The first caretaker Evy Cole had ever known for herself was her grandmother : Augusta Porte
The first caretaker Evy Cole had ever known for herself was her grandmother : Augusta Porte. She was an ancient, leather-skinned woman who had tried to instill her beliefs and habits on Evy from a very young age – trying to mold her grand-daughter, one might say, into what she hoped would be a miniature version of herself.
Therefore, when Evy turned out to have a rebellious streak ("As wide as the day is long," Augusta would lovingly complain to her friends) Grandmother Augusta would frown slightly at the tiny figure that was most often found barreling across the floors of the Porte manor, and proclaim that this particular aspect of Evy had come from the men in the family : Grandfather Geoffrey Porte, and Evy's father, Jack Cole.
It was an odd thing, to Evy, that she was more curious about her grandfather than she was of her father – a man Evy had no memory of. Grandfather Geoffrey was known only to Evy in the capacity of slinking around the manor and spending most of his time taking refuge in his study.
Geoffrey himself was a self-reserved man, or at least he had been, then. Grandmother Augusta had told a wide-eyed Evy about a man who was outspoken, outgoing, and upfront. But, she sighed matter-of-factly, the old man had only two loves in his life – his wife, and his daughter. When the news arrived of a strange green constellation hovering over the small cottage that Jack and Gwen Cole and chose to reside in, Augusta would explain to the quicksilver-lightning slip of a child that he had found it impossible to open his heart a third time, for more possible injury.
Then Augusta herself would reflect on the day of her only child's death, and remember that the only reason Evy had survived was because she had come to the house to take her on an outing, and let the couple have a bit of a lie-in, and some time alone from their days old baby girl.
Evy would try to reconcile this version of Grandfather Geoffrey to the one that she was told about by the house-elves who were servants in the Porte household, a Grandfather that was strong and courageous. Geoffrey, they told her in bits and pieces, had thought himself immune to death, or at least immune to the effects of death when his daughter and son-in-law were murdered. After all, Geoffrey had lived with effects of a previous War – his father, Gregory Porte, had fought valiantly against the Dark Wizard Grindlewald himself. Family legend had placed him right beside the great wizard Albus Dumbledore at the time of Grindlewald's defeat, but this was questionable.
Geoffrey, in turn, had decided on a career of an Auror even on his first train-ride to Hogwarts, even before he was inevitably Sorted into Gryffindor. His forefathers had all been Aurors, and Geoffrey was determined to follow them. He had seen the preliminary attacks on Muggle houses, and had taken his turn in the great Porte legacy of fighting against evil with courage, coupled with a keen sense of impulse that had allowed many attacks to be stopped even before they started.
He had, the house-elves told Evy, retired gracefully from the field around the age of sixty, to see his daughter Gwen grown up, out of Hogwarts, and married to the young and equally determined Jack Cole. It had all happened before Geoffrey had a chance to blink, it seemed – but he had been endlessly proud of his daughter, watching her come into her own Porte legacy, fighting against the new Dark Wizard alongside her husband for three years before she bore a baby girl, Evangeline, just in time to be murdered.
Then he had become a ghost of his former self – a wiry-haired, wild-eyed ghost that Evy only ever caught a glimpse of at erratic times. He reminded the small child of some kind of fierce beast gone tame, and Evy learned, on her own, that the man known as Geoffrey Porte was something to be pitied, yet respected.
Occasionally, Evy would find herself staring at the portrait made of her Grandfather and Grandmother in their prime. Augusta sat in a red chair, its rims golden, her dark brown hair haphazardly pulled up into a sort of bun, with curls spilling out onto her shoulders. Geoffrey stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, with golden-brown hair that reached his shoulders. The Augusta in the painting often reached up with one hand to place it on top of her husband's, and Evy would watch, entranced, as Geoffrey would look down at her, love and pride evident in his hazel eyes. Sometimes Geoffrey would even laugh – Evy would wake in the middle of the night to hear the golden sound of his laughter pealing through the corridors before it was silenced by a slam of a door and a low, masculine voice.
Evy often wished Grandfather Geoffrey would laugh like that sometimes beyond the portrait, but she heard neither laughter nor whisper from him.
At the age of five, Evy showed her first sign of magic. She had been sitting cross-legged, leaning on the wall across the way from her Grandfather's study, staring at the closed double doors with an intensity that Augusta, who had come to retrieve the child for her dinner, had never seen before.
