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Reducio

𝕿𝖍𝖊 wedding was taking place as the Sanctum Noctus Cathedral at 2:00 pm. The grand cathedral rose like a fortress against the clear sky. An edifice of dark stone quarried from the Aegean islands, its black spires knifing into the heavens with somber authority. Great carved gargoyles clung to the flying buttresses like distressed sentinels, mouths agape in silent screams, their shadows stretching long over the flagstones even in the early noon. This was not a church that welcomed joy, it endured it.

Within, vaulted ceilings arched to dizzying heights, lost in veils mánna and the dim glow of enchanted chandeliers that flickered with candlelight the color of dying embers. The stained glass windows lining the nave depicted martyrs with eyes veiled, hands bound or bloodied, their faces turned forever toward unknowable truths. Crimson and violet light fell across the pews like spilled wine and bruises, casting every guest in a half-dream of penance and prophecy.

And yet, almost clashing against the solemn, sobering space... pink.

Pink bows curled like parasitic blossoms around the gargoyles, along the main row of pews, even a few tied somehow to the iron candelabras. Pink roses spilled from tall urns beside the altar, their scent cloying and overripe. A satin runner, a deep blush and embroidered with tiny hearts and thistles, stretched down the aisle like a silken wound. Someone, surely the bride, had even placed a bow upon the neck of the fiendish statues that guarded the main gate. It looked as if it had been humiliated into silence.

Pink rose petals lined the central row, a pathway for the bride to follow to her destiny. No expense was spared it would seem for this spectacle. A subtle, not overpowering, scent wafted through the air; the soft sweet scent of strawberries, Winnie's signature scent and favourite food. Disembodied music played a longing melody that would suddenly change at 2:01pm to the familiar melody of Canon in D. As the processional party begin down the aisle, small pink petals begin to flutter gently from an unknown source above.

There are few places older or more sacred than Sanctum Noctis to the Athanatos family, the cathedral that loomed like a forgotten god in the heart of muggle London. Overlooked by the no-mag population as merely a brownstone flat that had remained unchanged and enduring for decades. Once the glamor dissipated, an act that required passage through a front door that was not that. That creaked like old iron, a gate, would give way to the truth.

A short lawn beyond a wall of iron and ivy that appeared as brick from the outside. The structure's black spires reached into the clouds, devouring daylight like a hunger never sated. Built in ages when magic was feared, loved, and bargained with, it stood now as a monument to the Faceless Gods of Prophecy, who whispered futures in tongues no living seer dared fully name.

Inside, the stone chapel was lit by candlelight and floating floating lanterns, outlining the profile of the faceless and ageless gods. The walls were carved with blind eyes and ancient runes. The air carried the scent of incense, myrrh, and something older—like wet earth before a storm and more recently roses. His future wife's influence. The altar bore no cross, no symbol, only an altar of stone, rune and flame set into the stone floor. The future, they said, had to be seen from above.

The guests sat silent, solemn. They had been warned: this was not a space for laughter.

And yet—

Pink.

Peach-blushed petals drifted from invisible sources above and lined the center aisle. Ribbons of blush and rose threaded their way through the pews. The aisle runner was embroidered in silver thread, a design with her in mind, not him. Tiny constellations stitched between tiny strawberry motifs. A ridiculous, jarring palette in such a grave place that beckoned back to not just her favorite fruit but the basis of their love which was grounded in something besides truth.

It was perfect.

At the head of the chapel stood Mathias Pride, still as a statue carved in ambition.

He wore black, because of course he did. But this blackness is not the austere black of mourning. This was ceremonial: a coat of deep velvet, double-breasted and fitted within an inch of cruelty, with silver buttons engraved with the crest of House Athanatos—an all-seeing, all knowing eye. Beneath it, his shirt was high-collared and fastened with obsidian pins. His cuffs shimmered with runes stitched in blood-colored thread, an ancient charm of endurance and silence that predated his awareness. These clothes were not his own, they were given to him. It was unsettling how his father seemed to faintly smile, he had never seen such an expression before.

