Private message to my eldest brother

[alt_sinistra]

I write these words in sincere hopes that though their form is broken, their intent will hold.

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us, now and forever, to the end of time, amen. Blessed are the Gods, always, now and forever, now and to the end of time, amen. To the souls of your departed servant, Antonin Nikolaevich Dolohov, called Antosha, called Tosha, called Toshenka, give rest where there is no pain, no suffering, but life everlasting, abiding there forever without corruption, now and forever, now and to the end of time, amen.

Though bearing the scars of so many transgressions, let his way be opened to the halls of Osiris, let the underworld be opened to him, let him be established as a dweller in the halls of the shining ones. Unclose the ways and open the roads to the souls of Toshenka who has now entered in the house of Osiris. Let him enter boldly and come forth in peace at the house of Osiris, without hindrance and without rejec refu repulse. Let his souls enter at his pleasure and go forth at his will.

Grant him eternal rest and may he rest in peace. May his souls and the souls of all the many beloved departed, through the mercy of the Gods and all the sacred powers, rest in peace.

Toshenka, chosen brother. I remember you with apples and with honey wine, at the dawn of the day and the sight of the first star. I will tell stories about you to the few to those who will listen, and I will remember you, all the days of my life. You have been teacher and brother and most of all, friend. You have saved my life and the life of those I love, and though you are dead and though you have done so many horrible things, I do remember the good you chose. These things I tell to the sky and the land and the lake and the bees.

Comments

[alt_sinistra]

Toshenka. I am furious with you. Still. Forever, now.

For giving up. How could you make inferi, Tosha? How could you turn your back on all the things I thought you believed, the last few parts that were still your better self, not something twisted and shattered and wrong? I can understand your loyalty. To family. But the rest - how could you?

For dying too soon. I was hoping. I was hoping we could fix the wards (your cobbled-together, badly-designed, monstrosities of wards that would have killed us all), and maybe give you one more chance, and I wasn't fast enough or smart enough or able to figure out the magics soon enough, and even if I had, you'd have said no, I'm sure. But dead is done, and there is no more. And it was a stupid hope, and maybe dead is better. You can't do more wrong now.

For teaching me to think like you did. You and all the people who blighted the past twenty years. You taught me enough to undo your work. You and Raz and half-heard conversations at parties, and things people thought I wouldn't understand and Irma's research and so much arithmancy and sheer luck. Despite everything. Despite what you did to Seamus and his mother, and despite all the blood, so much blood But it's in my head, and it will never come out.

For turning me into someone who could kill. Did kill. For making me more like you.

[alt_sinistra]

And if you do not, in that afterlife of yours, find Harry, find everyone whose deaths are on your hands and make things better for them, I will hunt you down to the end of time, to the death of the last star.

I thought better of you. And I was wrong.

[alt_sinistra]

I am so very sorry, Tosha.

And sorry I am not strong enough or fierce enough to be Antigone.

Private message to Aurora Sinistra

[alt_sinistra]

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us, now and forever, to the end of time, amen. Blessed are the Gods, always, now and forever, now and to the end of time, amen. To the souls of your departed servant, Bartemius Crouch Jr., called Barty, give rest where there is no pain, no suffering, but life everlasting, abiding there forever without corruption, now and forever, now and to the end of time, amen.

Though bearing the scars of so many transgressions, let his way be opened to the halls of Osiris, let the underworld be opened to him, let him be established as a dweller in the halls of the shining ones. Unclose the ways and open the roads to the souls of Barty who has now entered in the house of Osiris. Let him enter boldly and come forth in peace at the house of Osiris, without hindrance and without repulse. Let his souls enter at his pleasure and go forth at his will.

Grant him eternal rest and may he rest in peace. May his souls and the souls of all the many beloved departed, through the mercy of the Gods and all the sacred powers, rest in peace.

He was chosen son of my chosen brother, and friend of my husband, and for all the many wrongs that he did, he brought them and others joy.

[alt_antonin]

Youngest sister, I will accept the fault for so many transgressions and never gainsay your right to hold me to task for them, but you will not blame me for those last.

We made our bargain, at the very beginning, my word and magic on it, and I have upheld that bargain throughout, even past the point I was forced to return it to you: I have kept faith with you to precisely the extent to which it did not conflict with my older oaths. Certainly more than I could have; almost certainly more than I should have. But you will not hold me to task for having upheld that particular vow. I swore to you that I would do everything in my power to make certain you would survive the life you had chosen, and it is not my fucking fault that you did not believe me about the price it would demand of us both.

As for the rest of it, that I have failed, again and again: truth, and self-evident to any who have eyes to see. That I have done wrong: truth, and to you alone I will admit it, you who appointed yourself the keeper of my conscience even as I appointed myself your champion, but hindsight is the only vision we have that is not clouded. That I have broken all my vows, even the ones I should never have made: truth, and I will answer for that when my death is not clawed back from me, and the gods alone will be my judge. That it took me too long to see that those vows ought to have been broken, or never made in the first place: truth, and that truth is perhaps the bitterest, that I could have turned aside this wreck at a double dozen points, and by the time I saw any of them, it was far too late.

