THE KILLING MOON.

━━━ Prologue: All Things End

Willow never really got to be a girl. She was always a weapon, a saint, a sacrifice━something ready to be sent off to war beside her brother should the person who robbed her of her childhood to begin with returned. She was a lamb to slaughter, a knife in an armory, a notch in someone's belt, but never a girl. She was a god, a saint, the patreon saint of the women who died for their daughters━for the daughters who outlived their mothers━and something to be worshipped at an altar, adorned with sacrifices and prayers and hopes, gifts and donations, full of half-truths and bitter lies underneath a guise of protection.

But there has always been this carnal desire to have what she never got. Love, lust, pride, happiness. She wants more than she can swallow and bites off more than she can chew. It's a byproduct of being treated like a dog for most of her life, and a god for the rest of it. She's greedy, she's hungry, she's a girl and not all the same. It's a greed that many have but never fully understand. (Her brother won't, but he loves her no matter what; Harry's good like that, because he knows how to see beneath the surface.)

She is especially not a girl now, more of a pariah, and not a paragon of strength. She runs and hides and tries to find a way to win a war that will never end. Hope is as much as she can have right now, but even she knows it's fruitless; you cannot win the wars that were never able to be won to begin with.

Willow is not brave, but she is cutting. She's always been more Slytherin than Gryffindor, a girl adorned in red and gold with blood that bled green and silver. Her tongue is silver and lies spin like gold from her lips because she's always been good at pretending, and despite all that she stands for, sometimes she wonders if she's nothing better than the man who tried to kill her. Harry has him in his head, in his heart, but Willow feels him embedded somewhere in her soul. Voldemort may not have died and had a piece of his soul intertwined with Harry's, but he found a way to slither himself into Willow as well, even despite having no mark on her.

(She sat screaming in the next room over because the prophecy spoke of a boy born at the end of July, not a set of twins. Maybe if she and Harry had shared a crib, she would have been able to protect him better, or maybe she would have died instead of their mother. She'd never truly get to know what a mother's touch felt like.)

Voldemort sees himself as God to Willow and Harry's sainthood. He wants the riches and the power and the glory, but he doesn't want to work to get himself to being worshipped; Harry and Willow are still revered as gods, though, and maybe that's what sends the final nail in the coffin.

Maybe that's what kills Willow in the end: Knowing that she'll die without being a girl and instead a saint, a saint that was murdered before she could truly be God.

❋

Harry Potter is dead is the first thing she hears when she regains consciousness.

Her arms are bound behind her in ropes that were not there before, and a dull pain echoes in her head. She's not sure where she hurts, but she knows it's somewhere that wouldn't have killed her. Willow's vision swims as she tries to focus on the crowd gathered before her, held by someone like a prisoner as a man cloaked in black with glittering eyes of ruby paces before her.

"Harry Potter is dead," Voldemort declares. The entire area goes silent before a harrowing scream rips from someone across the crowd. She doesn't know who, can't tell who without straining what little energy she has left. "The Boy Who Lived is now the Boy Who Died. He was killed as he ran from death, like the coward he was, as you all lay down your lives for him and his sister."

Eyes turn onto her, and she can feel the penetrating stare of those she once called friends and family watch her unsteady form waver in the hold of the Death Eater holding her. It takes a few moments as she blinks, but her vision clears and she can see, almost smell, the despair of the Order in the air.

And Voldemort is grinning at her. "Harry Potter, the Chosen One, is no more. His life, his dreams, his aspirations━all extinguished by the power of the Dark Arts that he so vehemently opposed. It is a testament to the strength and might of my followers, those who believed in my vision and pledged their loyalty to the one true leader. Now, those who once cowered in fear, who dared not speak my name, will tremble in submission. The world will know that resistance is futile, that the forces of darkness are unassailable. Those who stood against me have been cast aside, and their feeble ideals will be forgotten. Let this day be a reminder to all that there is only one true path, and it is mine. The Boy Who Lived is dead, and his memory shall wither away, as will all those who dare oppose me."

