It began, as these things often do, on a Tuesday. No one ever suspects a Tuesday. Mondays carry suspicion like a bad perfume overworn, overhated, and avoided if possible. Fridays? Too celebratory to be dangerous. But Tuesdays…
Tuesdays are the quiet dagger. The silk-lined poison cup. The predator that smiles and says, "Relax, it's just the middle of the week."
And so it was, at precisely 7:43 p.m., in the grand, echoing halls of the Potter-Peverell mansion—a sprawling Unseelie estate wrapped in enchantments older than guilt—that Seraphina Liliana Lily Potter-Peverell, age two, stood barefoot on velvet carpeting, negotiating her life's most important political treaty to date: Bedtime Extension Rights.
Wrapped in ridiculously oversized pyjamas emblazoned with glowing Nightmares, Glooms, and Stalkers—the sort of ensemble any respectable Death Fae toddler would proudly wear—Seraphina planted her tiny fists on her hips and squinted up at her mother with the ferocity of an ancient queen.
"I not tired," she declared imperiously.
Lily Elaris of the Iron Veil Court—known to some as Lily Potter, but never in the courts where it mattered—pressed her fingers to her forehead and laughed, a brittle thing, more strained than she intended.
"You've been riding your father like a battle mount for the last hour, my little horror. Even Direwolves tap out faster."
Across the grand foyer, James Potter—scythe-summoner, occasional diplomat, and full-time nightmare impersonator—lowered his daughter from his shoulders with a dramatic groan, silver-white hair gleaming under the crystalline chandelier.
"Retreat, Lady Seraphina," he wheezed theatrically, staggering to the nearest fainting couch as if mortally wounded. "Your warhorse has fallen."
Seraphina's eyes, the exact luminous shade of the Killing Curse oh, the scandal at the birth registry office that day narrowed at the betrayal. "Papa, trai'ter!"
James clutched his heart. "Wounded twice in one night! First defeated in battle, now betrayed by my own blood!"
Lily rolled her eyes, but there was a tension in her shoulders she couldn't shake. The wards had been… humming strangely all day. A faint vibration in the air, like a song played just out of hearing. And now, as James play-acted his dramatic demise, that humming crescendoed into a sickening crackle.
The mansion's protective wards—etched into stone and bone, sealed with blood rites and old, vicious promises—fractured audibly, like ice underfoot on a spring thaw.
It was so loud, Seraphina stopped mid-stomp.
James' joking face melted away like wax over a flame. He was already reaching for his wand before his scythe answered his call, sliding into his hand with a sound that didn't quite belong to this world shhhhnkt! cold silver and onyx gleaming under the chandelier's light.
"Lily. Upstairs. Now."
There was no time for speeches. No time for the usual Unseelie dramatics about how "Should this be my final hour, let the bards remember…" None of that. Just a kiss pressed to his daughter's curls, his voice low and fierce.
"Be proud of who you are, little Nightshade. Never trust too easily. And never forget you are Unseelie. Be their nightmare."
Seraphina clung to his cloak, small hands fisting in the fabric, her nose scrunching in confusion. Why was Papa's voice different? Why did Mama look like that pale as if she'd swallowed ice water, green eyes wide with horror?
James kissed Lily, once, fast and rough, before pushing them toward the staircase. "Go!"
Lily ran.
She didn't glide like the court ladies; she ran, barefoot up the grand staircase, Seraphina tucked tight in her arms. Runes carved beneath her daughter's bed began to pulse faintly, the Iron Veil's last resort—a safety spell forged in logic and desperation. She'd designed it herself, never truly believing she'd have to use it.
Yet here they were.
For the first time in her life, Lily Potter cried. Not the quiet tears of a woman who'd known tragedy. No, this was a silent, choking grief. She knew James wouldn't survive the night. She could feel the wrongness crawling over the house like damp fingers down her spine.
She pressed her forehead to Seraphina's wild silver hair and whispered, "Live. You live, my treasure. You live, no matter what it makes you."
Downstairs, the front doors groaned. Not opened. Disintegrated.
And in the deep thrumming dark, something worse than death walked in.
Across the sprawling wilds of the Unseelie lands, Caius Everen Grey a boy barely older than Seraphina watched helplessly as his own family estate burned. Tonight was not the night of one tragedy. It was a massacre, precise and calculated.
By dawn, two orphans would remain: one a princess of the Nightmare Court, the other a lost heir of the Wild Hunt.
And somewhere in the ashes, far away from the carnage he'd helped orchestrate, Albus Dumbledore smiled faintly over his lemon drop tea and adjusted his chessboard.
"Check."
But that? That is a story for another time.
For now, it was just a Tuesday. And really, who the hell ever suspects a Tuesday?