On the last day of Abby's life as Abigail Reid, she woke to Lori yelling at Lee over something trivial, to a spread of breakfast fit for the pureblood elite, to the house elf crying into her apron, and to Calix's moody silence. It was like any other day. She wondered, in a far corner of her mind, if the omelet she tasted would be her last. If the ballet flats she donned would get scuffed against the stonework in some final desperate struggle. Or, if mercifully, they'd hex her asleep, and then kill her.

The only question left was how.

As the hours passed, Abby wandered the house in an old summer dress yellowed with age that trailed and snagged on the floor. She'd found it in one of Lori's trunks in the attic. The shoes were hers, but she didn't want to die in her own clothes. Her things belonged to a happier time, with better memories attached to them, and they didn't deserve to be marred by such an abrupt end.

As the hours passed, the panic crept and flitted in. She could not settle. When Lori flooed out of the house and Lee disappeared into the forbidden wing, she climbed the grand stairs, a choice held in each hand. Owls looped and careened past the windows outside, chasing one another in a dizzy dance, knocking into the sills. The sound of the cello drifted from Calix's room and calmed the mice curled up in the darkness of the walls.

Abby leaned against the door frame of his bedroom, watching Calix cradle the cello against him, the bow weaving back and forth like a wand, his face a study in concentration. The music darkened the shadows under her eyes and gentled her hands, and for a moment, she stood there haunted, just a girl looking at a boy whose seventeenth birthday meant death. The charm protecting adopted squib children had fallen away late that morning, marked by a hex from Lori that had singed the soles of Calix's boots as he'd walked down the hall. He'd since then changed into casual loafers, and wore a simple button-up and slacks.

She rested the pair of fire pokers over one shoulder, holding them together diagonally across her chest. Then she lifted the kitchen knife and wove it in the air, her shoulders swaying with the music, her head titled to the side in silent accompaniment.

Calix's fingers faltered at the top of the cello's strings. He lifted his gaze and stared at her.

“Happy Birthday,” Abby paused in mid-sway.

Calix set down the bow in one slow, careful movement.

"Don't lose it on me now," his low voice held a note of concern.

"I have a gift for you in the portrait gallery. Lee left to deal with a problem in the tower."

His eyes widened. He rose, then hesitated.

“What did you-“

“He’ll be occupied for a while,” Abby giggled. An owl brushed against Calix's window, its talons skittering against the pane. She'd slipped the owls a potion opposite to the one Lee used to keep the unicorns calm, modifying it to make them destructive and loopy, unable to report reliably on her whereabouts or to listen to Lee like they usually did.

The two squibs traveled down the stairs and paused before the forbidden, western wing of the house. The gilded doors yawned open, revealing a dim maze of passageways within.

Abby offered the weapons to Calix, handles first. She affected a neutral expression. It was his birthday. He should choose whether they went out in silence and shadow that evening, or in a shatter of glass while the sun still shone.

He selected the two pokers, holding one in each hand. He smiled a slow smile.

"Oh happy dagger," she hefted the knife with a grin.

They ran through the gallery, Calix smashing mirrors and shattering picture frames, Abby slashing paintings. Calix silent and focused, Abby whooping with glee.

They danced destruction on the gallery that Lori and Lee spoke of in revered and hushed tones, assessing the squibs with sharp eyes. Abby didn't know why their collection mattered so much to the Lilly siblings. She wanted to make them suffer.

For the first few minutes, the squibs made the only sound, flaying canvas and shattering glass. Under it all, in a hum too low to register, the wards on the damaged portraits unraveled, quietly torn by invisible teeth and nails.

As a fine mist coiled around Abby's ankles, they found another door, set at the end of a hall.

They entered a small room made of stone. The floor was stone, the walls were made of smaller stones, and the candles flickered upon a stone altar. There were no windows in the gallery, Abby realized then. Just a few wall sconces lighting the halls. Abby took a few slow steps forward, reaching out to touch the white asphodel flowers laid around the candlesticks. She lifted a flower to her nose and breathed in the fresh, sweet fragrance. Above the altar, an elaborate framed painting hung on the wall.

"Abby," Calix warned, looking up at the portrait.

A woman with wavy auburn hair stood in a spring garden identical to the garden in the courtyard outside. She held a book in one hand, and a rose in the other. She passed under a stone arch, studying Abby and Calix as the fog crept into the room. Her gaze caught on the knife in Abby's hand. The woman let the rose fall, and lifted her palm to rest against the canvas.

This was her. The woman Lee had loved. The one he said had drowned in the Lilly's lake.

Abby's fingers brushed against the painting. “Hello, Iona.”

Hope lit up the woman's eyes. Abby saw herself in those finely arched brows, the slightly upturned nose, the quirky mouth.

A crack of apparition sounded in the doorway.

Abby spun around, gaze hardening at the sight of Lee Lilly. His pale face was scratched and bloody. The owls. She smirked.

Calix turned. His expression held a fierceness belied by the downward slant of his brows. His hands loosened. Abby's grip tightened on the knife.

Her dreams were full of death, of the ways she might live if she could only manage to inflict a little violence. The fog rose to their knees thick as water. Lee jolted, then looked behind him.

"What have you done?" He shouted.

Abby glanced at the portrait. Iona had stepped against the stone wall in the painting, turning her face to the side. Abby had done the same in the woods that day, just before Lee had hexed her.

The knife felt so light in her hands.

Abby lifted her gaze. Locked eyes with Lee. She stabbed the portrait, deep enough to gouge the back of the frame, and dragged the knife through the canvas in one slow tug.

