The Deception

Chapter 15

October 31, 1979. Flamel Castle.

It had been years since she had received any form of communication from her youngest daughter and it had been a year in a half since she had been able to scry for her. Dread had filled her heart that sunny July afternoon last year when Evie had not returned home as she was supposed to. Hours spent uselessly scrying and panicking came to an abrupt end when Perenelle decided to use the family penance to go through all of the unlocked memories. Hours turned into days, she had forgotten just how many memories she had been given by her mother, but by the end of the last memory she was lost. The last memory she had been given featured Jamie and Castor filling Evie in on all the things she missed and Evie explaining everything she had learned while she was away. She had slumped down on her office chair and cried. The only explanation was simple; her child was hiding from her. She had debated heavily on whether to tell her family, confessing everything that happened in all these years but she couldn't, she had vowed not to speak of the memories until Evie returned.

She had searched through all British publications muggle and magical alike in search for any obituary, any mention of a Lily Evans, and had come up empty. She continued to hold onto the hope that she soon would be reunited with her youngest daughter. She sighed wrapping her arms around herself silently wishing for news, any news.

A chorus of anguished screams rang out through the Castle, ripping her out of her thoughts. Perenelle wretched the door of her private study open and began running through the halls in confusion. The screams and cries of her children were coming from different parts of the castle and she was torn on where to go.

"Tilly! Tilly!" Perenelle rasped out. "Tilly! What is happening?"

The tiny elf popped in front of her shaking like a leaf, tears were streaming down her small face as she tried to get words out. Tilly shook her head and took Perenelle's hand popping them back into existence in the kitchen where Loki, Billy, and Reagan were thrashing on the floor. Their hands clawed at their chests as pain-filled screams ripped through them for a moment longer and then suddenly it was silent. Their sweat-covered bodies stopped shaking so violently and as they slowed to tremors the tears began.

"Dead" Loki cried from his position on the floor, he began curling into himself as he cried. "Dead"

Outside on the quidditch pitch Castor and Katana cried together both in anguish and unbearable pain, they both had enough broken bones to be bedridden for at least a week. They had been flying together when the pain began and unable to do anything but scream had fallen hundreds of feet to the ground, a true and unplanned test of their immortality. They lay a few feet apart both stretching their arm towards the other to try and comfort each other.

Down in the potions laboratory, James lay on the floor staring unblinking at the ceiling as she tried to repress the pain she was feeling, the potion she had been working on had exploded while she had been thrashing in pain on the floor and covered part of her in hot liquid, luckily for her she was making a batch of blood replenisher and not a more harmful potion. She could sense the pain Castor and Katana were in as their faces had flashed in her mind after Evie's disappeared. She took a deep breath to settle herself before raising her hand and summoning her patronus, a bright silver phoenix burst forth from the palm of her hand and zoomed out of the lab, and towards her father, the patronus would guide him to Castor and Katana. Once the light from her patronus receded she closed her eyes and tried to gather up all her strength to get up.

Countries away in Austria at the same time, Tom was being transported to the Wizarding Hospital in Salzburg. He had been finishing up a meeting with his latest apprentice going over the cursed artifact they had found in an expedition in Brazil earlier that month when the pain began and without meaning to he touched the artifact before crumbling to the floor. His wife Thea would later be told that the artifact that Tom had touched had multiple curses layered onto it the most aggressive ones being a flesh-eating curse and a withering curse. The only thing that had kept him from suffering was the quick thinking of his apprentice who hit him with a stunner. Tom would unfortunately die before fully being admitted into the hospital, and his adoptive family would be alerted far too late to help him. His teenage children would be pulled from their dormitories at Beauxbatons in the early hours of November first by their Grandfather Nickolas and brought to Flamel Castle where their father would be buried.

As Tom died six lockets went cold for a moment before another emerald fell off. Miles away in England a baby was being conceived and the locket hidden behind multiple concealment charms hung uselessly inside Evie's jewelry box. She had taken it off when she married James, it was too risky to wear near her very inquisitive husband and so she had no way of knowing the unfortunate events that had befallen her family.

November 4, 1979. Flamel Castle.

They had decided to meet at Tom Gravestone once their parents, Thea, and the kids had gone to bed. James touched his gravestone trying and failing to keep the tears from escaping her eyes, they had lost two of their siblings in minutes. She made a small fire to light up the grave and offer them a bit of warmth and waited. She could sense some of her siblings arriving around her, their sadness and grief were palpable. She took a breath and turned towards them.

"How are your marks?" James asked touching the place where the locket-shaped mark was healing under her robe.

"Healing," Reagan said plopping down on the grass with a bottle of fire whiskey in hand. "I thought the burning when one of us was hurt was bad but having it alternate from cold to burning hot and back again repeatedly while feeling like a part of me was being ripped apart was like nothing I have ever experienced."

At that moment Tilly popped Castor and Katana into the small grove where Tom was buried, hospital bed and all. Their bones had vanished and regrown but they were still too weak to stand or even sit up for too long. James unconsciously ran her hand down her scarred arm, parts of her left side were covered in burn paste still, her mother assured her the scars would be gone in a few days.

"Has mother said anything?" Loki stepped closer to James, eyes red and puffy, his face expressing deep regret probably still remembering how he would scowl and angrily exclaim his misplaced hatred for his twin anytime a letter from her would arrive. "She's hiding for me, she can't even look at me"

Their mother had taken the news that Evie was also dead hard. She had locked herself away only coming out to help Tilly with Castor and Katana and for Tom's funeral. They still had no idea what their sister had been doing for all these years, where her body was, if she had a funeral, or if anyone had even been alerted to her passing. The only reason they knew anything was because of the lockets James had made, the lockets that now had two empty indents where Evie and Tom's emeralds had been.

Billy shook her head, "She has to tell us at some point, Evie is dead, the vow we all made no longer holds us back"

"Maybe we shouldn't go looking for her" They all turned to Katana in disbelief and anger, Katana turned her head to look at them. "Don't you get it? Wherever she was, she came across something or someone who was able to kill her, how are we going to fare against something or someone who can kill an immortal? Or she chose to die, don't you remember the agreement you made with death all those years ago Jamie?"

Katana's statement left them speechless, in their grief and confusion they had forgotten all about their immortality. Katana would have as well if she hadn't heard Tippy mumbling about immortal children playing with things above their comprehension when bringing their dinner earlier. That was when the seed of doubt began to plant itself in Katana's mind as she remembered the day James had given them the lockets and explained the deal she had made. Although she had a theory she didn't want to voice it she couldn't give her siblings false hope, not after losing Tom.

They received a surprise a few days later when a sullen and depressed Thea went to get more robes for herself and the children from their house in Austria only to return with exclamations of joy. Tom had come back as a ghost, just as death said they all would when they chose to die, and as the excitement began to settle down the Flamel siblings caught each other's eyes, if Tom had come back as a ghost then Evie should have as well.