His red hair was slicked back. His sharp cheekbones casting shadows. He looked less like a groom and more like a prince at the edge of war. Yet even now, his gaze softened when she appeared.

Thaddeus Athanatos, the head of the famed Seer family, stood like a monument in the first pew, shrouded in tailored black that shimmered faintly when the light caught the runes woven into its hem. Flames had a rebirthing quality to them that seemed to hold a kinship with the old man with even more ancient eyes. His eyes, pale and glacial, watched the ceremony with a gaze that weighed more than it witnessed. He neither smiled nor frowned, his thin lips drawn into a single thin line of neutrality.

His son, Mathias Pride was standing at the altar beneath an archway of blushing roses. Mathias, his middle son. The most ambitious of all of them. The only one willing to earn his place where others had simply remained idle in their roles. Mathias was willing to scrape and fight, claw and diminish himself on the distant hope that he would earn a modicum of recognition.

The bride, Winnie Harper, had been his middle son's long-time love. The girl was sweet-faced and half-blooded, a terrible shame that could not be helped. She wore joy like a perfume, thick, obvious and hopeful. Like a true romantic. Thaddeus did not look at her, not truly. He looked through her.

The girl was a means and nothing more.

The sun blazed high and pitiless in a cloudless, sapphire sky, its rays gilding the stonework of the Santum Noctus in flecks of fold against blackened stone. Heat shimmered off the cobbled avenue, casting everything in a dreamlike haze, as though the entire world had been dipped in honey and light with the exception of the Sanctum. It was the family church, but not a place that held good or kind memories for Vladimir. The "sanctuary of the night" in the common tongue is a church that worships the faceless gods of fate.

Vladimir Athanatos moved like a shadow through the streets of London. His dark cloak was heavy and ill-suited for the warmth of the day, drawing stares from passersby. The doors to the church were already closed by the time he had arrived. He could hear music, a muggled wedding march which gave him pause. He did not want to intrude on her moment.

Earlier that day Vladimir had seen a dead man. It was not the first time he had seen such a thing. But it was the first time that accusatory glare was centered on him. He fled to the River Thames, knowing that there was a place to hide for a time. But he could not hide forever and even if he could, he did not want to. Live moved on with or without him, he knew that already. He needed to live what life he still had her had determined.

The cuffs itched. That was his first thought. His underpants were too tight. That was his second thought and probably the most persistent thought through the ceremony.

The silk-lined robes the house elves had helped him don fit Aamon far too well. Which meant someone had measured him. He wondered when. They could have left a bit more space in the seat...

Aamon stood beneath the floral trellis, back straight, expression polished to dull steel. The crowd of well-bred witches and wizards before him blurred like a painting left in the rain. Winnie's muggle family would be there somewhere as well. The smell of earth and toil, cotton and store-bought, mass-produced attire alongside rose-gold, high collars, and ancestral wands polished for show. Somewhere, disembodied music murmured beneath the polite conversation. A masquerade of wealth and power, of magic so old it reeked of blood. The presence of muggles, half-breeds and mudbloods might bring charm to the stuffy event. That was how the papers would see this.

Aamon should have felt honored. Should have felt proud. The Athanatos heirloom clasp at his throat dug against his skin like a reminder: This is who you’re meant to be. Not the boy who nearly died in the dark. Not the boy who came apart like a broken marionette under stone and spite.

He swallowed. The token felt tighter.

The robes were deep black, a shade so dark it drank the light, spell-stitched with threads of silver that moved faintly when no one was looking and sometimes when they were. A single onyx clasp shaped like a watching eye sat heavy on his chest. He hadn't looked in the mirror since they'd dressed him. He didn't need to.

Because everyone else did. He knew those looks of calculation and envy. They stared with that mixture of approval and disapointment that said: He’s still breathing. Pity. Let’s see what he becomes. How soon he falls again.