Lee's eyes flashed loathing. He raised his wand. Abby let go of the knife's hilt, flinching away.

So many things happened at once. Calix tackled Lee, throwing him to the ground. Shrieking faces grew out of the fog and swirled around the room. A wispy shape engulfed Calix, flowing into his mouth. Other shapes snagged at Lee, plucking his wand out of his hand. Abby bent to pick up a fallen poker. She cringed at the tendrils of fog that chilled her skin.

She inched closer to the two of them grappling on the floor. Abby hefted the poker with both hands. She tried not to imagine what she had to do next. Was that Lee's hand, was that his leg in the mist? How hard did she have to hit? How many times before he'd let Calix go?

A cold breath snaked around her head and invaded her lungs. Abby fell forward, limbs scrambling, her soul wrestling with another self.

She opened her mouth in a scream and the fog rushed in. The strands of her hair darkened to a deep red. Her face grew leaner, sharper. A smattering of freckles hit her right cheek like a blood splatter. Her eyes remained a light brown.

She felt everything in her shrink. Her legs, her arms, her hands.

“Calix!” She gasped. Her voice held a note she didn’t recognize.

Lee stood over him as the fog slid out of the room. Abby crawled forward and covered the squib's prone form with her own.

She looked up into the end of Lee's wand.

Lee's face blanched. His hand flinched. He glanced at the portrait.

He apparated out.

She smelled smoke, but the fog had drifted down the gallery, that strange, consuming fog that had attacked Calix and Abby and disarmed Lee.

Abby stared out the open door, catching a glimpse of white wisps wafting from the framed portraits. She blinked, touching her hair. She glanced down.

Calix.

His dark brown eyes stared at her, open in horror. His full mouth had parted slightly. Abby could still taste the fog flowing into their screams.

"Calix?"

His face was drawn, his body still.

She shook his shoulders.

What spell had Lee shot at him? What spell? Why was she fine and he was not?

"Calix!" Abby touched the curve of his dark cheek.

Abby rested her ear on his chest, listening. No rise and fall. No beat. He felt warm. She placed two fingers on his neck. Nothing.

"It's me," she pleaded, bending close. "I'm still Abby. You have to come back."

She cupped his face with her hands. "Calix! Calix, wake up!"

Her breath hitched, gulping enough air for the both of them. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her head bent. Her hair fell red as roses around his head.

Behind her, a fire bloomed. It spread from the overturned candles, burned the white flowers, caught on the cloth draped over the altar, and danced higher toward the empty portrait. Roses and leaves swirled in the painted garden landscape. The slip of sky behind the archway turned the color of ash as flames reached the ripped canvas and took hold.

The fog - no, something else she didn't have a name for - blanketed the vast house and pressed out of the windows, shattering the panes. They flitted past Abby, paying her little attention as she trudged into the center wing of the house, through parlors and sitting rooms and towards the formal living room. She stepped around overturned couches and chairs, broken vases, strewn flowers, and smashed grandfather clocks. Lee shouted distantly from the tower above. Abby's steps quickened.

She stared blankly down at her hands. There was a gap in her shoes, which rubbed against her heels as she walked. Scorch marks singed the bottom of her dress. Her hands shook. She balled them into fists.

The living room. The fireplace. The floo. Move.

Was that her voice or another's? Were those her thoughts, jumbling and clanging in her head? Abby didn't have room to feel or think. She moved.

In the living room the pale blue walls were a softer, lighter color than the sky ever was, framed by a white, curling cloud of moulding at the bottom and top of the walls. The pair of sage green couches embroidered with flowers faced one another, sharing a glass coffee table, and connected by a thin, dusty pink rug. One couch faced the large window that had been shattered from within. The marble fireplace loomed tall and wide at the end of the room, the furthest away from the door. A sprint away.

As Abby stepped inside, the house grew quiet. The owls and the shapes in the fog shrieked no more, and she no longer heard Lee from the tower.

She shuffled onto the rug, glancing out the broken window. The sooty black clouds tumbled over one another like waves, coming closer and closer to the house, while the rest of the sky remained a soft, clear blue.

Abby blinked. She froze.

Move.

Dementors!

She'd seen them before, hurtling over the frozen lake toward Lori's voice. Abby had thought Lori was calling to them. She remembered the fog creeping over the water. The cloaked figures swooping and grasping after the fog with skeletal hands.

Abby lunged toward the fireplace, banging her shin into the glass table, losing a shoe on the wrinkled rug. Her arms and legs pumped, so slow, too slow, flinching at the gust of wind from the window, floating in air. All the while her head pounded move. Her hand reached for the bowl of floo powder on the mantle.

She grasped a handful. She stepped into the fireplace. She remained in the fireplace. This was a marvel to her for one precious second. She'd stuck her head into the green flames so many times, calling for her mother, her sister, her father, only to get thrown back on the basis that she was Abby Reid and Lori controlled her whole world.

Her bare foot sank into ash. A dozen conflicting thoughts ran through her head. Home! No, another home - a home in a flat in London with peeling wallpaper and a crumbling porch step and a gentle, smiling man named -

Abby!

Abby turned her head, hearing a woman's voice in the distance outside. A dark cloud with ragged edges curled around the window sill, blocking her view. Despair sagged her shoulders.

Go! Said the voice in her head.

"The Ministry!" Abby screamed, hugging her arms.

The Ministry had people. It had Level Two. It was her best chance at survival. Hearths swirled around her. Skeletal hands reached into the flames. But she was gone, gone, gone, and shot out into the Ministry atrium in a flash of green fire.