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iv. Grey, Through And
Through
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THE LINES THAT separate Thea Cindercroft from Lyra Vincent are fine and blurred at best, and that is OK. She is only just beginning to realise this now without hating herself for it, or beating herself up for it. It might be because Lyra is dead. Or that Thea is bored. She doesn't really know.

A summer coolness seems to linger in the room, coming in through the window above the sink that refuses to close. Thea is in a lull, so that she is halfway between a dream state and awake; it's strange, because she can't feel anything but drowsiness. So she allows herself to travel down the road in her mind she has long since banned herself from, weighing everything up.

Physically, they could be the same person. Long, dirty blonde curls and a pointed chin, carved out cheekbones and striking green-blue eyes, that are too green to be icy but too blue to be like new leaves. Impossible to figure out, but (she hopes this doesn't sound arrogant) rather intriguing.

She's only going off her own experiences here; Harry has basically said this, and he's her boyfriend now, so she can't be that far off the mark by saying that she's some kind of mystery. And considering the Order's reactions to finding out Lyra was with the Dark Lord, she got this tendency off her mother. Thea has seen photos of young Lyra and she thinks only the Ravenclaw uniform makes it obvious that it's not Thea.

Morally, Lyra is – was, she needs to get used to that – a trainwreck. But can Thea really judge? Is she not a little grey in that area? Once again, she doesn't know. She concludes that it probably depends on who you ask. She thinks Jude would describe her as an angel. Well, once upon a time, he would've. But everyone knows you can't survive a war as an angel, so she doesn't mind so much.

It's this that brings her around fully, so she lifts her head off the table and stretches, standing up to make herself a cup of tea and rub her stiff neck. She notices it's still a little dark outside, the sky a pale purple, but the moon nowhere to be seen. She checks her watch to see that it's just past four in the morning, and just as she realises with a little disappointment that there's no milk, so she'll have to take her tea black, she hears the door push open.

It was already ajar, so it's only the creaking that announces the person's arrival. She gets out another mug and looks over her shoulder, giving Harry a small smile.

"You alright? Did you sleep down here?"

"Yeah." She answers, lifting the boiled kettle and pouring the steaming water out, just as he reaches her to pull her into his arms.

"Are you alright?" she asks, voice muffled by his chest.

"No." is all he says.

She breathes out, bringing her arms around him so they lock around his neck.

"You're OK with black tea aren't you? We can go out for some milk today, there's none here, and even if there were, it probably wouldn't be wise to use it anyway."

She hears him let out a little chuckle. "That's perfect, love."

Pulling herself from his arms, she passes him his cup and sips some of the bitter liquid from her own, and although it scalds her mouth pleasantly, it doesn't do anything to shift the icy layer within her.

"I found Sirius' room...and a letter and a photo from my mum."

She can't stop a sad smile from breaking out on her face as he shows her a scroll of yellowed parchment, that's rather creased, but Lily Potter's swooping writing scrawled across it is neat and warming as she reads to the bottom, frowning a little at the abrupt end that suggests a part of the letter is missing. In Harry's other hand is a small, moving picture, with baby Harry zooming around the photo on a broom, full of laughter.

"Merlin, you were so cute!" she exclaims, pinching his cheek with her free hand. "I wonder what happened!"

"Might have something to do with being almost murdered every year." He shrugs, but there's an amused light in his eye.

Thea rolls her eyes, about to reply, when two panicked voices sound throughout the house.

"Harry! Thea!"

"We're in the dining room!" Thea calls out to Hermione and Ron, who come bounding through corridors until they reach them, their faces flooding with relief.

"We woke up and didn't know where you both were! Don't just disappear, please, we were terrified!"

"I found Sirius' room – it'd been ransacked before, but I found these."

He passes his mother's letter and photograph to Hermione, before muttering something about going to the bathroom.

Thea sighs. "I wish I could make him feel better, but we're all just as down in the dumps as each other."

"I know," Hermione says quietly as she folds the letter with the photo and places it on the dining table. She pauses for a moment, before her face fills with a little guilt and she looks at Thea.

"Thea, I'm sorry for snapping at you last night, I'm just worried –"

"Can someone come here a minute?"

