The Art of An Ending

Chapter Six: The House on the Cliff

The next few days passed in a blur. Erica felt better than she had after the first night, after she had killed Karkaroff, but Avery was still being careful around her, and he still made sure to give her Dreamless Sleep before she went to bed each night, and would stay with her until she was completely asleep.

They had fell into a sort of routine. Erica would get up sometime around sunrise and then proceed to curl up on the sofa around Avery whenever she found him still sleeping, and then when he woke they would have breakfast together stood up in the kitchen before he headed off to do whatever he did when he wasn't in the flat with her. She would lounge around all day, doing homework and working on her Transfiguration notes or some runic work, or she would transform into her Animagus form as a wolf, because her emotions seemed duller as an animal, and curl up to sleep until Avery got back. Whenever he did, which was usually early evening, they would go out for dinner somewhere tacky or somewhere nice and then he would let her pick a film and they would sit in the picture-house together until the manager kicked them out. Then he would give her Dreamless Sleep as soon as they got home, and the process would begin again anew.

It was a comfortable routine, and it helped her feel more like herself again, especially when she would make a breakthrough with runes- which she always used to strengthen the wards they had around the flat, because though Avery was certainly skilled and they had quite literally covered the place in protective enchantments, you could never be sure- or when she thought she was getting somewhere with the Transfiguration notes- she had begun work again on figuring out a counter-spell for the permanent human transfiguration spell she had found in her third-year, and which everybody thought she had destroyed.

It was two weeks after her birthday that the routine broke with a knock on the door a few hours before Avery was scheduled to be back, around-mid-afternoon. Erica's ears pricked up immediately, trying to listen out for who it was, though whoever was on the other side of the door gave no signs, though she could tell there were two of them from the heartbeats and the breathing.

Slowly she slid out of her wolf form before padding down the hallway, wand in her hand, and sliding the lock across and twisting the key. When she opened the door she didn't immediately recognise who was on the other side and blinked blearily at them, but then she realised she had seen them before, on the front of the Daily Prophet after the mass-breakout from Azkaban earlier that year.

Rodolphus Lestrange was slightly taller than his brother, Rabastan, though also slightly broader, and his eyes were curiously blank and devoid of life. Rabastan, on the other hand, was practically vibrating with energy, clearly the younger of the two, and his eyes darted around constantly before settling on Erica. Both of them had thick, dark hair though, and their blue eyes were exactly the same shade, though where Rodolphus had the shadow of stubble across his jawline, Rabastan was clean-shaven.

"What do you want?" Erica asked eventually, when both Rodolphus and Rabastan remained silent, simply taking her in.

She didn't think she looked particularly bad. She was wearing a light skirt of blue cotton and a white shirt with her wand holster strapped to her thigh, and though her right leg was exposed, she didn't think it looked altogether too terrible. Neither did her hair, which could no longer be scraped up, but instead curled around her chin.

"We have been instructed," Rodolphus eventually replied when the silence dragged on, "to take you to see your mother."

She promptly shut the door in their faces, breathing heavily as she rested her forehead against the wood. Her mother? Now, of all times, she was being allowed to see her mother, after everything that had happened. But if she was allowed to see her, that meant she was okay. A wild, soaring sensation lifted her chest as she straightened up once more, hands still shaking, though of excitement now as realisation set in.