Aurora wasn't certain how she'd gotten here - a dream? There were certainly aspects of Atlantis that were a dream come true, but this shared more in common with the most vivid of her nightmares. It had started in the kitchen at St. Ives which shouldn't have been unsettling. This was the place where she had always felt most at home, before she had dropped every trace of her old name and life. She'd been Chloe here, even when she'd been Aurora everywhere else: Chloe Wilkes, back when there had still been something of the Wilkes name worth holding onto.
There was a book open on her usual chair over in the corner by the fire, exactly where she used to sit and read while Lally cooked (That was what was wrong. The ever helpful, overly affectionate house elf was nowhere to be seen). It was the History of Graham Wilkes, and as soon as Aurora saw that, she knew it would be open to Graham's letters to his son. Without touching it, without even reading the words on the page, she recited aloud, “Our lives are not our own. They belong to those who came before and to those who will come after. The past and the future must be ever in our minds, even in the least of our decisions. We may not do as we please.”
Until she heard a reaction, she hadn't realized anyone else was there.
“Professor Sinistra?” Callie asked, the uncertainty in her voice matched by the confusion written across her face.
When Callie had woken up in the strange house, she hadn’t been able to decide whether she was dreaming or not. She’d spent the previous day in Atlantis in such a state of anxiety over Alicia’s kidnapping and, when she’d finally laid down to try to rest, her sleep had been so fitful that she thought it was entirely possible that this was a concoction of her tired and worried mind.
First hearing a voice then, when she investigated, seeing someone else here, and someone she recognised at that, didn’t do much to help clarify matters. Even so, she couldn’t think why on earth she’d be dreaming about her Astronomy professor, albeit a much younger version.
It dawned on her that a young Professor Sinistra had been in Atlantis too. The realisation suddenly made the dream scenario seem less likely, especially after everything she’d heard about Atlantis magic.
“Do you know where we are, Professor?”
It was still strange to hear the title, but Aurora was adjusting. She didn't recognize the girl when she turned, but she had encountered several future students in Atlantis. She pressed her lips together before deciding to answer. It was only a girl (and Regulus had still been in school when he took the Mark). “St. Ives, Cornwall,” she said. “My sister and I grew up here.” At least until her fifth year. Olivia had hated the house and all it stood for after their father’s death. “I don't know why we're here now, though.”
That was naturally the cue for a rattling and scraping sound on the stairs that led up to the rest of the house. It was accompanied by a slightly accented voice. “Chloe! Chloe Aurora Wilkes!”
Aurora's face paled.
Callie looked around them again as Professor Sinistra spoke, noticing the view of the sea through the large windows. It didn’t look at all like a view you would get from anywhere in Atlantis, lending credence to the professor’s claim.
She was about to reply when she heard a voice coming from behind her. One look at Professor Sinistra’s face gave her reason enough to be worried. Whoever it was coming down the stairs, the professor was not keen to see them. She found herself sidling closer to the other woman, instinctively reaching for her wand.
“Who is that?” she whispered, keeping her eyes trained on the entrance to the room, through which the sound was coming.
The color returned to Aurora’s cheeks, rapidly and brightly. She lifted her chin slightly. “My mother.”
Because it was family, there was really only one thing to do. Aurora stepped forward as the woman walked - no shuffled into the kitchen. “How many times do I need to call you? I shouldn’t have to come find you here. And what are you wearing?” The voice contained all the familiar disappointment and distaste of old, but far from the elaborately coiffed hair and fashionable robes, the black hair was limp and tangled, the clothes tattered, and the perfect skin pale and rotting. Graciela Sinistra Wilkes, who had always cared too much about image to appear at less than her best (and by that token, had always refrained from delivering a public dressing down), appeared entirely unaware of the spectacle she made (and in front of an outsider, no less).
More substantial than the ghosts of Hogwarts, but clearly still less than living. Aurora backed away without meaning to. “Do you even think how you reflect on us?” said what had been her mother.
“I apologize,” said Aurora, slightly aside, without taking her eyes away. This was not something a stranger should have to witness. Family affairs had always been kept strictly within the Wilkes family in the past.
“It’s only to be expected.” This time it was her father’s voice, and the inferius of Ethan Wilkes shambled down the stairs after that of his wife. “Two hundred years of Wilkes family legacy, and you abandon all of it, even your name.”
At that last accusation, Aurora flinched and backed up again. Just a short time ago (or was it short?), she’d been addressed by her given name for the first time in three years. Her father looked down his unnaturally pale nose at her and quoted. “‘Our lives are not our own. They belong to those who came before and to those who will come after.’”
“‘-We may not do as we please.’” Olivia Wilkes, the society belle with all of her mother’s beauty and the youth Graciela no longer possessed, looked even more grotesque than her parents, staggering up behind them in torn and stained dress robes. What direction had she come from? “I worked so hard to restore our name, and you were ashamed of it.” There was too much truth in that, and yet not enough. It wasn’t the name she’d been ashamed of, but the dirt through which they had dragged it in the wake of that wizard. “You should have been proud, Chloe, and yet you didn’t care for us at all.”