Harry's voice sounds loudly through the house, and Hermione scarpers off with a quick, "I'll be back.", leaving Ron and Thea in a comfortable but thick silence as they exchange helpless looks.

☾

Thea is in a huff, lingering to the back of the others who are interrogating the House Elf, Kreacher about R.A.B. She knows vaguely who he is and why he's important, but it's starting to really get her down how little she knows about everything going on. She swears she won't mention it to the others because they have enough on their plates, but it doesn't stop the frustration bubbling under the surface.

" – and the locket, Master Regulus' locket, Kreacher did wrong, Kreacher failed in his orders!"

Thea startles at the loud scream from the elf, her attention now set hard on the trio's and Kreacher's exchange, realising that sucking it up will give her a lot more information than sulking and feeling sorry for herself, but feeling way too out of her depth to get involved, so stays hidden behind Ron.

Her eyebrows raise as Harry presents the elf with the fake locket and Kreacher is overcome with melancholy and collapses into tears on the ground.

"Overkill, mate," Ron mutters.

After half an hour, with Thea now at the front of the help in calming down Kreacher, the elf is finally sent on his way to find Mundungus Fletcher and the real locket.

"Thank Merlin for that. I would've given him something to cry about if he'd called me Lyra Vincent one more time."

"Thea! You don't mean that!" Hermione gasps, rather appalled.

"I do. How would you feel if someone had mistaken you for an evil, backstabbing bitch who tried to kill you?"

Hermione speaks so quickly Thea almost misses what she says.

"Are you sure she tried to kill you?"

Thea is so frozen in shock that before she can reply, Hermione starts talking again.

"I just mean that you said on that night she died, she was chanting something, like a song."

"Yes? What does that have to do with anything?"

"You didn't die, Thea –"

"I'd noticed that much, thank you."

" – But your curse did. Do you not think... maybe she just took the curse off you? If she wanted to kill you, she'd have just used the Killing Curse. You said you saw her use it before she dragged you outside. So it's not like she was averse to it or anything."

Thea flounders for something to contradict her with, because it just doesn't make any sense. Why would her mother suddenly have a change of heart?

"But I thought the whole point of the curse was that you couldn't break it?" Harry interjects, when Ron and Hermione both exchange looks.

"It is...unless you're the caster. You can break the curse if you're the one who casted it." Ron says. "There was this case ages ago that mum and dad told me about; certain Purebloods, the really nasty ones, would use it on their relatives if they became affiliated with a Muggle, you know, to punish them or get them to rethink their ways. A mother did it to her son when he married a Muggle lady, but when he ran off with his wife, the mum missed him so much that she took the spell off. But when you take the spell off..."

"...You die. It's because so much dark magic only gets stronger and more concentrated the longer it manifests, like it gets a life of its own, so when it's absorbed, if you will, the caster can't handle so much all at once. That's a more likely story, don't you think? You're not cursed anymore, and Lyra is dead." Hermione finishes.

Thea exchanges a look with Harry, her mouth wide open and empty of words. How could she not have figured this out, but Ron and Hermione did?

"You two are brilliant!" she announces, leaping forwards and wrapping an arm around each of them.

"It's nothing. If I'm honest, T, I'm shocked you didn't figure it out yourself, but we've been thinking about it for quite a bit. It never added up right from the start." Ron says, patting her back before she steps away.

For the first time in a while, she feels a warmth spread through her whole body, and just for a moment, she forgets the chill clinging to her bones. 

☾

"Why are you all acting like someone's died?" Thea asks as she makes her way from the stairway and surrounding hall into the kitchen, careful not to disturb Mrs Black.

None of the three answer her. She glances at each of them in turn, seeing Harry's face looks slightly green, like he's about to be sick.

"Lupin was here," he mutters.

Thea feels a little deflated at missing him. She'd always liked Lupin. But when she sees Ron and Hermione's expressions, it dawns on her that it probably wasn't as pally as she'd hoped, and also understands instantly not to ask.

"Umbridge has the locket."

