Author's note: Please, don't judge my French too hard… (Though I have no idea why I cannot do very well without it)
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Chapter 3. About her
Elsie lived in a small two-room flat in London. She considered herself very lucky to buy it when she moved back to England.
This flat was previously owned by an old lady. That lady lived here for many years before she suddenly, out of nowhere, as the neighbors said, got an irresistible desire to travel around the world. So she advertised her flat in the newspapers, that is how Elsie bought it, and immediately set out on travels, she was never seen in London again since. It was a usual muggle house and this old lady was a usual muggle. Elsie did not want to buy a real magical flat because to find one was more difficult and the choice was far smaller. Furthermore non-magical flats were always noticeably cheaper and at the time she did not have a lot of money to spend.
The non- magicness of this place did not bother Elsie in the slightest for she was not in the habit of constantly doing dangerous things that would disturb the neighbors during her leisure time. There was a small bedroom, a relatively ample living room and a kitchen. The two walls of the living room were completely covered in books, the rest of the space was filled with a desk and a chair, an armchair and a tea table, also there was a big window which made the room very light. Besides, there was a special place for her precious violin.
In the evening Elsie was sitting on the armchair with a heavy old book called "Dark Arts: the enigmatic mysteries". It was her latest purchase which took her a lot of time and effort to find and she was very proud of herself that she finally managed to get it. She tried to read but it was in vain: now she was staring at the same page for over an hour, deep in thought. And it was not the content of the book that was occupying her mind so much.
Elsie was thinking about Dumbledore and that Order of the Phoenix. She did not know what the right decision would be.
Sometimes she envied that lady: to change her life so radically in mere days - such a pleasure was inaccessible to Elsie. Her life stayed absolutely the same for six years. During all this time she purposefully did not change a single detail in it and the Time generously did not force any changes. It seemed that everything around moved on without Elsie leaving her on the exact same place.
Ever since she moved back to England she worked in the Department of Mysteries. This job suited her perfectly but except for her work there was nothing interesting in her life. Elsie had neither relatives nor friends to spend her time with; in fact all her relatives she knew of were dead by now. As it happened Elsie did not develop any close friendships with her coworkers: she worked with them, discussed different topics with them but she had no desire to converse with them outside the Ministry. Furthermore she was never in the habit of visiting big gatherings or places of the kind to meet new people, and nobody in her usual environment was especially close to her in character.
Overall her life was far from exciting, devoid of all out-of-ordinary events. Maybe that was the reason why she looked younger than she actually was for "people who don't live are wonderfully preserved"**.
But Elsie liked her life nevertheless. She never got bored - because her day was planned so well, so precise, there was basically no time for it. That is why she was not very eager to join the Order: it will definitely ruin her usual lifestyle, all that was carefully built throughout the years. And she feared that she would not be able to return to her old life after everything would be over one way or another.
On the other hand she was a muggle-born witch with no magical relatives whatsoever that meant she should dread Voldemort rising to power once again. If this extremely unfortunate event happened, she inevitably would have to leave Britain and never return as there would be no possible way for her to stay. This would change her life a lot more than Order membership. Obviously she did not want to make this step, too extreme for her yet.
In addition to that her whole nature could not allow her just to rely on other people in this far too important matter, hope that everything would come off well and Voldemort would be stopped once for all. It was especially true if the Ministry was going to do nothing, according to Dumbledore. She had to be sure of happy ending.
Also for once Elsie sensed the desire to change something, it was very far from strong but it was present after all.
Thus the choice was made. She closed the book and decided to go to bed.
After six days Elsie finally decided to pay Dumbledore a visit. It was Friday, so she left the Ministry earlier than usual and was at Hogwarts' gates at around six o'clock.
The sun was already going down though still shining brightly, the weather was excellent and the air was fresh; it was no surprise that all the students were outdoors comfortably lounging under the trees, talking between themselves or doing other things – of course, all except for studying. Nobody gave any attention to Elsie while she was passing school grounds and certainly she had not met a single soul in the corridors of the castle.
Elsie reached Headmaster's office and knocked three times, after a quiet "Enter" was heard she opened the door. Dumbledore was sitting at his desk absorbedly reading "Transfiguration Today", by no means the most entertaining magazine nowadays in her opinion. He put it down and looked at her.
"Good evening, Miss Edevane, it's nice to see you so soon. Please, sit down."
She nodded taking place in front of his desk, then spoke right out:
"I've carefully considered your proposal, Professor Dumbledore, and decided that I want to become a member of the Order of the Phoenix."
That day in the evening Severus was returning to his chambers. He had just turned round the corner when he saw that woman again. She was passing through the corridor perpendicular to the one he was standing in and did not notice him at all. All the hot anger he previously felt towards her surged up within him immediately. His first impulse was to go straight to her and demand explanation of her outrageous behavior, at least tell her what his opinion of the matter was. It was an incredibly outrageous impudence after all. But when he reached the corner, instead of drawing her attention, he quietly hided in the shadows making himself completely unnoticeable. He watched the scene before him which was such an excellent opportunity to exercise his spying skills.
