(M - for language, violence, substance abuse, references to childhood abuse/neglect)


The sun dipped low and the wind curled its cool fingers into the long grass, sweeping it from side to side as shadows fell on the farmland. A barn owl let out a distant screech. Lorelei shadowed the doorway of the cottage, a basket of herbs resting against her hip. She watched the house elf feed Leander at the kitchen table. His coarse, gray wizard's robe tangled around his bare feet and the red tile floor. His limbs were lanky and pale, as if it had been a long time since he'd been outside. It had been. Leander Hunt had worn the skins of pentrals for over a decade, and it was only now that he sat as himself, a shell of himself, his body his own and his mind nearly gone. 

He sat in unnatural stillness, his feet planted on the floor, his hands planted on his knees, and his face turned toward the door. He did not see her. A multitude of cares and concerns lined his long, lean face in a permanent hangdog expression. Heavy gray brows framed his blank gaze, his eyes the color of stones buried in a shallow stream. Though his mouth had always favored a sad smile, it tugged downward as he accepted a spoonful of soup. His chin wobbled.

Her brother. So weak. Weak people deserved to die. She'd found him curled in on himself at the top of the owlery, his pentral and most of his soul stolen by dementors. Lore had felt fear and grief like never before, screaming and pounding her fists against stone. Deep down, she'd also felt a pang of relief. It was hard, being the strong one. Caring about him. Telling him what was necessary. When she'd felt his shallow breath against her hand, she'd realized he had a shred of life in him. Lore had done what was needed then, as always. She'd killed the owls, set fire to the mansion, and taken her brother and the sobbing house elf with her.

He deserved death, and she suspected he'd contemplated it in the years secluded at the lakehouse. It would be a mercy for him, but she was not a merciful person. She couldn't bear the thought of facing the world without her brother.

He would survive. For her.

The house elf muttered under her breath, her thin body wrapped in a stained tablecloth. Bruises and burns mottled the elf's bare arms from all the times she'd tried to ignore Lorelei's commands. Lore did not even have to lift a hand, though sometimes she did anyway. Those poor children, that poor boy, Jeeny had moaned as Lore had forced her to disapparate from the Lilly Lakehouse with her.

Poor children, poor boy, poor me!

Expression darkening, Lore fully entered the cottage, letting the front door slam behind her. The elf flinched, dropping the spoon.

"Wash that, and start again," Lorelei snarled, setting the basket on the butcher block counter. The wooden beams hung low over her head, and the small, rustic kitchen felt confining after living in the huge Lilly estate.

The house elf's wide eyes narrowed. She picked up the spoon, washed it off, and continued to feed Leander as Lore bundled and hung the herbs. Lore glanced behind her every so often. The elf muttered, allowing warm soup to drip onto Leander's robe, making no effort to wipe it away.

She stalked over to Jeeny, looming over her minuscule frame. "Are you forgetting something?" 

"N-no, missus-"

"The spill on the floor," she pointed. "The spills on his robe. Clean it up. And after you give him a few spoonfuls, dab at his mouth with a clean napkin. We're not animals."

The house elf's eyes bugged out, her mouth worked in a silent mutter, and then she started whacking the spoon against her face.

"Idiot!" Lore wrenched her arm back, hard. "Clean it up! Behave."

Leander stared into space, mouth hanging open. Jeeny had to coax him into every action, and did so capably, except when she purposefully misunderstood Lorelei's commands. Since the day the dementors had ruined him, his whole world consisted of the small, remote cottage Lore owned under another name. He paced the kitchen for exercise. He sat at the table to eat. He slept in the living room so as to avoid stairs. Lore had levitated a narrow twin bed down for him, trailing a child's quilt with it, which was embroidered with unicorns and dragons, of all things. Leander would still have his unicorns. She'd set the bed near the fireplace, letting him watch the fire at night.

Sometimes, on his own, he would stand and stare out the window. Whispering.


Iiiiiii

      ohhhh

            nuhhhhh


"I? I want?" Lorelei had gritted her teeth.


Iiiiiii

      ohhhhnn

            nuhhhhh


"I own? What are you trying to say?"

At first it had given Lore hope. Perhaps he could gain his mind back, if she just gave him time. Perhaps she could teach him words. She tried, tracing letters on the window pane and pointing at household objects. Chair. Table. Here's your cup. There's a hand towel. Go ahead and cover Jeeny's pitiful face with it, she's not allowed to mind.

