One Day at a Time

Mother and Father's House

Lying injured enough that I could barely sit up meant that I spent most of my time doing nothing but thinking. Without being able to walk around, though, I had very little new experiences to think about, and it was under that sort of paradox that I spent most of my time analyzing the letter Tarazet had sent me. He said he's not feeling well, maybe he's ill, was my first thought. Except wizards don't get sick very often, and if they do all they have to do is take a Pepper-Up potion. Unless he's seriously ill with a rare disease…I refused to follow that train of thought any longer, because rare diseases aren't very easily treatable, and I didn't want to think about the consequences of one such illness. Maybe he can't leave the house for another reason, but he doesn't want to or can't tell me why, was my second potential explanation. He gave large amounts of counterfeited galleons to some rather prestigious members of the wizarding (and Death Eater) communities, and they were all extremely displeased when the Ministry discovered they were counterfeits. Even if they immediately ratted out Tarazet, so their reputations escaped mostly unscathed, it wouldn't surprise me if some of them are still nursing a grudge. Are they threatening Tarazet, and that's why he doesn't leave the house? Or maybe they're making good on their threats, and that's why he can't leave…I stopped my thoughts there. I was worried enough without imagining what sort of form their revenge might take. The third explanation I thought was, Maybe Tarazet just doesn't want to see me. Maybe he's still mad about the last time we were supposed to see each other fifteen years ago. This explanation aroused a combination of guilt and sadness in me, and I hastily managed to clear it off my list of possible explanations. It simply wouldn't make sense for him to suddenly start refusing to see me when he had already seen me, and the written words of the letter itself didn't fit with that explanation. There would be no reason for it to be in shaky, sloppy printing, instead of his normal pristine cursive, if that was his motive behind it. Unfortunately, without that explanation, there were only the first two explanations left. I hoped that if something was wrong, someone else might look into it, but I knew I was hoping in vain; Deneb certainly wouldn't care, and Tarazet had no friends left over from his pre-Azkaban days.

Besides thinking about the letter, my only other focus was recovering from the curse. In my first day of recovery, Sev cast so many spells on me and gave me so many potions to drink that I felt as though I must have drunk the equivalent of the Hogwarts Lake. I spent the next two days in his quarters, because evidently the wound was too close to my heart for me to be safely moved any more than necessary. I felt horrible at intruding on his hospitality so much, but part of me was secretly ecstatic at being able to spend so much time with him.

By the beginning of the week, I was sleeping in my own quarters again, for better or worse. I was rather surprised to find that Severus's quarters were only down the hall from mine; I had never realized they were so close together. By the end of the week I was down to one potion a day, but still quite a few spells, and I could stand and walk short distances. Sev still didn't want me to start teaching my classes again, but I had another plan for what I was going to do with my day. While he was busy teaching, I slowly walked towards the Forbiddean Forest and prepared to apparate. Severus wouldn't approve of me venturing so far away from Hogwarts, I was sure, but I didn't care; I was determined to see what was wrong with Tarazet.

When I finished apparating, and my feet hit the ground again, my knees buckled under me. Right into a muddy patch of ground. Great. I stood up and tried to steady myself, ignoring the severe disorientation and dizziness I was experiencing. In front of me stood a small dilapidated house, which was nearly alone on the country road. There were several scraggly bushes out front, and on the rolling hill behind it, a few leafless trees stood in the distance. I tapped my wand on the door handle and, as I was a Colburn, it sprung open to allow me in. It was rather surreal to be standing again in the unchanged house, as though I was still a Hogwarts student. I quietly closed the door behind me, and strained my ears to listen for the sound of anybody in the house. It was dead silent. What if I'm overreacting? I thought suddenly. What if he's fine, and I somehow misinterpreted his letter? Maybe the house is quiet because he's out at a job interview, or because he's silently reading somewhere. I had come all this way, though, so I figured the least I could do was find him and assuage my, hopefully unfounded, worries. I started by walking down the narrow, poorly-lit hallway to my Father's study, but no one was there. A variety of quills were neatly lined up on the desk, and several dusty, stacked folders labeled with the name of the company that Father had worked at also rested on the polished wood. The partition which used to divide the study into two halves had been removed, and in the other half there was now a file cabinet and a comfortable looking chair. The last time I had been in this study was when I was moving out after Hogwarts, and the partitioned half of the room had been my bedroom; our house did not have enough actual bedrooms to accommodate all of us.