Elsie was walking without looking round as she was contemplating her conversation with Dumbledore, her new position and the changes that were about to come. But suddenly she bumped into something solid and the voice exclaimed far above her head:
"Oh! Ma chere Elsie, quel plaisir de tu revoir après toutes ces années! Tu aurais dû me écrit plus souvent! "[Oh! My dear Elsie, how nice to see you again after all these years! You should have written me more often!]
Elsie looked up to see for a brief second Madame Maxime standing in front of her before she was lifted at least one foot from the ground. The Headmistress hugged her so tightly that she almost lost the ability to breath. Elsie tried to say greetings back but the only result of her efforts was unintelligible mumble. After some time she was set free again, then she said smoothing her robes:
"Quelle plaisante surprise, Madame Maxime. Je suis très heureux de vous voir aussi. Ça fait longtemps. "[ What a pleasant surprise, Madame Maxime. I am very glad to see you too, it has been a long time.] Elsie reservedly smiled. She attempted to retain her dignity but failed. All her words had an air of a child trying to be an adult in front of people who knew him since he was very little.
"Alors, mon cher, ce que tu as fait toutes ces années?" Madame Maxime asked, "Tu as pas changé du tout." [So my dear, what you have been doing all these years? You have not changed at all.] Thus the long series of questions of different kind started. Elsie sighed inwardly while she plastered a permanent smile on her face. Somehow she felt that this enquiry process would take more than an hour of her life. And she was quite right: more and more questions were asked and answered and soon the Headmistress was eagerly talking about herself too. Elsie always knew that she had a certain talent, or a bane, for involving herself in the useless conversations.
Curiously the Headmistress carefully avoided any mention of Voldemort's return though she certainly knew about it first-hand. Maybe that was partly the reason why she was so excited: she was happy to have somebody to talk to and distract herself from thinking about the dreadful subject.
Meanwhile Severus was still standing near the corner listening to all this drivel. He thought it would be a good opportunity to spy on this woman and maybe found out who she really was or at least what her true intensions were. He continued to hope that she would decline the offer Dumbledore made her because in this case he would have less things connected with the Order to worry about. But he could not understand a word in the whole conversation as his knowledge of the French language, or any other language apart from English, was nonexistent. Never in his life he took the trouble to learn a foreign language and now he slightly regretted it. Finally the growing vexation forced Severus to abandon his ambush.
He walked past them, intimidating with his black robes billowing behind him, glaring at Elsie spitefully. She turned her head and looked at him with a faint surprise, an indulgent smile appeared on her lips. His glare did not affect her at all; on the contrary she seemed to be quite amused by his behavior. All the while Madame Maxime continued to talk gesticulating eagerly and completely ignoring Severus passing nearby.
The next day Dumbledore told Severus that Elsie had taken the necessary oath of loyalty to the Order, that consequently she had become its rightful member and that Severus had to inevitably accept this fact. It all turned out just as the Potions Master had suspected. He was not pleased.
Her very first Order of the Phoenix meeting Elsie was going to attend would be next week on Saturday around three o'clock pm. Not the best possible time in her opinion as this gave her just enough time to get nervous. And this inexactitude meant that Dumbledore probably would be late.
On Saturday she woke up as usual at half past seven in the morning and did all her usual morning routine. She ate her oatmeal. Every morning she ate this because she was not endowed with a lot of cooking talents to cook different breakfasts every time, and thankfully she never got bored of this simple meal. Actually there was not such a thing as her cooking talents for she had none. It actually took her a good deal of time to learn how to cook a single, very simple meal for breakfast, dinner and supper, and in the past there was a lot of unsuccessful attempts until she finally mastered that.
Everything was all right at first but after the clock showed nine her nervousness started to build up. She was thinking about what was going to happen at the meeting, who else would be there, what they were going to discuss and she started to doubt if she got the address right. So she was nervous about all possible things. It was quite strange since she presented numerous reports before large enough audiences in the Ministry, but on the other hand this feeling was hardly stage fright.
In the end she decided to play the violin to take her mind off all that. Usually she played it only on Sundays, but if she was going to break all her old habits anyway, there was not a reason why she should not start right now. Soon cheerful sounds filled the room.
Elsie wanted to be there half an hour before the set time, therefore quarter past two she was completely ready. She decided to wear muggle clothes to not attract unnecessary attention to the headquarters. She put on a dark blue dress, just below her knees, with long lace sleeves and her favorite black boots. By the way she always wore muggle clothes when she was not in the Ministry. This was partly because her neighborhood was not magical and people stared at her far too much when she was dressed in robes and partly because muggle clothes were more comfortable for her than wizards' attire.
