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Amelia had always liked Corban.
He had been in the year above her at Hogwarts but, on account of his taking a gap year to travel the continent, they started their training as Aurors in the same year – 1967, just in time to see them fully qualified upon the outbreak of the First Blood War.
He was a stoic man, slow to joy, anger and melancholy in equal parts – Amelia admired that about him. A level head was always desirable in a job such as theirs, and Corban’s disinclination towards the fits of pique which seemed to govern many of the other men in their department – especially Crouch, who had been something of a basket case even before the advent of the war – was a breath of fresh air.
Plus, it certainly didn’t hurt that he was something of a sight for sore eyes.
In an office full of unkempt, middle-aged men who had given up taking care of themselves whenever they got married back in the forties, Corban was an Adonis. He was tall and toned, with a clean-shaven face and a jaw which could have been carved from marble; like a silver-haired peacock he strutted around the office, showing off his muscled forearms with his rolled-up sleeves as he leant against Savage’s desk, pointing out some minor detail in a file which had passed the other man by.
To put it simply, she was sweet on him.
Amelia had never been one for marriage – even in school she had prioritised her studies over the petty trysts which seemed to enamour her peers – but, as the years went on, she became unaccountably infatuated with Corban.
She came to relish in the rare occasions where they were partnered up on a stakeout, indulging his banal chatter about his many supposed grievances with his father – which, coming from another man in his position, would have prompted her to scoff at his lack of perspective – and daring to share some of her own dreadfully dull drama with him in turn.
She told of how she had grown estranged from her brother, Edgar, because she believed his choice to bring three little babes into this war-torn world unconscionable; that he was selfish to even attempt to rear these children, so pure and innocent, when he knew full well that tomorrow was not promised for him.
The words ‘Order of the Phoenix’ never passed her lips when explaining why Edgar was in such danger because, no matter what she thought of her brother, she did not wish to see him arrested for being a vigilante – one whom they sorely needed with the Aurors stretched as thin as they were – but Corban was not a dullard; he could read between the lines.
He confided in her that he admired what the Order was doing, and had even considered joining their ranks before being talked into joining the Aurors by his father instead; that he had had a similar quarrel with his sister, Lysandra, who had fostered a daughter with a Prewett, potentially placing herself in the Death Eaters’ sights when she could have stayed out of it all with a more agreeable marriage.
But in the end, he told Amelia, family was family – he could think whatever he wanted of Lysandra’s decisions but, at the end of the day, she was still a Yaxley, just the same as him. With a shrug – as if there was nothing more to be said on the matter – he got to his feet and declared that if the Death Eaters hadn’t shown up by now, they were never going to; being that it was three o’clock in the morning, and the pub which the meeting was supposed to have taken place at had closed for the night an hour ago, Amelia was inclined to agree.
She left the stakeout feeling oddly comforted that Corban had faced and overcome a similar issue to her own, accompanied by a new resolve to try to patch things up with Edgar.
A year later, Amelia picked up the morning Prophet to find a family portrait of her brother, his wife Julie and their three children emblazoned across the front page.
DEATH EATER ATTACK IN SUFFOLK – ‘FAMILY MAN’ EDGAR BONES MURDERED IN THE NIGHT
Her hands shook as she read the article – Bones, 37, was still in his boxers at the time of the murder while his wife Julie, 35, had been divested of her nightgown by the killer(s) – and her knuckles turned white as she read the description of how her two nephews and niece had been slaughtered by these masked monsters.
Alastor, the senior Auror whom she was assigned under, told her in his usual gruff manner to take a day off – coming from the man who had reported into work the same day his own father was killed in action, this was the height of compassion.
Of course, Amelia declined his offer – Dark Wizards did not take bereavement leave. Her job was much too important to shirk for petty feelings like grief and heartache, so she persevered.
She made it to the end of her shift without issue, refusing to engage with that niggling voice in her head which insisted on reminding her that she would never see Edgar, Julie or their children ever again.
