Chapter Text
MARCUS FLINT - QUIDDITCH HUNK TURNED RESISTANCE SPY BARES ALL
August 2 nd, 1998
His glower remained unbroken through the third day of his trial, writes Rita Skeeter, Witch Weekly Special Correspondent. Ever since his arrest during what some are now dubbing ‘The Battle of Hogwarts’, Marcus Flint, heir to the Flint Fortune, has proven himself the ‘strong and silent’ type.
The Falmouth Falcon Chaser and two-time League Champion received support from an array of witnesses, including fellow Quidditch professional Oliver Wood and Arthur Weasley, father of Robart, best friend to Harry Potter (who remained notably absent from the historic hearings). Get the scoop on The Boy Who Lived post-war and what REALLY happened between him and Miss Hermione Granger on page 5.
“[He] only joined Voldemort’s side upon my insistence, in order to gain intel for the opposition,” Velebeth Flint, née Rosier, told the Wizengamot in an impassioned speech this Tuesday. Hours earlier, the young mum of one was spotted brazenly breastfeeding in the Ministry’s restored Atrium. In enviable shape mere six months after giving birth, Velebeth stood firm in support of her husband, accused of murder, torture, and arson during last year’s Dark Regime.
In a shocking turn of events, Flint broke his silence for the closing arguments, pleading guilty to the murder of Ivor Munn and more. “It was as if he wanted to be sent back to Azkaban,” said Cassius Warrington, junior partner at Warrington & Sons Solicitors and former Hogwarts housemate, “even though he’s obviously blameless. All those Gryffindors testified on his behalf – when’s that ever happened?”
Yet the drama did not end there! In one breath-taking hour, Marcus Flint provided details of top-secret plans hatched amongst the elite pureblood followers of Lord Voldemort, also known as Tom Riddle Jr. (†71). The name dropping of several high-profile members of Wizarding politics sent Kingsley Shacklebolt, newly minted Minister of Magic, scrambling to contain the fallout.
And what of the verdict? Despite the odds, Flint was cleared of all charges by a clear majority of the Wizengamot. But the real magic happened outside Courtroom Ten, where Flint and his devoted wife shared a tender reunion, sparking rumors of a new addition to their already enchanting family.
Fake Death Eaters, Hot Quidditch couples and brooding resistance icons aside: Flint's revelations might just be shaking the very foundations of Wizarding Britain! For more insight into Britain’s pureblood scandal of the century and Lucius Malfoy’s sinister plan to take over muggleborn property, continue on page 9.
*
Two steps.
That’s what it took for Marcus to cross his Azkaban cell from one miserable, grey end to the other. Sometimes the light that sifted through the bars of his window slit changed, and he imagined the clouds outside dragging along the sky, obscuring the sun, casting shadows on the churning waves that lapped at the stone walls of the fortress.
When he lay down and spread his arms wide, he could almost span the width of it. That was his favourite position. Eyes closed, whole body straining into the exercise of keeping still and breathing evenly: in, and out. In, and out. This was his life now. A blank space made of stone walls and the twists and coils of his own mind. He’d never sit a broom again. Never play another Quidditch match. He’d forget the faces of Beth, and Zippy, and his mother, and Oliver Wood. He’d forget the twenty-two years that led him to this.
The realization was strangely peaceful, and he tried to smile, but found that he couldn’t. Maybe he’d forgotten how. The vaulted ceiling looked strange. Different. He blinked, and it moved closer. Like a coffin lid, inches away from his nose. When he tried to move, nothing happened. Like he’d been suspended in tar. Blackened, glutinous tar.
“Marcus,” someone called out.
But he couldn’t answer, because there was no air left for him to breathe. The ceiling was closing in, and he suddenly realized that he was wearing his trusted Death Eater mask. It wouldn’t come off, no matter how hard he yanked –
Marcus blinked his eyes open and made a surprised sound when his vision dissolved in a blur of hot tears. Above him was the canopy of a four-poster bed. He recognized it immediately, but also found it confoundingly strange to look at. The softness of the bed was disconcerting. The texture of the pillow. The neatly pleated folds of the curtains.
“I’d wish you a good morning, but you look like shit.”
His eyes snapped over to the door. Velebeth was still dressed in her night gown, taxing him with her eyebrows raised. Seeing her, too, had an unreal quality to it.
“Right,” Marcus croaked, heartbeat still erratic in his chest.
He knew, in some perfectly sane part of his brain, that he was back home at Grosvenor Crescent. Yesterday, he’d been acquitted and walked out the Ministry of Magic free of all charges. He’d arrived home, had supper, and gone to bed at some point or other. All these facts sat in his head like the memories of someone else.
