of the dark dislike both heat and warmth. Slytherin writes that any who create such creatures should be sure to ward them regularly with fire protection spells as otherwise they can be easily destroyed via burning.
Slytherin writes that the increased likelihood for successfully casting the ritual spells requires an unnamed relic, though the relic also has properties linked to lighter magics including the ability to heal those afflicted by Dark Magic by the way of a sacrifice… Could this be what I am searching for?
Keith shook his head. Clearly the page had been marked by the ancient transcriber of the text, rather than any of the Galra. If there were clues to be found as to why they wanted the spellbook, they likely lay in the dozen of untranslated pages that now spilled across the desk before him. Keith plucked one at random, his eyes roaming the page. It looked like a letter, and Keith could tell that it was addressed to Godric Gryffindor, but the bulk of the text was in Latin. Of course it was. Slytherin had lived hundreds of years ago, long before English became the standard written language, and he was a pureblood noble to boot. His spellbook might have been written in Old English, likely because it was only ever meant to be read by himself, but anything that he sent to other pureblood wizarding families, to the other founders , would undoubtedly be more formal. It struck Keith suddenly that he was holding a piece of parchment that had not only been written by a founder of Hogwarts, but that had obviously been intended to be read by one as well. It was history that he was holding in his hands. The thought made his head spin.
He set the paper down and began rifling through the drawers of the desk. Keith could tell the remnants of dark magical wards still lingered on them, though someone had clearly already undone the protective enchantments. The first drawer contained ancient quills made from peacock feathers and bottles emerald green ink, a wooden space designed to display a wand not currently in use, and a signet ring that must have been used to seal correspondence with the sigil of House Slytherin. All useless to Keith now.
But the second drawer was far more interesting.
Nestled within a pile of scrolls and weathered documents, there was a small black journal. The thick pages were clearly handbound and the thick covers were held together with a thick strap of leather that someone had knotted across the front. The leather was dark and black and made from some animal hide that no muggle would have ever worked with: dragonhide.
Keith touched his fingers to it softly, almost reverently, though he held no love for Salazar Slytherin. But this was something important. He could tell. This was something that the Blade could use.
He scooped it up quickly, untying the leather with trembling fingers and skimming through the Old English text inside. He could barely make out what it said, but it was enough for him to know with complete certainty that this was what Regris had been hoping to find on the third floor. And he needed to get it to him as soon as possible.
Keith tucked both the small dragonhide book and Salazar Slytherin’s spellbook into his satchel, ensuring they were safely protected before he turned quickly on his heel and raced as quickly as he darted back through the dark halls of the upper floor back in the direction of the staircase where Regris was surely already waiting after how long Keith had spent poking around the study.
His feet were nearly silent as he all but slid across the ancient wood flooring, the invisibility cloak keeping him safe from prying eyes. A dim shadow seemed to waver slightly near the winding stairs and Keith realized that the form was Regris, still nearly hidden from view by the stealth enchantments he had cast on himself. Keith skidded to a stop in front of him and reached up just enough to peel the invisibility cloak back so that Regris could see his face.
“Put that cloak back down, kid,” Regris said in a low, warning tone. “You’re late. I was just about to come looking for you.”
Keith tugged the cloak back down but he ignored the rest of what Regris had said. His voice, when it came out, was breathless. “Regris. Regris, I found something.”
“What is it, Yurak?”
“A diary entry,” Keith said in a rush, the words spilling out of his mouth, laced with anxiety and excitement. He reached into his satchel and produced the dragonhide book - Salazar Slytherin’s diary - and flipped it open to the page that someone, maybe one of the Galra members, had left folded down. “Written in Salazar Slytherin’s own hand.” Keith continued, and he reached from beneath the invisibility cloak to offer the diary to Regris.
Regris leaned forward and tapped his wand with a small flourish against the page that Keith gestured to. “ Intelligere illud ,” the Blade member muttered, barely a whisper in the quiet hallway. Keith wasn’t sure what the spell was, but it made the letters shift and realign on the page, until what they were looking at was clearly modern English. It was dark in the hallway, so Regris risked a lumos charm, both of them bending low over the page to read it.
I admittedly find myself at a loss. When we began to lay down the foundations of our life’s work, we all swore to protect it fiercely. I could expect this of Helga, whose bleeding heart lends itself towards these less-fortunate souls who now roam our halls. Rowena, I was surprised by, as I thought she would be one to listen to reason, but she has always sided with Helga over me. But Godric? I never thought this of him, that he would have let the danger of muggles masquerading as witches and wizards permeate throughout Hogwarts. I thought he would have known that the students of these hallowed halls must be exceptional. That we cannot afford for stains to tarnish the reputation of this facility. I was somehow wrong.
I fear there may be no chance of reconciliation. My longest companion has looked at me with nothing more than contempt on his features. I must leave here, and leave nothing behind. My duty at this school shall cease and I shall task a new generation to impart my teachings. I see no end in sight to this madness. I doubt even my failsafe shall prove useful. I shall take little with me when I go, aside from death’s gift that has been my constant companion.
Instead, I shall move the creature from here and place it into a deep sleep in the scriptorium. I hope that one day it shall prove useful to me, that there may be an opportunity for it to rid the Wizarding world of those unworthy of the magic they cast. If not, I shall leave it for a descendant worthy of commanding it, in hopes they will understand why I must take this path of action. I long for a day when we are safe and happy, and free from the influence of the impure.
Maybe then Godric will look at me again.
“Regris,” Keith gasped, “is it possible that Slytherin could have kept a beast in stasis here? In a room called the… scriptorium? Whatever the hell that is?”
“A scriptorium?” Regris echoed incredulously. His eyes roamed the page hungrily. “It is mentioned in some medieval texts, but…” He trailed off after a moment, consumed by the diary entry. “It might have been a room where Slytherin would have transcribed his works. But if he moved a beast here…”
“What does it mean?”