Thea's eyes widen, and all of the colour, well, the remnants of colour, in her face drain off. Her stomach starts to churn, not with fear, but with pure rage and upset at the thought of her, at the thought of having to face her again.

"Well, sod's law really, isn't it?" she tries to disguise the dangerous flames igniting again at the pit of her stomach, and busies herself with putting away the groceries Hermione had left on the table.

The other's eyes burn into her back apprehensively.

"What?" she demands, shutting the cupboard above her head with way too much force than necessary.

"Nothing!" Hermione chirps, but Harry jumps in.

"What's going on with you?"

"What do you mean, what's going on with me? I come back from trying to get into this stupid thing," she holds up the necklace from Dumbledore that was once her father's, " – and you all look like you're at some kind of funeral! Pardon me for being a little concerned," she snaps, rather nettled by his accusation.

Harry exhales, his shoulders slumping and hands going to his face to rub at his eyes. She stares at him indignantly, when Ron speaks.

"Well, Lupin came, and told us the Order is OK. Tonks and Remus are having a baby.  Harry was a bit," Ron spares the boy a look, "out of order with him. Then Kreacher brought Dung back, who told us Umbridge has the locket."

"Right," Thea says softly. "We can work with that. I know we can. We've gone off less before."

She glances at Harry. Shocks of warmth, one that settles the rage still bubbling under her skin, fleet through her body at the look of awe in his face, the one he always has when he looks at her, when she speaks. She loves that look.

Over the next few weeks, the others pore over maps and papers, writing furiously with the Muggle pens Hermione brought, planning and considering every last detail. Thea brings over a pot of tea, with milk this time, and takes a seat beside Ron, leaning forward to get involved, but looking down at the table to hide her terror of what's to come from the others.

☾

Thea's knee twitches anxiously under the table, her hands locked around a lukewarm, half empty cup of tea, her eyes trained on the door. The others have been gone for a good six hours now at the Ministry, bringing it to be around two o' clock in the afternoon.

Thea sighs, pulling the locket from her pocket and frying it with spells, trying to prise it open with instruments she finds in the kitchen cupboards to no avail, letting out a scream of frustration.

She hates, no, despises been cooped up here, left out of the others' plans all because she can't Apparate. She absentmindedly curses McGonagall for not letting her take part in the lessons with the others, standing up and seizing the Invisibility Cloak Harry had left her, in case she wants to go out, but she knows it's his apology for her not being able to come with them. He'd argued against leaving her, dreading the thought of splitting up, but Hermione forced the logical side to the point where she thought Harry and Hermione were about to have a huge fight, so Thea insisted upon staying here.

Sighing, she slips the cloak over her body, remembering the presence of the Death Eaters in the dingy square outside, and opens the door slowly, standing on the door step and gulping fresh air gratefully.

She waits there for about an hour, watching a little smugly as the two Death Eaters switch on duty with a man and a woman who come sauntering down the street in huge black cloaks.

Her eyes follow the Muggles walking up and down the street, and every time her mind falls into a pit of worry about Harry, Ron and Hermione, she finds another person to watch, wondering what on earth it would be like to be a Muggle at this time, completely oblivious to the war blazing at full force in the Wizarding World, aware only of strange flocks of owls or a frightening, unexplained death. Thea frowns a little, when suddenly, she's blasted hard against the door as a loud crack she knows to be that of Apparation fills her ears, broken only by a familiar voice – Hermione's voice, screaming her name helplessly. She knows something is wrong, and it's this that spurs her to act without thinking.

Thea is surprised by how quickly she pulls the Cloak off her, keeping it tight in her hand, her heart jumping within her chest, and her body prickling intensely with adrenaline. She only just manages to seize Hermione's forearm as it disappears when the girl turns on the spot again and she's yanked into an uncomfortable, tight, black tube, and Grimmauld Place disappears.

☾

Thea blinks against the bright, blinding white obscuring her vision, Harry's voice searing through her head that's throbbing terribly, only she can't make out what he's saying.

As she comes around, the ground earthy and jagged beneath her, she sits up to find trees and browning leaves everywhere she looks, when Hermione, Ron and Harry come into focus. For a moment, she doesn't realise anything's wrong, when her ears process Hermione letting out breathy sobs, while Ron cries out in agony.