Velebeth finally stepped into the room properly, and he belatedly registered that she was carrying the baby. Marcus stared at it, caught off guard. It seemed like a different baby altogether. Not that he’d done a lot of tender gazing during the war, when it had been a squirming bundle, perpetually asleep. A lump nursing at Beth’s breast whose nightly yelps and cries he’d mostly blocked out with muffling charms.
Marcus quickly sat up in bed when Velebeth approached. She gave him an unimpressed glare, unceremoniously placing the baby down on the top of the duvet. There it laid on its belly, little arms outstretched, looking up at Marcus with impossibly wide, blue eyes. Like Beth, it had dark, unruly curls that sprung up in coils. “Blimey.”
“Gah,” the baby said in response.
“Reggie, meet your dad. He was busy spying on Death Eaters while being completely emotionally unavailable, but you’ll be spending more time with him now.” Velebeth’s voice had a familiar snide edge to it, and Marcus answered instinctively, the words almost a knee-jerk reaction.
“Dad was also in prison because he killed a man, sorry ‘bout that.”
That sparked a wry laugh out of her. The baby reacted to the sound. It twisted towards Velebeth, a wide, unguarded smile breaking out across its little face. It then let out a high-pierced squeal that threated to rattle the window glass, yanking up a small fist before smacking it back down onto Marcus’ thigh beneath the covers.
“At least someone’s happy in this family,” Velebeth said after a beat, catching his eye. She looked drawn and pale, quite the same as the last time he’d properly seen her, more than three months ago. During his trial she’d been a force to behold, of course. Perfectly put-together, with just the right amount of genuine affection to induce sympathy on his behalf. She’d moved heaven and earth to get him out of Azkaban, her and Oliver Wood both.
“Buh,” the baby said, turning its focus back onto Marcus. “Buh buh.”
“Won’t you hold him?” Velebeth crossed her arms and slouched against a bed post, sticking out her chin in a challenge. “I’d like to quote you from this February – you said you’d take time off Quidditch and stay home with the brat. That’s verbatim, Flint.”
Marcus glowered at her, hands coming up to hover awkwardly around the baby’s back. His heart was rabbiting in his chest, and he sent a final glance in Velebeth’s direction before uneasily picking up the baby and resting him in the crook of his arm, cradling his curly little head in his palm. He was called Reggie. Reginald, after his own fucked-up, narcissistic old man who’d done the naming as head of the family.
Reggie didn’t weigh much at all. He made an inquisitive noise at the new position, face stiffening into an apprehensive look. Marcus braced himself, already cringing in anticipation –
Velebeth burst out into tears.
“What – what is it?” Marcus called out helplessly while the baby – Reggie – waved his arms and legs, wriggling aimlessly with agitation. Then, finally, he dramatically screwed up his eyes and let out an earth-shaking wail, face turning white at the edges with the force of it. Marcus frantically looked between Velebeth and the crying baby in his lap. Though crying truly didn’t capture the sheer volume of it all.
“Fuck, what do I do?”
“Give him here,” Velebeth threw back the covers and nudged him until they were sitting side by side. She then pulled down her night shift and brusquely pressed Reggie’s wide-open mouth to her nipple. The whole procedure oozed a terrifying brand of competence. The cries grew muffled, then slowly petered out as he started suckling, breathing rapidly all the while.
“Merlin,” Marcus said under his breath, awed. “What the fuck.”
“Oh please, you don’t know half of it,” Velebeth hissed. Her face was still wet, but there was also an increasingly vicious twist to her mouth. “I’m not saying you had it easy – but do you have any idea, any fucking idea what it was like here, in this blasted house, with this blasted baby. Just me and Zippy, twenty-four fucking hours a day, with my darling mother threatening to apparate straight into the bedroom –“
Reggie gave a little whine, and she quickly shushed him, lowering her voice to a whisper.
“You were in prison, fine, alright. But now you’re back. And I – I can’t. I can’t do this any longer.” She took a deep, shuddering inhale. “Not like this.”
Someone might as well have cast a Petrificus Totalus. Marcus froze, unsure what to do with his hands. “What – what d’you mean?”
“What I mean to say is…” Velebeth took yet another deep breath, and she finally looked at him again. There was something terrified in her eyes, something pleading. “What I mean to say is that I’m leaving. For some time. Because – I’m ill.”
Marcus shook his head, uncomprehending. “You’re ill?”
“Yes. I wrote to a mind healer back in June, and she gave me a remote appraisal via the floo. You can heal this sort of sickness, the procedures are positively ancient –“
“You’re sick in the head? Seriously?” Marcus called out, forgetting to lower his voice. Something propelled him out of bed, and he walked a couple steps away, crossing his arms defensively. A kernel of panic was unfurling in his chest, making him quite light-headed.
“I think about chucking my baby out the window and jumping after him every other minute, how’s that?” Velebeth spat out her answer with a stroppy disregard, but there was something fraught in her voice, a faint tremor that showed an unbearable edge of vulnerability.