Regris shook his head. “I’m not sure. But I have a feeling that whatever we might encounter here will be associated with the darkest arts. We must be careful.”
Keith’s head whipped up. “Mystic and Spirit are on the ground floor. If the Scriptorium is real… they might find it and not realize how dangerous it is. We have to warn them!”
“Yes,” Regris agreed. “Finding the Scriptorium is our top priority now. This explains why the Galra presence has been concealed from us. Quickly, boy, back down the stairs. And keep that wand up.”
Keith did as he said, clutching his wand in his hand as he began to make his way back down the stairs, his feet pounding against the wood, taking them too at a time. This was the closest he had been to answers in ages.
If they could find what the Galra were doing here and stop it…
Maybe Keith could bring more than information back to the Blade. Back to Lance.
Maybe he could bring hope as well.
Chapter 7: Chapter Seven
Summary:
Keith and the Blade members he’s working with make their way into the Scriptorium of Salazar Slytherin. A hidden entrance is revealed, a door is opened, and a realization is made.
Notes:
Greetings, y’all! It’s me, your girl Kate, writing to you this month. Thank you all so much for your endless love and support on both this fic and INSLYTLTL. It has been so sweet to see how many new readers are still finding INSLYTLTL lately, I’m not sure if it’s because of the sequel or not, but it feels like it is and my AO3 email has been making my morning every day. We also hit 1,000 bookmarks on the first fic so THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone who has read, saved, and shared our little series. We love you guys so much. I really hope that you all like this next chapter as it is one of my favorite things that I have ever written. For any of my Arkham Horror board game fans… this one is dedicated to you. We really hope you enjoy this chapter, so please feel free to come scream at me and Cait in the comments or on twitter after you finish reading. <3 Kate
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Keith’s feet pounded against the stairs, the constant thump thump thump echoing the pounding of his heart against his ribcage as he and Regris raced back down towards the ground floor. There was no need to be quiet now. Even without checking the second floor, Keith knew that the Blade members were alone here in the Manor. If the Galra really were here, and Keith could feel in his gut that they were, then they had surely already sequestered themselves into the scriptorium. They had already found it, and whatever else Salazar Slytherin might have hidden inside. The rest of the house had been little more than a decoy, a distraction, one that had wasted precious time. The Galra might already be gone by now. Mystic and Spirit could be captured or worse. Keith felt bile rising in the back of his throat, tasting it on his tongue. They might already be dead.
The white light of Regris’s lumos spell ricocheted off the banister of the stairs, the framed portraits and heavy tapestries hanging from the walls, casting long shadows across the floor.
The stairs spilled out onto the ground floor and Keith stumbled over the edge of the invisibility cloak as he landed, delaying him just long enough that Regris was able to take the lead. Regris launched himself immediately towards the West Wing of the ground floor - the direction that he had sent Spirit when their party split. Keith hesitated in the center of the entry hall for a moment, unsure if he should head to the East Wing and try to find Mystic or keep their group together as much as possible. Mystic could be in danger, but they didn’t know what they were walking into down here and Keith couldn’t let Regris go without backup either. Kolivan had told him to listen to Regris, and Regris hadn’t told him to go wandering off on his own, so Keith tightened his invisibility cloak around his shoulders and chased after the retreating sound of Regris’s footfalls.
Keith had lost his sight on Regris’s shadow-wreathed form during his moments of indecision so the sudden sound of voices from up ahead caused him to instantly stiffen and press himself flat against the closest wall, his wand in his hands, the wood slightly damp from his sweating palms. But then the now-familiar tenor of the voice registered and Keith felt his shoulders drop as the tension faded from his body.
Spirit.
A higher pitched, feminine voice joined the conversation as well, although Keith couldn’t make out exactly what was being said. Mystic. So she was alright too.
There had been a dozen worst-case scenarios Keith had been picturing, but none of them were true. The relief that slammed into him was so startling he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had only spent a mere few days with Mystic and Spirit. They meant almost nothing to him. Merlin, he didn’t even know their names. But he had been so scared.
Once he had steadied his breathing and he didn’t feel like he was on the verge of having a panic attack, Keith pushed himself off the wall and followed the voices deeper into the West Wing. Similar to the layout of the floors above, Keith passed several doors that he knew from the floorplans of the building led to the entertaining spaces of the Manor. In Slytherin’s time, this ground floor would have been open to pureblood wizarding visitors at all time, to say nothing of the grand feasts and balls that had been held. Everything about it, from the golden chandeliers hanging above his head to the massive marble statues lining the wall had been hand picked for its grandeur.
Keith barely saw any of it.
The pinprick of light from Regris’s wand called to him like a specter. He followed it deeper into the massive hall until he could make out three shadowy figures standing on the edges of the puddle of illumination, conversing quietly though even whispers echoed loudly throughout the cavernous chamber.
“-ould be right here,” Spirit was in the middle of saying. He stood nearly pressed against the far wall, which was an unbroken collection of the same stones that made up the exterior walls of the castle situated at the end of the hall. There were no doors or windows, not even archer slits like they had seen from outside. Something about it felt off to Keith, though he couldn’t put his finger on why.
Keith reached up and brushed his hood back so the others would know where he was. “What’s wrong, Spirit?” He asked.
Spirit paused with one hand pressed against the stone in front of him. The other held his wand in a light grip as he tapped it against each stone brick in turn.
“There you are, boy.” Regris said roughly. “Keep up next time. Your mother would kill me herself if I lost you in here.”
Keith winced. He could hear the truth of it in Regris’s voice, though he was clearly trying to hide it. The older Blade member had been worried about him. “Sorry.”
