Meanwhile...
Arcturus Black sat hunched over his mahogany desk in the silence of Blackwood Castle, the rhythmic scratch of his quill the only sound in the room. A few feet away, Melania sat by the hearth, the soft click-click of her knitting needles providing a domestic anchor to his work.
Bang!
Melania jumped, her heart hammering as she saw Arcturus collapse forward. His chair skidded back against the stone floor, and the eagle-feather quill snapped in his hand, splattering ink across his half-finished documents. She let out a piercing scream, dropping her knitting as she scrambled to his side, but she froze before she could reach him.
To Melania's horror, his skin began to pulse with a terrifying, rhythmic light. A network of shimmering, gilded veins erupted across the backs of his hands, spreading like molten gold beneath his flesh and wrapping around his body with the speed of a lightning strike. Arcturus let out a sharp, ragged gasp, his spine arching as his eyes flew open. For a heartbeat, his irises were replaced by a solid, burning gold before the fire receded, leaving behind a stormy, piercing grey that looked decades younger.
"What?" Melania gasped at the sight.
In another wing of the castle, the air of Cassiopeia Black's laboratory was thick with the acrid, sulfurous fumes of her latest experimental concoction. She leaned over a bubbling cauldron, humming a disjointed, haunting melody that broke into fits of raspy, erratic laughter. In one hand, she swirled a glass of expensive amber sherry, her eyes wide and dancing with the chaotic glint of a mind long since unmoored from reality. She took a slow, languid sip, toasted the green vapors of her potion, and cackled at the empty air.
The laughter was cut short by a violent, magical tremor.
Cassiopeia gasped as a tidal wave of raw energy slammed into her core. The sherry glass shattered on the stone floor, forgotten, as she collapsed, clutching her throat in a desperate search for air. Around her, the shadows of the lab were chased away by a swarm of brilliant, floating gold sparks.
Across the country, Lucretia Prewett (née Black) is sitting in the garden with her husband, Ignatius. She let out a strangled cry, her teacup falling and soaking her dress as she doubled over. Ignatius caught her, panicked, but he watched in awe as the thin, gold traceries of the ritual climbed up her neck.
In the Tonks' residence, Andromeda fell to her knees in the kitchen. The gold veins burned through her skin. She heard Nymphadora yelp in the hallway. She was too distracted to be noticed that her little girl's hair changed color from her slimy green she always wore to a regal raven-black that ignored her every attempt to shift it back.
At Malfoy Manor, Narcissa was simply pruning her favorite white roses in the garden when she suddenly felt dizzy.
"Narcissa?" she heard her husband call. "NARCISSA?!"
She felt a pair of hands catching her before she reached the ground. She heard more yelling, the panicked voices of the manor's inhabitants echoing around her. The last thing she saw before everything went dark was her little boy.
Was her little boy glowing?
In the deepest cell of Azkaban, Bellatrix Lestrange's head hit the stone wall as she went into a violent seizure. Her mad cackles were now replaced by screaming as she clawed at her own arms, her ragged nails drawing blood that shone like liquid gold.
Pollux Black was in the library of his estate, his gnarled hands gripping a crystal glass of firewhisky. He was staring at the family tapestry on the wall, bitter eyes tracing the charred holes where his "disappointing" grandchildren had once been. Suddenly, the glass shattered in his hand—not from a weak grip, but from a surge of magic so violent it buckled the air around him.
He slumped into his armchair, his breath hitching as a searing heat raced through his marrow. He watched in a daze as his own wrinkled skin began to shimmer, a web of gilded veins pulsing with the rhythm of a frantic heartbeat. Pollux let out a low, guttural groan.
In his private conservatory, Cygnus Black was tending to a rare, flesh-eating orchid, his movements slow and sluggish from years of heavy drinking. Without warning, he was thrown backward, his back hitting the stone floor with a sickening thud. He didn't feel the impact; he only felt the fire.
He clutched his chest, gasping for air as golden sparks began to leak from his very pores. He saw his reflection in the glass of the greenhouse—his tired, sallow face was flushed, and for a fleeting second, his eyes burned with a brilliant, molten gold.
Marius and Ophelia sat at their small kitchen table; the air filled with the savory scent of roasted chicken and the hum of quiet excitement. They were busy poring over a calendar, talking animatedly about their upcoming trip to the Finch-Fletchley residence. Their granddaughter had invited them over, and the prospect of finally seeing their great-grandson again had made Marius feel years younger. He hadn't held the boy since he was an infant.
"I hope he remembers his Great-Grandfather," Marius joked, his eyes crinkling with a warmth that belied his status as the family's forgotten son.
"Marius?" Ophelia's voice suddenly cut through his laughter, sharp and breathless.
Marius didn't answer. The world had started to tilt. A violent, icy shiver raced up his spine, followed immediately by a wave of nausea so potent he felt like throwing up. He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white, as a strange, forgotten heat began to throb in his fingertips.
"Marius, your hands!" Ophelia gasped, her fork clattering to her plate.
He looked down, his breath hitching. Beneath the thin, papery skin of his aged hands, a network of gilded veins began to glow.
Deep in a lightless cave, surrounded by a lake of Inferi, the stasis charm on Regulus Black flickered. The golden pulse of the ritual traveled through the family bloodline and hit his cold skin. For the first time in years, his chest hitched. His lungs expanded, drawing in a single, ragged breath of damp, salty air.
*****
When the Lion casts the Silver to the night,
The Weaver hides the True Son from the light,
The Sun shall fail in a golden lie,
While the Hidden Stars reclaim the sky.
From the Hollowed Grave, the King shall wake,
by his blood, the Curse shall break.
Through Serpent's tongue and Gilded vein,
An Ancient House shall rise again.
Sybill Trelawney rarely graced the staff table in the Great Hall; she preferred the misty, incense-choked solitude of her tower to the "discordant vibrations" of a thousand students. Today, however, she sat clutching her floral teacup, a vague, distant smile on her face as she enjoyed the rare simplicity of a quiet breakfast.
But something was odd this morning.
The Hall was silent. A heavy, suffocating silence that felt thick enough to choke on. Sybill blinked, her oversized glasses sliding down her nose as she sat back up, her posture losing its sudden, unnatural rigidity. She looked around, confused by the sea of horrified faces staring back at her.
To her left and right, the faculty were frozen. Professor McGonagall's face was ashen, her fork halfway to her mouth, while Albus Dumbledore stood at the center of the table, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the dais. Down in the body of the Great Hall, the student body had stopped eating entirely, hundreds of eyes fixed on her in paralyzed shock.
"What?" she asked, her voice returning to its frail, fluttering quiver. She looked down at the shards of her cup and sighed. "Oh dear. Is something wrong? You all look as though you've seen a Grim."
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This is my last update for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Until my next hyperfixation.
58Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ6bpijAhmt
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