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“Give me your Gringotts pouch and I’ll release him.”
Crimson magic ripples across Lady Harriet Potter’s skin. Rage and terror ricochet through her, bouncing off each other and magnifying in the process. She’s— This can’t—
“If you hurt him, I’ll kill you,” Harriet hisses. It’s not quite Parseltongue—she lost that when the Killing Curse killed the Horcrux in her scar—but it’s unnervingly close.
The war is over. Harriet fulfilled the accursed prophecy and “vanquished the Dark Lord”. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen now! Her loved ones shouldn’t be held at wand point ever again! Everyone should be safe.
“You didn’t even kill the Dark Lord, Potter. His spell rebounded. That’s why he’s gone now,” the wizard in the hooded, black cloak mocks.
Mister Ron Weasley stares at her with blue eyes full of confidence. An elm wand digs into his throat, and there isn’t even a hint of fear in his gaze. His faith in her is both humbling and frightening.
Harriet tears her gaze away from her oldest friend, the love of her life, and glares at the hooded figure with a hatred she hasn’t felt since Voldemort’s demise. “I swear on my life and magic that I’ll kill you and every member of your bloodline if you don’t release him in the next seven seconds.”
Her sworn Potter Vow echoes in the grimy depths of Knockturn Alley.
“One.”
“What have you done?” the blackguard screeches.
“Two.”
The hand that’s pressing the elm wand so viciously into Ron’s skin that it will surely bruise trembles.
“Three,” Harriet bites out, her holly wand brandished. It’s never failed her in a fight, not when it truly matters. It means the world to her that she was able to use the Elder Wand to repair it after the Final Battle.
“You can’t!” the cloaked wizard yells.
“Four.”
Harriet has lost … everything. She lost both of her parents and ended up being raised in the Muggle World by the Dursleys, which was hellish. Her godfather spent over a decade in Azkaban for trying to avenge her parents and then died a scant few years later. Sirius Black, whom Lady Walburga Black officially disinherited, never would have been in the Department of Mysteries that night if Harriet hadn’t—
“You’re the Chosen One! You don’t kill!”
“Five.”
Except for those few weeks in fourth year, when Ron was behaving like an idiot because he didn’t know how to deal with his crush on her, and the couple of times he slipped away during the Horcrux Hunt to check on his family, he has never left her side.
Ron is good and brave and Harriet will absolutely murder someone to keep him in her life.
They haven’t announced their engagement yet, because it would be crass as hell to do so when there’s been a death in his family less than a year ago, but that doesn’t change anything. As far as Harriet is concerned, Ron is her future lord-husband, the father of their eventual children. And she will commit wholesale slaughter before she allows anyone to rip her family away from her again.
“Six.”
The cloaked wizard Disapparates with a cry. It doesn’t surprise Harriet in the least when he Splinches himself, leaving two fingers behind. That’ll be enough evidence for the Aurors to track him down and bring him to justice.
Harriet’s hand, so steady in the face of violence, now shakes. It’s only a long-learned instinct that stops her from dropping her wand now that the danger has seemingly passed. She can’t bring herself to return it to its holster-bracelet.
“I’m fine, Harry,” Ron says, voice firm but soft. He walks forward slowly, uncurls her unoccupied hand from the tight fist it’s formed, and then leans his freckled cheek against her palm. “See. I’m fine.”
It doesn’t surprise Harriet that no one, not even a hag, steps out into the alley. People don’t survive in Knockturn Alley by being nosy. And anyone with even half a brain knows to avoid a member of the Honorable and Most Ancient House of Potter whose skin is rippling with crimson magic.
“I—”
Harriet can’t tear her gaze away from the bruise already blossoming on his freckled throat, just to the side of his Adam’s apple. It’s evidence that Ron can still be attacked, even though she and her family sacrificed so much to defeat Voldemort and win the war.
Her heart hurts. Tears stab at the backs of her eyes.
Ron leans more fully against her hand, even as he gently nudges her wand toward the uneven cobblestones. “Don’t heal it, Harry. The Aurors will need pictures for evidence.”
“I know,” Harriet replies, even though she hates it, even though she wants to heal it immediately. She wants to wipe it away as if it never happened. She can’t— Harriet breathes heavily and thunks her head against his chest. “I can’t lose you, Ron.”
“You won’t,” Ron promises.
“You can’t promise that,” Harriet rasps. She wishes he could. Oh, how she wishes it were possible. But Harriet is too old and too jaded to believe in promises like this one. She knows all too well how easy it is for someone she loves to be murdered.
Ron scoffs and slings an arm around her waist. “You just swore to end an entire bloodline to keep me safe, Harry. There isn’t a magical in all of Avalon who would risk fighting against a Potter Vow. Not even Lestrange, as mad as a hatter and fresh from Azkaban, would have chanced it. Potter Vows can’t be broken.”
Objectively, what Harriet swore to do is awful. However, she doesn’t regret it.
“I was only being fair,” Harriet says, remembered rage reigniting the crimson waves of magic across her skin, which had nearly stopped. “You’re the only wizard who’ll ever make love to me, Ron. How else was I meant to respond to a threat to end my bloodline and, with it, the Honorable and Most Ancient House of Potter?”
Ron’s heartbeat is thunderous in his chest. “If you keep talking like that, Harry, we’ll end up pissing off Hermione and my entire family by eloping before they even find out we’re engaged.”
Harriet huffs a laugh against his chest, finally returns her holly wand to its holster-bracelet, and then leans back to meet his gaze. She declares, “I’m Gryffindor enough to face that. Are you?”
“Course I am, mate.”
Even as Ron presses her against the nearest brick wall of some dingy shop’s exterior and drapes an arm over her shoulders while they wait for the regularly scheduled Auror patrol to arrive, Harriet knows that they won’t actually elope. The Weasleys are grieving. Neither she nor Ron will steal an opportunity to celebrate away from their loved ones who have dwelt in grief since the Final Battle.
“I can’t believe anyone was stupid enough to try it,” Ron mutters. “Merlin, not even Malfoy is that stupid. You took down Voldemort with a wand that wasn’t even yours.” He kisses her cheek. “What did he think was going to happen?”
Harriet doesn’t answer as her gaze flicks to the Splinched fingers on the filthy ground. She has lost too much. She refuses to lose anyone else. If Harriet has to kill to protect the people she loves, if she has to stain the earth with magical blood, if she has to end an entire bloodline, then she will.
Once the Aurors track this bastard down, once the trial happens before the Wizengamot, revealing the threat of a vow that Harriet swore, nothing like this should ever happen again.
But if it does … Harriet will ensure the perpetrators pay in flesh and blood and corpses rigid and cold with death.