B.Q. Book Two: Black Princess Ascendant

Chapter 39: Aftermath

Disclaimer: Were the atrocities of Wizarding Britain's justice system – including the summary execution of Barty Crouch, Jr., and Harry being tried as an adult for what was a crime that by definition could only be committed by juveniles – completely ignored by everyone, including the Muggleborn and Muggle-raised among the characters?

If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.

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"Come on, Jen. Say 'aaaah'."

Rolling her eyes, Jen indulged Luna's whimsy and opened her mouth wide enough for her girlfriend to toss the honey-dipped grape inside. "I'm pretty sure this is what parents are referring to when they tell their kids not to play with their food," she said around the piece of fruit.

"I wouldn't know. Mummy and Daddy never told me anything like that." She licked the drizzle of honey off her finger and frowned. "Wait, no, she did tell me something like that. Kind of." Pouting cutely, she turned to Jen and asked, "Is it the same thing to tell me that food belongs on the table and not the ceiling?"

"How old were you?"

Matching Jen's disbelieving expression with one of absolute innocence, the blonde answered, "Six, maybe seven. Accidental magic introduced me to the wonders of levitation and Sticking Charms rather early."

She laughed and caught hold of the girl's shoulders, then pulled the blonde closer so she could give Luna a peck on the lips. "There are days I wonder who had the stranger childhood, and then you come up with something like that."

Luna gave her a bright smile and lowered herself to lie completely on top of Jen, the platter of finger foods momentarily forgotten. "Why? What were you doing when you were that age?"

Learning dark magic from a Voodoo witch, twirling around a stripper pole, spreading my legs for the clients in the upstairs rooms. "Oh, you know. The usual kid stuff."

"Not really a competition if that's all, is it?" The blonde pulled away, her smile sad and her silver eyes shadowed. "I can tell when you're lying to make me feel better, you know. If you don't want to talk to me about something, you can just say so."

Dropping her head onto the armrest of the old couch they lay upon, Jen breathed out a tired sigh. "Sorry, Luna. It's just…" It was a lot of things, really, but what was truly preying on her mind lately was the revelation Lily had unknowingly dropped on her. For years and years, she had known without a single doubt that everything wrong in her life could ultimately be traced back to her birth parents. The instant James and Lily left her on the Dursleys' doorstep, her whole world had turned to shit, and only through her own efforts, her blood and sweat and tears, had she been able to turn things around.

Well, she thought with a mirthless smile, her and other people's blood. Mostly theirs.

This year had therefore been one of extremely unpleasant surprises. Elsie stumbled onto her broken, bleeding form not because the world was finally making up for its crimes against her but because the old woman had been ordered there by nothing less than Death himself. When she sacrificed her faulty magical core for a direct connection to the world's magic, a ritual that before her success had been uniformly suicide, it was nothing special about her magic or her determination that let her survive but instead because she had the dumb luck to be named in a prophecy as one of the two individuals who could defeat Voldemort. And now she learned that the entire reason her core had been unstable in the first place was because she had been sabotaged when she was just a baby by an old goat who thought he knew better than everyone else.