Edwin and Casper Bones, pictured to the left and middle above, were found dead in their rooms, their lack of injuries congruent with the Killing Curse – it is believed they were asleep at the time of their murder.
However, Magdalene, Bones’ youngest child and only daughter, was found in the hallway with numerous wounds on her body, including a slash to the throat which likely resulted in her death. Edwin and Casper were 12 and 10 years old respectively – Magdalene was aged just 7.
Amelia took a left when she should have taken a right for the Floo, turning down an empty corridor and ducking into an abandoned broom closet. Now that she was off the clock, Amelia could no longer ignore the obvious; her brother, sister-in-law, nephews and niece were all dead.
Edgar, who had shown her the beauty of duelling as a young girl, had been killed in his boxers. The Death Eaters had slaughtered Edwin and Casper like cattle, had brutalised little Magdalene, had violated Julie, and for what? For fun? Because that was just what you did when you were young, bored and Pureblooded enough for a snake and skull tattoo?
Hot tears streamed down her face and she bit down on her fist so that any passersby could not hear her cry, wiping furiously at her eyes with her free hand. Amelia had always prided herself on her good sense and her ability to think with her head rather than her heart, but there was no amount of reasoning which could rationalise these murders.
It was senseless. Edgar had made his choices and Amelia had long come to terms with the fact that she may wake up one day only to discover that he had been killed – that he may wake up one day and find her name amidst the casualties in a battle between the Aurors and the Death Eaters.
Julie and the children, however, had not made that choice. They were innocents in this war – yet the Death Eaters had killed them all the same. It shouldn’t have surprised her, not when their enemies killed Muggles for recreation and had wiped out the last of the McKinnons not a month prior; it still caught her unawares.
If they could kill Edgar’s family, what was stopping them from killing her little brother, Felix? He and his wife had stayed out of the war, but the Death Eaters had proven that that had no bearing on whether they would be targeted – she wouldn’t even have put it past them to kill their little girl, Susan.
When you’ve already killed a seven-year-old, how hard could it be to do the same to a one-year-old?
Unbidden, the sound of a hiccoughing sob worked its way around Amelia’s fist – the thought of these monsters taking her last niece, that little redheaded mite on whom Amelia’s last hopes of the innocence and goodness of man rested, was too much to bear.
She withdrew her fist from her mouth and let out another sob, drawing in a shuddering breath as she rubbed at the angry-red bite marks she had left behind on her hand.
“Amelia? Is that you in there?”
“Fuck!” she swore under her breath, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. Corban. God-fucking damn it.
If there was anyone she didn’t want to see her like this… it was Alastor. But, if there was anyone else, it was Corban – and now here he was, right outside the door of her broom closet.
“Amelia?”
With a sigh, she reached out and opened the door – Corban’s platinum hair was incandescent in the light from the hallway, his face cast into sharp relief from the darkness of the closet.
“I heard about Edgar – I wanted to pass on my condolences.”
How dreadfully insincere.
Amelia prepared to shove past him – to make her way to the Floo, as had been her original intention – but Corban reached out and grabbed her wrist before she made it past. She looked up at him and, for a moment, there was fire in those fathomless grey eyes of his.
“I mean it – he was a good man. Lysandra was friends with his wife and she never had an ill word to say against him. It’s not right, what they did to his family; with any luck we’ll have the bastards locked up in Azkaban before they can do it to anyone else.”
“Right,” Amelia said, feeling as though she had been transported into some alternate universe – she did not think she had ever heard Corban so impassioned. She was intimately aware of his hand still closed around her wrist, with him giving no indication that he was going to let go.
You’ve been waiting years for this, she told herself, staring up at Corban’s chiselled face. Can you wait any longer?
She already knew the answer. No, she couldn’t wait; not in times like these.
Tomorrow was not promised. Today, it was Edgar – who was to say that tomorrow it wouldn’t be her, or Corban for that matter?