Aamon's hands were clasped behind his back, not for decorum, but because if he let them hang at his sides, they might tremble. Athanatos hands were never meant to shake. He knew his place, the right words to say, but he felt like he was playing a role rather than living a life. Aamon felt like a decorative sword, polished, unused, and pointed somewhere he didn’t belong.

Mathias Pride. His brother, technically. They’d never shared more than space and blood, not even a name. His mother was a bitter creature who had laid with their father and bore him two sons. The first, Mathias, was presumed broken. Wrong, an avatar of her sin and so named. But Pride became a man of refinement, tradition, and cold resolve. Truly an avatar if his namesake, so perhaps father was not so wrong. This wedding was the clearest proof yet that Mathias had succeeded in building the future he wanted. Beautiful wife. Powerful alliances that had maintained a distance from their storied family. A celebration of conquest dressed as union.

Aamon smiled, politely, and hated himself for it.

Then the wedding march would start to play.

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THE BRIDE'S MUGGLE FAMILY:

Audrey Davies | Maternal Grandmother	Aoife Duncan | Maternal Aunt	Dexter Duncan | Aoife's Husband

Chris | Cousin | 20	Juliet | Cousin | 18	Viola | Cousin | 15	Oliver | Cousin | 13

On the bride's side, sitting in the second row from the front, was Winnie's muggle family, minus her mother, who was getting ready to walk her daughter down the aisle. Audrey Davies adjusted the pale pink hat she had pinned to her copper curls the morning of the wedding. She wore a power suit that matched her hat, with a pink rose brooch pinned to her chest. At 72 years of age, she glowed with maternal warmth, each fine line on her face had been earned.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph... This is quite the place." She whispered to her oldest daughter, Aoife, as she clenched her small handbag tighter to her chest. It had been years since she discovered her daughter, Saoirse, had married a wizard, but she still didn't seem used to the magical world.

The Sanctum Noctus looked like something straight out of a fantasy horror novel. Was this really where her granddaughter was meant to get wed? She thought of the bright-eyed girl who always seemed so happy and carefree... The two did not mesh together. It must have been him. The boy she was marrying at such a young age. Still, Audrey had pretended to smile when she had been told of the wedding, had handcrafted soft pink pillows for Winnie and her... Husband-to-be. Saoirse told her it was just magical culture, had said something about poorbloods, but these people didn't seem so poor to her?

Aoife Duncan, Winnie’s aunt, leaned in to pat her mother on the shoulder, "it will be fine, Mum. How long can a wizard wedding last? It's probably just twenty minutes like our human weddings."

Though after she ensured her mother was fine, she leaned over to whisper in her husband's ear, “Dex,” she muttered to her husband, “Tell me this is just for drama. Please tell me she’s not marrying into a cult.”

But Dexter, her husband, didn't respond. He was too preoccupied gazing up at a gargoyle with a bow around its neck, looking for all the world like a demon forced to attend a baby shower. "Do you think I can borrow one of these for the courtroom? Unsettle the defendants?"

"Oh my god, this would be such a great photo for my insta." Their oldest daughter, Juliet, clad in a pale pink short dress, sighed as she leaned back to admire the surroundings, "It's like, got such a Twilight aura to it. Do you think I'll meet a vampire or something?" She tilted her head, her short copper curls pulled back into a pink ribbon. The entire outfit screamed of Winnie's touch.

Oliver was pale faced, his skin coated with a layer of sweat as he gripped Viola's elbow, who looked equally as terrified as he did. He might die of shock there and then if something else strange happened, "I hate it here, I want to go home, Winnie's weird anyways why did we have to come?" He hissed in his mother's direction.

"If the food is skull shaped I swear to God I'm leaving." Viola squeaked, half hiding against Oliver. She wore a dress that matched Juliet's own but felt incredibly out of place compared to all the weird robes and fancy dresses everyone else seemed to be wearing.