A flight of stairs was close by to the study, so I climbed the wooden steps to the first story, wincing at how loudly the stairs creaked; I wasn't sure why, but I had a vague notion that it might be better for me to move stealthily through the house until I determined why Tarazet was unable to leave. On the first floor there was only a washroom and four bedrooms, but I thought that if Tarazet was ill he might be resting up here. The first door was the Master bedroom, and when I peeked in, I could guess that nobody had set foot in it for over five years. Every surface in the room was covered by a thick coat of dust, and all of Mother's and Father's belongings looked as though they had not been disturbed for quite some time. A faded drawing of the Colburn coat of arms hung on the wall directly opposite the bed, and under it a variety of photos rested. Seginus, in brilliant green and silver graduation robes, smiled out of an intricate brass-colored frame, while Matar, in a smaller frame next to him, did the same. Deneb's photo, surrounded by a pewter-colored frame, was next and he was similarly beaming, reaffixing the gleaming Head Boy badge on his silver and green robes. Tarazet's photo was next, but almost as though it was an afterthought, it had no proper frame and was only held up by a stiff paper backing.

I decided to check all of the rooms on the hallway, one by one, and I quietly walked into the next one. This room had been Deneb's, and it was preserved exactly as it had been while he was a student. Affixed to one wall was the remains of his Chocolate Card collection and a photo of a school-aged Marie-Ange; it appeared to be before one of Slughorn's Christmas parties, and she kept enthusiastically blowing kisses out of the photo. On the opposite wall was a crest of Slytherin with a large green and silver swath of color behind it. Deneb hadn't left anything else in his room when he moved out, except a tattered quill, a few pieces of scratch paper, and a book on learning French that he had bought to impress Marie-Ange, until he realized that she didn't actually speak French. Still straining my ears for the sound of human activity, I walked into the adjacent room. Like the previous rooms, there was no sign of any recent human activity. Unlike the rest of the house, though, it was not identical to how it had been when I was growing up. Formerly Tarazet's room, it seemed that my Mother had transformed it entirely into a sewing and crafts room. Where his bed had been, there was now a very large trunk filled with different colors of yarns, and his bookcase was now filled with a variety of scissors, needles and a few scraps of cloth. I had spent most of my free time in Tarazet's room while growing up, my bedroom being rather small, and I noticed that the chair I had often read in was still there, only now in front of an empty loom.

I checked the last room on the hallway, and was surprised to find that Seginus and Matar's bedroom did not have the preserved, almost museum-like quality of the other rooms. All of their belongings were still there, only they had been rather haphazardly rearranged. All of the objects, posters and sets of robes from Seginus's half of the room had been removed and dumped into only semi-orderly piles on Matar's half of the room. A photo of them dressed in the Slytheirn Quidditch robes, and holding up their beater's bats, grinned up at me from one such pile. I looked up and noticed that the two constellations painted on the ceiling of the room still stretched across both halves and that the stars my brothers were named after continued to twinkle particularly brightly. Even though Seginus's half of the room was mostly empty, there were some books, robes and quills by his bed. I was unsure whether I ought to be consoled by the appearance of recent human activity, or whether that coupled with the lack of any human actually being there should be a cause for worry. I looked at one of the pages of parchments by Seginus's bed, and it seemed to be the second page of a letter. Scanning the first few lines was enough to tell me that it wasn't Seginus's. It said:

Transfiguration: O

Charms: O

Potions: A

History of Magic: A

and I noticed it was attached to a job application that filled out in neat, cursive handwriting. I looked around the room again. It seemed as though when Tarazet had moved back in a few months ago he had decided to use Seginus's room as his, probably fearing it would be rude to rearrange Mother's and Father's belongings without consulting his siblings. I gave a final look around the room, and it struck me that the unmade bed, with the sheets messily balled on top, was a bit uncharacteristic of Tarazet and his neatness. I thought that perhaps he had simply become messier while in Azkaban, and that there was no need for me to be worrying about trivial things. Despite the fact that I was normally rather messy, I was seized by the urge to at least make the bed look slightly neater, and I grabbed the sheets to smooth them out. I vaguely noticed a small discoloration on part of the blanket, but I didn't pay any attention to it until I laid it out flat; there was a streak of reddish-brown color that stretched over a foot long and was several centimeters wide. I was seized by a sudden feeling of horror, and desperately thought, Surely it's not…blood? There were a few streaks of the reddish-brown color on the mattress, also, and with a foreboding feeling in the pit of my stomach, I closed my eyes and smelled the blanket. Blood. It was blood. When I strained my ears, I no longer heard the stuffy silence of the house, but instead the pounding of my heart as terror was pumped through my veins.

