an eye for an eye - Theodore Nott

Prologue

NOVEMBER ​​1st 1981

Alicia Black was tired. The war was long and draining, seemingly never ending. She missed her family, her friends, both the ones lost during the war and the ones still fighting. But most of all, she was worried. Her one year old daughter was upstairs, sleeping, supposedly supposed to save the wizarding world.

How, she thought, resting her head in her palms and taking a deep breath, She's a child, a baby, what does Dumbledore expect her to do?

Her husband had left the house in a frenzy earlier in the night, intent on checking in on Peter, citing a 'bad feeling'. She had learned not to ask, just to trust. If Sirius thought something was wrong, it usually was.

She let out a long, drawn out breath. She felt old. Older than any 21 year old had a right to. Rubbing a hand down her face, she suddenly froze feeling a sharp tug from within her.

The wards had been breached.

She got up, slowly, carefully, lifting her wand in preparation.

What she wasn't expecting was for Peter Pettigrew to walk through her door.

She sighed in relief, dropping her wand, but still keeping a tight grip on it, because something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

"Pete? What are you doing here?" Three years of war had told her to trust her gut. And her gut was telling her, screaming at her to run. Take Cassie and go. "Sirius just left to go see you." Sirius who told her that something was off. That something was wrong. And when Sirius says something is wrong, it usually is.

She had a second to dive behind the couch, before a slice of green flashed through the air. She let out a low, "Fuck" before retaliating the curse.

"Don't make this more difficult than it has to be, Al" His voice was pleading, desperate, as if he was the one who'd just got the killing curse thrown at him.

"Shut up." She snapped, breathing heavily. She threw a quick curse over in his general direction. "Don't call me 'Al'. Traitorous Death Eaters don't get the courtesy of nicknames."

She stole herself, before chucking spells at him in rapid succession.

He's winning, she thought incredulously, He wasn't allowed on proper Order missions because he couldn't duel for shit, and now he's winning.

"I see You-Know-Who's taught you some tricks"

Peter got that glimmer in his eye, the same one he always got when one of the boys gave him a piece of praise. He let out a quick, almost involuntary smile, before shrugging. "It's not you, He wants Alicia. It's Cassie. Let me take her, and I'll go."

"You fucking touch her and I'll skin you alive" But her anger got the best of her, clouded by her emotions, she missed the quick flipendo and fell backwards, wand flying out of her hand and across the room. She glared dangerously at him, struggling to find a way out of this as he pointed the wand directly at her chest.

"We could've avoided this, Al. You're dying in vain, just tell me where Cassiopeia is, and you can live."

She grit her teeth, praying to every deity she didn't even really believe in that the Fidelius worked. "Over my dead body"

He smirked, let out a huff of laughter, before mockingly muttering "So mote it be."

Little did he know, he'd just given the little girl upstairs a protection against dark forces that only one other child in the country was given.

***

Pettigrew searched the house, from top to bottom, knowing the child was in the house, but being unable to find her. He eventually fled, upon hearing the crack of apparition and seeing one Minerva McGonagall enter the vicinity. He disapparated immediately knowing that if he was caught, he'd be shipped off to Azkaban.