Petra heard the words, and knew in her deepest heart, the eye of her rage’s storm, that they were good. Lucy was right. And yet…
And yet another voice spoke up inside her thoughts. A voice that she, Petra, had not heard in almost a year.
KILLING IS NOT A STAIN, the voice exclaimed, screaming the words in the centre of Petra’s mind, drowning out every other thought like an impatient observer that can no longer remain silent. KILLING IS THE POWER OF IMMORTALITY! KILLING IS BEING AS A GOD!
“Yes,” Petra said to herself, her expression going calm again as she turned back to Keynes. She desperately wanted to agree with the Voice of the Bloodline in her mind. It felt so good to go along. “And he does deserve it…”
Keynes saw the resolve forming in Petra’s eyes and tried to shake his head. His eyes bulged from their sockets, even as his face drained of all color, turned as pale as wax.
He deserves to die… The Voice agreed, now dropping to a greedy whisper. They ALL deserve to diiie!!
“We all deserve to die,” Lucy agreed from behind Petra, almost as if she could also hear the vicious Voice in Petra’s mind. Her words were like a lilt of sanity in the frozen air, unavoidable and persistent.
“We all deserve to die, Petra, the moment someone with power decides they have the right to kill.”
Petra blinked again.
She paused.
Lucy was right. Of course she was. Petra wanted desperately to refuse it. The Voice that haunted her thoughts railed against it, cursed against it, would have turned and killed Lucy herself just to silence her if it could. But the Voice didn’t control Petra anymore. Despite its strength, and despite the occasional dark persuasion of its logic, the Voice of the Bloodline was no longer a curse. It was just a part of her, and she was a part of it.
Grudgingly, hating herself for doing it, she let go of Keynes.
He dropped to the floor and crumpled like a doll made of loose sticks.
Petra stared down at him, unmoving and unmoved. She yearned to kill him still. Her fingertips arced and crackled with icy power at the thought. But somehow she resisted.
Warmth approached her from behind. The two girls took Petra’s hands, one each, warming them and stifling the killing power that wanted to lance out, that yearned for expression.
You can hold it in for a time, the Voice seethed petulantly, diminishing once again into the background noise of Petra’s mind. But you can’t control it forever. And when you finally unleash it, it won’t care who is standing in your way…
“Is he still alive?” Lucy asked, looking down with morbid fascination at the crumpled form of the Arbiter.
“He’s alive,” Petra admitted reluctantly.
Lucy nodded. “I’m glad, Petra,” she said, and then glanced up at her, her dark eyes somber and sincere. “I’m glad you didn’t kill him.
Because some things can’t be undone. Some lost things can’t be unlost.
No matter how much you might want them to be.”
Later, barely an hour from that moment in the hallway with the three girls standing hand-in-hand, Petra would remember Lucy’s words.
They would come to her in a flash of light and a moment’s horror— a moment that would turn into an endless ringing note, growing louder rather than softer with every passing day and month and year. Petra would know all too painfully well how much one might wish for a lost thing to become unlost.
But were Lucy’s words true? Were lost things ever really lost forever?
Petra had been teased with such bargains before, but they were always false bargain, empty hopes, mere capricious tricks intended to manipulate.
But what if she, Petra, could conjure the answer herself? What if, purely by the strength of her own immense power and prosaic intelligence, she could write her own bargain?
Was there any price worth paying, no matter how high, to find out?
She wondered. Over the course of the following years, Petra wondered that more and more.
1. – The interview
“Looks just like the first time we rode it,” Ralph commented jovially, making his way along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express to the raucous noise of boarding students and the nearby hiss and chuff of the crimson engine. Rafters of steam, brilliant white in the morning sun, drifted past the windows. “It’s easy to forget the whole world’s about to drop straight off a cliff, isn’t it?”
Rose hefted her bag past a gaggle of nervous-looking first years.
“I really wish you’d stop saying that. You’re just repeating what your father says.”
“Well,” James bobbed his head, “Denniston Dolohov is chief Muggle advisor to the Minister of Magic. It’s his job to know all the ways the magical world is breaking out into the Muggle, and the other way around. He’d know better than anyone. Here.”
He pointed toward an empty compartment near the end of the corridor. Noisily, they shunted open the door and filed in, unloading their knapsacks and duffles and hoisting them up onto the luggage racks.
James leaned to peer out the window before sitting down. The usual crowd milled on the platform— knots of families saying goodbye, students hurrying with carts of trunks, tall porters in red coats directing people and tweeting their whistles— but the collection of wizarding news people were still evident in the foreground, holding court near the engine. The Daily Prophet photographer’s flash poofed over the crowd as he snapped more pictures. Next to him was Myron Madrigal from wizarding wireless news, who appeared to be conversing with Cameron Creevey, broadcasting live with his wand held between them. James grimaced, knowing that the boy’s infectious enthusiasm would probably fill ten breathless minutes of air-time, whether Madrigal wished it or not, and nine of those minutes would probably be about James Sirius Potter.
“She doesn’t seem to be down there anymore,” Rose commented, cramming in next to James and blocking his view with her bushy reddish hair.
“Probably already on board,” Albus suggested, joining them in the compartment and tugging the door shut with a bang. “Getting all set up for her big interview, I imagine. Your public awaits, James.”
“Just shut it, will you?” James shook his head in embarrassed annoyance. “She’ll probably be interviewing loads of us, not just me.
Besides, it sure wasn’t my idea.”
Rose sniffed. “But you didn’t say no, did you?” Suddenly she raised a hand and waved energetically. “Bye mum! Dad! Love you! See you at Christmas!”