Elsie looked at herself in the mirror for the last time, took her wand from the tea table and went out.
She Apparated in some dirty alley. The smell of rotten meet and dirty socks immediately filled her nostrils; a few cats ran away from the nearest trash cans mewing furiously. Five minutes later she was standing on the Grimmauld Place looking at the houses in front of her. There was only numbers eleven and thirteen but as soon as the thought that there should be number twelve too somewhere passed through her mind, the two houses were moved apart and a third one had slowly inflated between them. Elsie came to the black dilapidated door and rang the serpent shaped doorbell, no answer followed, so she did it again. "Do not ring the bell for Merlin knickers' sake!" an annoyed male voice shouted from inside the house. Somebody in there was clearly trying too hard to be funny.
Finally the door opened revealing short, red-haired, kind faced woman who glanced at Elsie and said quickly: "Oh, you must be Elsie," then took her by the arm and yanked inside. The red-haired woman only had time to say "Dumbledore told me -"but she was rudely interrupted as the long, moth-eaten curtains on the right wall of the hallway flew apart and horrible screech pierced their ears. The portrait of an old woman in black cap was violently screaming brandishing her clawed hands.
"Filth! Scum! Half-breeds, mudbloods, werewolfs and freaks! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers -"
Soon the other portraits in the hallway woke up and started to yell too creating the atmosphere of the real chaos.
Elsie was shocked, to say the least. Looking round eyed at the scene she clapped her hands over her ears and moved back until it looked like she was trying to become a part of the door.
The red-haired woman was frantically attempting without much success to close the curtains, but then a man with long black hair came hurriedly out of the door in the far end of the hallway. Together the two of them finally managed to close the hideous curtains and the screeches of the abominable old woman died away. While the man was muttering something under his breath staring maliciously at the velvet fabric, the woman ran up and down the hall stunning all the other portraits with her wand. At last she returned to Elsie, who was still standing very, very near the door.
"I am so sorry, dear," she whispered, "We tried to take that thing down but it's no use. Calm down, don't look so scared. Let's go to the kitchen, I'll give you tea."
Elsie nodded and followed her without saying anything.
They went down the hall towards the door through which the man with black hair had just come. She had already, more or less, come to her senses, which let her notice the surroundings. The house was very gloomy and sombre: the old-fashioned gas lamps were casting a flickering light over old portraits which just recently were producing such a terrible noise, a cobwebby serpent-shaped chandelier glimmered overhead and under close examination practically every possible thing had a serpent form.
Although this house certainly was not the one she wanted to live in or be in for a prolonged period of time, it appealed to Elsie in a peculiar way. Judging by the appearance this place should contain at least several interesting magical objects, maybe even Dark magic artefacts. In this case she was very eager to get her still sweaty from the recent fright hands on them.
The basement kitchen with rough stone walls was a little bit less gloomy than the hallway. All the light was coming from a large fire at the far end of the room and a ball of light that was flying above the door. Heavy iron pots and pans were hanging from the dark ceiling casting odd shadows on the floor. A long wooden table in the middle of the room was surrounded by numerous chairs. There was nobody else here. Elsie visibly relaxed for she apprehended that she would have to go into the room full of unknown people.
The red haired woman hastily put a steaming cup of black tea on the table, then she conjured seemingly out of nowhere a huge plate of chocolate chip cookies and put it near the cup. She put her hands on her hips and looked at the table appraisingly.
"Here you are," she said and looked at Elsie as if she had just remembered of her presence, "Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Mrs. Molly Weasley, you can call me Molly." And she put out her hand. Elsie took it and smiled softly shaking the woman's hand lightly.
"Nice to meet you. I am Elsie Edevane, a new member of the Order."
"I know, Professor Dumbledore told me. And again I am sorry for that portrait," Mrs. Weasley repeated her apologies.
"It's all right but it was rather unexpected -" Elsie trailed off, her smile faded. Now she felt ashamed of her disgraceful reaction, it was very cowardly but after all she was always a coward.
"You don't know anybody here in the Order, do you?" Mrs. Weasley sympathetically patted Elsie's forearm, "But don't worry everybody will be very happy to meet you." Elsie wanted to add "almost everybody" and smirk but decided against doing this inconsiderate act. Mentioning Professor Snape would raise unnecessary questions but nobody needed to know in what circumstances they had met before.
Mrs. Weasley continued:
"I noticed you have French accent, then you should meet Fleur Delacour, she is French too, you know, Elsie, you certainly will find common ground -," but her speech was interrupted, for that Elsie was deeply grateful.
"What a little timid rabbit you are, aren't you, Eeelsiee," black haired man observed drawling her name as if tasting it while he was standing in the doorway with a beaming smile on his face.
**It's a quote from "the Forsyte saga" by John Galsworthy, if you are interested:)