The room was dark, almost pitch black, save for what we can just make out -- the almost imperceptible shape of two triangular tufts of white hair, framing the shadowed face of Kronos Malvivicus.  He sat in silence, in the dark, deep in the bowels of the castle -- a meditation chamber.  Fires raged within his still frame, though his spidery fingers gripped the padauk wood of his wand with such ferocity that it is a wonder it didn't crumble in his hand.  Memories... -- they did this to a person.  Gave them strength.  Made them act.  Helped them calculate the efficacies of their projections.

Gradually, the echoing steps sent their audible timber down, down into the stone fathoms of the underground maze.  A bit of a skirmish was coming nearer and nearer to the man who, formerly seething, now breathed the air deep, a small smile fitting his ruby lips as he lay in wait, in his web, underground, in the dark.  Keep him still! someone shouted.  And there was howling, an endless string of insults and blasphemies spilling forth down the hall and down the stone stairs, which was found to be so poetic, so delicious that Kronos Malvivicus began to laugh, a deeply somber, level laugh that grew in strength and pitch, causing his head to tip back in strangely satisfied delight.  It was time.  The puppet was being fitted with strings.  His most glorious gift! -- in the making.

The tall double doors were thrown open, instantly causing torches to be lit all around the room in unison, so that now we see it is a circular room, there are runes painted in red on the black walls.  Not a single window.  Underground.  And, Kronos, sitting in a tall-backed chair of sleek black wood, widened his eyes at the three Wizards struggling with the outraged, squat old man, the rope slithering off of him, setting him... free.  A thousand exclamation marks could not do him justice.

"Bloody fecking hell, what the feck --" and so on, a mile a minute, vehement, not knowing what was good for him except, that it didn't so much matter.  The end was the end, and it was written in stone; no matter what the alley rat might do, his fate was sealed and did not, as far as Kronos knew, contain torture.

"How good of you -- to contain him," he said smartly, his tongue slithering cross his teeth, snake-like.  The man -- he had thinning black hair and a scruffy face -- all at the tail-end of a last, spit-drenched curseword, registered suddenly the Old Man's presence, so that he stumbled back a half step in surprise and stopped. 

"...the bloody 'ell," he trailed.  His voice was gruff.  He squinted at Kronos, leaning in slightly.  "Say, you're that...."

"The good son," said Kronos in a richly intonated voice as he stared down at the man, "Shall be very pleased with your performance."

The middle-aged, slightly hairy chum crossed his arms over his chest defiantly and quirked a brow, leaning back the slightest bit.  "I ain't fer hire," he sneered.

"Pity," said Kronos slowly.  "I didn't mean to give the impression -- that I was asking."  After that a twitch was all it took and, in a flash, his wand arm was up and incanting; a scurry erupted in as slow motion as was ever known, a voice booming, the firelight on the torches flickering, knees buckling and the disgruntled Wizard whirring round, being caught by the men in black who flanked him, im-PEER-ee-oh echoing, all the while.

And then, as befitting slow motion scenes, we spin round the room to see from a different pair of eyes entirely.  He had never felt so blessed in all his life, suddenly, his whole body from his balding crown down was brimming over with the purest tranquility, his worries slipping from him with the deepest grace.  Not just the events of the night -- no, -- it was Azkaban, it was dementors, the first rise of Voldemort, his school days, his loyalty and concern for -- ... it all fell from him, sloughed off and sinking back into the earth.  And what was left was a serene, trance-like state; he felt bathed in light and, at the same time, he felt nothing.

A wand.  A wand was floated towards him and he took it.  Simply.  As if it was his.  He hadn't held a wand in over twenty-five years.  He turned round right as rain, walked the catacomb lair, mounted the steps, walked as if floating through the castle and out, down the winding narrow path, and disapparated, reappearing in the Schlagenweit's barnhouse in Essex.  A... familiar territory.

---

From there it was not a far trek.  No, not long through the frosted night was it at all, till he came to the white, white door atop the red-roofed house.  Using the unregistered and untraceable wand given him, if a "him" there was left, he unlocked the door with simple ease, and stepped inside. 

Instantly, and rather strangely, his entrance was... cause for alarm.  Rather literally.  A repetitive dwwooooop, dwwooooop sounded throughout the house.  My, well wasn't that interesting.  His bloody puppeteers couldn't have foreseen that little mishap?  Well, didn't matter, just made him pause inside his stuffed doll for a moment.  Long enough, incidentally, for a female specimen of the servant variety to start up in her bed.  Kronos, through a sort of hazy tunnel-like but well-attuned meditation, heard the beginnings of a frenzied skirmish coming from behind a closed white door.  In her fervor, she had caused something heavy to drop.  So that in the shadows of the night-fallen estate, as he slowly walked forward in old leather boots, creaking just the slightest bit, he perceived in Edith Gerste's audible fumbling an insufferable obstruction. 

