THE FURIES ▸ Draco Malfoy

Chapter Thirty-One: ACHLYS

◤ ❝I no longer cared for the lives of others, muggles were scum beneath my shoe.❞ ― Alastiare Erebus◢

▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: ACHLYS

February 13, 1996

"Alastiare? What are you doing? It's nearly midnight."

Celicia Erebus had changed significantly in the last few months. The decades that danced around the end of the First Wizarding War were falling into their graves now, and among them was her family. Alastiare was hunched over his desk in his study, only a lingering silhouette in the dimmest light from the lantern. Still, she could see in the darkness that he was rushing away to write something on a piece of parchment with his favorite quill. Only when she came in did the room get brighter, omitting a light from his wand without ever having to say the word 'Lumos'. Nonverbal magic, a talent Celicia had never been able to perfect like her husband.

As she walked to him, she started to see what he was writing. Instantly, her heart plummeted into her chest and she stopped where she was. "Alastiare, tell me you aren't still―"

"Cease your worries. I will be the one to give them to her, Cece," he muttered hoarsely. She wondered how long he had been sitting in that very position, trying to find the right words to say. "She'll have a collection by the time she is of age to read them. But it is best to explain myself while I sit in the circumstances than to recollect the memories when I am filled with regret."

She raised her brows in disbelief, swallowing hard. "And you mean to tell me you feel no regret now?"

Alastiare finally looked up, and Celicia's heart shattered in two at the sight of her husband. The man she had been in love with since they were eleven―not so far that he was a stranger, but not so close that he was the same person she remembered back then. Dark, veinous shadows sunk his eyes to an age older than he was. The remnants of tears soddened the hollow cheeks of his pale flesh. Green eyes so dim they looked a burnt-out brown. Celicia saw less of a man, and more of what his shadow left behind.

"No," he said honestly, quietly, as he glanced back down at the letter in front of him. "Not when I see the futures of my wife and daughter being lived through this sacrifice. It is the later, when I realize how much of it I have missed, that I will feel the most regret."

"We never asked this sacrifice of you, Alastiare―" Celicia burdened, her eyes burning with tears "―and nor would we have ever done so. Andromeda wants her father. Not your letters. Not your teachings of Legilimency and magic. She wants you in her life, and you..." she croaked, stepping back and covering her mouth when the tears fell. It was silent for some time, but she finally recollected herself and faced him again with a painful expression. "This was not a decision we made together. Not as a family. You chose this for all of us. You returned to him when we could have fled. We could have walked away from all of this. We still can. If you speak to Sirius―"

"Celicia."

The use of her full name, and not the nickname that Celicia loved to hear so much from him, shut her up right away. She paused, blinking away the tears when she saw the broken expression on Alastiare's face.

"Sirius would rather see me dead than see me beside him now. He believes I'm one of the traitors behind the Potters' deaths, and I am no more innocent of that crime than all of the others he has asked of me to do ...you must know, I did not have any other choice, Celicia. Not like Sirius did. Not like all those who joined the Order. I made a vow to him, a mark upon my skin that I cannot just abandon―"