Chapter Text
Gren Particularis looked at her hands as she swayed on a swing. She was in her garden in her home in Bull Avenue, Middle-Frogton, staring at her palms. They were red and swollen with multiple callouses and chemical burns. Since Hogwarts had forced her to return home to recuperate after the loss of Emmeline, Greenda had done little else but busy herself, and since Emmeline’s funeral, which had only been ten hours ago, Greenda had wanted nothing more than to go back in time and change how things had happened. Bagsy had offered to come back to hers after the funeral, but Greenda had refused. She wanted to be alone.
Greenda could clean the house with a wave of her wand and be done with it, but her brother was a squib, and so they had cupboards filled with cleaning chemicals that muggles would use. Greenda found cleaning took up a lot more of her time the muggle-way. Her father and brother were worrying it was becoming obsessive. It was currently three in the morning, and Greenda had accidentally woken her brother, Mallory, with her angry scrubbing of the fireplace.
‘You cleaned that just this morning,’ Mal had murmured in a soft voice, putting his hands onto Greenda’s and forcing them to still. As soon as she’d stopped moving, she’d begun to shiver and sniff. ‘Go to bed.’
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Go outside, then,’ Mal had suggested.
When Greenda wasn’t cleaning or writing or running or doing anything to not think about Emmeline, she would be on the swing, allowing herself to wallow in the events that had happened.
She drew in a breath, looking in through the window to see Mallory putting the cleaning equipment away. Greenda twisted the chains of the swing in her hands, activating their ascension, and the swing soared into the sky. It stopped abruptly and Greenda looked down at the speckled lights of Middle-Frogton far below her feet. Up here it was cold and quiet, and only Greenda’s thoughts buzzed around her head. Since everything that had happened, she was very grateful for the enchanted swing set in their garden. It gave her space to think.
Emmeline had said something to her at the Vampire Ball that she couldn’t push from her mind.
‘Greenda.’ She’d smiled softly as they’d swayed to the music. ‘We’re both idiots. But now, at least, we’re each other’s idiot.’
Greenda’s grip on the chains tightened. She knew exactly what Emmeline had meant by that, and it made her heart ache to know Emmeline had been taken from her before they’d had the chance to spend any real time together. Why had they spent so long fighting? They’d been the best of friends when they’d first met back in their first year. But then they’d had a falling out and it had all gone downhill until, finally, they worked out their problems. And just as things were beginning to look up…
Closing her eyes, Greenda saw the acting troupe in her mind’s eye. They were the ones who had done this. Their stupid castle with its stupid defence mechanism, invitations and floor that lets you fall through it. Greenda shook her head, inhaling sharply through her nose as she felt the threat of crying tighten around her chest. She looked back at her hands. Professor Fitzsimmons had told her Swiftie’s fate. The woman who’d driven the carriage that had taken them to the acting troupe had died. She’d been killed by a plague inflicted on her by the mysterious boy who’d attacked them as they’d escaped. At the time, Greenda had been in shock. Part of her felt like she still was. But back then, after the strange boy of flies and sickness had left, Starrett had urged her on. Greenda had been the only person who knew enough about healing magic to help someone afflicted with such a horrific, and fast acting, illness. Her hands had tried their best. They’d busily worked away on Swiftie’s body, trying to defeat the sickness festering below her skin and running her veins a dark, concrete-hard black. She’d stabilised her, sure. She’d given her a few more weeks to spend with her family. But, in the end, she’d failed, and Swiftie had died. Just like Bill had.
Just like Emmeline.
Greenda hadn’t even got the chance to help Emmeline. She’d been locked in by those invisible walls while Emmeline had been sitting, awaiting her fate. Bagsy had written to Greenda, telling her how Emmeline had tragically lost her invitation and fallen through the floor. The invisible walls had prevented her from making it back to the platform on time, the only place that didn’t require an invitation to hold someone up. Before she’d been able to send Bagsy a letter in response the funeral had arrived. At Emmeline’s funeral, Greenda’s words and emotions were too big to get out and Bagsy had simply comforted her in silence as the event progressed. Greenda didn’t know how to express how much she appreciated Bagsy being there for her.
The funeral had been a small affair, and Emmeline’s mother had forbidden Mr and Mrs Vinski from attending, though Greenda had spotted Primrose hovering on a nearby street in a hoodie, watching with her sharp eyes, one snake one blue. Greenda had stared at her for a long time, thinking on the last thing Emmeline had asked her to do; to look after Primrose. Then Emmeline’s mother had spoken a few words, and her broken posture and cracking voice cut through Greenda and sent her mind straight back to the acting troupe’s castle.
If Greenda had been with Emmeline could she have carried her and kept her safe? Could she have done something to keep her alive? Even now, weeks after the funeral, and after the incident itself, she still wondered. She didn’t know, and she would never know. So, instead, to stop her thoughts getting too loud, she focussed on what she could know: that the fireplace was spotless, that the dishes were squeaky clean and that all her clothes and robes were freshly pressed.
She was intending on descending the magic swing back into her garden and trying to get back to sleep, or at the very least reorganise her filing for the hundredth time, when something flew into her ear.
Greenda instinctively flinched. She wasn’t scared of falling—the swings were enchanted to make sure you couldn’t, and didn’t that fact sprout a bunch more ‘what ifs?’ regarding Emmeline’s fate—but she wasn’t keen on an insect so close to her. She managed to flick the bug out of her ear, grossed out. ‘Go away,’ she muttered angrily, swatting at it, before noticing a second fly, and then a third.
Her breath slowing to a halt, Greenda slowly turned her eyes skyward to an inky black cloud. A froth of swarming insects slowly appeared through the mist, bearing a boy with thousands of tiny wings.
Greenda recognised him. He was the one who’d attacked them as they’d been trying to escape the acting troupe’s castle. His limbs were longer than they should have been, and there was a horrid, rattling breathing emanating through the air as he approached. His wiry blonde hair was a mess around his head, and his lower jaw was entirely missing, replaced with thick, black tendrils that looked like rotting flesh.
The boy’s eyes squinted with the wrinkles of a menacing smile, though the tendrils of his lower face merely continued to squirm. ‘Hello.’ Greenda wasn’t sure where his voice was coming from. ‘I have a proposition for you.’
Greenda’s wand was in her hand and pointed at him. ‘Stay back!’ Her voice shook as she moved to make the swing return to the garden.
‘I not going to harm you. I’m here to offer justice for your fallen friend.’
Greenda froze. ‘Justice?’
There was an ominous pause. ‘I know who killed her. I can help you get revenge.’
‘Who?’
‘The acting troupe. They knew Emmeline’s invitation was destroyed. That’s why those invisible walls went up—they wanted her to die.’ The boy gestured to the horizon, in the direction of a far-off London. ‘The marionette is alive. Philipupus had more bodies in his collection than just the troupe and retreated to one of their minds. Right now, he dwells in the mind of the Minister for Magic himself, Moro Loget. I am planning for his downfall, but I need help.’
Taking a second to think over her options, Greenda glanced at were the boy had gestured. ‘I’m not interested,’ she answered quietly. However much she longed for justice, she didn’t trust this boy. He’d attacked them, and tried to kill them, after all.
Surprisingly, the boy seemed to accept that. ‘I won’t force you to help but know that you’re letting Emmeline down.’
Greenda raised her wand to point at him again, fury and shame igniting at its tip, but the boy was already disappearing back into the clouds. Within a few seconds he, and his flies, were gone.
The danger passed, Greenda looked back at the horizon. If what the man had said was true, if the marionette was in the mind of the Minister for Magic, and controlling him, then she was certain only bad things were coming their way.