Before she could think too hard about what she was doing, Amelia stretched up on her tip-toes and captured Corban’s lips in a kiss.
. . .
The last few months of the war passed in a blur. Benjy Fenwick and Caradoc Dearborn from the Order were murdered and disappeared respectively; Fabian and Gideon Prewett were killed by Death Eaters – with eyewitnesses identifying Dolohov at the scene, whose mask had slipped off during the duel – and Corban didn’t come into work the next day, citing obligations to his sister and her husband.
Dorcas Meadowes was killed in her home by Voldemort himself and, for a moment, their position in the war seemed untenable – then, not two weeks later, Voldemort was vanquished by Harry Potter, a boy no older than her own niece.
He was celebrated as the Boy-Who-Lived, and before long the Dark Lord’s reign of terror began to crumble.
Death Eaters were apprehended in droves – some, such as Malfoy and his ilk, were able to worm their way out of punishment by claiming Imperius, but others were not so lucky. Dolohov, Mulciber and Travers all received life sentences for their role in the murder of the McKinnons, while Greyback was driven out of the country as the Aurors closed in on his pack.
Karkaroff was a boon, flushing out Rookwood from his position in the Department of Mysteries, and soon enough there were only three known Death Eaters still at large – the Lestranges.
When they were apprehended at Longbottom Hall, though, there was a fourth Death Eater amongst them – Crouch’s son, Barty Junior.
Corban refused to attend their trial. When Amelia relayed the proceedings to him there was a strange expression of paralysed relief on his face, and he pulled her into a kiss the moment she had finished recounting Bellatrix’s declaration of devotion to the Dark Lord, not even giving her a chance to talk about the scandal with the Crouches.
They went on like this, snatching up whatever brief moments of time alone they were granted – Amelia felt as though she was living those moments of schoolyard romance that she had passed up on at the time, pushing Corban into Crouch’s deserted office and backing him up against the wretched man’s desk.
Crouch was shunted sideways into the Department of International Magical Cooperation and Julius Winpenny succeeded him as Head of the DMLE – Amelia and Corban continued to fool around in the shadows, neither willing to face the scandal which would come if their relationship was made public.
She could see the headlines already; the unmarried Yaxley heir, tempted by the spinstress Bones – there was no doubt in her mind that she would be the villain of the story should it come to light. Still, she made no effort to break things off – this was fun, and she needed that more than ever after what happened to Edgar; the world seemed to turn grey when she wasn’t with Corban or her family.
The years ploughed on, and the keen edge of her grief for Edgar was dulled by time – the knowledge of his loss was still there, ever present and unchanging, but she felt it less as she left the war in the past.
Before she knew it, Susan was no longer a baby but a boisterous, preteen girl who was fast catching up on her in height – she went with Felix to see her off to Hogwarts and tried not to cry on the way back to work, knowing she had not been able to do the same for Casper and Magdalene.
Throughout all of this, she remained entangled with Corban – they had made no moves to take their relationship any further than they had ten years ago, both perfectly content to be ‘living in sin,’ as it were. She did not want children and Corban was entirely ambivalent on the matter, never voicing any desire for them beyond a half-hearted ‘maybe someday’.
Susan came home from her first year at Hogwarts, and with her she brought rumours of Harry Potter killing the Defence Professor. Worried, Amelia made a note to investigate, but this was soon forgotten when Winpenny announced his retirement and, for whatever reason, vouched for her to become his successor.
Thus, Amelia became the second ever female Head of the DMLE, and she threw herself headfirst into her work. Students were being petrified during Susan’s second year, and it seemed as though both Dumbledore and Fudge were obstructing her efforts to investigate; a Basilisk was unearthed from the depths of the school and Fudge forbade Amelia from doing anything at all about it, as though she was just supposed to be okay with her niece being in the same school as a bloodsucking monster.
