Loss
"I can't believe those idiots! Those walking monsters still haven't found Black! Do you think he'll actually be thick enough to try and break into the castle again? Leo? Lestrange!" Draco Malfoy said forcefully, hitting the table with his fist.
Leo Lestrange sat staring at the letter he'd received in the Great Hall, but hadn't opened until now. He had long since discovered it was seldom good practice to distract oneself with one's correspondence just before class. Numb, he could no longer read the words in front of him, much less listen to his obnoxious cousin.
"Lestrange!" Draco said again, even more loudly.
"Oh, find someone who cares, why don't you?" Leo answered harshly, not even looking up.
Draco looked nonplussed. Although their relationship was hardly close, Leo rarely used that tone on anyone, even provoking Gryffindors (not that they weren't all provoking, of course). For the first time, it occurred to Draco that something might actually be wrong—other than the recent attack on the school by well known mass-murderer Sirius Black—who supposedly was only interested in Harry Potter, but had nearly murdered Ron Weasley—Draco had a sigh for that—ah, what might have been. Still, it seemed unlikely Black would look for Potter in the Slytherin Common Room. So why the extra venom in his cousin's tone?
Draco wasn't the only one to have noticed something amiss. "Leo?" asked Elle McKinnon softly, from her place at the table. Unlike Draco, she knew Leo-in-a-bad-mood was hardly unprecedented—but she had a sinking feeling about that letter.
"Lestrange—you're a prefect!" exclaimed Draco. "Aren't you supposed to care about this sort of stuff?"
One look at Leo's white face, and Elle rose, addressing Draco. "Back off, Malfoy," she said quietly. People were turning to look at them, wondering what was amiss. Elle still didn't know—but they didn't need to know that. "Now," she added venomously, when he simply stared at her.
"Who died and made her the boss?" he grumbled to Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. Still, he spoke quietly enough that Elle felt she could justifiably ignore it.
"Leo?" she asked again.
He looked at her, and she almost cried out at the despair in his eyes. "Let's go," she said, with sudden decision. She grabbed her book bag, pulled him to his feet, and dragged him out of the Slytherin Common Room, past the Great Hall, up several floors, and to a blank stretch of wall across from a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.
I need someplace safe, she thought, pacing in front of the wall three times. A door appeared, and Leo and Elle entered.
Only then did Leo speak. "Here," he said, shoving the letter he still clutched at her. "Read it. Just read it."
Elle took the letter gingerly. It was written in neat, no-nonsense handwriting (Elle smiled; clearly her kind of person) on expensive, but plain, parchment.
My dearest Leo [it read],
I am writing with bad tidings. The slight but lingering illness with which your grandfather has been struggling flared up suddenly. There was nothing anyone could have done. Your grandmother and I had it all out with the best Healers, but I'm afraid they weren't able to save him. Your grandfather is dead.
You will, of course, come home for the funeral; I've already written to your Head of House, asking him to let you out of school for a few days. I'll meet you at Hogsmeade Station tomorrow at three o'clock. Don't be late.
Your loving mother,
Leea Lestrange
Elle looked up from the letter, tears of sympathy starting in her eyes. "Oh, Leo, I'm so sorry," she said impulsively, for once not analyzing her feelings or her words.
"I don't understand," he said desperately. "I mean, Grandfather…"
Elle walked over to him, handed back the letter, and hugged him fiercely. At first, he stayed stiff in her arms; then he hugged her back, weeping silently on her shoulder.
The next day, Elle walked with him to Hogsmeade Station—they were both silent, but she knew he appreciated her presence. If it had been her, she would have hated to be alone.
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The funeral was horrible, as funerals always are.
Afterward, Leo was forced to sit in a cramped lawyer's office, back in London, with his mother, pragmatically making all the arrangements, and his grandmother, not saying a word and staring sightlessly around, while the lawyer paced back and forth, telling them about his grandmother's portion, and the small trust left in place for Rabastan Lestrange during his lifetime. Naturally, the estate and everything that was entailed (a ridiculous, sexist custom, that, Leo thought) went to Uncle Rodolphus, but since he and Aunt Bellatrix had no children it would almost certainly eventually go to Leo. Everything else—after Uncle Rodolphus, his father, and Grandmother Rheanna—was his in trust until he came of age.
"Can I give my mother control of the trust?" he asked at length.
"No, I'm afraid not; the trust is arranged through the Office of Magical Law—it will break automatically on your seventeenth birthday," said the lawyer. Well, he said it longer—but that was the gist.
"Can I give my mother a percentage of the interest from the estate, since that is mine to run—my uncle, you understand—?"
"Yes," said the lawyer—or rather that was what it boiled down to.
"Do that," said Leo.
He was still forced to undergo more in the nature of going through the legal documents and drawing up a contract for his mother—it was so unjust that she had no source of income herself—but, eventually, it was over, and he was allowed to go back to school.
It surprised him how much he was looking forward to it—even seeing Draco Malfoy and possibly coming across dangerous Sirius Black had assumed a rosy glow in his mind. Most of all, he missed Elle.