Chris seemed indifferent to their surroundings, and was instead focused on staring at Mathias Pride. 'Gives me the creeps,' he thought to himself, his brows furrowed as he sized the guy up. His gaze shifted over to Thaddeus Athanatos, 'dear Lord, that one moved. I thought he was a fucking corpse. Is his suit on fire?'

Note: The hidden text can be 'overheard' by characters with mind-reading abilities or wands.

Jürgen Hess was a name most at the ceremony barely registered. Jürgen was a cousin of a lesser house, one of the many offshoots that orbited the sprawling Athanatos legacy like dim satellites. Jürgen's invitation to this wedding had been a matter of protocol, not sentiment. His family bore the Hess name, but the blood that linked them to the Athanatos clan was thin and bitter. He was far enough from the main house that they bore daughters that they would take back into the main house as concubines. In fact, boys like him were intended for nothing more than service to the clan. A Seer still in his own right, he had his uses.

Jürgen could be described as primarily Asian-German. His features were angular and his presence quiet. He was a Hogwarts student in his final years, and once he had learned all he could, taken what was his, he would run and never look back. He knew that they had reached far from their European roots for the sake of genetic diversity, making him more a curiosity than a family member. His siblings, his children, they would be drawn into the Athanatos orbit. Masters over generations, they thought in decades rather than days, weeks or even months. Jürgen's robes were fitted, formal, and forgettable, nothing like the ceremonial heir-spun silks that clung to the groomsmen of closer kin. Even standing among them now, alongside his young cousin Aamon, Jürgen who was much older, seemed more like an honored servant than a peer. But his posture was rigid with duty, and his dark eyes missed little.

Jürgen knew too much. About the family. About the things that lived in the walls of Athanatos manor. About the way the Seer blood was curated like wine, decanted and tested, thickened with the essence of monsters, thinned with forgotten rites. He had read things, overheard worse, and held his tongue not out of fear but contempt.

As Jürgen's thoughts flicked toward Winnie, something almost like sorrow pinched his brow. Not for her beauty, which was modest, nor for her rank, which was meaningless, but for the role she had been made or convinced to play. He pitied her. He was aware of the poisoning, what he thought was a dumb prank ended up becoming a multi-year affair. If anything, it was curious the girl remembered how to braid her own hair.

If the bride was not a hag in disguise, then Winnie was a vessel, a pawn whose womb had been dismissed as unworthy, whose blood held no augury, no omen, no fire. The family had not chosen her to propagate, only to consecrate a union without means or legacy. That made her either a fool or a sacrifice. "It would be a kindness to end her before she learned real suffering."

The disembodied music would change, the wedding march would begin. It was tradition he supposed, for muggles in any case. He looked at the dissonance between worlds. The petals and the floral perfumes that tried to coexist alongside obsidian and incense. Jürgen wondered if Winnie Harper had any idea what she was stepping into. They came from different words, neither meant for the other. The Ravenclaw was too young to marry, to make such a permanent decision at barely 16. Hess sighed.

The half-brothers flanked the groom like statues, proud and brutal. Jürgen stood behind them, quiet as shadow, rehearsing the truth he could never speak. “They will not love her. They will use her. And if she ever begins to see too much… they will silence her.” That was the fate of most women in the Athanatos family. Silent screams, closed doors and control. But for now, Jürgen would bow when required, raise his glass when summoned, and play the part. Because family, even a cursed one, had its expectations.

Gideon Athanatos stood in formal silence, every inch of him draped in opulence. The suit he wore was an exquisite thing, nothing less would do. Midnight velvet, embroidered with dusken filigree, a splash of oxblood silk at the throat, it made a fashionable noose. Gideon did not slouch, not today. He stood at his full height, not the posture of a boy, but rather that of a man. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t blink too often. He simply stood among the groomsmen like a statue that had once been a prince, and perhaps still believed itself to be one.

