Oleandra drew a deep breath. Beyond this door lay only the Astronomy classroom and the open sky, so this was it. Whatever the Death Eaters were after, it had to be here, and it had to be something important enough to warrant every risk they'd taken to slow her down.
"Thursaz."
With a sweep of her hand, the door tore from its hinges and crashed to the stone floor. Oleandra strode through the threshold, fingers of her left hand already signing the Mudra of Elhaz, incantations dancing at the tip of her tongue.
Night had fallen; the stars spilled their quiet radiance over her, igniting in her power unlike anything she'd ever known. Oleandra's pupils took a golden sheen, immediately adapting to the semi-darkness as she took in the three figures standing beneath the baleful glow of the Dark Mark floating overhead. Magic was truly in the air tonight…
"…Daphne?"
The smallest of the three figures turned around.
"Oleandra…?"
The figure standing at her sister's side could only belong to Draco Malfoy. Oleandra's blood turned to ice as she saw who they held at wandpoint: Dumbledore— disarmed and defenceless, hunched and trembling, looking as if he had aged another hundred years.
"What's going on here?" Oleandra said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I thought…"
Hadn't she heard her sister's voice downstairs?
"I…"
"Not one more step, Greengrass," Malfoy spat venomously, turning his wand on her. "I don't care where you've been hiding all this time, you are not ruining this for me."
Oleandra turned her gaze to Dumbledore, her fingers itching as they hovered above her holstered wand. Here was everything she could have ever dreamed of— the owner of the Elder Wand at her mercy… sort of.
There wouldn't even be any need for the Killing Curse… a simple Banishing Charm would do the trick… he'd tumble from the battlements… seven hundred feet straight down… death would be instant… and then, the Elder Wand would be hers…
Oleandra licked her lips nervously.
Was this… really what she ought to be doing? Stealing her sister's kill, murdering a defenceless old man, just to revive the deadliest magical species that had ever walked the Earth? She had promised she would do it, but surely there had to be another way…
What Oleandra didn't know was that even if she killed Dumbledore now, the Elder Wand would never recognise her as its true master, as he had already been beaten. Even if she gathered all three Hallows afterwards, the miracle she sought would never occur.
"Well, it seems we've reached an impasse," said Dumbledore, his voice strained. "You could have killed me the moment I arrived— but you didn't. You don't truly want to murder me, Draco, Daphne. You are not killers. And now that Oleandra's joined us, I would imagine she has already made quick work of your friends downstairs. So… what will you do now?"
Oleandra's sudden disappearance had been the final nail in the coffin. Her twin sister had never returned after going out for some air during Professor Slughorn's Christmas party. All she knew was what Harry and Draco had told her afterwards.
Theodore Nott— acting on Voldemort's orders, or so Malfoy had implied— had erased Oleandra from the timeline. Voldemort had ordered it done, so surely, he was the only one who could undo it. Which meant, if she was to bring her sister back, she had no choice but to see through the plan she'd begun half-heartedly.
Of course, Theo hadn't sabotaged his experiment on purpose— but once it had gone wrong, and Oleandra still hadn't returned after months, he'd been all too happy to take the credit. Currying favour with the Dark Lord, even if he didn't necessarily agree with all his policies, simply made sense, seeing as his family was already aligned with him.
"You don't understand! Voldemort has my mother, so I have to help her!" said Malfoy agitatedly. "You're already a dead man, so we might as well get this over with!" He turned to Daphne, but his wand remained fixed firmly on Oleandra. "Come on, just do it, already! It's your job, isn't it!?"
"Do what, exactly?" Dumbledore asked cautiously.
Daphne remained silent for a few seconds, before finally uttering a single word.
"Poison."
"Those particularly clumsy attempts have already been foiled," said Dumbledore, shaking his head. "The House-Elves have reported everything to me. But I must say— even if you were trying to be caught— I'm disappointed you'd risk the lives of your fellow students simply to take an old man's life."
Daphne smiled ruefully.
"The Tears of Ra," she sniggered. "An impossible poison— I invented it, fed it to you, and you never even noticed a thing."
Dumbledore's eyes widened slightly.
"You were often absent from dinner, so it took several tries. Using the Imperius Curse, I manipulated different Hufflepuffs to deliver the ingredients to the Kitchens one by one. On their own, each component is harmless— but they linger in the body, waiting to be triggered by the incantation I devised. In a way, the entire school is my hostage. Even without a wand, all I need is to speak the word— and anyone who's consumed the completed poison, so long as they're within earshot, will instantly succumb."
At last, Oleandra saw a glint of fear in Dumbledore's electric blue eyes. Oleandra and Draco wouldn't be affected, since they had missed six months of school, but a certain invisible someone…
"But I won't use it," said Daphne with some effort. "I…"
Her voice trailed off.
As if pulled by an unseen force, Oleandra, Daphne, and Draco tilted their heads in unison, eyes lifting to the star-strewn sky. One by one, twenty-four constellations— each marking one of the twenty-four ancient runes of the stars— began to burn with a brilliance rivalling the sun itself.
Momentarily stupefied by his three students' sudden synchronicity, Dumbledore looked up as well— but to his eyes, the night sky held nothing out of the ordinary.
"The Dark Lady will rise…" Oleandra said in wonder, "when the veil between worlds grows thin… and when the stars align."
Dumbledore's breath caught in his chest.
The prophecy was happening now!? He had always believed that the prerequisites had already been fulfilled the previous year, during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries! The celestial bodies in the Space Room had spilled out into the Death Room, marking a trail of stars that pointed towards the veiled Archway, which led to the realm of the dead…
Was that not what the prophecy referred to!?
Oleandra, Daphne, and Malfoy sank to their knees, eyes blank as they stared up at the stars. Hundreds of feet below in the Slytherin sleeping quarters, Tracey mirrored them— eyes glued to the porthole window in her room, straining to catch the starlight piercing through the murky waters of the Black Lake.
"When the veil between worlds grows thin… an Archway in the Room of Requirement…" Dumbledore murmured. "The one Draco used to bring through the army he so proudly mentioned earlier? To think there was such a thing hidden in Hogwarts…"