Turning open another white door, his vision black at its edges, a woman came into view.  She was on the telephone, issuing out an address, her eyes flashing toward the intruder like stars in the darkness.  A green flash.  The phone hung off the hook. 

And the body of a fallen soldier turned to mount the stairs.

---

The Good Son, is a song by Nick Cave.

Sleep had come reluctantly to Sasha after a long, tense and exceedingly awkward evening.  Like a subordinate soldier who'd horribly violated the chain of command, Sasha had been ordered back to the house, leaving Gerhard and Kronos alone in the barn.  Sasha could only speculate what had transpired.  But, just as Sasha had suspected, judging by the fury radiating from his stepfather when he returned to the house, Kronos had probably managed to push every single possible button Gerhard Schlagenweit had to push.  That fury had relentlessly found a target in Sasha until, with strict orders to finish packing immediately, Gerhard had finally left him in peace in his room. 

They'd be leaving first thing in the morning.  Gerhard was already reevaluating whether sending him to study at Abbey at Ettal would be preferable to the larger boarding school.  The alarm had been set; the code had been changed.  More with the intent of keeping Sasha in rather than anyone else out.  For nearly an hour, Sasha sat on the edge of his bed, staring blankly at the wall before his wits had been gathered enough to carefully stow the rest of what he wanted to take with him into his bag. 

Most nights, Baldur slept on the rug at the foot of Sasha's bed.  But, after another hour of anxious tossing and turned, Sasha had called the Shepherd up onto the bed where the dog curled into a ball at the small of Sasha's back, his chin resting on the boy's knee.  The oblivion of sleep had been a profound relief when it finally caught up with the young man. 

---

The respite of the oblivion of sleep couldn't have lasted much longer than an hour when the shifting of the bed and a low, throaty growl roused Sasha.  Sleep lingered stubbornly in his eyes, despite the attempt to dig it out with the heels of his hands.  Baldur was standing on the bed; the hair along his back - from tail to neck - was standing straight up as he stared out the window.  Perched on the edge of the bed, Sasha peered through the window but the yard between the house and barn was quiet, as was the barn itself. 

"Alles in-"

The shrill shriek of the alarm broke through the darkness.  In the depths of his chest, Sasha's heart skipped a beat as Baldur jumped off the bed and charged the door, barking sharply.  False alarms weren't unheard of; had Baldur not been growling out the window a moment before, Sasha would have likely dismissed the alarm.  But, the dog was on full alert. 

"Platz!"  Barking, his tail straight up, the dog ignored the command the first time.  "Platz!" he commanded more firmly.  The dog crouched down though every muscle was tense; he was ready to spring up in an instant.  His heart thumping wildly against his ribcage, he tugged his door open and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, trapping the dog in the room.  Light spilled out onto the landing from the room next to his, a tall shadow silhouetted against the light before the young girl turned and hurried towards Sasha.

"What's going on?"" Anna whispered as she reached her brother's arm.  Across the way, Sasha could hear his parents' door swing shut and the heavy footfalls of Gerhard as he moved down the opposite corridor towards the stairs to the first floor. 

Anna trailing just behind him, Sasha moved quietly along the hall towards the top of the staircase until he could see as Gerhard descended the stairs to the main entrance.  His mother, he could see, was perched at the top of the stairs opposite them.  "Who's there?" he heard Gerhard demand as the man reached the middle landing of the stairs.  The man hesitated.  In the next moment, a bright, sickly green light flashed behind the door to the kitchen, followed by the dense thud of something dropping to the floor. 

That light...  Had that ... had that been magic?  Sasha froze, his eyes wide.  He'd read about the Unforgivables in class, of course, but ... certainly, that couldn't have been. Not in his parents' home!  That ... The thought gripped Sasha's stomach like a vice and he looked at Anna.

"No!  Run!"  Sasha shouted down at Gerhard.  He could see the anger and confusion written across the man's face as he looked up the stairwell at Sasha.  At that moment, the shadow of the intruder came into view.  He was short, squat and Sasha could clearly see the outline of the wand in the fellow's hand.  "Run!" Sasha shouted, again.