Mathias Pride, radiant in his borrowed joy, waited not far away. His bride, Winnie Harper, since mistakes must all be named would soon be making her procession, beaming like all girls do when they think death has left them untouched. But Gideon’s gaze would not follow the usual pageantry. He did not look at Mathias' first bride.

He looked at Taylor. Taylor Athanatos was his younger cousin. He was in love with her, with the monster he saw in her.

But today, Taylor stood like a ghost with skin. There was something too still about her, something just slightly off-axis. Her eyes were wrong. Not simply dazed or lost in thought, no. These were hungry in the way a tiger's were. The twitch in her jaw had returned, just at the edge of his vision, like a pulse flickering behind thin skin. Her lips parted once as if to speak or breathe... or bite.

The change had begun. He knew it eventually would. He knew the signs. Knew them in his bones. Knew them from the shrieking mess Erin Ryan, another cousin, had become. The change back then had no cure. It as simply madness heralding the irrevocable change. Blood-soaked screams behind Veela glamour, broken sleep and the smell of ash in the morning. It was happening again, but they understood it now. It did not need to be, and yet it was happening again.

And this time. This time it was Taylor.

A hot thread of fury licked the edge of his thoughts. Not at her—no. He was angry at her. Her for allowing this. For not curing herself, since she knew how. For not letting him cure it. But rather than clear herself from the parasitic rot, she let it fester in her. This thing that was so old. So cursed. Something that belonged to the Athanatos family truly, but did not have to. This was not a legacy, this was a family rot. A creeping fate for the unworthy and the broken so only the strongest remained, a culling in some cases and a price for others. The Athanatos women always paid.

But not today.

He turned his head forward, the soft wedding music playing like a dirge under his skin. He said nothing. He moved not a muscle. But inside, something coiled. Let the ceremony play out. Let the bride take her vows. Let the guests drink and dance. He would act when it mattered. And when he did, there would be no mercy left to spare.

Erin Ryan sat alone near the back of the Church of Sanctum Noctis, the candlelight licking at her silhouette like the former Slytherin was something conjured, not born. Her dress was dark. Elegant. Unintentionally arresting. A gossamer thing that clung in all the ways she never noticed, veela blood singing quietly beneath her pale skin like a warning bell no one could quite place. A few guests stole glances, some out of admiration, others out of a discomfort they couldn’t name. She didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.

Despite being a part veela, her madness overrode anything allure her body might suggest. Her hair like spun, burnt sugar and her eyes like luminous pools. She was undeniably beautiful, but she was also troubled. She had been broken long before the hag slugs had infested her mind. They just made her incapable of hiding it.

The cathedral was ancient. It was not the first church their family knew, but it was the oldest they knew in the United Kingdom. The church predated the Ministry, Hogwarts, and written prophecy. Before wands were carved and spells were named, Sanctum Noctis was already here, carved into black stone that hummed faintly beneath one's feet, as if remembering something buried beneath it. Something vast.

It had been a temple much. That much Erin believed. A place where seers came to dream with their bodies. Women who made themselves sightless, to fill themselves with knowledge of what would be a could be so deep that it blistered their minds. Kept in cells, not to cage but to anchor them, lest their visions slip their souls lose from their bones.

But it was a lie wrapped in legacy and memory made more palatable. They did not see the future with their visionless gaze, they saw and became the true shape of sin. They became the first of their kind. Not the withered crones that populated bedtime tales or cautionary pamphlets in Auror offices. The first were not twisted by time. They were born of ambition and pride in places such as this. Born twisted. Propagated broken and wrong. They were midwives of hunger that emerged from the cracked skin of the world. In places where the most reverent of ancient Seers discarded visions that pooled like poison.

Born in a cradle of stone and silence, swaddled in regret. Her eyes opened backward, and she fed on memory until she learned the taste of magic.

Erin knew deep in her cracked and re-stitched mind that Sanctum Noctis had become a place of worship, but to gods that man no longer knew and could no longer name. This was a place for Seers to die. To be devoured. That the faceless ones were blank because their fate was erased. To signify what once was was not meant to be repeated.