Her authority was similarly undermined during Susan’s third year, when Fudge decided that Dementors would make better custodians for school children than her trusted Aurors. It rankled her, not in the least because of the potential for some unsuspecting student to get their soul sucked out, but also because it robbed her of the opportunity to feel as though she were doing something meaningful to stop Black.
They had been good friends, Edgar and Black – ‘Nothing like you’d expect, Amelia – nothing at all,’ Edgar had said of him in one of his letters. Of course, Amelia had been all too willing to believe it.
Now Edgar was dead, and the Order’s Death Eater mole was at large and seemingly intent on breaking into the very castle Amelia – and Edgar’s – niece slept at night.
She spent many sleepless nights agonising over the best approach to take against Black, allocating as many Aurors as she could spare to scope-out his old haunts. Strangely, he never once returned to the one place Amelia had expected him to – the Black family seat on Grimmauld Place.
When she heard that Black had broken into the school she had been a hair’s breadth away from telling Felix to pull Susan out of Hogwarts – when she heard that Black had escaped from near-certain death after being apprehended in the Forbidden Forest she could have screamed.
She gave Fudge a dressing down for his incompetence at the next Heads’ meeting and wrote several strongly worded letters to Dumbledore, who replied in his usual cryptic fashion that ‘All would be revealed in due time.’
The whole thing stunk of collusion, in her opinion – the Death Eater spy in the Order, captured by the Order spy in the Death Eaters? Amelia didn’t buy it for a second. Severus Snape had turned Black loose, and the whole Wizarding World seemed determined to let him get away with it.
She confided her suspicions in Corban, who told her he’d look into it. A few days later he placed a sheaf of parchment on her desk, which he claimed to have gotten from a contact on the Board of Governors at Hogwarts – inside was record after record for detentions served by Sirius Black and Severus Snape, with most all of them being issued for committing some form of assault on the other.
“Death Eater or not, I don’t think Snape would have helped Black,” Corban said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “Would you risk blowing your cover after more than a decade to rescue, say, Dawlish?”
Amelia blew out a heavy sigh, leaning back in her seat. Corban was right, of course – that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“No,” she conceded, “I wouldn’t. Is there anyone in the hallway?”
A ghost of a smirk crossed Corban’s face as he turned around, taking a moment to deliberate before declaring that the hallway was empty. With a flick of her wand, Amelia closed the door to her office – as Corban turned around she reached out and grabbed his collar, pulling him down to her level and planting a wet kiss on his lips.
That’d teach him to prove her wrong, eh?
The Quidditch World Cup brought with it the usual headache of processing all the arrests of petty hooligans, as well as the more concerning development of men in Death Eater regalia rallying at the site. No-one was apprehended, because of course they weren’t – Amelia had to attend three separate hearings about the failing of her Aurors, as if anyone could have predicted a Dark Mark causing the Death Eaters to scarper.
Still, eyewitness accounts of a man whose platinum blond hair was escaping his mask left little to the imagination regarding the identities of the belligerents – it would seem that Lucius Malfoy and his cronies had grown bolder now that the dust had settled on their Imperius claims.
After the Quidditch World Cup came the Triwizard Tournament – Amelia enjoyed two months of relative calm before Harry Potter’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire and everything went to pot.
Susan told her in her letters that her housemates believed Potter had entered himself – preposterous; she may have had her disagreements with Dumbledore, but no fourteen-year-old could have beaten spellwork laid down by the Headmaster – and Amelia monitored the boy’s progress in the tournament warily, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Corban was not himself for the duration of the tournament – he had developed a strange tic of itching at his left forearm through his robes, and had become uncharacteristically brooding. When she asked him about it he blew her off with some shoddy excuse about troubles with his ailing father, and Amelia was left with the dual anticipation for the fruition of whatever plot had caused Potter’s entrance into the tournament and for the reveal of what on earth was wrong with Corban.
Finally, on the 24th of June, it happened.