But he only showed interest in certain things at certain times. He watched the fire. He watched the window at sunset, when streaks of red bloodied the sky. He watched the robins hopping on the windowsill. When he looked at her, he sometimes noticed her red hair.


Iii

      Oh

            Nuh


Iona.

The girl he'd loved since Hogwarts was still in his head.

"She's dead," Lore had snapped. "Do you understand? She's rotting in the lake. Fish are nibbling at her flesh."

"Iiiiii," he'd groaned.

Something had happened in the altar room in their gallery, Lore assumed. A fire had started there. She'd found Calix dead there, and a knife's hilt sticking out of the burnt portrait of Iona. The canvases and photographs in the halls had been ripped and smashed. The pentrals were gone. Her life's work was gone. She'd been forced to flee. Forced to hide. Forced to feel fear.

Her rage had burned for days and days until it left her hollow and numb. It simmered just under the surface of her skin, waiting. Now was the time to settle and plan. Abigail Reid must think she was safe.

Lore would destroy her.

But first, she'd save her brother. She had to keep him hidden, as he was in no state to handle a pentral disguise. She would find a way to get his soul back from the dementor. She didn't care if it was fragmented. She didn't care how broken it was. They were broken people in a broken world.

Once she'd finished hanging the herbs on one of the beams, Lore donned her light summer cloak and informed the house elf that she was leaving for a few hours. She gave her specific instructions on letting Leander walk for ten minutes, and reiterated her instructions as to what she was to do if any muggles or wizarding folk got past the wards around the farmland. The wards were new, and Leander was unable to help her or check for weak spots.

"Yes, missus," the elf glanced briefly up and then away.

Lorelei grabbed her tiny shoulders and jerked Jeeny around to face her. "Look at me."

The elf glared. Good. The hate felt better than the stupid thing's initial pleas, her pathetic attempts to please Lore over the years, and her constant crying. Leander had confused the elf, like he had the squibs, by being nice occasionally.

"What do you do if anyone gets past the wards?"

"I hide us, missus Lore."

"And? What else?"

"I strengthen the concealing charm on the cellar, where we're hiding."

Lore stared at her for a long moment, then released her.

She passed Leander and paused before the tarnished mirror hanging on the wall over the row of coat hooks. She arranged her hair over the plaid cloak. Her hair was red, like before, but her face was different, with a quirky mouth and delicate, elfin features adopted from her latest pentral. Pretty. She picked such pretty pentrals. People responded to lovely faces, and though it made her disguises more memorable, she preferred to stand out and control the reasons for standing out. 

Lorelei stood out for different reasons. Lori Lilly had been slim and fit. Lorelei Hunt was not. She'd discarded Lori Lilly's pentral soon after fleeing from the lakehouse, but she'd had to let her body rest for a day before merging with a new identity. During that time, her movements had felt stiffer. Her body had felt heavier, carrying more bulk around the middle. Gray streaked her brown hair. Two sharp lines had appeared between her brows, and two more from her nose to her mouth. Her eyes were much the same, the same pale gray-blue as her brother's, intensified by her heavy brow.

Every glance in the mirror had startled her. With relief, she'd donned the new pentral's skin and erased almost all traces of her real self.

Magic did wondrous things. Lore exited the cottage, glancing over the worn shingles on the roof, the brick crumbling at the corners, and the chipped yellow paint on the shutters. Every faucet in the house leaked and every window let in a draft. It was in bad shape, and Lorelei let it continue to look that way. She had not bothered to touch the farmland either, letting the grass grow high in the fields where hares darted and skylarks danced. A few wildflowers had popped up here and there, but the land appeared abandoned, and that suited Lore. It stood humble and secluded, far from muggle neighbors.

Best of all, it had a cellar for potion brewing, lots of hidden storage, and two large, intact greenhouses already filled with magical plant and herbs. Those were the only structures that Lore had maintained over the years. Any prying eyes would find the greenhouses in a state of neglect and disrepair, same as the cottage and the land, but that was an illusion. Lorelei excelled at illusions, hiding the beautiful in the ugly and the ugly in the beautiful.

She'd use this ugly place and save her brother.

But first, she'd visit her mother.

Lorelei watched her mother from the back garden of her childhood home, tracking her slow movements through the small, square windows framed in peeling white. The lawn she stood in was more weeds than grass, and the old brick house looked dark and muddy brown under the cover of the night.

