And Nothing but the Truth PV Mathias

The moment his wife pressed the note into his hand, Mathias had known something was off. Not "wrong," he had seen "wrong" before. In fact, he had caused "wrong" a number of times. But this… this was something else.

Winnie looked like a ghost of herself, wan and trembling, all cracked porcelain in a Hogwarts unform. Skipping breakfast and classes? She was a Ravenclaw, "obsessed with grades" would be a gross over-statement. But she was fixated on doing things right and skipping class was not something she did for the sake of it. So whatever it was, it had rattled his wife deeper than she wanted to admit. Winnie's kiss on his cheek was like a stamp of guilt. He didn't like it.

Throughout the morning he had pulled the note out several times. "Meet me in our usual spot at lunch. Make sure you aren't followed."

"Why did she worry about being followed?" They had a pretty calm start of the year. "Dramatic," he thought, folding the parchment with care and sliding it into his inner robe pocket. That was the kind of sentence that explained affairs, confessions, or assassinations. In her case? He sighed. She was really starting to fit in to the family wasn't she?

But still, his mind ran wild as the mid-day hour crawled forward. And when he got up from the Slytherin table, no one stopped him. By the time he stepped into the abandoned classroom, the tension in his jaw could have cracked stone. He didn't ask why the room was rearranged; he didn't ask if she was okay.

Mathias looked her over once. He really looked. The flushed cheeks. The way Winnie's arms were crossed, even if she did not notice. The too-careful way his new wife stood, like the wrong word might send her shattering. This was his first wife, they had been married for a few months. Yeah, it is about right.

"Fuck," Mathias announced. No "hello" or "how are you feeling," just "fuck."

Matt's eyes narrowed. "You're pregnant," the heir said flatly, voice low. Not a question. A deduction. This was version of panic. He was going to have an heir before he even graduated from Hogwarts. He strode further into the room and closed the door behind him, wand flicking once to seal it with a charm that hissed like a warning.

Mathias ran a hand through his red hair and paced away before turning back toward her, his hands splayed in frustration. "It's mine right?" Who else's could it be? "Whatever it is, say it. Don't wrap it in riddles. I've had enough of prophecy and drama for one lifetime."

But behind the arrogance… was something else. Not softness, not yet. But fear, maybe. Vulnerability, buried under marble. Mathias loved her in his way. Enough to be scared. Enough to already be planning the next dozen moves.

Interacting: @Mathias Athanatos

Outfit: Uniform

Mentioning: @Gideon Athanatos

English | Irish | Internal thoughts

"Mattie..." Winnie whispered, his name leaving her lips as he entered the room. She was tempted to rush towards him and hug him, have him tell her it would be okay. But the look on his face made her pause. Was it possible he already knew everything? How much trouble was she going to be in for going against what he had told her last November and again in January? Stay away from Gideon. Four simple words, but instructions she just couldn't seem to follow.

She took in a breath to speak, when the Slytherin decided to land on one bombshell of a conclusion. "You're pregnant."

"... E-Excuse me?" She asked, blinking over at him in disbelief. Pregnant? PREGNANT? "I'm not...!" The denial came as a mere squeak. Heat bloomed across her face as she shook her head so hard that copper curls fell from her loose ponytail.

"W-We've been very careful w-whenever we're... Y-You know!" The blush spread to her ears, her light blue eyes unable to look directly at Mathias. She had spent the last four and a half months making sure that did not happen. You can't play Quidditch when you're pregnant!

Then he asked if it was his, and Winnie's jaw dropped like she hadn't spent the better half of last year flirting with Percival Gray. "EXCUSE ME? And just what do you mean by that? Of course it's yours-- I mean, if I were pregnant, it would be yours! You're the only one I've ever d-done that with and..."

"I am not pregnant, Mathias!" She repeated with a hiss, her hands curling into fists as she tried not to get angry, "And I am not having some... clandestine affair! You are the only one for me."

Her breath shook as she tried to steady herself, her nerves calming. It had been at least a nice distraction from the truth. "I need you to listen to me, okay?"

She stepped towards him, her trembling fingers grabbing one of his larger hands, "Something happened last night. Gideon lured me out to the woods... During the new moon." Her voice broke on the word 'moon'.

She swallowed hard, her finger nails practically digging into her husband's skin as she continued, "I may have... Broken all his fingers."

Mathias went still.