"Evy dear?" She whispered down at her grandchild. "I've had the elves make your favorite tonight, come on now, child…"
But Evy just sat, staring at the doors, until the pair of them began to hear a cracking, breaking noise, and the doors began to tremble violently.
"Evy?" Augusta spoke hesitantly, straightening to watch the doors as well. She glanced down at Evy, and began to kneel again in surprise, seeing a single tear make its way down Evy's cheek.
The double doors burst open and came off their hinges, and hurled themselves to the floor.
Inside, a man with dirty gray hair stared with wonder out at the hallway. His eyes widened when he spotted Evy sitting on the rich carpeting, and he rose quickly, forcing the chair out from the dark wood desk that he had been sitting at.
"Grandfather!" Evy rose to her feet and ran at the man, throwing her arms around his middle, and he stepped back at the impact, still looking toward his wife for some sort of help. Augusta, smiling slightly, shook her head, and looked pointedly at the small child who was attached to Geoffrey. His arms tentatively went to Evy, and he carefully placed a hand on each of her shoulders, gently pushing her away from him.
"Grand-daughter," Geoffrey spoke, and then stopped. He crashed to the floor onto his knees, looking her straight in the face. "Evangeline," he then said, staring his hazel eyes into her brown ones.
"Grandfather, please – you won't get hurt by loving me, I promise. I promise you won't. Just please try, I promise nothing bad will happen, I promise."
The hope on the child's face was too much for Geoffrey to hold against, and he brought her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her fiercely.
oooooo
It wasn't until she was ten, a year before her start at Hogwarts, that they told her who she was. They told her the significance of her being, they told her how important it was that she stay safe. Grandfather spoke about a need for secrecy, and Grandmother nodded her head fervently. Lack of secrecy, too many tongues wagging, too many people knowing; they were sure this was the reason that they had not died before their child. They would be sure to not make the same mistake with Evangeline.
On May 15, her eleventh birthday, Augusta Porte gave Evangeline a present that she said had been the possession of all of the women of her family, tracing up to the very first wife.
"Your mother and I were the first to have daughters instead of sons, Evangeline. The name will die with you, but you must be certain the legacy does not," Augusta said urgently before letting Evy open the square box. Evy felt a weight settle on her shoulders, and she looked into her grandmother's eyes with a new gravity.
"Never," she whispered, then slowly opened the red velvet box in front of her. Inside lay an ornate brooch; rubies, outlined with gold.
ooooo
On her first day at Hogwarts, Evy received an owl from her grandparents. One of her dorm-mates a wiry, fire-red-headed girl named Ginny Weasley, stared at the owl with admiration.
"We are so proud of you, Grand-Daughter," the letter read. "A true Gryffindor in all ways, at last." It was all written in her grandmother's loopy script, all except a post-script at the bottom, where the quill had obviously switched hands, and blocky penmanship stated, "Laughing with joy and love."
ooooo
At fourteen, her grandparents argued whether or not to send her back for her fourth year.
"If it's true, Augusta, then we can't let her go, it's as simple as that," Geoffrey's voice rang throughout the manor, and Evy heard him clearly even from her room.
"So what if it's true, Geoff? She's got to grow up sometime, she's got to face it sometime."
"Face what? Face possible elimination? Can you ask your flesh and blood to do that, Augusta? Can you?!"
Then, quietly. "It is nothing more than you asked of yourself, Geoffrey, and nothing more than you asked of Gwen."
"This is not about Gwen!!" Geoffrey roared. "She knew fully what she was getting into, she did it willingly. She was of age, overage. She was grown up!!"
"We can't protect her forever, my darling. Please, think. We can't, and we shouldn't. What will she do when we are gone, if we shelter her? She will be helpless. Hogwarts is not only safe, but she will learn how to defend herself there. Things we cannot teach her."
A long pause. Then, "I can't lose her, Augusta. Not another. I'd die before I lose her…"
Evy had never heard her grandfather speak in such a despairing tone. She nestled closer to her door; pressed her ear even harder against the keyhole. But she heard no more of the conversation.
The next day, her grandmother told her she would be going back to Hogwarts.
oooooo
Evy Cole waited for her grandparents to show up and meet her on the train from Hogwarts, at Christmas holiday in her fifth year. She had even rehearsed a mock-offended speech to say to Grandfather when they came.