The home was like her mother, old and worn. It leaked and ached and groaned alone, protesting its existence more and more every day. It'd be better off torn down, along with the other houses on the block. The muggles had spread and sprawled even to this poor little corner where a few witches clung to their way of life.

Her mother shook her wand, cursed at it, pointing it in the direction of the kitchen once more. Lorelei's lip curled, her eyes glinting amusement. Both the witch's wand and her body were betraying her, refusing to do the washing up, to fetch the bills piling on the table, to levitate a drink. Her back hunched as she tottered in ratty old slippers and a ratty old robe right to the ice box, tugging a few times to open it. Her hair fluttered wispy white on her head, so thin that the bald spots shone through.

Weak.

As her mother plodded back to the living room and to her favorite armchair, Lorelei mocked her in her head, a childhood habit she'd never been able to give up.

Yes, dig into your pocket and wipe your nose on that balled up tissue. Go ahead and drop it back into your pocket, you disgusting piece of shit.

Hack up a lung while you're at it.

Is your knee aching? Do us a favor and trip over that step, no one will miss you.

The witch slowly lowered herself into the sagging chair, her brittle frame settling into the furniture's familiar dips and curves. That chair had gotten more warmth from her scrawny ass than anything else in the house. She clutched a vial in each hand, setting one down on the end table and opening the other. She'd always clutched potions rather than her children's hands.

Lore understood. Children were wretched creatures. They trailed snot and cried and whined and were constantly wanting things. She understood, but she'd never forgive her parents for bringing her into a world that did not want her. Everything she'd learned in the first eleven years of her life, she'd learned wrong. Lore had tied her own shoes by making massive knots of the laces and leaving them on her feet for a week until they stank. She'd hid bottles of milk under her bed until the curdled, soured taste in her mouth had made her throw up. She'd sung her own stories, mixing up the beginning and middle and end, the heroes and the villains, the magical and the muggle, until her parents had laughed and laughed.

Look what she had become, no thanks to them. She had land, property, money hidden away, a new face and a new name whenever she liked.

If she still confused the heroes and the villains, still left glasses and bowls crowding her nightstand, well, it hurt no one but her.

She smirked. If only that were true. She'd flung several glasses at Jeeny, after all.

Her mother drank from one bottle and then the other. She soon slept, slipping into a deep, peaceful oblivion.

Lorelei slipped into the house, casting Alohomora on the window her mother consistently forgot to charm. She'd returned to her childhood home several times over the years, unable to keep away. She passed her mother still and silent in the living room, passed the memory of her father dead on the kitchen floor, and entered the dank, dark hallway which hid an old room behind its cracked walls.

She traced the crack in the wall with her fingertip, waving her wand left, then right, then up until the door shimmered and creaked open.

"Lumos," Lorelei said under her breath.

Her wand lit the windowless room, highlighting its dusty shelves, its stained tile floor, and the empty cauldron in the corner. Lore shook her head at the dozen or so vials left. So few. There were potions for happy dreams, potions for deep sleep, potions for calming down. There were potions for lessening pain, easing aches, and softening harsh noises and lights.

She didn't know what exactly made her mother dependent on potions, and she didn't much care. Her mother was who she was. Lorelei picked up every single vial, dropping them into her bag. They clinked and knocked together in delicate protest. Lore didn't need any of them. She made the harsh edges of the world sharper, not softer. She welcomed her turbulent dreams. She stole the dreams of others.

Lorelei moved back into the hall, and froze at the sight of her mother standing at the end of it.

"Who's there?" the woman spoke loudly, squinting. Her wand shook in her hand.

A slow smile crept over Lore's face. Her mother was either going blind and deaf, or the potions had made her this way. She reached into her bag, and shook the liquid in the vial.

Her mother frowned, cupping her ear and shuffling closer. "Who is it? I have hexes! Traps!"

Lore tossed the vial in the air and caught it in her hand. Then, testing its weight, she threw it at her mother's feet.

Her mother flinched back at the sound of shattering glass, her nostrils widening at the acrid smell.

"You thief!" The old woman pointed in Lore's direction. "I know you!" She took a step forward, her thin slippers crunching the glass, her face fearful as she touched her hand to the wall, steadying herself.

Lore continued to smile. It had been a very long time since she'd been this close to her mother's rage. Sometimes she lingered outside after her visits, watching through the windows as her mother realized that someone had taken her store of vials. She'd tear up the house, her screams pinging against the glass panes.