“‘Sorry’ doesn’t matter. Just stay close to me. Your intuition was right.” He turned to Spirit and Mystic. “The Galra are here and they’re up to something,” he confirmed for them. “Yurak found some notes in the study up on the third floor. They seem to allude to a hidden chamber somewhere in the house. It’s called a ‘scriptorium’. Slytherin might have hidden some kind of deadly beast inside.”
“Merlin’s sweaty asshole,” Mystic cursed strongly. “Slytherin’s Scriptorium.”
“You know it?” Regris asked. He glanced over at Spirit, who shook his head. “What do you know, Mystic, that the two members of Slytherin House on this mission don’t?”
“Nothing for fact. Rumors, mostly. The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts spends a few chapters on Slytherin. The author speculated that Slytherin had a hidden chamber called the scriptorium, although they seemed to believe it was hidden somewhere in Hogwarts Castle. I spent all of sixth year trying to find it. Never did. Until now,” Mystic’s gaze slid over to the same wall that Spirit was so focused on. “Bloody hell.”
Spirit glanced over his shoulder and seemed to clock the confusion in Keith’s gaze. “You missed it when we reported our findings to Regris. But there’s something weird here. Look down. What do you see?”
Keith cast his own light charm, the warm glow adding to Regris’s so that he could study the wooden floor beneath their feet. The panels were warped and discolored with age, coated with thick layers of dust. Except… there were scuff marks in the dust as well. Footprints. As if someone, or several someones, had been coming and going from this part of the hall fairly frequently.
Not that there was anywhere to go.
Because it was a wall.
Keith’s head snapped back up. “It’s a secret door.”
Spirit nodded once. “Yes. I thought maybe it would be like the wall behind the Leaky Cauldron in London but… I can’t sense anything in any of these bricks.”
Keith bit his lip, looking around. He had found more secret passageways in Hogwarts than anybody, and figured out how to access most of them. He had been the one to learn about the scriptorium in the first place. He could do this too. He could prove to Regris that it had been smart to bring him along.
His gaze skipped across their surroundings, looking for anything that seemed even remotely out of place.
There.
“ Revelio,” Keith whispered, pointing his wand first at one of the life-sized marble statues that had been positioned in the corner at the end of the hall and then he turned and quickly pointed it at the second in the opposite corner as well. The revealing charm bounced against the stone and the white marble disguise seemed to melt away.
It had caught his attention because the statues had been identical to a pair Keith had noticed earlier, elsewhere in the Castle. A powerful wizard like Slytherin, one with his wealth and fame, would have typically wanted to show off a variety of their private collections. Having these statues be identical to others was an oddity just suspicious enough that he knew it had to be connected to the hidden entrance.
As the marble seemed to melt and drip away, the true objects that stood in the corner were revealed. A pair of massive stone braziers, unlit. The ancient stone was carved with the effigies of snakes along the bases, which curled up to support the tops where the fires would be lit.
Regris’s hand clapped onto his shoulder. “Good eye, boy.” Then he turned his attention to Spirit and Mystic. “Light them up.”
The pair of Blade members positioned themselves on opposite ends of the hall, so that they each stood before one of the braziers. In unison, their wands flashed through the air and streaks of fire followed. As the fire struck the top of the braziers, they instantly lit, the flames flashing from orange to a deep emerald green that cast an eerie glow over the dark stone around them.
As the fires burned, the green light of the flames raced down the pillars of the braziers, a line of light and magical energy in that same emerald green color following what Keith could now see was a very narrow crack carved into both the brazier and then the stone flooring. The green energy spread across the stone flooring, until it met with the wall. The green fire climbed up the wall of the stonework from each end, carving out the shape of a large door from either side before meeting in the middle far above their heads.
The green light flashed once, and then the stone disappeared, replaced by an open archway leading into a small dark chamber lit only by that eerie green light. The chamber was sparse, with no furnishings to speak of, but the walls were carved with elegant reliefs depicting a man seated before a massive serpent, which raised its head to look him in the eye, as if the two were speaking to each other as equals.
Spirit took the first tentative step over the boundary line. When nothing happened, he waved the rest of them through.
The room was not large, and it felt even smaller with all four of them crammed inside.
Keith’s attention was snagged by the massive cold iron doors that made up the opposite end of the chamber. Celtic knots decorated the panels of the doors, but they were no ordinary celtic knots. Instead, the raised designs consisted of dozens of carved snakes that seemed to weave together to create a scene that was both beautiful and horrifying.
Mystic stepped forward, following his gaze, one hand raised as if to touch the doors although she stopped with a good few inches of space between her flesh and her stone. Reverently, she traced the shapes of the designs. “This is a shield knot,” she said, referring to the massive circular design along the tops of the doors. “The lines connect in an unbreakable bond, symbolizing protection. In mythology, this is a battle symbol. Or something used to ward off evil spirits. But this here,” she ran her hand further down the doors, where the center of them consisted of three snakes looped together to form a triangle, almost like the central lock on the door. “This is the trinity knot. Muggles now believe it is associated with their religion, but the pagans of old thought that it stood for something else. The cycle of threes: life, death, and rebirth.”
Keith swallowed thickly. The ideas of life, death, and rebirth were closely linked to the darkest of magics in the wizarding world. Just what had Salazar Slytherin practiced down here?
“These two,” Mystic crouched, pointing to a pair of x-shaped snake carvings along the bottoms of the doors, “are Solomon’s knots. This is one of the oldest types of knots, dating all the way back to what humans refer to as the stone age. It is associated with wisdom and knowledge… the knot is supposed to represent the connection between man and the divine.”
Spirit let out a long, slow breath. “This is it,” he said at last. “The entrance to Slytherin’s scriptorium.”
Mystic turned back to look at him and nodded. Her eyes seemed to catch on the relief on the wall, and she abandoned her examination of the doors to study the stone carving instead.
