The Last Lieutenant

Drowning

Emmeline had ruined things.

It's hard not to resent her for that, whenever Audra feels the empty space around her neck where the locket should be hanging or lays in bed thinking that this would be the time that she should be meeting Fred, but it doesn't matter.  What's done is done.  There is no going back to him, and even if she did, there would be too many things caught between them to really go back to the way it was.  There would always be her and the dueling just because it's fun, always George and the killing curse between his lips, always Fred standing between his brother and the girl he loves with his hands outstretched, trying to force them apart so they don't hurt each other.

Sometimes, without noticing, you turn into a different person overnight.  

This is one of those times.

"Come on."  Audra throws her voice over her should and Emmeline follows like she is tied to her with a string.  She does not know what they are doing here, but she follows behind her anyways, because she knows that she had hurt her and is being swallowed up by guilt over it.  "Let's have some fun."

It's like de ja vu, walking the footsteps she had taken only a few months before, moving to press her palms to the window and yank the chain off the door, all of their defenses falling with a few spells, because she knows their magic and can sense how it is woven together.  It's just too easy to pick apart, and within a matter of seconds, she and Emmeline can move into the room without either of the twins noticing.

"Is this the shop?"  Emmeline doesn't bother to keep her voice down. She never does.  It's like she's always testing fate, always daring people to wake up and try and stop them.  "It's nice."

"Yeah."  Audra picks up a bottle filled with love potion and tests the weight of it her hand.  "Better than I expected, actually."  When she throws it at the wall, it shatters, and the potion rains down on them, making her skin shimmer like it had been coated in fairy dust, and Audra actually screams, one little exhalation of grief that seems to knock the wind out of her, but she cannot stop.  She had come too far to stop.  "But now it's time to tear it down."

It's all fixable, what they had done, but they leave it a wreck.

The shelves are destroyed.  Windows shattered, the glass spread out all over the street.  She had knocked through displays and unlocked the cage the pygmy puffs were in, thrown the cases of love potion into the walls until it looked like a unicorn had puked all over the place.  And she'd ripped a gash through the poster behind the cash register, right through both of their faces.

They leave their mark.

It was like a declaration, not to the world but to Fred and George, because they would know that this was her,  because she had ruined things that made it look like were a lot of destruction but was easy to fix.  And by extension they would know the signature was hers, and if that signature was hers, then all the crime and terror that preluded it must belong to her, too.

She's not really sure she wants them to know, but she would have to tell Fred the truth sometime.

It's better that he figures it out now, when she is not around to see the look on his face.

They tell her good job.

Narcissa throws the paper down on the table and Bellatrix cackles, coming up behind her to run her hand through Audra's hair in maternal fashion.  She doesn't move away from the touch like she wants too, just sinks into it.