B.Q Book Four: The Black Queen's War

Chapter 1: Endangered Lies

The final act of this story.

Writing this book is going to be a bit of a bittersweet experience for me, especially as we get closer to the end.

The desire to tell Jen's story was what pushed me into writing in the first place, and now that it's coming to a close?

Yeah, I almost don't want to finish it.

But all good things and that jazz.

Welcome to the beginning of the end.

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Jen jolted into sudden wakefulness, her heart beating a panicked tattoo in her chest. Several figures she could make out in her bleary vision, and she hurled a brace of lightning bolts at her attackers before they could get another curse off. Thunder boomed, and she called up green death around her other hand—

"Whoa, whoa! Stop stop stop!"

Blinking her eyes clear, she now saw the five members of her family huddled behind Dora's shield. "What happened?" she demanded, dismissing the Killing Curse and sending her senses through the wards over Grimmauld Place. Herself, her family, Kreacher in the kitchen. No one had slipped in without their notice, no one had disturbed the wards. What had sent her in such a panic, then?

Sirius cleared his throat. "Uh, that might be my fault. We – the Marauders, I mean – had a spell we used to keep ourselves awake after spending the whole night working on a prank. We need you up and alert for this conversation."

And between her paltry resistance to magic and her normal paranoia, him trying that had sent her over the edge. She took slow, deep breaths and ran her fingers through her hair. "Please don't do that again. I thought we were under attack or something." Her eyebrows furrowed when she took in the white nightie she was wearing. "Who changed my clothes?"

"I don't think putting clothes on you counts as 'changing' them," Andi said, crossing her arms with a faint huff. "And whether you like sleeping dressed or not is the least of our concerns right now. We're a little more worried about why you've been sick on the summer solstice for three years in a row." Jen tried her best to keep her sudden resurgence of panic from showing, but Andi and Dora's narrowing eyes were proof of her failure. "The first time, we thought you got sick after being kidnapped and exhausted your magic fighting it off. The second, you had just fought Voldemort, so maybe the same thing could have happened. But you didn't do anything like that this time, and what's happening to you doesn't match any disease we can find. A fever and coma that starts suddenly the night before and goes away as soon as the sun goes down again? There's something unnatural about this. How about you tell us what's going on?"

She gave them a weak smile. "I'd really rather not."

"Tough luck. Explanation. Now."

Glancing around for help, she saw that even Cissy, the witch who was supposed to be her ally when her darker nature brought her in conflict with the rest of their family, was looking at her with steely determination. Great. Worse, she knew that in other circumstances, their suspicion and determination might be the right way for them to approach this. They knew something was wrong, but because they did not know what was wrong, they had no idea just what they were asking.