“What does it mean?” Mystic asked, cocking her head towards Spirit. “The carvings are uncommonly good for something created during the Middle Ages. But this feels like it belongs more firmly in your areas of expertise.”
Spirit joined her before the stone, brushing his fingers along the head of the snake carved there. “It is telling us to speak to it in its ancient language,” Spirit said, slowly and thoughtfully. “I think it is the key to unlocking the door. Step back, all of you. We don’t know what is waiting for us on the other side.”
Regris pulled both Mystic and Keith behind him, putting out his arms in silent warning to hold them back in case they tried to interfere.
But Keith had no desire to. Clearly Spirit knew what he was doing, and Keith doubted that the Galra would be right on the other side of the doors. There was no way that Slytherin would make the entrance to his hidden chamber that easy.
Spirit opened his mouth, and those same eerie hissing noises that he had used to unlock the gate began to spill forth. Some of the sounds - words? - that he spoke sounded the same, but others were clearly different. It was true, then. Spirit hadn’t merely copied the noises the dark wizard they had spied on had used. He was a Parselmouth.
The tone shifted from soft pleading to a harsher, grating tone. Like Spirit was ordering the stone snake to obey him. The snake carved in the relief moved, it seemed to turn its head so that it was facing Spirit directly and Keith could swear that intelligence gleamed in its basalt eyes. As Spirit’s words increased in pitch and fervor, the snake bowed its head and twitched its tail. As it did so, the room was filled with the harsh shriek of metal grinding against metal as the trinity knot in the center of the doors that Mystic had pointed out began to unwind itself, like a lock coming undone. The snakes, which had previously given the impression of swallowing their own tails as they were knotted together, like an ouroboros, twisted themselves free from one another. Two of them straightened to form a pair of parallel lines running on opposite sides of the central crack between the doors. The third snake slithered up in the direction of the shield knot at the top of the doors, where it circled itself into a small, tight circle in the center of the design.
The doors swung open upon their own accord, and Keith realized that the actual doors were much smaller than the metal frame that held them. The shield knot atop what Keith had thought to be the metal doors was completely untouched, as the doors swung open, watching down over them like an all-seeing eye.
Eerie was an understatement.
In the room beyond, which looked to be a short hallway that ended in a dark archway, torches set into the wall flared to light with a bright orange glow, casting flickering shadows across the floor.
“That’s our cue,” Regris said. “I think we’re being invited in.”
“Slytherin wanted to make sure that only a Parselmouth could make it this far. But he might have more personal protections as well. Be careful,” Spirit warned as he stepped up to the now open doorway. Mystic moved out from behind Regris, falling into place naturally at Spirit’s back. Clearly the two were accustomed to working missions together.
Once they were satisfied there was no easily seen, obvious trap waiting for them on the other side, they stepped through the door and waved for Regris and Keith to join them.
The regular orange glow of the flames felt weird on Keith’s eyes after the odd green glow of their current chamber, so at first he blinked several times in a row, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him.
No.
It was real.
The floor beneath his feet was made of a slick, dark stone as black and shiny as wet ink. Across the hall, lavish corinthian columns held aloft a stone archway that gave a level of oppressiveness and grandeur to the much smaller door that was set beneath it. But the door didn’t need the opulence to be intimidating. For the door was made from the same dark, slick stone as the floor but it had been carved to resemble dozens of faces that were twisted with agony, mouths open in silent screams of pain.
It was horrible.
It was the worst thing Keith had ever seen.
A chill stole over his bones, but it had nothing to do with the horror he felt and everything to do with the oppressive dark magic that filled the room.
This place was wrong. Really wrong.
The rest of the hall was empty. There were no carvings to give clues as to how to unlock the door, no snakes upon which Spirit could press his will through the language of Parseltongue.
“We should go back,” Keith heard himself say, though he didn’t remember making the conscious decision to open his mouth. “Something isn’t right.”
Regris looked inclined to agree with him, but before he could respond the room was filled with an echoing slam.
Keith whirled around. The door that they had just passed through was closed. Worse than that, it seemed to not exist on this side at all. Where there should have been the massive metal door frame, instead there was only a blank stone wall.
Spirit launched into action, throwing himself against it, but he only succeeded in cracking his shoulder against the stone. A low string of dark curses filled the air as he grabbed onto his own upper arm, face twisted with pain.
“Spirit,” Mystic said, her tone laced with academic fascination. Her attention was still locked on the door, not having watched Spirit’s actions. “What did you just do?”
“Tried to break through the wall like a dumbass muggle,” Spirit ground out, between clenched teeth. “Hurt like a son of a bitch.”
“The door liked it.”
Keith whipped his head around to look at the archway, forcing himself to shove aside the vague nausea rolling in his stomach so that he could focus on the twisting, roiling faces. Mystic was right. Whereas before the door had been still, like it was solid stone, now the faces seemed to be wiggling and moving ever so slightly. As if there were people on the other side of that door, pressing themselves against it like it was only a thin membrane.
Keith’s mind snapped back to the words he had read in Slytherin’s journal, the mentions of armies of the undead.
He really hoped that wasn’t what was awaiting them just beyond this door.
“What do you mean ‘the door liked it?’” Spirit echoed incredulously from behind Keith.
“Regris,” Keith said, words of warning resting on his tongue. His hand had shot out to rest against the satchel at his side, itching to produce the spellbook within. Keith watched enraptured as the faces slowly came to a halt, the door becoming still once more.
Regris held up a hand to silence him, his lips pressed thin in concentration. He turned towards Mystic instead. “The door responds to pain.”
“It seems to, though that isn’t a guarantee. The reaction could have been unrelated, perhaps it corresponds instead with the door closing behind us. There might be enchantments that sense our presence. It could be anything. The only way to confirm the suspicion would be to try something again.”