"What's wrong? Did you find Umbridge? How did it go?" Thea rushes out a million questions that fly past her usual filter and out of her mouth.

Hermione has a small potion bottle in her hand, that she tips over a gaping hole in Ron's shoulder. The waft of blood turns her stomach, almost inside out, her heart starting to thump out of her chest. "Will he be alright?"

"He was Splinched. Yes, we found Umbridge, and we have the locket." Hermione says quickly, as Ron's pale skin seems to stretch over the wound and cover it. "We couldn't go back to Grimmauld Place, we're just unbelievably lucky that you were on that step when we Apparated, otherwise..." Hermione trails off, her eyes shining with tears as Thea and Harry both stare at her.

"I don't think we can go back there again...Yaxley, he had a hold of me when we were leaving the Ministry, and I couldn't get rid of him – and then I think he must have seen the door, and thought we were stopping there, so he loosened his grip –"

"Hang on... you don't mean he's at Grimmauld Place? He can't get in there?"

"Harry, I think he can. I forced him to let go of us with a Revulsion Jinx, but I'd already taken him past the Fidelius Charm's protection. Since Dumbledore died, we're Secret Keepers, so I've given him the secret, haven't I? Harry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"

"Don't be stupid, it wasn't your fault! I'm just glad T isn't still there."

"Oh, Thea, I – thank Merlin you were on that step at that time, I don't know what I would've done if you were inside – all I could do was shout your name!"

"Hey, everything happens for a reason." Thea says, managing a soft smile. "How's Ron?"

To answer her question, the boy groans. "Lousy."

She chuckles, standing up to stretch herself out, making a start on the protective enchantments around them with Hermione as Harry sorts out the tent.

"That's as much as we can do, Thea. At the very least, we should know they're coming, I can't guarantee it will keep out Vol –"

"Don't say the name!" Ron interjects sharply, startling them.

Thea looks at him, a little confused, but she decides it's probably smarter to keep her mouth shut.

"I'm sorry, but it feels like a – a jinx, or something. Can't we call him You-Know-Who – please?"

As something dawns on her, like a bucket of cold water dousing her body, she hears Harry and Ron start to bicker a little, when she interrupts them loudly, her heart hammering hard against her chest.

"Shut up! Ron's right! The name is jinxed! I'm sure of it, that must be how they found us at Grimmauld Place!"

"What?"

"It's when you say a certain word, the caster of the curse gets alerted of it, so they know where the word was said. That's what they must have done to track down the rest of the Order – and you, Harry!"

"A taboo?" Ron adds.

"Yes, that's it! So we're going to have to call him You-Know-Who, or we'll be getting some unwanted visitors," Thea finishes.

As night creeps up on them, cold sets in, and Thea pulls her coat over her shoulders and slips into one of the bottom bunks in the tent, sipping the tea Hermione had made. It's red hot and lovely, but it doesn't spread through her body, and a chill is still nasty in her chest.

Over the next few days, the atmosphere lingering over the group is frosty and quiet. Apart from a few bickers, they barely speak at all, except one night, when Thea is particularly cold and sleep avoids her like she's contagious, so she wraps her blanket around her shoulders and makes her way out of the tent, careful not to wake Ron and Hermione, to join Harry outside on watch. She's desperate to just be with him, whether they talk or not.

"Hello," she says, taking a seat next to him and resting her head on his shoulder.

He leans his own head over hers, reaching for her hand to hold it.

"Can't sleep?" he asks.

"No," she answers.

There's a pause, in which the only thing she can hear is their breathing and the distant calls of different animals cantering and flying through the trees. She breaks it apprehensively.

"Harry, I know he's getting on your nerves – he's being a bit of a prat actually, but please try and keep your patience with Ron. I couldn't bare it if you fell out."

Harry doesn't respond, just gives her hand a small squeeze and turns his head a little to kiss the top of her hair to show that he's heard her.

Thea's half in a daze, like she's almost taken by sleep, but foreign voices break through. Her heartbeat rockets, and she nudges Harry next to her, both of them listening hard.