But I have never pretended with you, for all that you persist in attempting to see the better of me. I warned you. I warned you repeatedly, as plainly as I could and more plainly than I ought to have, and we have spoken often enough about choice and necessity that you know that my life is ruled almost entirely by the latter. There are many choices I do not have the luxury of making, and have not had for years.

And now you will want to tell me that there is no choice that cannot be made or unmade, and you will tell me that it is never too late to do the right thing, and you will persist in believing the better of me in hopes that the universe will bend to your will, and you will preach to me the virtues of fairness and mercy, and I will say to you what I have always said to you, which is that my life has always revolved around consequence. I pay my prices. I do not pay all of them gladly, nor will I ever stop regretting some of the prices the universe has asked of me, but I will not shirk them. That the consequences of all my actions up until now led me to a place where there is no right action, and not even the least worst -- that I regret, and the price those actions demanded of me. But it will not stop me.

Your side may be the better choice -- I will not argue that question with you. But they are killing mine, and while I likewise will not argue the question of which of them deserved to die, you cannot hold my desire to live against me any more than you can hold my desire that you live. When the choice is between atrocity and execution, I will choose atrocity, and make my excuses to the gods when I must. And at least now Barty is beyond the

Set me aside from your thoughts; you have undoubtedly spent enough of your influence on the question of me. I made my choices, and although I may regret some of them, I will not beg to be spared the consequence. But do not curse me for them. I have never pretended to be a tame lion.

That you have written the prayers for me is a comfort. What little of it I have left.

[alt_sinistra]

Toshenka,

The comment you cannot see, here, the one to me, those are the prayers for Barty. Because someone needed to say them. And because whatever else he was, he was your son, and he was Raz's friend, and I remember that, even if no one else wants to. People are so very complicated.

For all he killed so many people. Children. Utter innocents.

I will not set you aside from my thoughts, because I cannot. No more than I could set aside the stars. It would be easier, certainly, if I could. You are right I have spent all the influence I might have had on your behalf, and I do not regret that, but - it will not do any good, and I am sorry for that. Still. Always.

As to - as to what you made me, what keeping your promises made me, you are right. You did tell me. Warn me. And I chose. I have wrestled myself to some sort of detente about it in the days since. I can't regret it, because it mattered, in the end.

I'm still thinking about that. Will be, for the rest of my life, I'm sure.

There are a lot of things I'm thinking and can't say, don't have words for. But I will never stop listening to you.

I was rereading the notes I sent you, what feels like decades ago, on Kirkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I have been thinking about Troy, so much, the past two weeks, in the thoughts I can spare from other tasks, about walls and oceans and deaths and how we treat the dead, and how we treat the living, and what's left after a great war. About how you are like Odysseus. The questions of mutuality, of vows, of commitments, even when they turn out to be wrong. I don't have words, or even coherent thoughts, most of the time.

But I would not be here, now, but for you, and I thank you and I love you and you are still my chosen brother.

[alt_antonin]

If you have been thinking of Troy, I have been thinking of Aulis. And Moriyyah. And Shelley's Ozymandias -- the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed -- and T. S. Eliot, with whom I have been wrestling for longer than you have been alive, and whom I had always intended to lend you, one month when we had nothing more pressing with which to occupy ourselves, for the joy of watching you wrestle with him, too.

Read the Four Quartets, if you have been thinking about the shadows of a great war. You will find East Coker speaks to you most plainly (home is where one starts from; as we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated, of dead and living), but as should surprise you not in the least, Little Gidding is the one that speaks to me most clearly, and always has:

And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

Yes, I will be giving you books until my end.

I will not defend Barty to you -- may his memory be eternal, ныне и присно и во веки веков -- and I would not expect you to listen if I tried, because as near as I can tell he was mad with grief and guilt and pain, and for all that I understand that grief and guilt and pain (O gods do I understand that grief and guilt and pain), madness must be stopped. I comfort myself by thinking even he must have known that, at the end. (There are so many things that must be stopped, and I was the one who set too fucking many of them into motion in the first place, and I suppose now the price I must pay for having done so is to be the one who decides where to begin looking for the end. Which is my beginning.) But I loved him, and I will not stop loving him, and it is good to know that someone wrote the prayers for him immediately, that he was not left entirely to

no, I shall leave it there, I think. Safer. You can comfort yourself, at least, that whatever I do next, it won't be out of madness. Or maybe you won't find that a comfort at all.

If we are to add up the measure of my balance, I am well aware of which direction that balance falls, and I will answer for that when I must. Do not apologise to me for not having been able to convince the company you keep that I am anything other than the monster they name me. You are perhaps the only person left upon these shores who can see at least some measure of what went into my making, and I will not expect you to champion me further. I had not expected you to champion me at all.

I have not ever doubted your love for me, little star, as I hope you have not doubted mine for you. For all that we may be the only people who can recognise it as such, from time to time.