Friends. Previous acquaintences. Well-wishers, hanger-ons, and the whole damned lot. It was a tricksy business, Michael had decided, too slithery for him. No use for them now, and they had no use for he; his ghosts had always been family and the replay of his last free minutes when he'd been in Azkaban, and he had no need for ghosts now when he had both family and freedom.

Yet here he was, slinking uncertainly about the outskirts of the Tarth Hill estates. The place was huge, ordained with pureblood contemptuousness and spiky memories, but it was not the house that bothered him. His home was half as large, maybe, but he had been here too many times before and never as anything but safe. No, no, not the manor itself - and no, no, he was not bothered, per se... only uncomfortable, steeled, dark and set and with his mad brain racing.

It had been a very long time since he'd been here, after all. Amarantha Lestrange was family to an aunt and a father even crueler than he, but she herself was not so insensible. She was addicted not to causing pain but to curing it; Michael had never had need of her services in that arena, but still he'd known her. Floating vaguely through politics of the war eras they'd been gently urged together, both parents, both purebloods, both ruthlessly committed to the cause (all sorts of little reasons to bond), but neither bearing the damning mark on their forearms to get them convicted once things went sour.

Michael hadn't been so careful twice, much to his deepest, wildest frustration; caught out for treachery in the post-war era, it was not killings for Voldemort but killings for escape which gutted him and led him so seething to prison. He'd been out half a year now, escaped of his own doing, and he'd never go back. How could they catch a man who could change his own face? And why would Michael want to wear his own when he could have any he wished, any lie, any mask?

He wore his original face today, though. For her not to curse him silly when the grounds wards tripped and she found him skulking outside. Roughly hewn hair and a hard merciless face took all the tenderness out of what he once was and stripped him of his remaining youth. He looked like a killer and he looked like a cad, but no matter the handsome memory of his former lost looks, he was still the Dark patriarch in every commanding, brutal line.

He'd wait for her here, for twenty-two minutes. And then he would let himself in.

No one who has not been forced to live through war and loose yourself in it can possibly understand the severe, never ending impact on the world. On ones own world.And no one who has never been on the side of the party that has lost can possibly understand how it feels when the own life - the own world and the understanding of it- ends within the growing joy of others. Ended- yet the heart beats on. And does not forget.When you think war ends the killings, the pain and the fear- you're wrong. Amarantha could tell a different tale. A tale about loss. About families torn apart. Friends vanishing into the mist.

Reunions in this tale were rarely joyful. Most of it was profound silence and they always needed loads of room. Room for the lost ones, for their shattered families, smashed hopes, ideals, beliefs. The things neither said nor done. The things both said and done. There was no room, however, for forgiveness. Or hope. No repairs were to be done. Could not be done. The leftovers were too little, the glue too old for the new world they had to cope in.

When the rich dark blue smoke rose from beneath her feet to she had already known of his presence. She had felt it. The gentle shift in the atmosphere in the air around her estate. Tarth Hill had merged with her over the years, the house was like her soul, the garden like her hair and clothes. Carefully brushed, taken care of, showered with attention. The house whispered to her. It told her everything.

Amarantha stood on the stairs that led to the wide lawns, waiting. There was nothing else to do.If the visitor meant harm, she only randomly sensed it. It was rather something familiar. Someone she had known before the Now. Way before. She brushed some earth off her skirts, then stood still again. Her left hand lay above her right, which casually held her grandfather's wand as if it had never been anywhere else. The air smelled like rain, but the clouds moving above had a too innocent nature to carry the heaviness that so often fell out of the sky. Maybe it was just the visitor.

The wand ached for a duel. It was a sensation crawling from the wand onto her fingertips, moving up. Up, up, up. Into her mind. Into her heart.
Use me. Let us play like we used to. Let us dance. Let us kill.

Amarantha withdraw, retreating into the depths of herself. Something was wrong. Something was beyond reason. She straightened her spine, brushing the sudden shiver off and regaining control.

Her visitor had no sense for the sane. It had left him. And when she reached out for him, the Lestrange could feel her sense leaving, too.

Twenty-two minutes, twelve past propriety's sake. If she was coming to get him, she'd have already done it. Michael flowed towards the house entrance as commanding as could be. This was not a place to back down from.

She was waiting for him on the steps and Michael, half-lost as always, half-never there, was thrown off by the flash and curl of blonde. He was distracted, disoriented, by a pretty face beneath ugly hair; Amarantha hadn't been blonde when he'd known her, and only one woman shimmered so temptingly ash in his feverish, jumbled mind. Many such colored might exist, but not for him. For him there was only one.

It made him stop dead with the incongruity. If it was his ex-wife in a tea shop he could go on in - he could flirt with a stranger's wedding band on his finger and a stranger's face. He'd done so, he knew he could, hardly any tables at all had been destroyed and there'd been a minimum of screaming. She'd gone without trouble or so much as a wrinkle in her pretty dress. Other women weren't so lucky, sometimes. And he'd been a lady-killer before, long ago, even if it was in an entirely different manner.

But his ex-wife on Amarantha's steps? For a second he couldn't approach. Then he recognized the features under the hair, bright eyes, sharp nose, different rose of a mouth, and rigid attention melted into wariness alone. He still didn't like it, didn't like it, like it he did not. But it wasn't his hair, and it wasn't his wife, even if he wished he'd found her brunette as she was.

He approached more slowly now, with a deliberate step, so that she'd have the time to recognize him in return. Straighten the shoulders, add more flesh to the bones - if he wanted he could look as he had before, but why bother? Likewise he could when he needed draw reason about himself, but he didn't bother with that either. A mad man could still reintroduce himself, a mad man could still sip tea. No pretending here. Games, but harmless ones - he had no intention of doing her ill.