"...Mum? Dad?"

"Yes," she says, "My wonderful girl."

The man turns to her, his form fading into reality more, and he grins - his face is a bit more discernible than the rest of him, and his lips move, but he seems far away - then a sudden waver, and, "You've grown. You survived - " 

And he wavers out.

Lily laughs. "Tell Sirius we don't blame him, we still love him," she says, speaking quickly now. "The Hallows are real. They can - "

She almost flickers out, then reforms with an annoyed expression. "You need to - "

Fade.

"You have - "

Flicker.

"...I love you. Please avoid ever permanently dying," she says, glowering at a point none of the girls are in. 

Her form's very faint, now. James is still there, still a shade - still not entirely solid.

"I'll try."

"Goodbye."

Softly: "I'm always with you, Ellie. And we'll meet again, someday. Just - briefly."

And she and James fade out.

"Well."

Hug?

That'd be good, yeah.

"People said I looked like them but-"

"Guess I really do, huh."

She moves around the table to hug Ellie from the other side.

"Genetics are funny like that," she says, softly.

"Yeah."

"What she said- We should write it down. Try to figure it out."

"Ahead of you. I started a transcription spell when it seemed she was actually aware of everything that's happened in the living world. None of the other spirits - including your father - seemed to be."

"Still, there's some things before that I didn't get. We should hopefully be able to review it all in a Pensieve, though... Some of her body language was also - telling, maybe."

"Seemed like something was stopping her from talking."

She puts the stone back onto the table.

Snuggle. "It seemed that way to me, too. And - she seemed aware of it enough that she might've been trying to work around it, with her last words."

"Yeah. Implying that I might- temporarily die."

"...It didn't sound like a metaphor for something."

"No. But these," she taps the table next to the stone. "have something to do with it. So it'll be horcruxes and Hallows we have to find."

Bellatrix nods. "Grindelwald was the last person rumored to have the Elder Wand, though he's in a European prison with no visitors."

"The cloak... That's less sure. It was supposedly an invisibility cloak, remarkably fine, that could hide you from even Death."

"...I have an invisibility cloak. It was my dad's. Still works."

"...And it's made of thestral hair, a creature associated with Death..."

"The Elder Wand's core is supposedly thestral hair."

"Well, marrying into a family with a Hallow would be one way to find out about them."

"Guess so."

"There's no obvious mythical way to identify the cloak, though. It was supposed to be the most subtle of the three."

Nod. "There's a lot of circumstantial evidence, though."

She nods. "There is."

"Which likely just leaves the Elder Wand."

"Which we have no leads on."

"It might be the easiest one to find cold, actually - you could say it's the only Hallow actually confirmed to exist. To the point some people think the Hallows legend was created as an origin story for it, actually, though not everyone believes it's - effectively supernatural."

"The Elder Wand supposedly jumps between bearers. It's the only wand known to shift its loyalty. It jumps when its previous wielder is murdered - which seems to pretty much happen inevitably - and it always switches loyalty to whoever caused that death, either directly or indirectly."

"Grindelwald isn't dead, but... He doesn't still have a wand, or at least he shouldn't. And some of the myths around the wand are... Very non-specific. It's possible that utter defeat, possibly including destroying everything someone stands for, counts - a more metaphorical death."