The way Mystic presented the information was so straightforward, so practical. Yet they were talking about hurting themselves, feeding into the dark magic of the place rather than trying to find a way to combat it. It wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense with everything that Keith had learned about the Blade over the summer. They were heroes. They were the good guys. When the Ministry gave up, when they didn’t go far enough because they were afraid, it was the Blade who had answered the call and saved the world. They put a stop to the dark practices of the Galra.
Everything Keith had learned had led them to idolize them. Like he idolized the aurors his dad worked with. Like he idolized his dad.
This wasn’t what the Blade was supposed to do! This wasn’t what they were supposed to be.
“How good are your healing spells?” Regris asked Mystic, unconcerned with the storm of emotions that were battling through Keith.
Mystic’s face blanched. “Passable.”
“It’ll do.” And then, before Keith could even think to react, Regris stepped in front of the door and shoved his wand between his teeth to free up his hands. Then he snapped his own finger.
Keith heard the rough crack of the bone breaking even over Regris’s grunt of pain. The wooden wand in his mouth kept Regris from screaming out loudly, though Keith was unsure whether the tough Blade member would have anyways, knowing that their mission was on the line.
The faces in the onyx door stirred once more, writhing and straining towards Regris as if they were feasting on his pain. The movement was more pronounced than when Spirit had smashed his shoulder, but only barely. As if even a broken bone was not enough pain for them. As if they were still hungry.
A pit formed in Keith’s stomach as he realized what that meant.
As he realized that there there could surely only be one type of pain that would satisfy these guardians and allow their party through the protective enchantments that Salazar Slytherin had clearly used to protect his lair. Intense, unending, excruciating pain.
The type of pain the Galra would never hesitate to inflict upon someone to get what they wanted.
For a moment, he was back in that graveyard, writhing on the ground, his body nothing but a sea of agony that threatened to pull him under at every moment. The dark release of unconsciousness tantalizingly close but never reached. Then, he was watching, screaming until his voice was raw, while Lance’s limbs twitched and his eyes which should only ever be shining with mirth rolled back, while his mouth that should only ever be laughing twisted with pain. The way Keith’s hand gripped his wand.
He blinked and forced the thoughts out of his head. He couldn’t think about that right now, so he did what he had done so many times before and he buried it, shoving the thoughts somewhere deep down inside of him.
This was it, then. The end of the line. The Blade wouldn’t be able to make it any further. They would have to report back to Kolivan that their mission had been a failure.
Regris held his hand out towards Mystic, using his other hand to pull his wand free from his mouth. Mystic steadied the injured hand and placed her wand against the finger that was already swelling. “ Episkey,” she muttered. “That was stupid. What if there were enchantments in here to prevent healing magic? We don’t know what this chamber wants from us.”
Regris hissed at whatever the effect of the spell was, Keith had heard that Episkey felt like a sharp flash between hot and cold sometimes, or perhaps from the shock of his finger snapping back into place and the bone healing itself. Slowly, he looked over at Keith. “Yes,” Regris said, and Keith knew that he had come to the same realization. “We do. Tell me, kid, how do you think the Galra members got past this door?”
“Through the use of an Unforgivable Curse,” Keith said, and he was proud that his voice didn’t shake. “Probably the Cruciatus Curse, as it is unlikely that Slytherin… killed someone every time he wanted to access his chamber.”
“That’s right. Whatever these things are, they feast on pain. So if we want to get through that door, we have to give them what they want.”
“But we can’t,” Keith cried, throwing his hands up into the air and temporarily displacing his invisibility cloak. “The Unforgivable Curses are illegal. The Galra don’t care about the Ministry or about morals, but we’re trapped here. We need to find a way back out.”
“I hate to break it to you,” Regris said, though he didn’t sound sorry, “but the only way out is through. Mystic, Spirit, you know what we have to do.”
The two other Blade members both nodded solemnly.
“Use me,” Mystic said, sliding her wand back into the sheath strapped to her chest. She offered her arms to Spirit. “I’m smaller, the most easily restrained. As long as Spirit holds me down, I shouldn’t hurt anyone else.” She tipped her head to look up at Spirit. “And you can keep me quiet.”
Spirit immediately grabbed Mystic’s arms without protest, though he whispered something to her that was too low for Keith to make out. Regris watched on with stoney eyes.
Keith reached forward, grabbing onto Regris’s arm. “Regris,” he hissed, “you can’t do this. It isn’t right. We’re supposed to be better than them.”
“No,” Regris said, his voice low and dangerous. “We’re supposed to beat them. There’s a difference, kid. You’ll learn.”
“What’s the point of beating them if we’re just as bad as them?” Keith pushed. “That’s not justice, that’s just…” he trailed off, searching for the word. “Revenge.”
“Are you telling me you never wanted a little revenge, kid?”
Keith was in the graveyard again, his wand in his hand, an Unforgivable Curse on his lip. His body had hummed with the desire to see the Galra member who had hurt Lance screaming in anguish.
He never wanted to feel like that again.
Spirit pulled Mystic in close to his chest, restraining her with one arm. With his wand in his other hand, Keith watched as he fired off a quick Quietus , the Quieting Charm, at the door, hopefully to prevent anyone from the other side from overhearing what was sure to follow. Then, Spirit holstered his own wand and, for good measure, placed his hand over Mystic’s mouth.
“Regris,” Keith tried again, “The Ministry-”
“If we don’t do this, there isn’t going to be a Ministry. You’re playing a game you still don’t fully understand, kid. There’s no playing it nice when it comes to the Galra. Mystic and Spirit know their jobs, they signed up for this. You want to be in the Blade? You have to be prepared to do what it takes. So listen to my orders and stand down.” Regris shoved Keith off of his arm as he bit out the words.
Keith staggered back, his body caught off guard by the sudden momentum of Regris’s push.