"Hermione put the Muffliato charm over us, we'll be fine," Thea whispers anyway.

"...My wife should be OK, she's pure-blood. And then I met Dean here, what, a few days ago son?"

Thea lets out a sound of pure happiness. Dean's here! He's right there, and if she needs anything right now, it's to hear his voice.

"Yeah."

"Muggle-born, eh?" asks a different man.

"The one who bumped into Dean is Ted Tonks, Tonks' father, she's in the Order." Harry clears up for Thea.

She doesn't respond, desperate for Dean to say something else.

"Not sure. My dad left my mum when I was a kid. I've got no proof he was a wizard, though."

There's a silence, where Thea absorbs his voice, every syllable of it, before it disappears, and all she wants to do is leap from where she's sat and throw herself into her best friend's arms. She misses him so much, and knowing he's so close and him having no idea as to whether or not she's alive sets off a dull ache within her that's deeper than she's ever felt before.

"You seen those posters, the Undesirable ones? These days, I'm seeing more with the Cindercroft girl on them than Potter. I reckon she's upset them, somehow, the Death Eaters. Betrayed them, maybe?"

Thea narrows her eyes.

"You can't betray someone you had no loyalty to in the first place," Dean says, a little nonchalantly, but so firm that the only sound they can hear once he stops talking is the scraping of knives and forks against plates and the crackling of a fire.

She smiles despite the uncomfortable knots in her stomach. He has her back. Of course he does.

"I miss him so much," she mutters, more to herself than Harry, but he sighs a little, saying a few words before they're consumed by the quiet again.

"I know love. You'll see him soon."

☾

"Didn't you say the sword presented itself to you, Harry?" Thea asks, her brows knitted together.

She did not expect to be spending her birthday this year in the middle of a freezing cold forest away from any kind of civilisation on the hunt for different parts of Voldemort's soul, but alas. She pushes the bitterness away as best she can, keeping her mind firm in place.

"Yes, but what's that got to do with anything?"

"I don't know," she groans exasperatedly, "Maybe the sword doesn't have a fixed place?"

"But it's still a physical object. It must do. Where could he have put it, so that it doesn't wind up in dangerous hands?"

"Somewhere in Hogsmeade? The Shrieking Shack? No one ever goes in there," Harry considers, as Thea's head starts to ache and the lights blind her despite being dim.

"But Snape knows how to get in, wouldn't that be a bit risky?"

Thea lets out a shout, one that startles the others, as she stands up and stomps her foot loudly.

"Merlin, he hasn't half made this ten times more difficult than it already is! I've never known anyone frustrate me more!"

"Who, Dumbledore?"

"Yes! He hasn't told you shit, Harry, and it's infuriating because it could end up with us all being killed!"

"Why are you coming for him, now? We have more important things at hand."

"Oh, we do, do we?"

Ron's voice cuts in, as he takes a place next to Thea. She looks at him incredulously, shock drenching her at the edge in his voice. She was sharp when she spoke, of course, but that was a vent of her frustrations towards Dumbledore. But this? Ron? He sounds dreadfully like he's furious with Harry.

"Well, you've obviously got a problem. Spit it out," Harry returns harshly, his attention spinning from Thea to Ron.

Ice starts to crawl through her veins, twisting and knotting stubbornly around her organs. Rain starts to pound on the roof of the tent, the only other sound that can be heard. She knows exactly where this is going, and she realises so does Hermione, when they both mirror each other's helpless expressions.

"All right, I'll spit it out. Don't expect me to skip up and down the tent because there's some other damn thing we've got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don't know."

"I don't know? I don't know?"

"It's not like I'm having the time of my life here, you know, with my arm mangled and nothing to eat and freezing my backside off every night. I just hoped, you know, after we'd been running round for a few weeks, we'd have achieved something." Ron fires back.

"Ron," Thea hears Hermione's tiny voice over the rain, and it aches her heart.

"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for."

"Yeah, I thought I did too."

"So what part of it isn't living up to your expectations? Did you think we'd be staying in five star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day? Did you think you'd be back with your mum by Christmas?"

"We thought you knew what you were doing! We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!"

