"Briar Lupin had dreamt, predicted, foreseen death more times than she cared to admit. If she actually remembered all of the times it had occurred, at least."
Sequel to Blue.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TWO NIGHTS SEWN
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ONCE UPON A TIME, in the depths of an old manor with three ghosts standing carefully close to whoever happened to be the most recent inhabitant, there was a master and his obedient servant. They hid between four of the wood-panelled walls — well, it wasn't quite hiding, it was more staying unseen to avoid unnecessary trouble — with the curtains arrogantly open. There was no point in being that careful with their whereabouts. The only people nearby lacked a drop of magical blood. And, even then, they'd probably only be the muggleborns. Neither the master nor obedient servant thought that they were worthy of the title wizard.
The master was the origin tale of most nightmares. A generation of wizards and witches and werewolves and squibs and seers were going to wake up fearing his possible return, just by the way their parents reacted at his name. The generations born before feared him more than anything else. Grandfathers and grandmothers would tut over tea and tell their grandchildren, "And we thought Grindelwald was bad."
One night — when the moon in the sky wasn't as full as the moon outside of the window of the girl dreaming the future, since both moons sat on either side of a werewolf's least favourite phase — the caretaker of the haunted house caught notice of the master and his obedient servant wrongfully finding asylum in the house of a family murdered by their own blood. The caretaker walked up the steps of the grounds he spent the majority of his final years looking after. In the distance, the high-pitched whistling of the kettle on his stove laced with the harshness of the summer breeze. Well. He wouldn't call it summer. It certainly didn't feel like summer.
He arrived at the house. The bedroom of a boy in the village was letting out the song of a band no parents seemed to like.
"Come as you are, as you were..."
The master spoke about the murder of a woman. The servant spoke about the same subject, just lacking the eloquence in which his master spoke.
"As I want you to be, as a friend, as a friend..."
The caretaker was kind at heart, even if the gossip of a village of his past cronies thought otherwise. The master spoke of killing a boy — a boy with the name the girl dreaming the dream recognised with a heavy heart — and the caretaker couldn't bear the thought of that. He had to stop it, he had to stop them—
"As an old enemy..."
He was unable to stop the master and his obedient servant, for a flash of green light left the master's wand, and that was that. He fell to the floor. His heart stopped.