Not the ordinary stillness he used when calculating or hiding irritation, No. This was the kind of stillness that preceded storms, executions, or miracles. His eyes, sharp and pale as winter glazed grass, fixed on her. Unblinking. First she denied the pregnancy. Then she said it was his. Mathias let her ramble: blushing, babbling, flustered. Terrified that he thought she had been unfaithful. He would not have been surprised, he saw how she looked at other men like Percival, the name of a purse dog.

He listened in total silence, expression carved from white marble. It wasn't the denial that she looped back to that held him. It was her last sentence. "I may have… broken all his fingers." Gideon, one of several brothers, the only full-blooded sibling he had. He did not care for "Giddy" as mother used to call him, the rivalry went on long before his younger brother had thrown his fiancé from the Owlery. Gideon was not just a sociopath, he had the inclination and temperament to be something much more dangerous than socially awkward.

A slow breath slipped from his lungs, the kind of exhale that belongs to a man stepping into prophecy and escaping panic. Mathias' head tilted as he appraised his questionably pregnant wife. Then, a sound left him. It was a laugh. This low, disbelieving, joyless sound. Not mocking. Something darker threaded through it, something nearly reverent.

What had she done?Matt stepped toward her; not the hesitant, lover’s step she might have expected, but something far more deliberate. More dangerous. As though drawn by gravity, or fate, or the thrill of violence touching his bloodline at last.

The Slytherin's fingers dug into his own palm as he made a tight fist with his right; but his other hand rose slowly, carefully, to cradle the side of Winnie's jaw. The gesture was almost tender. "Winnie…" Mathias murmured, voice soft in the way thunder is soft when you hear it from afar. His words rumbled with the promise of the storm to come. "You broke all of Gideon's fingers," he repeated.

A dark, delighted pride flickered behind Mathias' gaze. Pride in Winnie: in his fragile little china-doll bride who was not nearly as fragile as she looked. Pride that bordered on awe. Matt leaned in, forehead nearly touching hers. "And he" Gideon, his arse of a brother, "deserved it," Mathias whispered, the words poisonous and intimate. "He should consider himself lucky you didn't break his neck."

Interacting: @Mathias Athanatos

Outfit: Uniform

Mentioning: @Gideon Athanatos

English | Irish | Internal thoughts

Winnie's breath hitched as Mathias invaded her personal space. The Ravenclaw stumbled back until her legs hit the front of a desk. Trapped, not by force, but by the intensity burning in his hazel eyes.

She had expected concern, perhaps lecture on the dangers of venturing into the woods on the new moon or going anywhere near his psychopath brother. Perhaps anxiety like when he had begged her to stay away from him after she'd healed from her fall from the owlery.

She had not expected... This. He looked at her as if he wanted to push her up against one of the dusty desks and try to make his earlier assumption a reality. "Matt, wait..." She didn't pull back, she couldn't. Why did he have to look at her with those eyes? Why did it seem like her violence had lit a fire somewhere inside of him?

"I mean... He did deserve it..." The whispered words slipped from her lips before she could think about it. Had he? Gideon had started it. Pushed her from the tower and kept poking at her. "But he wanted me to do it, it's been his plan all along. He's been using me from the beginning, toying with me, picking away at the cracks and now..." She trailed off, her hand rose up to rest on his chest, her fingers curling into the fabric of his robes to steady herself.

"Now I've snapped. He's... Corrupted me. When I broke his fingers, it made something wake up in the forest..." Her voice cracked towards the end, her eyes widened as she remembered the way the trees had shifted, moving as if they could breath. "I know it, I saw it with my own eyes. The trees moved, like they did so many years ago.

She paused to brace herself for the next bombshell, knowing this would be the hardest part. She had to be careful how she worded it, because she decided she wasn't going to tell him that Gideon told her about his relation to the hags. Instead she would hint she already knew. She didn't want him to be able to dismiss it as mere manipulation by Gideon. "When were you planning on telling me you're related to hags? B-Because... They're back."

"You saw the forest move?" he echoed. There was a brief pause before he added, not really asking for confirmation because he already knew the truth. "Of course," he confirmed. There was no surprise in his tone. No horror. Just the calm of someone who had already made peace with something most people couldn't name without shuddering. He had been aware of the forest for years.

"It always moves on the new moon," Mathias explained, his gaze narrowing with quiet intensity. It was the new moon the other day he reasoned. Of course the forest was moving. "You didn't wake anything, Winnie. You heard it. That's all. You listened." It was supposed to be reassuring, but it was likely anything but. There were numerous rumors about the forbidden forest. About the dangers contained within the darkened wood given such an ominous moniker.