That wasn’t true. Chloe - she really wasn’t Aurora here - backed so far from her sister that she bumped into the girl she’d forgotten was in the room with her. “I cared!”
Callie watched as Professor Sinistra backed towards her and she put out a hand to steady her as they collided. She couldn’t blame the other woman for wanting to put as much distance between herself and the things in the room with them as possible. They were hideous. They were clearly not… alive. Callie had read about things like this in books but not the kinds of books that were freely accessible on the shelves at Hogwarts. These kind of creatures only haunted the pages of books in the Restricted Section. Unless she was much mistaken, Professor Sinistra’s family were inferi.
“Professor, I don’t know what’s going on but this isn’t right,” she murmured, trying to keep her voice low so the inferi couldn’t hear her. “We should be in Atlantis. This has got to be some kind of magic.”
It was strange how Aurora had almost forgotten Atlantis in her horror at the advancing - creatures, but she clutched at the reminder. “It must be magic,” she echoed, and then added in a stronger voice. “Dark magic. His.” Professor Dumbledore was still trying to encourage the use of the Dark Lord's name, but Professor Dumbledore was known to be the only wizard Voldemort had ever feared. He was also, very possibly, quite mad. Either might excuse such daring, but Aurora could claim neither, even if she'd longed for madness in her darker moments.
Aurora's grasp on the reality that Callie had pointed out started to slip away again into those memories. They were moments reading anonymous letters that condemned the Wilkes sisters for their parents’ crimes... telling her dearest friend that he didn't deserve to sleep easily... and months later telling the same friend that she could forgive anything but his death... sitting side by side and silent with Olivia because Regulus’s absence had stretched on beyond what could be accounted for by the ups and downs of their complicated friendship (that had been her sister, not this monstrosity, even if it used Olivia's words)... running away to an empty field while a squad of stone-faced Aurors searched the townhouse for evidence after the last stand of ‘Rosier and Wilkes.’ Madness would have been better than the loneliness of waiting for someone who would never come.
“Because you left!” The new voice came from the one remaining direction. There was nowhere to run. Waterlogged and dripping, more green than a night of overindulging could have ever accounted for, stood the one person whose words could hurt more than the rest. Perhaps that was because, however undefined Aurora Sinistra’s feelings, Chloe Wilkes had never ceased loving Regulus Black even when she'd wished she could hate him. “Just like Sirius. Just like Andromeda. Just like your parents. You never looked back. You never looked.”
Abandonment was the unforgivable sin of their world. “I couldn't have found you,” Chloe protested.
“You didn't try. You just walked away. It's your own fault you're alone.”
There was a rattling and sliding as the other Inferi shuffled closer. “You aren't worthy of the Wilkes name,” pronounced Ethan Wilkes. “And without us, you'll never be anything.”
Callie whirled around to see where the new voice was coming from and felt her breath catch in her throat. She recognised the new man (if man was what you could call the creature shambling towards them). He had been in Atlantis too and he certainly hadn’t looked like that. It only confirmed to Callie what she had hitherto strongly suspected: whatever magic it was that had brought them here (and she didn’t agree with the professor that it was His magic, although the idea still cast an icy chill over her), this spectacle had been designed to shock them. No, not them, the professor. This was her family and, Callie guessed, her friend. And, by the looks of the other woman, it was having the desired effect.
Realising that the professor was too gripped by the shock of coming face to face with the inferi to act, Callie raised her wand and cast Incendio in a ring around them. Magical flames took hold of the carpet and flickered upwards to about waist height, creating a fence of fire between the pair of them and the horrible things on the other side.
As soon as the spell was cast, Callie turned to Professor Sinistra and, acting out of desperation, took hold of her firmly by the shoulders so she could look into her anguished face.
“Professor, I don’t think this is real. That man…” She tried not to glance through the flames to where the latest inferius was shuffling around agitatedly in her peripheral vision. “He’s in Atlantis, alive and well. We should be there too. You do remember Atlantis, don’t you?”
One thing the Wilkes family had never been was overly physical, whether in anger or in affection. The shaking was effective, even more than the fire, although the blaze did help to startle Aurora back to herself. She almost protested as the inferi backed away from the fire, but bit down on the exclamation. “Thank you,” she said instead. “I remember.” Atlantis had ocean views that rivaled Cornwall's. It was a place where the dead lived in reality, not only in memory or dark magic. It was a paradise straight out of a storybook, and as in any fairytale… “There's a war to fight.” Something to preserve: worlds upon worlds of promise, the blue of the ocean outside, her students at Hogwarts. There was a baffling number of them in Atlantis, including the girl in front of her, all exceptionally talented and building a future better than the past.
Callie breathed a sigh of relief when the professor started talking sense.