“So you think about offing yourself, big fucking deal. I myself would’ve loved a good Avada Kedavra every now and then, just to make everything stop. I would’ve liked to dash my head against the wall in my cell and just be done with it. Do you see me running away to do mind healing?”
The words simply came, and speaking them out loud felt exhilarating. Beth sat herself upright in bed, still feeding the baby, bouncing him ever so slightly. The look she sent his way was perfectly homicidal, and Marcus knew immediately that he was going to be eviscerated.
“I gave birth to your fucking son. I know you don’t remember, but I almost bled out while doing it. And you never even properly looked at him for the first three months, because you’re brilliant at ignoring things that inconvenience you. I was all alone. Do you get that? You upped and left me, first.”
Marcus walked over to the nearest chair and sat down heavily. His mind was oddly clear, the last vestiges of his nightmare dissipating while he observed the scene. “I didn’t want him,” he said after a while. Reggie let out a soft, gurgling noise, and Marcus’ stomach ached.
“Oh, fuck off. I didn’t want him, either. But I’m the witch, so I had him, and I love him. Unlike you. But I can’t – go on like this. I’m serious, Marcus.”
The bed was growing closer again, and he realized that he’d wandered back, as if in a trance. Reggie pulled off Velebeth’s nipple and twisted until he could properly see, blinking up at him with curious eyes. “Ugh,” he said, and there was something sad in his expression. Like he’d understood his parents, fighting hideously and declaring him unwanted.
“Where will you go?” He asked after a couple moments of helpless silence.
Velebeth slowly got up. She didn’t even bother to straighten the night gown, her hair standing on end. Reggie was still burbling, making his little noises. “Gah,” he exclaimed as his mother hoisted him up with her arms outstretched, kicking his chubby legs while she held him in mid-air, waiting.
Slowly, incrementally, Marcus reached out.
Then Reggie was in his arms, a pudgy cheek wedged against his bare shoulder, wriggling against the unfamiliar hold. Velebeth walked a few quick steps backwards, mouth opening and closing. She looked genuinely startled, as if she hadn’t really believed he would meet her demand. Then, she squared her shoulders and straightened her spine, mouth thinning into a severe line: “Swear to me you’ll take care of him while I’m gone.”
“What,” Marcus said flatly, before cringing away from her glower. “Alright. I swear, for Salazar’s sake.”
“You can’t just leave him with Zippy and go off on your broom, promise me.”
“Beth…”
“Promise me!”
“I promise!” Marcus barked, immediately regretting his outburst. Reggie was breathing very quickly again. He squirmed, rubbing his face against Marcus’ collarbone. Then he started sobbing pitifully, whole body going taut. Velebeth’s face crumbled. She lifted her hand, making to touch the baby’s head before forcefully snatching it back.
“The clinic’s just outside Heraklion, on Crete,” she told him, eyes averted. “The program runs for a month.”
“A month,” Marcus echoed faintly.
*
In all honesty, Marcus belonged back in Azkaban.
This was a thought that passed through his head at random in the next few days. Not just because he’d murdered Ivor Munn in cold blood, but also because he felt completely, genuinely out of his depth. Not that he received the chance to further mull over his life choices in between all the crying, frantic pacing and passing out in exhaustion. Zippy, dutiful servant that he was, tried every trick in the book to calm Reginald Flint Jr. from his incessant bouts of desperate screaming.
Nothing worked.
He wouldn’t have any of the milk Zippy warmed up for him. He didn’t want anyone to hold him, but Merlin forbid if he was put down. He somehow managed to scratch a thin, bloody track down his own cheek. And on top of it all, he started running a fever despite the scorching August weather.
“Your mum’s in Greece doing mind healing,” Marcus told him at five in the morning, while resting his head on the carpet after a second night spent mostly awake. “I just got out of prison. Your grandparents are basically all Death Eaters. Hard luck, Reggie.”
Reggie filled his lungs and screamed in response. And who could blame him? Certainly not Marcus. He occasionally caught sight of the paling Dark Mark on the inside of his left forearm while cradling him. His son had every reason to despise him.
The Rosier grandparents sent over a bevy of owls, which he summarily ignored. His own parents remained conspicuously silent, though he couldn’t be bothered to overthink the issue. He’d basically sold out half the Sacred Twenty-Eight families during his farce of a trial – undoubtedly, at least his father would be furious. But Marcus had regurgitated milk soaking his third undershirt within half an hour, and his head was threatening to split open, so he chucked that particular worry out the window.
“Mistress Corentine wants to see Young Master Marcus,” Zippy told him in a croaky whisper on the third day of the ordeal, tiptoeing around Reggie, who was finally, finally asleep, sprawled out on a folded blanket on the kitchen floor. For whatever rhyme or reason, this was the chosen spot that invoked no further crying.