The champions entered the maze as expected, but before long both Delacour and Krum had been taken out of the running – the crowd waited for an hour with bated breath, wondering which champion would win the tournament for Hogwarts.
Then Potter returned with the Triwizard Cup, clutching Diggory’s lifeless body and proclaiming the Dark Lord’s return.
The pieces fell into place soon after – Crouch Jr. had come back from the dead, impersonating Mad-Eye for the course of a whole school year. Then he was sent back into unbeing, his soul sucked out by a Dementor under Fudge’s dubious oversight.
Crouch Sr.’s disappearance was cast into new light under the circumstances, but Fudge brushed it under the rug in favour of spinning up the propaganda machines – Hogwarts broke up for the summer, and with it came a slew of articles calling Potter and Dumbledore’s reputation into question.
Amelia was not inclined to believe any of it – she didn’t know a lot about Potter, but the picture Susan had painted of him in her letters was that of an honest young man, if a bit ignorant. She could not believe that he would lie about this, nor that Dumbledore would sanction it if he was.
Corban agreed with her – whatever fit of sullenness had gripped him in the past months, the events of the Third Task seemed to have successfully caused him to snap out of it. He had no trouble believing that Voldemort was back and, although Fudge’s obstinance limited what they could do to investigate his return in an official capacity, he spent many an hour with her at her home, poring over newspaper articles and attempting to discern whether any of the Wizarding World’s going-ons were connected to Voldemort.
The calm was broken on the night of June 18th after almost a year of inactivity, with a full-scale battle between the Death Eaters, the Order and a group of school children.
Malfoy, Nott, and Dolohov were arrested, Voldemort was revealed and the Ministry went into overdrive attempting to backpedal on a year’s worth of assurances that the Dark Lord had not returned.
The deposition of Fudge seemed inevitable, and Scrimgeour was favoured as his successor – he vouched for Corban to take his place as Head of the Auror Office, leading to both he and Amelia being swamped in work.
Her home became a second office for the pair of them, with Corban coming over almost every day after work to continue their investigative efforts.
Therefore, when her Floo flared at 10 O’clock at night on July 1st, she didn’t think too much of it.
“Back here, Corban!” she called out, not looking up from the file she was reviewing. “Interrogation with Nott tomorrow – any pertinent questions you can think of to ask him?”
There was no response.
“Corban? Get back here, love – don’t be a stranger.”
Slowly, she heard Corban’s footsteps approaching. For a moment, she could have sworn that there was a second set walking in tandem with him, but the noise was so fleeting that she dismissed it as a figment of her imagination.
That was until he entered the room, walking side-by-side with Voldemort.
They looked horrific.
Corban’s hair hung lank around his face, tear tracks clearly visible on his cheeks, while Voldemort’s waxen appearance had deteriorated to the level of seeming inhuman. His snow white skin and red, serpentine eyes were like a caricature, a small child’s imagining of how a dark wizard might look.
Yet, here he was before her; Lord Voldemort, a nightmare given flesh and form.
And Corban had brought him into her home.
“Corban, what exactly is going on here?” she asked, although in her heart she already knew the answer. Corban’s throat bobbed and he didn’t answer her, while Voldemort’s mouth curled up into a twisted smile.
“Roll up your sleeve, Corban,” he instructed.
His hand shook as he grasped his left cuff, rolling up his sleeve with all the reticence of a man being walked to the gallows – a currant red tattoo poked out from under the sleeve, and the Dark Mark was revealed inch by torturous inch as the fabric ascended further up his arm.
“How long?” was all she could think to ask.
“Nineteen years,” Corban murmured, refusing to return her searching look.
“Chin up, Corban,” Voldemort demanded, pressing his wand into the underside of his jaw – Corban gagged and raised his head, finally meeting Amelia’s gaze. “Tell her everything – look her in the eyes when you tell her what became of dear Edgar.”
He swallowed thickly, eyes blown out wide as Voldemort traced the contours of his jaw with his wand.