He braced himself on the wall, resigned to what was about to happen. He might not want to feel the way he had felt in the graveyard ever again, but he couldn’t deny that it had been effective. Regris was right, in that regard. Keith had done what he needed to do in order to make the Galra stop.
Regris didn’t even watch to see if he was alright. He merely turned back to where Mystic and Spirit were positioned before the floor. Spirit had maneuvered them so that Mystic was now kneeling on the floor, propped against his knees, her arms still pinned to her side by one of his own, her mouth still covered.
Regris raised his wand so that it was pointed directly at her. “Are you ready?”
Mystic nodded, though Keith could see just how wide her eyes were, large circles in the low-flickering flames, the whites of her eyes flashing like a horse just about to rear its head.
He knew she would never admit it, but she was terrified.
If Keith could pick up on that, after only a handful of hours in her company, surely Regris and Spirit, who had known her much longer and much better, could tell the same.
If they did, they didn’t seem to care.
“ Crucio,” Regris said, his voice lower and crueler than Keith had ever heard it. Magic was about intent, after all. The Unforgivable Curses were perhaps more sensitive to that than any other spell. There was a reason they had such a dark reputation.
That was when the screaming started.
< < < > > >
Keith’s ears were ringing.
Even with Spirit’s hand over her mouth, the pained noises and startled screams pouring forth from Mystic’s mouth couldn’t be fully muffled. She had bitten him at some point, and red blood trickled down both Spirit’s wrist and Mystic’s chin. Her body twitched and convulsed in Spirit’s arms, as it was wracked with pain that came from no wound, no weapon. Sourceless and unending and everywhere all at once.
Keith knew what she was feeling.
He remembered it.
He still woke screaming in the night as his body recalled what his mind had already worked so hard to try and forget.
The seconds seemed to drag on. How long had Mystic been screaming? Thirty seconds? A minute? It felt like an eternity.
The onyx door had become a living, writhing thing. The faces seemed to press the odd stone membrane so thin that Keith was afraid they truly were going to push through, that they were going to become real and even more monstrous than they already were. His grip around his wand was so tight he could feel his fingers growing numb.
The worst part of it all was that the faces were smiling. There was no other word for it. They seemed to delight in the screams, in the pain, as if it were the most beautiful music they had ever heard.
Slowly the smiles faded, however, as the faces began to droop like running wax, their features distorting horribly as the onyx stone shimmered and dripped like an oil spill. Before Keith’s eyes, it liquefied, melting into a puddle of black ooze that spilled across the floor, only inches away from Keith’s boots.
Leaving the path forward completely clear.
It worked.
Regris had been right.
He had also been so, so wrong.
Spirit was in the process of helping Mystic up from where she had been writhing on the floor. Her body was still shaking with uncontrollable tremors. Despite that, her eyes flashed like steel as she took in the aftermath of what the door had become.
“Let’s go,” Mystic said, though her voice was hoarse from screaming. “We don’t know how long the door will remain open and I am sure as hell not doing that again, so… let’s go.”
Spirit glanced back at Regris for confirmation whilst he cast a healing spell on himself, and Regris nodded once, serious and sharp. “I’ll take point this time. Mystic, you stay back with Keith.”
Regris stepped up to the puddle of dark ooze that the horrifying door had become, stepping over it carefully. “ Lumos,” he raised his wand and the bright white light spilled out to illuminate a long, dark hall. The ceiling curved overhead like a tunnel and the scent of stagnant water filled Keith’s nose.
As Keith stepped through the archway of the door, being careful not to touch the black ooze that was slowly beginning to bubble and convulse, he finally saw the source of the scent.
His initial guess had been right. He was in a tunnel. The stone walkway that he and Regris had stepped out onto was also a bridge. It was bordered on either side by long canals of water that seemed to be as still as glass, broken only by the dozen massive snake sculptures that lined the long passageway - six on either side. The serpent statues cast long, black shadows that cut through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the space from the light emanating from the opposite end of the hall.
Before them, it was clear that the tunnel spilled out into a much larger chamber. The stone walkway seemed to join with another, forming a massive stone platform that was overlooked by a huge stone effigy carved to resemble the face of an aged man, his beard and hair spilling out around his features, his mouth open as if speaking or casting a spell, all of it wrought from dark stone.
Regris instantly plunged his wand into darkness once more. “Put that cloak back on properly, boy,” he said under his breath.
But for a moment all Keith could do was stare.
He knew what this chamber meant.
They had arrived.
“Do you hear that?” Mystic asked, and Keith realized that she and Spirit had also made their way through the entrance.
He turned behind to look at her and bit his lip to keep from exclaiming in shock as the black ooze began to climb its way up the stone of the archway they had just passed through, fitting itself back into place as the door, moving as if with a sentience. From this side, the black surface was still and smooth, like an unbroken lake.
Once again, the way behind them was sealed.
It was as Regris had said. There would be no going back, at least not until they figured out Salazar Slytherin’s own secret passwords or spells he must have used. For now they could only go forward.
“Yes,” Spirit said, his voice low and harsh and Keith was reminded of Mystic’s question.
He strained his ears.
Oh.
Yes.
He heard it too.
A low, ominous chanting, the sound of at least a dozen voices rising in pitch and fervor in unison created a low hum in the background, echoing faintly and distorting the sounds just enough that Keith’s body had instinctively tuned it out as background noise at first.
The Galra.
They had finally found them.
“They’re here,” Regris said, his voice low. “Remember, our orders are not to engage. We stay back, observe, and find out what they’re up to. And then we find a way out of this godforsaken place so we can notify Kolivan to send in the attack team. Understood?”
Keith’s mind flashed through everything they had already done to make it this far. If they want back now… Kolivan’s next team would have to go through all of the exact same challenges. Someone else would have to sacrifice themself up to an Unforgivable Curse. It seemed so stupid and pointless and wasteful to turn back once they were already here.