After forty-five minutes, Evy asked a porter if there was a nearby fireplace she could Floo home with.
oooooo
"Le Lyon," Augusta told Evy across the table. "Repeat after me, Evy. 'Le Lyon.'"
"Le Lyon? What is that?"
"If there is ever trouble, if there is the slightest chance that we are not able to help you, that is the name you must remember. If there's ever a time when we don't come when we should, or one of us disappears, that is the name you must say in order to get away."
"I couldn't just leave, Grandmother! I would want to help…"
"Le Lyon. Floo there, don't look back. Don't come back. If it was an accident or a mistake, we will come find you. You must not try to find us. If there ever comes a time for you to use that name, Evy, then it is very probably one or the other, or perhaps both, of us have been found by the wrong sort."
"But Grandmother…"
"Do you understand me?"
Evy meekly looked at the floor, and nodded. "I understand."
At the Platform, Evy stepped into the green fire. Her heart ached to call out "Porte Manor," but she steeled herself from shouting it out. Knowing she would be leaving everything she knew, Evy cried, "Le Lyon!" as ashes filled her mouth and the bottom of the fireplace seemed to fall out.
Evy didn't know how long she had been falling, nor how much longer she would be, when suddenly the back of the fireplace seemed to push forward and force her out. Tumbling, Evy fell outward, instinctively pushing her hands in front of her to help break the fall.
She felt the heel of her right hand scrape against the carpet of the floor she was now lying facedown on. Slowly she raised herself up to a stand, and looked carefully about her. She was standing in a large room, and the windows looked out onto a dreary grey sky. Evy shivered, and began to walk around.
The room's furniture was draped with white sheets, but Evy could tell by the pieces in the middle – one long, rectangular shape with twelve smaller but taller shapes surrounding it that she had landed in the dining room.
Augusta had given Evy the distinct impression that "Le Lyon" would be a place where help would reside, but this house had been deserted for months, if not years. Silently, Evy pulled one of the sheets off one of the dining chairs, and sat down in it. Still in her Hogwarts uniform, the precious brooch pinning her hair up, Evy draped the sheet around her shoulders and arranged another over her legs, pondering her situation. She didn't dare go home; she wasn't sure if she should stay here.
A voice from the doorway made up her mind for her. "Oi, Max! Come see what we've got here!"
Evy's head whipped to the doorway. The boy who shouted looked to be around her age, and he was dressed in blue robes, a crest of two wands crossed, both shooting out some sort of spell, on his right breast.
"Hallo, who are you then?" he asked, and Evy instinctively drew the sheet tighter around her.
"You a frog? Kes ker… no, that's not it. Erm, kell ess two?"
"I don't understand what you're saying," Evy was prompted to say, "but if you're trying to speak French, you're doing a job of it."
"Oh good. Hate that language. All those letters hanging off the ends of words, I've got no idea what you're supposed to pronounce and what you aren't. Max!" the boy shouted again. "What's your surname?" he asked, facing Evy again.
"I'm… I'm Evy Cole. I go to Hogwarts."
"Whatchoo doing here, then?" It was a reasonable question.
"I dunno," Evy answered dumbly, then a ray of hope entered her mind. "Are you a… a… Lyon? Do you live here?"
"Lyon? They've been gone for months, didn't you know that? No, I'm a Delaroché. Proud mixed-blood stock, we Delarochés are. Lot of Pureblood crap, them Lyons. And Cole… I don't recognize that one, you're bound to be Muggleborn or Half. I don't know of any Purebloods called Cole. Do you, Max?"
Evy turned her head suddenly to look at the other boy who had entered the room. "No, no Pureblood Coles," he said in a soft voice. He had dark, longish hair and very pale skin, and his eyes were the grey of a cloudy twilight.
"Well then, I reckon you can stick with us. If you're here you've not got another place to go. D'you reckon, Max?"
"Sure. She can stay with us. It's Evy?"
She nodded.
"Short for…?"
"Evangeline."
"Good. I'm not one for nicknames, personally. Max is what Georges calls me, he's my brother, he can get away with it. I'd prefer if you'd call me by my full name, though."
It seemed an odd sort of request, but Evy agreed. "What do I call you then?"
The boy stepped closer to her, and stuck out his hand. "Name's Maxim."