"People think they understand the forest. That it grows wild. That it serves no master. But it's not wild, not really. It has been twisted over the years by their," not a singular her but 'their' presence. "It" the forest "is fed by blood." He waved his hand dismissively. "But you probably barely felt the wood quiver," he added. "The hags died a long time ago, an assassin" or something like that "was paid to take them down after my brother was hurt." Well, killed but some parts of history were being overwritten. "So I doubt the forest had much life to it anymore," he commented. She was in no danger, at least from the forest. Previously she could barely enter the forest, stones were breeching the soles of their shoes, vines were lashing at their backs, attempting to snare their legs and swallow them whole.

"When were you planning on telling me you're related to hags? B-Because... They're back."

A cold chill ran through him and he paled. "Who told you... that?" He tried to recover quickly, adding "I'm a pureblood Winnie." His lips curled around the word like it tasted foul. He already knew who told her: Gideon. Mathias's jaw tightened. "Of course he did," he internally muttered. "He always liked to bleed the wound just to watch it scab over wrong."

"Yes," Mathias said finally, louder now with a snarl to his lip. He did not want to admit it. "It's true. The Athanatos line crawls with hagblood. My mother didn't "taint" the bloodline she reminded it what it was," he said it almost defiantly. "She," Mathias' mother, "was rough and strong and powerful and loud, but loving. She was terrible in ways no lullaby could ever fix." She reminded Pride a lot of Winnie.

He looked at Winnie with something like pride. Maybe even affection. Twisted, of course. Possessive, always. "I know what she was. I know what that makes me. And I don't run from it. I am no worse for it either." The hagsblood was in fact the source of his power, the thread from where prophecy was divined.

He stepped even closer now, his breath warm on her cheek. "That was why father had sent my mother away, he failed to tell him what she was." There was a bitterness threaded on his words as he made that statement. He was young when his mother was isolated from them, but not so young that he would not remember. Remember how she was sent away, the culling of women from the family bloodline. It was not the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last.

"It is nothing to be afraid of," no more than being part muggle. "I've studied it. Embraced it. Do you understand? The others pray for prophecy. I inherited it. Fate moves in me like a second spine." Mathias took her hand and pressed it against his chest. His heart beat was erratic but strong. "Ignore Giddy, he is trying to scare you away again. Striking back was not wrong, he wronged you first. It is not corruption to fight back."

He exhaled, a long, slow breath. "You're too old to become a hag. You are in no danger at all, besides whatever Gideon is on about now. The hags of the wood are dead and have been for years. And IF something is awakening, I'm not afraid of whatever might be walking out of those woods. Its' conflict is not with us Winnie." He paused and appraised her again, was this really what had left her scared and skipping class? He attempted to console her with kisses in a PG13 manner befitting a forum where kids might be reading this post. "We have won in every way that matters. Gideon is grasping at straws."

Interacting: @Mathias Athanatos

Outfit: Uniform

Mentioning: @Gideon Athanatos

English | Irish | Internal thoughts

"It's not the first time I've seen the forest move," Winnie added, the fingers clinging to his robes twitching as she remembered the night she had ventured into the forest with her housemates. "I saw it... Four years ago. Vladimir had gone into the forest."

She exhaled a shaking breath. He spoke with such an eerie sense of calm. Of course he'd known, of course he wasn't surprised by this. Mathias always knew more than he let on. Just what other secrets was he hiding? "Why does it only move on the new moon?"

He said the hags were dead, but Gideon said they were ready to rise, not resting in peace, but in 'pieces'. She could still see him groaning in pain, his fingers mangled as he explained his plan to Winnie. (Feel free to say that Mathias' wand picked up on this moment from Winnie's memory.)

"I'm a pureblood Winnie." Mathias' recovery came.

She was ready for him to deny it all, assumed she would have to wrestle the truth out of him. But just as quickly as he claimed to be a pureblood, he pulled the curtain back to reveal the truth and all of the broken jagged pieces of the puzzle came together. Winnie stared in shock as Mathias explained it all to her. He spoke of hags like they were comparable to humans.

She didn't react at first, not like she had when Gideon had revealed their heritage to her. Hagspawn. Her husband was part hagspawn. Any children they had in the future would be part hagspawn too.

It was only when he spoke of his mother that the Ravenclaw's gaze softened. He didn't speak of her as a monster, but as someone who loved her son, someone fierce, terrible, and wonderful. She understood what it was like to lose a parent, but she couldn't imagine the pain of watching your own mother be exiled. Her heart ached for her husband.