Willow staggers in the hold of her capturer, head swimming as bile rises in the back of her throat. There's no room for her to throw up, no food to fuel it either. She simply feels the nausea of defeat and loss curling at her insides.

Harry Potter is dead.

There's blood on her face, she realizes, dripping down her skin as some of it dries and cakes and the other leaves in a steady stream from a wound. The pain she should feel is now numb, from the grief that is bubbling inside her and the numbness of knowing that after all she has fought for has been lost. Some of it is caked beneath her nailbeds, a mixture of blood and dirt and skin. (She's not sure if it was hers or someone else's.)

Harry Potter is dead.

The Death Eater tightens his hold on her arms, and she glances down, seeing gloved hands swallowing her thin and sallow skin, wrapping around her forearms that were more bone than muscle. She doesn't know who is holding her, but she can feel the barely restrained strength from them. She would know better than to run from someone who could snap her neck as easily as they could shoot an Unforgivable at her back.

Harry Potter is dead.

McGonagall screams and Willow's neck strains as she struggles to twist it around, but it quickly becomes futile as Hagrid stumbles towards her, a small body clutched in his arms. Thick black hair sticking out in all directions, as it always had, and a body that was once much bigger than hers seeming infantile.

She meets Hagrid's eyes as he stops before her, Rowle and Crabbe Sr. tightening their chain hold on his torso until he drops before her and holds out Harry's body for her viewing. Eyes that were once bright and a vibrant viridian green are glassy and vacant and empty, and his glasses are gone. His glasses are gone. He can't see without his glasses.

"Take your brother, Potter girl." Voldemort's high-pitched voice cuts like a knife. It hurts more than ever to have to listen to him, more so than having to look at him. To hear the voice of the man━no, thing━that was responsible for the murder of everyone she had loved was hurting her more than anything that could've ever come close in the world. It would have killed her. "See what has been done to the boy who thought himself invincible. Look at what he became."

Look at what I've done to him, goes unsaid. Look at the boy who opposed me and now see that he is nothing now. Nothing but a corpse, a warning, for all those who shall seek to challenge my power.

A thin hand curls around her chin and tilts it up, dark hazel eyes meeting venomous red ones. Eyes that are as unnatural as the man himself. "Do you understand that if you were to rebel against me, against the new world order, you would die the same way your coward of a brother did. Scared and alone."

She says nothing.

The Death Eater squeezes at her tighter and pulls her taut as a bow, arms behind her back now as she hangs in his grasp like a limp marionette. Without her brother, who will play the strings, because Willow isn't sure if she'll ever be whole enough to be herself again. "Answer him," the voice whispers, and a heady rush of hatred courses through her veins. Lucius Malfoy.

She nods, head bobbing like a dead rat. "Yes."

"Yes, what?" Glee trickles through his voice, and Willow has to refrain from screaming at him. No, not refrain. Refrain from screaming in her mind, because she doesn't think she'll ever be able to speak another word to the man again without wanting to throw herself off the bridge.

But she does anyway.

The final nail in the coffin hits like a blow to her dignity, her pride, her soul.

"Yes, my Lord."

❋

Voldemort takes most of the Order's most active members to the Ministry and has them locked in temporary holding cells as his Death Eaters try to extract secrets from them. Most of them know just enough to get by, but none of them know nearly as much as Hermione, Ron, Willow, Luna, Neville, and Ginny do. No one knows of the existence of Horcruxes nor do they know where and who they visited when they were fighting, only that the Order was strong and there were numerous safehouses.

Numerous safehouses that were able to be compromised, that is.

Most of the remaining Order disperse across Europe, with a select few being sent to the States to negotiate with MACUSA and some of Canada's government. Given the fact that most of their most valuable members are all under watch of the Dark Lord's regime, they try their best to keep spread out. The less people found by Death Eaters, the better their chances are staying alive.

