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Isaure Wang swaddled Galath tightly. She didn't have any way of securing the note to him other than by tightening the blankets; she hoped it would be good enough.
Odhran Lan had named him Cadoc, an old family name which meant "battle." It had belonged to many great warriors of the Lans, many who died young in the service of some great wizard or Dark Lord. It was what Odhran hoped for him. Isaure named him Galath, after the Mediwizard protagonist of her favorite novel, and after Galahad, the greatest of all knights, the one who didn't pick up a sword.
She had drafted a dozen letters to Galath, pages and pages, pouring out her love and her hopes and her wisdom, saying everything that a luckier mother would have been able to spread out over eighteen years. Finally, she'd decided on a single small note: Your name is Galath Wang. I love you. I know that you will make me proud. There are many things that they will tell you are important, but the only thing that really matters is that you are kind.
Isaure was not an exceptional person. Odhran Lan had told her that, told her how lucky she was that he had exalted her by loving her. He could have loved anyone. He could have loved someone worthy of him. She should be grateful.
Isaure was a halfblood from a family that often married Muggleborns if not Muggles. Her mother had been a veela, which left her with the one thing that was remarkable about her, the beauty that had made Odhran Lan fall in love with her. She'd been a Hufflepuff, more-or-less by default. Her mediocrity at magic and poor background had led her to a job at Knockturn Alley, black-market retail, the sort of job that didn't require many skills, where being served by a halfbreed reassured customers that their goods were as Dark as they expected.
Galath watched her with wide, interested eyes. Something new was happening, and new things didn't happen often to Galath; his first year of life, like the last eight years of Isaure's, had been confined to a single room from which they couldn't see the sun. He didn't cry. Galath never cried. In a different world, Isaure would have felt lucky about it.
She kissed him on the forehead. He smiled.
The Death Eaters didn't gossip much in front of Isaure. But, in the prison cell that Odhran Lan called her quarters, she didn't have anything else to do except to watch and to listen. She knew that there was something planned for Galath, some Dark magic, and she knew he wasn't expected to survive.
She had tried to escape when Odhran had first taken her as his prisoner, or as his wife. She had spent nearly three days on the run with Rordan after he was born. They'd gotten more paranoid since then. The wards were stronger and blocked off her ability to use magic entirely. Her food was cut up for her because they didn't want to give her a knife. Her guards were house elves, immune to veela magic.
But she'd packed up a little bag with the essentials, and she'd broken off the leg of a chair, because no matter how hard you tried you couldn't deny someone everything that was a weapon.
She was going to die, or Galath was going to live. She was at peace.
Isaure kissed Galath's forehead again. In books, she thought, once you'd made this decision, the guards had the grace to show up immediately afterward. In books, they always knew when it was their last chance to say goodbye.
Galath cooed, entirely unknowing.
--
It only took three minutes to take Isaure down. It didn't even delay the ritual.
Odhran Lan would mourn the loss of his wife, but he had agreed to sacrifice that which was most precious to him in the world, his own infant son, so that his Dark Lord would live forever. If anything, the loss of his wife would give the ritual more strength.
Though no one had thought of it, for no one thought much of Isaure Wang at all, when Isaure Wang stood at her door with a broken chair leg in her trembling hand, it was the third time that she had defied the Dark Lord.
Perhaps the Dark Lord would have noticed if he'd touched the child. But the Dark Lord had never been a man who was affectionate to children.
Galath had been quiet during the ritual. There were frightening sounds, strange people; but still he had thought, perhaps, that his mother would be back soon.
And there was an Avada Kedavra and a flash of green light and a surge of magic that even the Muggles had felt for kilometers around, and the cry of a small child who had just realized that his mother would never come back again.