"... Okay." Winnie whispered, though the word shook. It was not quite acceptance, but acknowledgement as she was still processing the information. She pressed her hand against his chest, felt the rhythm of the heart beating within.

"I'm not scared, not of you." It was the truth, and maybe she should have been afraid. She had when Gideon showed off a twisted smile or when his vertebrae snapped back into place, but Mathias was her husband... It was different. Honestly, being a hagspawn might have been the least scary thing about him anyways. "It's everything around you, the unknown, everything that looks at you and sees something to claim or someone to defeat."

"I love you, hagsblood and all, but," She held up her free hand, ready to gesture to him to let her finish if he tried to interrupt, "I'm pissed off you kept this from me."

Her throat bobbed, her gaze sharpening. "I said my vows, Mathias; I'm yours. I don't want you to keep hiding things from me. You're going to tell me everything... I saw Gideon change, his smile was different. Is that something you can do too?"

His lips met hers, an attempt at distraction. "Mattie..." She murmured against his lips between kisses, her head spinning. It was unfair how he knew how to easily distract her.

She would try and pull back, her blue eyes wide, "Please, you have to believe me. Gideon isn't lying, I felt how the forest reacted... Like it recognized what I had done. This has been his plan all along. He didn't push me out of the tower to try and kill me..."

Mathias didn't respond immediately, in truth Winnie did not leave him much space to interject. So when there was a moment of silence, he allowed that silence stretch, a reprieve from the tangle of apprehension and trepidation being woven by his lovely wife. Winnie's words hung between them like mist in a clearing: truthful, trembling, but not trusted. She, a trapped thing, even with his vast pride understood that, did not love him. She love the idea of him, the person he had created in her mind to serve as the perfect avatar of a boyfriend, a future husband and a partner. When that image failed short, and it did often, that was when the potions bolstered her perception or at least her recollection of him. That had worked for a number of years, that is until she finally started to develop a resistance to the memory potion. That was when he had turned to threats, to fear. He allowed the mask to and all pretense to drop, and what potions could not bind, his will had.

Mathias studied her the way a diviner studies smoke: for signs, for weakness, for proof. Not proof of her assessment, she was right. The forest moved, he had known for years. In fact, it was known by most students that the Forbidden Forest was "forbidden" for a very good reason. Still pretty. Still malleable. Still so much like her. He did not believe that she loved him, he did not even love himself. But it did not matter as long as she was there, as long as she did not or could not run fast enough to escape him.

"The forest always moves," Mathias murmured at last, voice graveled with reverence. "Trembles really," he seemed to admit. "Their presence physically changes the environment if they stay there too long," they they he was referring to were the hags. "And the phases of the moon have an impact on magic," he reminded her. For years the moon was woven throughout their lessons: lycanthropy, potioneering with Hesper Starkey, animagus transformation and the ritualistic aspect of the moon.

He tried to kiss her neck, "The moon has transformative properties." It was posited in the Lunar Dissonance Theory that the new moon was unstable, reactive and spiritually dangerous, ideal in the realm of potion-making for making transformational brews. He was the bookish sort at times, but iterating a whole tome on how lunar cycles effect transformative spells was not what she was looking for. Not really. She did not want to understand it, she wanted to be validated. "The new moon is sometimes referred to as the hag's moon or... more commonly, the witch's moon." A term she was likely more familiar with, muggles used that term during the witch hunts to describe the dark moon's power. "The dark moon represents beginnings, secrets, and feminine power," he continued. "Hags are exclusively women," he reminded her. "The woods shift because they are effected by a hag's long-term presence in the forest. The forest is always trembling, but when the forest moves it demonstrates the fact that the hags that reside there are at full power."

According to the Pagan Grimoire, the new moon was a time also of new beginnings, planting seeds (literally and metaphorically), and setting intentions, as the darkness allows for focus on inner work and hidden potential. Therefore, the night had more relevance than he was willing to mention as Winnie carried on.

Winnie's breath, her hand on his chest, the truth spilling from her lips; Mathias should have been disarmed. But instead, something flared behind his hazel eyes. Not anger. Not even lust. Recognition. He closed his hand around her wrist, firm but not cruel. "Vladimir made a bad deal, got greedy and made the world suffer for his arrogance," Mathias confirmed. "He lost his status in the family for it, you chased a self-serving fool into the forest that day and you are fortunate you survived." His brothers had an uncanny knack for nearly getting his wife killed. But he seemed to only benefit from his brother's idiocy. "You would have been better off if you avoided my family, rejected Gideon's invitation," he reminded her. Hadn't he told her to stay away from his younger brother. "Why" he tried to kiss her neck again "do I let you" and again "run off on your own" and again.

