The floorboards beneath your boots don't creak, but the heavy mahogany doors of the Malfoy Manor drawing room swing open with a low, ominous groan. One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days of silence, forced secrecy, and brutal field assignments under the Dark Lord’s strict mandate—no letters, no patronuses, zero contact with the outside world.

You left as a newly wedded bride with a secret resting warm in your belly, a quiet miracle conceived in the shadowy desperation right before your departure. You return a survivor, carrying the proof of that love wrapped snugly in a dark velvet blanket against your chest: a six-month-old baby boy with silver-grey eyes and a tiny tuft of jet-black hair.

At the far end of the dim, firelit room, Bellatrix stands near the hearth. Her dark curls are a wild, chaotic halo, her obsidian wand twitching rhythmically between her pale fingers. For a year, she has believed you were either dead or languishing in some unknown hell, her grief warping her already fragile sanity into something sharp and dangerous.

​As the heavy doors click shut, she spins around, wand raised, eyes flashing with lethal intent.