Of course, what she knew could be wrong. Erin had long ago went mad. Was the story in her head the truth or was it simply the madness speaking for her once again. She shook her head at memories she was not sure were actually hers. At the scene before her that she was uncertain was true. The Sanctum was gothic, reverent, wrong in a way she couldn’t articulate. The pink intrusion was jarring, as if it was trying to poorly hide the truth.

That was right, Winnie Harper was obviously setting a trap.

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THE BRIDE'S WIZARD FAMILY:

Orla Harper | Paternal Grandmother	Sean Harper | Paternal Grandfather

Fergus Harper | Great Grandfather	Aileen Hemlock | Great Grandmother

Orla Harper, the matriarch of the Harper line, sat rigidly in the front row. Her light blonde hair, streaked with white, had been pinning back into a sky blue pointy hat. It was the traditional colour of the Harper family, despite her granddaughter exclusively wearing pink. She wore a set of hand crafted dress robes that matched the hat, the family's crest embroidered over the left side of her chest.

Reducio

She had not spoken during the journey to the Cathedral, and she still remained quiet. She had said little since her son had passed away in February. She and Sean had lost their oldest son, Deaglan Harper, when he was a mere twenty years of age, now they had out lived their youngest as well. Tragedy had a habit of finding their family, with branches of their family tree decimated by the wizarding wars, their men had a habit of aspiring to be Aurors, and look where it landed them. They had lost their status as purebloods when Fionnagáin had married a muggle. It was a scandal that she had endured for the happiness of her only living son... Now she had Winnie and Evelynn to care for.

Orla seemed to know about the Athanatos family, despite being 'disgraced' purebloods she was still up with the latest gossip. She knew they were perhaps the most influential wizarding family in recent history. She had made comments to Winnie before about them. Back then she had been impressed her granddaughter was dating one of their sons, but now she looked mournful. 'She's only sixteen.' She quietly dabbed her eyes with the embroidered handkerchief Saoirse had made her.

Fergus Harper, Sean's 95 year old father, suddenly snorted awake. He reached up to push his pale blue hat back onto the top of his head, "What's happening? Where am I? This my funeral?"

"Not yet, Da." Sean grunted, clapping his father on the back.

"Merlin's sake, this life is taking forever." Fergus grumbled, still half asleep in the pew.

Aileen Hemlock, Orla's mother and a force of ancient bitterness, her large black hat was adorned with feathers from what she proudly claimed was a real phoenix. Her black painted nails tapped impatiently against the curve of her dark wood cane that was intricately carved with the image of a vicious looking black dog, a sign of death in the wizarding world and the creature that happened to be on the Hemlock family crest. She wore the same crest on the neck of her black and green dress robes.

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"Looks like a damn circus in here," Aileen grumbled under her breath. "Where is Evelynn? At least that girl has good sense."

"She's in the wedding party, Mother," Orla reminded her, straightening her posture on the off-chance her mother was watching.

Aileen's lip curled in disgust as she flicked away a pink rose petal that had fallen onto her shoulder, "This is your fault, you know," She hissed at Orla, "You're the one who let your son breed with a muggle, and now you're parading her around like she's something to be proud of. Can our family tree not wilt with a shred of dignity?"

Orla's jaw tensed as she tried to keep staring blankly ahead.

"What's next? Mudbloods dancing down the aisle?" Aileen tried to continue but was soon cut off by Sean.

"Enough," The Irish man growled, "We are here to celebrate and support Winnie, not listen to you groan on about the state of our family."

Aileen opened her mouth to argue back, but then, the music started to swell and the petals fell like snow. Everyone's eyes seemed glued on Winnie, with even Fergus waking in time to glance down the aisle, but Orla remained glassy eyed, 'they're going to eat her alive.'

Note: The hidden text can be 'overheard' by characters with mind-reading abilities or wands.