He pulled his wand from his holster, a length of sycamore wood with a snallygaster heartstring core. "Colloportus" he incanted. He had other thoughts on his mind, but regardless of past, present or future successes, Winnie had more to say.

"You’re not scared of me," Matt echoed, the phrase seemed to humor him. "And maybe that’s the most dangerous thing you've said all day." The prideful heir's hand lifted, fingertips brushing her cheek with something surprisingly tender. "Just what surrounds me. What wants me. The family. The prophecy. The bloodline." He paused for a moment, "and even with your misplaced sense of fear," his insistent attempt at kisses. "You were alone with Gideon of all people."

Nope, still talking.

His wife accused Mathias of hiding things and he didn't deny it. He couldn't. His entire life had been layered in secrets like stone laid in a tomb. But when Winnie asked, really asked about the transformation, about the smile, the bones, the shift... His lips parted, but not for denial. "No," he said flatly. "I can't change. And neither can he," Mathias asserted. Gideon was no changeling, his form was the same as it always was. "He is short for an Athanatos, but he was making himself appear small," Mathias simplified the explanation. In truth it was a manipulation tactic - appear less threatening, small. It was how he survived when Vladimir and Aamon floundered, he affixed himself to elder students who saw themselves as big brothers to the child in need. That was what George Henry was, not that Mathias knew the name of Giddy's benefactor.

Mathias took a breath, cold and sharp.

"As for Gideon…" The boy, the almost man. "He's a mad dog in need of a leash," he did not see his younger brother, the never-heir, to be a threat. That was Mathias' fatal flaw, the sin from which he was forged: Pride. "He wants chaos. He wants to burn down the world and crown himself in ash," he did not see a plan or order, just madness. "Don't credit him for being more than he is."

Interacting: @Mathias Athanatos

Outfit: Uniform

Mentioning: @

English | Irish | Internal thoughts

Winnie's thoughts derailed the moment her husband's lips caught hers. She wasn't sure if it was affection, an attempt to comfort, or a distraction. Knowing Mathias, it was likely all three. It wasn't fair how easily he could distract her. The images of Gideon's mangled fingers and the looming forest seemed to disappear.

He spoke about phases of the moon, she vaguely remembered it from classes long ago... What was it about? He kissed her neck, her thoughts scattering again as she felt heat rush to her face. Had the forest really been moving that night? Not the way it had been when she followed Vladimir in, but it had almost trembled around them. The hags couldn't be at full power, right?

"Wasn't just me..." She managed to point out through her brain fog, "the other Ravenclaws went too." It was a weak defense considering she had been the first to enter the forest that night after Vladimir. Shivers trailed up her spine when his kisses continued. Why did he let her? She had never asked his permission. Her frustration was sharpening beneath the fog. "Y-You say that like you can control me. Maybe if you actually told me the truth I wouldn't have to keep playing the curious cat."

Click.

She snapped out of it the moment he mumbled an incantation and the door's lock clicked into place. Her eyes flickered to his wand, then back up to his face. "Mattie, you can't just seduce me to make me stop talking."

"Do you want me to be afraid of you?" She asked, her voice hushed as she pulled back to study his face. She knew the answer, logically at least, she should be. Especially after everything he had done to her. Still, she couldn't help feeling safe in his arms, a cage she had become all too familiar with.

Her shoulders seemed to relax when he confirmed Gideon couldn't change. Had her mind been playing tricks on her? She could have sworn he had too many teeth... She was tempted to ask Mathias to open his mouth so she could peer inside of it and count his teeth.

"No... Gideon is dangerous. Last night I learned that he doesn't do things just for the sake of doing them, he plans... Plots... Mad dogs bite at anything near them, they don't set traps." He wasn't taking her seriously and it was frustrating her. She knew that she wasn't intelligent, Merlin knows why she was placed in Ravenclaw, but she could still see the obvious staring back at her.

Gideon. The one thing she had been playing attention to for the past few months.

Her hands slid down his biceps and forearms before squeezing his hands within her own. "Gideon told me that you have all the right tools but you never asked what they cost, that you know a lot and nothing at the same time.

Blue eyes grew sharp, her anger boiled over as she thought of her brother-in-law's words. "Can't you see he's planning something? Mattie, there are so many people waiting for you to stumble. They're circling overhead like vultures."