“Yes, there is. They need us. We’ve got to try to get back.” Callie wasn’t exactly sure how they were going to get back but snapping Professor Sinistra out of her shocked incapacitation seemed to be a good first step.
“I know this is going to be hard, and I think it’s designed to be,” she carried on, hoping she was on the right track here and not about to cause the professor unnecessary emotional pain, considering what the Inferi had been saying. “But we have to get out of here. We have to leave those things behind. They’re not real. They’re just designed to keep you here.” Oh goodness, how terrible would it be if she were wrong?
Aurora pressed her lips together and then nodded agreement. She certainly had no desire to stay here with these mockeries of life. The stairs were blocked by the Inferi. Aurora turned and looked at the fireplace. “The floo,” she said. Inferi hated fire as Callie's spell had demonstrated. Even if they had the ability to use the network, Aurora doubted they would attempt it.
There was a pot of floo powder on the table where Lally usually kneaded bread. Aurora ran for it, grabbing Callie's arm as she did so.
“Of course!” Callie gasped, already on the balls of her feet to run as the professor grabbed her arm. Quickly, she flicked her wand, commanding the ring of fire around them to expand outwards and split apart until it formed a horseshoe shape with the fireplace at its open end.
Travelling by floo powder with someone else wasn’t going to be easy or comfortable but there was no way she wanted to be left behind with the Inferi and she wasn’t going to risk going first and losing Professor Sinistra along the way. Determinedly, she hooked her arm through the other woman’s, holding tightly to her sleeve.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get straight to Atlantis,” Callie called anxiously as they headed towards the fireplace. “Let’s just get somewhere safe, then we can think.” She paused.
“We can go to mine!” she exclaimed. For her, there was nowhere safer. Her family’s house had been her safe haven since she’d been five years old. Certain it was the right move, Callie reached into the pot in Aurora’s grasp, grabbed a large handful of the emerald green powder inside and flung it into the fireplace, yelling, “Vineyards!” as she pulled Aurora with her into the flames.
Floo-ing in tandem was uncomfortable, but the Inferi could not follow, and that was the important part. Aurora stumbled out of the flames at the other end, pale and soot-covered and rather relieved not to find anyone else in the room to see her in that state. It was lighter here which helped to provide some distance from the scene they had just left. Aurora was still shaken, but she was already trying to close that memory away and compose herself. After all, a Wilkes did not cry.
She looked to Callie for direction. This was her home.
Except it wasn’t. A wave of unease washed over Callie as she stepped out of the fireplace in the living room. Although they were in the correct place, nothing about it felt right. For one thing, all of her Nonna’s beautiful, Italian furnishings were missing. The furniture that was left was only the plain and functional pieces - the bare bones of the warm, lived-in surroundings she knew and loved. The artworks were missing from the walls and the smiling photographs of her family, some of which Callie had taken herself, had disappeared from their places on dresser opposite. It was as though someone had stripped everything personal out of the room.
Feeling cool fingers of uncertainty begin to creep down the back of her neck, she crossed the room towards the doorway and called out, “Nonna? Grandpa?”
There was no response.
She glanced back over her shoulder at Professor Sinistra, a frown forming on her forehead.
“This isn’t right.”
Aurora had begun to realize exactly that. Callie had said they were going to her home, but this house did not look as though anyone lived there. She looked at the other woman and frowned thoughtfully. Seacliff had contained every phantom that haunted Aurora's nightmares. If the Vineyards followed the same pattern, only Callie knew what they might find here. “What's happened?” she asked.
Callie could feel hot tears welling up in her eyes. She didn’t know whether it was because her nerves were already frayed because of what they’d just witnessed on the other end of the floo or simply because the thought that had flashed through her mind, that had so often caused her to wake from fitful sleep as a child, was her most desperate, visceral fear, she couldn’t control the wave of emotion she felt at seeing the Vineyards so completely devoid of Spinnets.
“They’ve left,” she whispered past the thickness in her throat. “It’s something I’ve always been terrified of, that they would leave me behind because I’m not really part of the family. I used to have nightmares about it.” That’s what this whole experience felt like, now she thought about it, one big nightmare, a combination of hers and Professor Sinistra’s.
"Nightmares," said Aurora aloud. It echoed her own thoughts. "I begin to wonder if any of this can be real." She looked at Callie intently. "I do not believe, having met your family, that they could ever regard you as less than fully their own." There was an ease and a warmth in the interactions Aurora had observed on the network that she rather envied. She remembered, distantly, the rumors from the latest mission, the anxiety and solidarity over one of their own being captured. It was nothing that had ever been present in the Wilkes home. "In fact, I suspect they are quite worried for you at this moment." She said it with conviction. Wherever they really were, whatever might be happening in Atlantis, Aurora had no doubt that someone was seeking to recover them: Callie's mother, aunt and uncles… Regulus…
"Someone or something wishes to keep us from them," Aurora concluded. "And I do not wish to oblige them."