“You stay back!” Keynes cried out, extending his wand full length ahead of him, gripping it fiercely. He waved it back and forth as he edged along the hall, dragging Isabella with him.
The hallway was long and drab, lined with bricks enameled a pale, industrial green. The bare concrete floor radiated cold. Black doors lined both walls, all closed, marching away for what seemed like miles. But that was an illusion, of course. Keynes knew there were stairwells at both ends of the building. If he could make it to the other end, he could take the girl back down. Her sister could not stop him.
She was guilty. She was chaos.
Keynes firmed his jaw and straightened his back. He was justice.
He was order.
The lights flickered again and buzzed. The bulbs overhead were old, clear glass glowing with bright Goblinwire filaments. They required no Muggle electricity to burn, and yet, one by one, they began to extinguish. Each one popped like a miniature bomb, spraying glass and cold sparks. Darkness marched down the hall toward Keynes, but he forced himself to walk into it, increasing speed and raising his chin to face it.
“Chaos cannot defeat me!” he cried out, calling into the approaching dark. “I am order! Order trumps chaos!” He marched faster, his fist still cinched onto Isabella’s hand, squeezing her wrist hard enough to bruise the very bones, dragging her forcibly along with him.
The bulb directly over Keynes clouded suddenly with frost. Its light dulled, went cold, then flashed brilliantly, exploding. Glass and sparks rained down on him, peppering his bare head.
Petra Morganstern’s voice came from directly ahead of him.
“I’m not chaos,” it said, and suddenly she was standing before Keynes, her silhouette slight, but rushing with cold wind, somehow towering.
She was like a woman-shaped black hole, full of compressed gravity and seamless dark. “And you’re not order. I just want my sister back.”
Keynes halted clumsily and even stumbled back a step, his eyes bulging wide at the shape before him. “Oh, no you don’t!” he said stridently, shrilly. “You think you can simply defy me?!” He shook his head furiously, his rage somehow equaling his terror. “You’re a condemned criminal! You have no legal rights! You… you…!”
Petra’s arm stretched out toward Keynes. He couldn’t tell if she was reaching for the girl in his grip or for his own neck. The blackness of her silhouette seemed to pull him in. He resisted, pressing his lips into an enraged line. Violently, he jerked Isabella forward in front of him, using her like a human shield. He hooked his left elbow under her chin, forcing her head back against his chest, and raised his right fist, brandishing his wand. In a second, it was jabbed against the blonde girl’s temple.
“I’ll do it myself!” he shrieked in a fevered rush, his eyes widening with zeal. “I’m not as good as the official court Obliviator, but I know the spell! She may never be capable of forming another memory again.
But I can do it! I will do it! You’ll force me to it! The court has spoken!”
He screamed the last sentence, hoarsely enunciating each word as if it was a talisman.
“Put down the wand…” Petra said, her voice dropping to an icy monotone. Her form seemed to elongate, to grow in size, looming against the dimness of the walls. The walls themselves bulged away from her. Cracks raced along the bricks, spurting broken mortar like fireworks. Distantly, windows shattered and walls groaned. “Let. Her. GO!”
Keynes sucked in a sudden breath, filling his chest and preparing to shout. “OBLIVIA—”
Along the length of the hall, every door blew open like an explosion, erupting with clouds of icy steam. Petra’s arm lanced forward like a snake, clamping onto Keynes’ throat and propelling him backwards, straight out of his shoes. His hands scrabbled helplessly, first releasing Isabella and his wand, and then groping uselessly at the icy fist wrapped around his throat, locked beneath the shelf of his chin. And still Petra’s form drove him backwards along the hall, faster and faster, floating in pursuit, flying, her hair streaming around her like the snakes of a medusa. Her shape was a black nightmare of shadow except for her eyes, which blazed like starlight through sapphires. Keynes’ heels stuttered wildly backwards along the hall, scattering broken lightbulb glass.
“I’ve killed once before!” Petra’s voice boomed. The sound was like cracking glaciers, echoing, ringing along the bulging walls like a gong. “Horror that she was, the woman I killed was still the better of a deluded insect like YOU!”
“Petra!” a small, unexpected voice interrupted. It was a girl’s voice, familiar enough not to shatter Petra’s rage, but to surprise and pause it, at least for a second. Pent lightning crackled along the hall from Petra’s eyes and free hand, longing to be unleashed, and yet, reluctantly, she halted. Keynes was still thrust forward in her extended fist, his own hands clamped around hers, uselessly struggling, his mouth frozen in a silent, choked gasp, his eyes bulging up at her face.
“Izzy?” Petra said without turning, blinking the cold blue glow from her eyes.
“No,” the voice said meekly. “It’s me. Lucy.”
Petra finally looked back over her shoulder. Her hair hung around her face like black ribbons, revealing only one eye. She blinked again, ignoring the struggling Keynes.
Lucy was standing next to Izzy. As Petra watched, the girls drew a step closer together. Without looking, Lucy reached for Izzy’s hand, and Izzy gave it to her, lacing their fingers together. And with that gesture, Petra understood something. While she had been asleep, under the influence of Mother Newt’s poison apple, something had happened between Lucy and Izzy that had bonded them. They were friends now.
Other than Petra, Izzy had never before had a true friend. Despite everything, the sight of the girls’ clasped hands both broke and gladdened Petra’s heart.
“Don’t kill him, Petra,” Lucy said. Her dark eyes were calm, neither begging nor demanding. “Not because he deserves to live. I don’t know. He does seem like a pretty awful man. He may deserve to die. But you don’t deserve to kill.”
Petra glanced from Lucy’s dark eyes to Izzy’s green ones. The blonde girl was nodding slowly. “It’s not like with my mother,” she said in a low voice. “She was so miserable and ugly inside that she almost wanted to be killed. She nearly begged for it. But this… it’s different.”
Petra’s grip slowly tightened on Keynes’ neck, creaking the joints of his vertebra. His jaw dropped as his mouth gaped like a beached fish.
His thin chest hitched silently. Petra ignored him, still staring back over her shoulder at the two girls, at their laced hands.
“But… he almost ruined you, Iz…” she said. There was something like a plea in her voice. “He’s a human wreck. He deserves nothing but to be ended.”
Izzy nodded. Lucy frowned worriedly. “He probably does,” she admitted reasonably. “But you don’t deserve the stain that ending him would leave on you. On your soul.”