“Regris,” Keith said, “by the time Kolivan gets another team down here, the Galra could be finished with whatever they are doing. They could already be gone. Shouldn’t we-”
Regris cut him off. “You promised you wouldn’t engage the Galra when I agreed to take you on this mission. Stand down, Yurak. We will proceed as I said.”
Keith snapped his mouth closed at the harsh tone of Regris’s voice, though it didn’t stop the traitorous thoughts from bubbling in his mind. He knew what he had promised his mother and Kolivan, and yet now that he was here… he tightened his grip on his wand and tugged his invisibility cloak back over his head as Regris had ordered earlier, though he did it mostly to hide his expression of frustration from the other Blade members.
Regris gestured for Spirit to join him at the lead of their party, leaving Keith and Mystic to watch their back. Keith was close enough to the girl that he could see she was still shaking, though her face was a mask of determination as she stepped in front of him.
Their group proceeded across the bridge soundlessly.
Keith kept a watchful eye on the snake statues, fully expecting one of them to move, waiting for some magical trap or protection to trigger, but nothing happened and they were able to make their way to the lip of the entrance of the massive central chamber without anything deterring them.
Regris halted them in the shadow of the final serpent, positioning them so they had a clear angle on the parts of the room that they hadn’t been able to see before.
Keith’s breath caught in his throat.
It was worse than he had even imagined.
A group of dark wizards clad in long, enveloping robes stitched together from black and purple fabric stood in a half circle, their wands raised and pointed towards the corpse that they had clearly arranged their ritual around. Chalk circles and glyphs had been etched across the stone flooring, broken only by half-melted candles and the hazy smoke of burning incense.
Anyone who had ever taken a Defense Against the Dark Arts class would recognize what they were trying to do here.
The forbidden art of Necromancy, the Dark Art of raising the dead.
But Keith could hardly focus on the ritual or even on the dark wizards, because the corpse they were trying so hard to reanimate was not human. It was a massive snake, or something very similar, over fifty feet long. The scales were a vivid, poisonous green and a dark, inky black, its massive head lolling limply on the stone floor.
For it was very clearly dead. Its skeleton protruded sharply through its flesh and scales, as if it had lost whatever meat it had once had on its bones and in other places the skin seemed to hang loosely. Keith’s head echoed with the words from Slytherin’s own hand: Instead, I shall move the creature from here and place it into a deep sleep in the scriptorium. I hope that one day it shall prove useful to me… If not, I shall leave it for a descendant worthy of commanding it…
Slytherin had left this monster for his heirs, but the secret of Salazar Slytherin’s scriptorium had been lost to time. The creature hadn’t been found, had never been awoken. It had slept down here for hundreds of years and all the while, it had slowly starved to death. The corpse was remarkably well preserved, perhaps partially saved as a result of all of the enchantments that Salazath Slytherin had placed upon it. Maybe Slytherin had even seen this outcome as a possibility, and taken steps to ensure the creature was ready to be awakened no matter whether it was living or dead.
“It’s the creature from Slytherin’s diary,” he whispered to Mystic, who was still standing the closest to him. “It’s a snake, we should have known.”
“Merlin’s Beard, Yurak,” Mystic said quietly, the chanting all but covering the sound of her words. She looked over towards where his voice had come from but her eyes were focused somewhere slightly to the left of him, unsure of his exact presence thanks to his invisibility cloak. “That isn’t just any snake. It’s a Basilisk, one of the most dangerous magical creatures in the world. I thought they were just a myth. They’re incredibly dangerous. Their fangs are venomous, but it’s worse than that. The Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all of those who find themselves fixed in the beam of its eyes are said to suffer instant death. Even just seeing its reflection can Petrify you as if you have been turned to stone.”
“And now the Galra are trying to bring it back,” Keith said the words slowly, the weight of what Mystic had told him sinking in. This was bad. This was beyond bad. If the Galra got their hands on a Basilisk, if they could control it, they would have a weapon which they could use to hunt down anyone who stood in their paths.
Except something about this didn’t make sense. Keith had been raised on stories and warnings about the Galra, he had seen the things they would do: the destruction of the muggle bridge, the hunting down of muggleborns, trying to execute him and Lance in the courtyard. They liked to be responsible for the deaths themselves. He had never heard any stories of the Galra using monsters to fight their battles for them.
Realization slammed into Keith.
This wasn’t what they thought.
He shoved past Mystic and Spirit, grabbing on to Regris’s sleeve. “Regris,” he hissed. “We were wrong.”
“What are you talking about, kid, the Galra are right there. And there’s no way out. We’ve got ‘em pinned. Kolivan’s attack force will have no problem wiping the floor with these assholes. Don’t know what they’re wasting their time doing. The Galra don’t have the knowledge to bring something like this back from the dead. They don’t have the patience, or the control.”
“It isn’t the Galra,” Keith said, the words coming out in a rush. His blood was pounding in his ears, his mind recalling the golden flash of occamy eyes as the bird-like creatures drove themselves into a frenzy. “It’s the Druids. You have to warn Kolivan.”
“The Druids?” He questioned, letting out a dark string of curses. He quickly took out his wand and cast a quick muffling charm, allowing them to speak normally without risk of the Druids overhearing. “They’re practically a Blade myth. Kolivan’s mentioned them, but none of us have encountered them face to face. You have the most experience with the Druids out of anyone in this room, Yurak. Do you think they are capable of completing this ritual?”
Keith didn’t have to think about it. He knew what Headmistress Daibazaal and her Druids were capable of. “Yes.”
Regris flickered his wand through the air and a stream of white-blue light poured forth from it like a fog, coalescing into the form of a small rat near his feet.