They all know they can't fight anymore, anyway. It's futile; Harry's dead and Willow's a ghost of a person following his death, no longer fully able to be his stand-in. Hermione keeps a tight leash on her, knowing that if Willow got into the wrong things, she'd find herself buried alongside Harry.

(No one but Willow knows where Harry is buried. She intends to keep it that way.)

Time withers away quickly as Hermione and Ron go to Czechoslovakia to go digging in the archives for any connections to Horcruxes as most of the knowledge in the UK has been erased by Voldemort in a desperate attempt to hide his tracks, and Ginny takes Neville and Luna to Shell Cottage. No one says anything as Willow rots away in 13 Grimmauld Place, too wrought with grief to even feed herself most days. There's no anger, no hatred━just nothing.

Madam Pomfrey says it's not healthy, how she ignores her personal health and withers away like a rotting corpse in Sirius' room, tucked into his bed in one of Remus' cardigans and Harry's sweats, but she can't do anything to change it. She knows that Willow won't move from the bed. She knows that Willow won't eat unless forced. She knows that Willow can't live without her brother.

Willow's not whole anymore. Just a half of a whole missing a part of her soul.

The news comes the day that Ginny's supposed to come home to take Willow to Shell so Molly can find a way to forcefeed her into submission. Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, part of the so-called 'Golden Trio' with Harry Potter, killed in Prague by loyal Death Eaters.

No one says anything for a few moments as they all read the Daily Prophet before a scream echoes through the walls of the Black family ancestral home. Some think it's fright from Ginny's arrival before Kreacher apparates into the kitchen and stares at them wide-eyed for a moment. (It's unnatural to see such an unemotional house elf so expressive.) Then he says: Mistress Willow has left, and the Order dissolves into chaos.

Two days later, the Daily Prophet arrives to an anxious group of Resistance members.

Shocking News: Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, and Corban Yaxley found dead in Prague. Largely suspected that disgraced sister of the dead Harry Potter, Willow Potter, responsible for the brutal murder of the Dark Lord's loyal Death Eaters.

On the front cover, three bodies hang from St. Vitus Cathedral, all with nearly severed heads and depicted as if they had been stabbed numerous times with a knife, and an individual bullet hole through the center of their heads, and they all know that whatever little shred of depression has left Willow. Next to it, though, is what chills them the most.

          Tom,

                    I'm coming for you.

                    And I bow to no one's lord.

                    Willow.

❋

Six months later, a girl stands on a bridge in Italy. Inky black curls blow in the wind behind her, a stark contrast against the cream-colored cashmere of her jumper. Wind nips at her skin, turning the tip of her nose and the apples of her cheeks a vibrant pink, and above dark hazel eyes stare unflinching at a man stood in front of her.

"You know why I'm here, Potter," he hisses.

"I do," she replies. "Now come and try to get what you came for."

An hour later, she walks off the bridge, blood staining the front of her jumper and splattered across her face. The man hangs limply off the bridge, with his head bobbing unsteadily, sinew nearly severed from the other side, and a bullet hole in between his eyes.

The moon rises above her as she walks away, a full moon that guarantees no good to the citizens of the globe, and a whisper coasts along the group of people who watch him hang from the bridge: Il diavolo agisce sempre con la luna assassina.

The devil always acts on the killing moon.

AUTHORS NOTE ━

i finished it!! it's not done as well as i would've liked, but i did really try. willow is a really complex character, as are all of my characters, but she behaves as one as well. i tried to depict some of her thoughts in this and leave sort of a present omniscient narrative because she's a very unreliable narrator. she's very mentally ill, but we support womens rights and wrongs.

and she will make a lot of wrongs.

but who else doesn't love a murdery girl in search of avenging her dead brother and friends and everyone else voldemort and his goonies killed? i sure do. she's my precious baby and while she may be a tad insane, she's adorable.

#livelaughlovewillowmarlenepotter