“Don’t let her wake the baby,” Marcus hissed, casting another warming spell on the marble tiled ground. “Wait, Zip – let me do it.” Making no sudden movements, he slowly heaved himself upright, backing away from his sleeping son on socked feet.
His mother was just outside the kitchen door, dressed in a heavy satin robe despite the summer heat. Her mouth grew decidedly pinched as she scanned him, head to toe. When she finally spoke, her voice splintered with anger: “Would you care to inform me where your wife has disappeared to?”
Marcus crossed his arms over the yellow spot on his shirt, scowling right back: “How nice to see I’ve been missed.”
“Supplicia Rosier writes me three times a day asking after her precious daughter, your father is facing an investigation after that little stunt you pulled before the Wizengamot and half our basement’s been confiscated by the Auror Office –”
Marcus callously cut into her rant: “Beth’s gone to do mind healing because you both fucked her up so bad with the forced pregnancy. Tell that to Mrs. Rosier, won’t you?”
He felt a strange, hollow satisfaction at the shock on her face, though most of his adrenaline had been used up in Reggie’s last sleep-scream-sleep-cycle. He was growing decidedly light-headed with sleep-deprivation.
“Do you understand that we might lose everything?” His mother was coming closer now, hysteric blotches marring her face. “Flint manor, this very house, do you have any idea –“
“It would serve us right,” Marcus told her coldly. His eyes passed over her affronted expression, and he felt nothing but a vague distaste. “And now excuse me, the house elf’s been teaching me how to tie nappies.”
“Your father might go to prison!” Corentine Flint cried out, hat askew, voice pitching into genuine alarm. In the recesses of his mind, he recognized that he’d never seen her this frightened before.
A muffled whine sounded beyond the kitchen door.
“Bollocks,” Marcus sighed. He was already half-way down the corridor when something invisible jerked him back. With his addled brain it took a full minute for him to remember his mother’s trademark retrieval-charm, and its corresponding counter spell. She unflinchingly seized the chance, stepping into his space.
“You listen well, Marcus Reginald William. I don’t know about the spying that Rosier girl talked you into. It might’ve gained you some Wizengamot votes, for all I care. But it took us fifty-thousand Galleons to buy that majority. Is that what you’d like us to lose? The Flint Fortune is the very reason why you’re not rotting in Azkaban anymore, you ungrateful brat.”
Marcus had a hundred responses on his tongue. He could’ve started yet another screaming match with her, reminiscent of his early days out of Hogwarts. But Reggie was still snivelling in his corner on the kitchen floor, and despite only really knowing his son for three measly days, the sound alone made his chest ache. So, he said nothing and traipsed back into the kitchen, leaving the door open.
Zippy was cradling the baby, making loud shushing noises. His large, tennis ball eyes were bloodshot when he met Marcus’ gaze. He cast an apprehensive glance towards his Mistress, who was standing in the doorway, stony-faced.
“Bah,” Reggie said tearfully, mashing his cheek against Zippy’s starched dishtowel. “Guh.”
“That was just your grandmother,” Marcus said in a low voice. He picked Reggie up and buried his nose in the soft curls on the top of his head. “She’s mental.”
By the time he thought to look up again, his mother had gone.
*
“The Chief Warlock calls upon the third witness. Full name?”
“Oliver Callum Wood.”
“You may speak, Mr. Wood.”
“I’m here to retell what I saw on the night of the first of May. I was called upon by the Order of the Phoenix –“
“Which you’re a member of, I presume.”
“Yes, right. I joined in 1996. But I was in the periphery, you know, I spent most of the time doing groundwork, nothing strategically important. But I was called to the Hog’s Head by Arthur Weasley’s Patronus, which is a weasel. That was in the evening, perhaps around eight or nine, the sun was setting.
I didn’t see Flint until maybe two hours later, when Voldemort’s giants attacked. I was dragging Katie – Katie Bell, she was unconscious, and Remus Lupin waved me into an alcove, to put her in a stable position, she’d been bleeding, you see – well, Flint turned up, and Lupin wasn’t spooked at all. He spoke to him like they’d had an agreement. That’s when it became clear to me that Marcus Flint had been spying for the Order of the Phoenix. He came out into the open, after – after Harry was killed. Covered for me in battle, fended off at least one killing curse. I’m grateful, actually.”
“And what was your relationship with Mr. Flint prior to the Battle on the first of May?”
“We were – we were both captains of our Quidditch teams back in Hogwarts. Then we both went professional and saw each other on and off the pitch. I can’t say we are particularly close, but – I reckon I know him. And I know what I saw. I’m certain that all he did was in the service of the Order, and the resistance. He’s a good man.”