“Kolivan,” Regris instructed the charm, “we have discovered a secret chamber beneath the West Wing of Slytherin Manor. It can be reached through the blank wall at the far end of the hall. Ignite the braisers to access the next room. Speak in Parseltongue commands to open the next door. Finally, cast the Cruciatus Curse on a willing victim to open the final door. Inside this hidden chamber, the Druids are working to reanimate the corpse of a Basilisk. You must not allow them to succeed. We will pull out to safety as soon as we can find a way out.”
The rat seemed to nod its head as it received the words, and then it turned back down the way they came and raced off into the darkness, faster than should be possible for any real rat and unconcerned by the doors and miles that lay between it and its goal.
“Kolivan knows what to do. The Blade cannot allow this to stand. Clearly the Druids are more of a threat than we previously thought. Technically we are outside of Ministry jurisdiction right now, but this is still too close to home. The attack team will stop these fuckers before they get what they want. But in the meantime, we need to get out of here. Mystic, Spirit, let’s start looking for an exit. We’ll sweep the opposite end of the chamber first, maybe that stone mouth in the Slytherin statue. There’s got to be a way out.”
Regris was all business, he reached out, his hand fumbling through the air for a few minutes before he found Keith’s arm beneath the invisibility cloak, grabbing onto his shoulder. Despite Regris’s words, he hardly seemed concerned by the Druids and their ritual, almost as if he didn’t truly believe that they were capable of actually reviving the Basilisk. He was so confident that the Blade would arrive in time, but he hadn’t seen the Druids in action like Keith had. He hadn’t been on the quidditch pitch while the occamies swarmed the skies. He hadn’t been in the maze when Allura was under the effects of the Imperius Curse. He didn’t understand.
It was like he didn’t fully believe Keith that the Druids might successfully revive the Basilisk.
Maybe, Keith thought, Regris was right.
Keith tried to calm himself, studying the reassuring, steady way that Regris held himself. Regris was one of the highest ranking members in the Blade. If he thought the Druids wouldn’t be able to resurrect the Basilisk, maybe Keith should trust him. Surely Regris had seen all manner of Dark Magic. Necromancy was rumored to be impossible.
Yet Salazar Slytherin’s spell book had contained an entire section on the Inferi. He had clearly believed it to be real.
Keith spun back around towards the ritual site, he couldn’t just leave. He needed to do something. He needed to know more. This wasn’t enough.
The Druids had raised their arms to the ceiling now, their wands tracing complicated sigils in the air. Sparks flashed from the ends of their wands. Maybe it was all for show, but Keith didn’t think that Headmistress Daibazaal or her dark wizards worked that way. She wouldn’t have ordered them to do this unless she thought there was a chance it would work, it was too great a threat to their cover otherwise.
The Basilisk laid before them, the same as it had.
Keith blinked.
No.
The eyes, which had previously been dark and unseeing, the spark of life faded from them, had begun to glow an ominous, familiar gold though the magic hadn’t fully reawakened the creature yet.
It was almost too late.
They were out of time.
Keith tugged himself free from Regris’s grip.
“What are you doing, kid,” Regris hissed in warning, “You listen to me right now, we need to get out of here.”
“No,” Keith shot back, “it’s working. The ritual is working. We have to stop them!”
“Let it go, kid,” Regris said, barely sparing another glance towards the Druids and their ritual site. “Necromancy always gets messy. These so-called ‘Druids’ are just going to get themselves killed. The Blade will be here to clean up the mess when they do. But that isn’t our job. Right now, my job is to get you the hell out of here and that is what I am going to do.”
“You have absolutely no idea what they’re capable of-”
“Regris,” Mystic interrupted, her voice low and laced with concern, “this doesn’t look like anything we have seen before. It doesn’t look like their magic is backfiring. No, something is happening here. Can we just ignore that?”
“We can and we will,” Regris snapped, “because that is what our orders are. Fall in line, Mystic.”
Mystic pressed her lips into a thin, pink line. The green glow of the chamber washed her pale skin into a sickly, sallow color. She looked unhappy with the command, but she didn’t speak up again.
“You need to listen to me,” Keith snapped, “we have proof that the Druids were behind the fucking Occamy attack during the second trial. They were able to mind-control powerful creatures in their attempts to target Lance. They almost killed him. If that’s what they did with a group of Occamies… imagine what they could do with a fucking Basilisk.”
Regris’s tone was an order. “The Basilisk is dead. No resurrection magic that is known to us is capable of bringing it back. We have other duties to attend to.”
Maybe that was true. Maybe the Basilisk wouldn’t reawaken, but Keith wasn’t going to count on that. If Mystic or Spirit, who had stood watching the entire exchange silently, or even Regris weren’t going to help him, then Keith would do it himself.
He spun on his heel and launched himself towards the Druids, not willing to give Regris another chance to try and stop him.
“Keith!” Regris hollered after him. Keith didn’t even have it in him to be shocked that Regris had broken protocol and used his real name. “I am ordering you to get back here!”
Regris’s hand shot out, searching in the air for Keith. There was a moment of resistance as the older Blade grabbed hold of the edge of Keith’s invisibility cloak and pulled on it, hard. Keith felt himself get tugged back but he reached up to quickly tear the cloak free at his neck.
Regris spat out a low curse as he stumbled backwards at the sudden change in momentum, holding Keith’s dad’s old invisibility cloak limply in his hands.
Keith took advantage of the confusion and raced forward, ignoring any further instructions from behind him.
Regris wasn’t important anymore, Keith’s orders weren’t important anymore. The only thing that mattered was stopping the Druids before they completed their ritual. He wasn’t about to allow the Druids and the Galra to get their hands on a weapon as powerful as the Monster of Slytherin.
He would die before he let that happen.
Notes:
in this chapter keith begins to understand that fascism sometimes must be met by doing things that make you uncomfortable, sometimes with violence. riot!!!! punch nazis!!!!!!
biiiig fight scene next chapter hope yall enjoy!!
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