Aurora Rosier & the Year of the Snake

A Fall From Grace

August 19th, 1981

Amalthea could hardly believe it.

It was finally the day. The day she had been patiently waiting for.

She paced the length of the small nursery over and over again, glancing out the window with each pass, but with every glance, nothing changed. The large trees lining the path that led up to the Fawley Estate remained still, and the path held nothing but the scattering of fallen leaves.

Near the window, in a wooden bed, a baby girl slept soundly. With her eyes squeezed shut and the just sprouted curling tufts of golden hair brushing her forehead, she was the most perfect thing Amalthea had ever laid her eyes on. She was so solid, so very very real, sleeping curled up against the same forest green blanket that Amalthea had been swaddled in nearly twenty years ago.

A perfect reminder of the joys the rest of her life promised.

Amalthea had never been one for sentimentality. She had been surrounded by it for so long that she had grown more or less numb to it. Her childhood had been a happy one: two very loving parents, three siblings (two older, one younger) who rarely fought, plus a family fortune that had made her life very comfortable. On top of everything, every single member of her family, from great great great uncle Humbert to her little sister Ileana, had been a Hufflepuff. Kindness and compassion were so abundant in her life, that she had been surprised that they never stifled her to death.

But now, with her daughter sound asleep and just months away from her second birthday, the only thing she wanted to do was cuddle her close.

Amalthea scooped the child into her arms, cooing and rocking softly to keep her asleep, eyes still fixated on the empty path.

It felt odd to be so at peace. Despite the war raging strong everywhere in the wizarding world, the Fawley Estate remained tranquil, almost as if someone had forgotten to tell the gently swaying trees and cooling air that there was chaos about to bubble over the horizon.

Amalthea was no stranger to the ongoing war. Merlin, it was everywhere she looked.

The Fawley family was one of the pureblooded Sacred Twenty-Eight, which dropped them directly into the center of the conflict, despite the majority of the Fawleys preferring to stay far away from the fighting. Her eldest brother, Marius, was the predictable Ministry swot. A dedicated Ministry employee, as both the Head of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad and holding a spot on the Wizengamot, he was tight-laced, rule-abiding, but most surprisingly, a close friend of the Order Of the Phoenix. He was the one who kept the entire family up-to-date with all sorts of tidbits of war-related news and plans of attack.

Plans that Malthea would quietly slip to Evan Rosier, a high-ranking Death Eater.

And the absolute love of her life.

Even thinking about Evan made her smile, her giddiness for that evening's festivities kicking up butterflies in her stomach. She buried her face in her daughter's hair, which was nearly identical in shade to her father's. She had met Evan during her third year when he had stumbled upon her tucked away in the Restricted Section of the library. Despite being a Slytherin and Hufflepuff, they had gotten off rather well, their lives so similar, in such different ways. She met his friends, and once she had learned all they stood for and the future they planned to usher in under the Dark Lord, Amalthea found herself eager to join them. Evan had proposed to her before her Hogwarts graduation - a single black pearl on a silver band - and Amalthea had been overjoyed.

But now, Evan was the reason she was trapped in her family home. Their marriage had come with a stipulation, one that Amalthea once had no qualms about accepting: after their union, their lives would be dedicated to supporting the rising power of the Dark Lord. Most of Evan's friends already had their Dark Marks while in school, and Evan had gotten his before the start of his seventh year. Amalthea had been expecting to get hers, but because she had been stationed as a double agent within her own home, it was decided it would be safer for her to remain unbranded, at least until her family had been erased.

It was less than an hour before Evan was due to arrive and Amalthea could finally publicly join the Death Eaters proudly by his side. Knowledge of her betrayal and where her true loyalties had lied would shatter her family, but Amalthea felt no remorse. If everything went according to plan, the only reminders of Amalthea's past would be burning to ashes.

Hoot! Hoooo!

The sharp call and hurried flapping of wings shook Amalthea's attention back to the window, where the family's ancient screech owl was scratching at the glass, a newspaper folded in his beak.

Amalthea huffed, annoyed at the interruption. She placed her daughter back into her bed before unlatching the window. The owl swooped in and circled the room, dropping the paper to the rug with a thud, before it settled back onto the windowsill.

"Ajax!" Amalthea hissed, brushing the now-preening owl away.

As her fingers got close, the owl nipped, just hard enough to draw blood. Amalthea sucked in a sharp breath, trying not to curse, gently shaking the offending finger and trying to ease the sting. She had always maintained a theory that owls could sense when danger was near; the war had probably set most creatures on edge. But then again, the family owl hadn't liked her for years now.

Amalthea shooed the owl back out into the night, shutting and latching the window before it could swoop its way back in. It landed on the narrow sill, knocking once, twice for a treat, before flying away in a ruffled huff.

Sucking on her bleeding finger, Amalthea prepared to just toss the newest Daily Prophet onto Marius' unread stack in his study, when a familiar face on the front page caught her eye.

HIGHLY RANKED DEATH EATER, EVAN ROSIER, DEFEATED

Amalthea snatched the paper from the floor, suddenly trembling as she realized it was her husband's face grinning cockily up at her. Even though the story was front-page news, his picture took up most of the space - the story itself barely filled a column. From the information Marius had given her, Amalthea knew it was the Daily Prophet's desired way of getting across important news: not enough detail to scare the readers, but enough that some comfort could be gained from the knowledge.

She read and read and reread the article. It explained how Evan had been traveling with fellow Death Eater Wilkes to an undisclosed location. How they had been ambushed by the auror Alastor Moody, and the lengthy duel that followed - apparently, Evan had refused to give up and even shore off a chunk of Alaster's face, before the auror brought his demise.

Amalthea let the paper fall from her now numb hands as her blood ran cold. She glanced out the window again, but this time, instead of hope blooming in her chest, it was fear.

With Evan dead, she was nothing. If she had truly held any importance, someone would have arrived already to whisk her to safety, protecting her so she could raise her daughter to continue the importance she had been born for. With a gasp of horror, she realized: the Unbreakable Vow was void. All she was now was a traitor to her own family, a loyalist to a cause that, if she were caught, would leave her locked up in Azkaban for the rest of her life. And with no Dark Mark of her own, she couldn't even justify that she was truly loyal to the Dark Lord, that she hadn't been a double agent and an accomplice in taking her own husband's life.

Her daughter was the one of importance. She was nothing but disposable.

The room felt like it was closing in around her. Every creak of the house sounded like a footstep, and she could feel herself growing more and more paranoid. A crack of thunder shook her to the core, rain pelting down outside as if it had sensed a shift in the mood. She needed to get out of the estate before someone got to her first. Get out of England, do something, go...somewhere.

But where?

It wouldn't be until much later that evening that any of the Fawleys realized that Amalthea was gone, her daughter vanished as well, leaving nothing behind but the forest green blanket on the floor.