“I- Edgar’s house was- it was well-hidden. We’d been looking for years, and still we had no idea where he laid his head at night. Then- well, then came you. You told me about how last week you’d taken the Floo to go visit, and I thought- I thought that’s how we’d get him.
“I knew this woman who worked in Magical Transport – she was sympathetic. Let me have a look through some files unattended, and I found the address. I took Mulciber, Travers, Gibbon and Jugson with me for backup. We- we didn’t need it. They were all asleep when we got there, and I killed Edgar in his bed. Travers tortured Magdalene before I put her out of her misery. Mulciber, he- he wanted to stay behind, for a bit. Julie still had her robe on when the rest of us left.”
“Very good,” Voldemort purred, withdrawing his wand. Corban’s breathing was ragged as though he had run a mile, eyes still fixed on Amelia’s – they projected his wish for absolution as loudly as if he’d been screaming.
Grief. Betrayal. Apoplectic, all-consuming rage. I killed Edgar. I put her out of her misery. Julie still had her robe on when the rest of us left.
Amelia met Corban and his pathetic, pleading gaze and mutely shook her head, denying him the salvation he sought. He had made his choices – now it was time to live with them.
“Okay,” she said to Voldemort, turning her gaze away from Corban. “You’ve made your point – now it’s time to do what you came here for.”
Voldemort’s thin lips curled upwards once more, baring his pointed teeth in a facsimile of a smile.
“As the lady wishes,” he purred, sinking into a shallow bow. “Draw your wand. I will give you the honour of a fighting chance, given your importance to our friend Corban.”
“My Lord-” Corban tried to interrupt, only to be met with Voldemort’s hissing rebuke.
“Silence! You test my patience, Corban – do as I have instructed, or I will compel you to do so.”
“Yes, my Lord,” he murmured, sweating and grey in the face. The sight disgusted Amelia – he had been transformed entirely in the last few minutes, warped in her mind into the lowliest, most disgusting of creatures. She drew her wand and prepared to do battle with the Dark Lord, putting a dozen paces between them.
“Count us in, Corban,” Voldemort demanded, his scarlet eyes focused solely on Amelia.
“Okay,” Corban whispered, although his voice was heavy with congestion, tears running down his face. “Okay. Th-three. Two. One-”
“Avada Kedavra!” Voldemort cried, at the same time that Amelia cast a Severing Curse. She sidestepped the curse, sending spell after spell towards Voldemort, but she knew before the duel had even started that this was the end.
The Dark Lord was not like his minions – he was fluid and nimble, dodging and blocking her every spell with cat-like grace, yet also vicious and unrelenting, pelting her with a ceaseless stream of curses.
The duel lasted two minutes in its entirety – Amelia dodged left when she should have gone right, too distracted with trying to aim a flesh-eating curse at her opponent, and an acid green curse struck her squarely in the chest.
Voldemort had tucked his wand back into his robes before she even hit the floor, an expression of mild interest on his face.
“She fought well,” he commented, strolling over to her lifeless body. “A warrior, and of the right pedigree too. Perhaps, in another life, you two may have had your happily ever after,” he said, looking at the silently weeping man to his right. “Alas, no such luck. Pity.”
“Yes,” Corban croaked. “A pity.”
The two of them lingered beside Amelia’s body for a moment, Corban looking as though the world was collapsing around him and Voldemort appreciating his handiwork. Then, the latter turned to leave, beckoning for the former to follow.
“Do not linger, Corban – this was for the best. Choose better bedfellows, and we won’t have to repeat this exercise ever again.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
With one last look at Amelia, Corban followed Voldemort out of the room and back through the Floo.
Felix Bones buried a sister, and Susan Bones buried an aunt – Corban Yaxley did not bury a lover. Instead he ascended to the role of Head Auror, and life marched on with a cruel disregard for the passing of Amelia Bones.
Despite his Lord’s advice, Corban never did find a better bedfellow.