"Ron, why are you taking this out on Harry? It's not his fault, so don't –"

"Thea, you agree with me! You know that this is useless, he's useless!" the boy shouts, jabbing a finger in Harry's direction, so that a flurry of fury strikes her like thousands of knives.

"I have frustrations with Dumbledore, yes, but I'm not taking it out on Harry because it isn't his fault, now take off that necklace and stop being so horrible, this isn't you! –"

"Horrible? Horrible? –"

"She's right, take it off, Ron. You wouldn't be talking like this if you hadn't been wearing it all day!" Hermione butts in.

"Yeah, he would. D'you think I haven't noticed the two of you whispering behind my back? D'you think I didn't guess you were thinking all this stuff?"

"Harry, we weren't –"

"Don't lie! You said it too, you said you were disappointed, you said you thought he had a bit more to go on than –"

"I didn't say it like that – Harry, I didn't!"

The world around Thea seems to collapse; her head is spinning and the corner of her vision is fuzzy and black. The agony in her head is like one she'd expect to feel if her skull were splitting apart. It sends a shoot of nausea through her stomach, and it takes everything in her to keep herself upright.

"Then why are you still here –"

"No, Harry, we cannot split up! Ron, don't even think about going anywhere, you'll be alone! I couldn't live with myself!" Thea cries out, tears starting to spill over her eyelashes.

"Didn't you hear what they said about my sister?" Ron demands, ignoring Thea and Hermione's distraught pleas.

"She was with the others, she was with Hagrid!"

"Yeah, I get it, you don't care! And what about the rest of my family, "the Weasleys don't need another kid injured", did you hear that?"

"Yeah, I –"

"Not bothered by what it meant though?" Ron snaps.

"Ron, you aren't even letting him speak!" Thea is sobbing now, her voice a mangled mess of what it usually is. "Take the locket off, please –"

"It's alright for you three, isn't it? With your parents safely out of the way?"

"My parents are dead!" Harry bellows.

"And mine could be going the same way!"

"My God, that's not a competition!" Thea says loudly, desperate for this to be over so she can sleep her migraine away. "Please, just stop –"

" – Then GO, Ron!" Harry shouts over Thea, "Go back to them, pretend you've got over your spattergroit and mummy'll be able to feed you up and –"

"NO!" Thea yells, launching herself at Ron and grabbing his right arm that's reaching for his wand. He shakes her off roughly.

Hermione casts her wand between the two boys, setting up a Protego Charm before either of them can do anything, a force expanding between the four for a moment, pushing them backwards and knocking the little wind left in her from her lungs.

"Leave the Horcrux."

The finality in Harry's voice sends a shiver throughout her body. It's almost like Harry is telling, no, demanding Ron to go.

"What are you doing?"

Ron's staring at Hermione.

"What do you mean?" the girl asks quietly.

"Are you staying, or what?"

Thea's stomach plummets. She knows Hermione will stay. And Ron will be out there, all alone, furious and in a dangerous state of mind. She feels as though her heart is split in two, being pulled in different directions.

"I... yes, yes I'm staying. Ron, we said we'd stay with Harry, we said we'd help –"

"I get it. You choose him."

"Ron, no – please – come back, come back!"

Thea's mind seems to stick to something as she slowly moves towards Harry, stretching her arms out to cup his face softly. He looks confused, but leans into her when she kisses him, lingering slightly, and although she doesn't want to, she breaks away and whispers to him, so quietly that she'd be convinced he hadn't heard it if it wasn't for his eyes softening and filling with tears.

"I love you."

Then she pulls from his arms, and ignores his voice asking where she's going, and follows Ron and Hermione out into the rain, that hits her skin and soaks her hair like bullets within a second, but she runs as fast as she can, pressing on through the blackness around her and following her friends' familiar, arguing voices.

She reaches them in a clearing, and throws herself at Ron, latching onto his arm just as he Disapparates, only just picking up on Hermione's shocked, strangled cry of her name as Thea and Ron are sucked up into a tight, silent darkness.

She forgets about being as white, as pure as her father, or as black, as ruthless as her mother. She knows now that she is grey though and through.

And that brings an ache she will never be able to shake.