In the midst of war and chaos, Eve struggles to find and keep her true love - but also herself.
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Eve and Regulus desperately wish to find their way out of their siblings' shadows - but they might just find that the darkness is the best place to be...
"Eve smiled, but Barry recoiled slightly at the expression hidden under it. It was something dark and twisted, a thorn pressed into a beating heart. It was the face of someone who knew better."
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WHEN BARRY WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD, he drowned in his family's lake.
Legitimately, genuinely, completely drowned. He died there, quietly, on a cold December afternoon, with grindylows beneath his feet and seaweed twisted into his hair, and when his heart stopped beating, he sank until he landed on the dirt, murky water swirling above his head.
The mermaids pulled him out. They grabbed him by the back of his too-big jumper (a gift from his father, who never learned his own son's clothing size) and dragged him up, out of the dirt and away from the monsters below, and they threw him back onto the dock, and they can't breathe above water but one of them lifts it's head and screams something awful, something that Barry still can hear ringing in his ears despite the fact that he was gone-dead-disappeared, and the small army of Crouch Family house-elves trooped out and performed muggle CPR until his little chest rose again.
Barry lived again, then, with seaweed in his hair and water still drifting in his lungs, shivering in England's freezing December cold, alone with only the elves to keep him company, and it felt like he was long past dead.
He's never told anyone. His parents had kept it beyond hushed; his father was well on his way up the political ladder and if his opponents learned that he had paid so little attention to his family that his son had up and died - well, that certainly wouldn't be good for his future career prospects. So his death and revival became a secret - more than that, even. It was like it didn't exist; no words were uttered about the incident, not ever again.
His father killed the mermaids who saved him. Murdered them. They were there one day and gone the very next. They were witnesses, Barry supposes, witnesses to his neglect, and that was a risk that Bartemius Crouch Sr. could not risk.
So Barry kept his mouth shut. He woke up gasping for breath, nightmares plaguing his sleep until he was little more than darkness and bones, and it felt like he was drowning, over and over and over again. He was always drowning then; no one to pull him up, no one to get him out, and so he drowned, again and again and again in the night until it transferred to day-drowning, when he moved through life as if he was underwater, sounds more muffled than clear and life more cloudy than true.
And yet, in this moment, Barry thinks he has never been pulled out of his drowning faster.
Regulus lays, shaking and terrified, on one of the common room couches. Barry had stroked the fire in front of his best friend the way a muggle would, with a stick and more wood, just to keep himself busy, keep himself moving, and so the flames roar, high and hot, and yet Regulus still shivers steadily underneath his blanket.