Her mother's rage filled her with joy. It was the antidote to her exhaustion.

Lore aimed another vial. It hit her mother's shoulder, rolled down her arm and crashed to the floor.

"Martin!" She screeched, cowering against the wall. "Martin! Get in here!"

Oh Merlin, she was calling for her dead husband. Lore's shoulders shook with silent laughter.

"Leander?" The woman's voice turned plaintive. "Leander!"

Lore straightened, the smile dropping from her face. Her eyes flashed. No, her mother was not allowed to call out for the son she'd made weak.

She adjusted her bag over her shoulder and marched up to her, the glass crunching under her heavy boots. Stopping a few inches away, she grabbed her mother's upper arms, catching a whiff of sour, unwashed skin.

"Your son?" Lore hissed.

The woman tried to push her away.

"Your husband?" She breathed the word like a curse. "Dead."

Confusion and pain flickered over her mother's worn face. She started to shake her head.

"They left you, you worthless fuck," Lore spat.

The woman's head stilled, locking eyes with her. She lunged forward, one hand grabbing at Lore's neck and getting a fistful of hair, the other jabbing her wand against her ribs.

Lore pushed her into the wall, wand raised.

Then her mother hexed her. An invisible hand smacked her across the face, then upside the head, and swatted at her legs until she too, fell back and grasped at the wall for support. Her mother's mouth worked, trying for something crueler, searching her addled brain.

It was as if the wand had been waiting for that moment, spent years waiting and wanting, wishing to hurt again. It was tired of cleaning things and fetching things. It hummed in her mother's shaking hand.

"Accio wand," Lore caught it. She flung the wand in the opposite direction down the hall. Her mother's gaze skittered from side to side, and she turned to shuffle as fast as she could shuffle to the kitchen.

An ugly fire burned in the pit of Lorelei's stomach. Every hex, every slap she'd suffered as a child flashed through her mind.

She could try to repress it, but she let it rise up, like an addict. Every person with a fire in them knew what this felt like. It ate and clawed and left you hollow, but it was better than the other emotions. Forget sadness, fear, doubt. Fire drove her to do great, terrible things.

"Wingardium Leviosa."

Such a simple, gentle spell. She levitated the pieces of glass, swirling her wand to pick up all the pieces. Her mother glanced behind her. She shuffled quicker. She made it to the end of the hall when Lorelei shot the glass shards at her back.

Her mother fell onto her knees with a cry. Blood bloomed against her thin robe, then trickled down her spine, joined by a trickle from her scalp.

Lore waited until the old woman's knees and her arms gave out. Until the woman lay there on the floor, gasping.

Lore drew near. She remembered her father lying on the same floor, remembered the sharp pang of regret as she'd stood over him. She felt nothing like that now. The fire dimmed to an ember, filling her with warmth and light.

"You were a monster from the second you were born," her mother croaked.

Lore knelt, lifting a hand to her mother's face, delighting in her flinch as she merely rested it against her cheek. Her thumb brushed over the woman's lined, dry cheek.

Because of you, because of you, because of you and father.

She slammed her mother's head against the floor, hearing it thud. Lorelei left her there, whimpering. Though she knew her mother had recognized her, she'd never reported her break-ins to the authorities before, and likely wouldn't start now. Leaving a dead body behind would cause more suspicion. She was in control. She didn't have to kill.

Outside, she disapparated.

In the cottage, she found the house elf sweeping at the cobwebs between the ceiling beams, knocking down the herbs Lorelei had hung. Lore sent her to sit in one of the lower cabinets of the kitchen, contorted among the pots and pans. Leander sat on his bed, gazing at the flames in the fireplace. She plopped next to him, resting her shoulder against his. Her hand absently traced the unicorns and dragons sewn onto the quilt. Children had lived here once. The wretch who'd almost brought the Ministry to Lore's door had begged her not to kill her, claiming she was all her children had left.

Lorelei's hand stilled.

What was that witch's name? Lore had killed her, then bought the land with another identity. The children had been sent to a muggle family, who had wanted nothing to do with the cottage or the land.

The name came to her, drifting over the names of so many others she'd killed.

She leaned in, and whispered into her brother's ear.


Looooooo

      Seeeeeee


He blinked. His mouth worked.

"Iiiii-"

Lore let out a sharp laugh, rising to block the fire from his view.

Lucy. The mother.

Lorelei would be a mother after all.