There was not enough blood for its loss to be fatal, but it was certainly far more than could be released from any mere accidental cut. No, somebody had most likely attacked him, while he was sleeping, judging by the location. No question that it was a wizard or witch; my parents had long ago put charms surrounding the house so that people could only enter if they were invited by a Colburn. So either the wizard or witch had broken the charm, or they had been invited. Unless Tarazet had managed to form enemies while in Azkaban, it was probably one of the snooty, already filthy rich Death Eaters who he had donated counterfeited galleons to in order to help the Death Eater cause. He ("he" because there were many more male than female Death Eaters) was undoubtedly angry that his reputation might have been tarnished by being associated with Tarazet, the counterfeiter. After all, reputation was everything for purebloods. But, really, was any pureblood's reputation hurt that much by Tarazet's actions? I wonderingly thought. It suddenly struck me, that I had only thought of two of the ways a wizard might enter the house: he could have broken the protective charm, or he could have been invited, but he could also be a Colburn. Deneb's reputation had been temporarily damaged by having Tarazet, his brother, arrested and thrown in Azkaban. Except Deneb seems to have overcome that and become moderately successful, even if he's never going to make it to Minister of Magic, I countered. Besides, he didn't really seem to be the blood-thirsty type.

Seginus and Matar would definitely fit the bill for blood-thirsty, but they were already in prison when Tarazet was arrested, their reputations destroyed by their own actions. Beyond that, there were no grudges between them, at least not that I knew of. While growing up they had gotten along okay, not great, but certainly nothing warranting an attack. The main point of contention between them had always been me, with Seginus and Matar both arguing that Tarazet should only associate with other Slytherin men. Seginus and Matar had not even attacked me to the point of drawing blood, though, and the only other point of conflict between Seginus and Tarazet had been one-way; Tarazet, as the fourth one born, had often been annoyed at Seginus's general haughtiness at being the heir, but that was no reason for said heir to attack him.

I descended to the ground floor, and was making my way back to the entry hall when another thought struck me. Why was there blood only on the sheets and mattress? If he had been bleeding that profusely, why were there no drops of blood anywhere else in the house? Nothing seemed to be making sense. I paused in entry hall and carefully regarded the dark hardwood floor. Either going away from, or coming towards the door, there was a line of dried blood droplets that stopped suddenly beyond a certain distance into the hallway. I wasn't sure whether to be glad that the mystery of no blood anywhere else was solved or not. Cautiously, I followed the hallway towards the living room, one of the few rooms in the house I had yet to look into. Even from slightly down the hall, I could tell that the living room looked almost exactly as it had while I was growing up, down to all of Mother's and Father's belongings still lining the fireplace mantel. While the room wasn't exactly messy, it had a feeling of disrepair and uncleanliness that my parents would have been too proud to ever allow to infiltrate their house. I fully stepped into the room and immediately took a shocked step backwards, running into the wall. Without even realizing it, I had clasped my hands to my mouth to keep a horrified gasp from leaving, and I felt fear coursing through my veins. Tarazet's bony figure was lying curled up on a small, worn brown couch on the opposite side of the living room. I thought that I would never see him looking worse than when he had immediately been released from Azkaban, but I ate my words now. His left arm was outstretched, with several bloodied cloths wrapped around it, and his normally pale face had gained a sickly yellow tint. On the floor there was a small pile of other bloodied rags, and many empty containers labeled "One dose blood replenishing potion." Why didn't I tell Deneb to check on him? I guiltily demanded of myself as I raced across the room. Or—or—tell anybody to check on him, one of my friends at Hogwarts, anybody? I wouldn't have cared if people associated me with my convicted criminal of a brother, as long as it meant he'd be okay! I threw myself at the foot of the couch and prayed that he was only asleep. "Tarazet," I desperately pleaded, placing a hand on his shoulder.

…

A/N: So I tried to make this chapter suspenseful, and it'd be really great to hear your opinions on it. Even reviews just showing that somebody's reading are great! I also wanted to say thank you to grumpirah, Mywaychan, Someotherperson, argyle owl, tibys and Sunny Christian for reviewing.