Chapter 26
The Maiden with the Laurel on her Forehead
Book I: In which Cupid's revenge resulted in Apollo pursuing the nymph Daphne, whose father turned her into a laurel tree to preserve her, and Apollo made her into a wreath anyhow.
As with everything else so far on the journey, Larka obtained her first relic in a very convoluted and somewhat surprising manner.
After much research into the topic of the Four Ovidian Trials*, Larka came to the conclusion that it would not hurt to contact these pillars of the wizarding society, and just ask for them. She did not expect the prestigious members to hand over the relics—if indeed they had them in the first place—without some sort of negotiation, but Larka was determined, and a determined woman was a terrible force.
So she owled Remus, who contaced this woman he knew, who owled her close friend Lady Anise Greengrass, who told her daughter Daphne, who in turn owled Larka an invitation to call upon her at the hour of low tea on the following Thursday.
Come three o'clock the next day, Larka took the train to Swindon. The train ride was two hours long, but Larka secretly liked spending an abundance of time on trains. (Sirius also liked trains a great deal—he wasn't allowed on public 'plebian' transport when he was a kid, and so of course developed a fascination of them.) She had a small copy of Howards End that fit wonderfully in her hands, with gilt page borders and an attached red ribbon-bookmark. This was the sort of book that she could never read in her parents' house, with her mother's overbearing aversion to novels—Mrs. Roxburgh called them 'wasted time'. Larka, however, had transformed from her younger days of Proust—which was a waste of time, although a delightful one—into Forster and Turgenev. One might say that middle age taught her to appreciate realism, but Larka never thought about her reading at any grandiose level. She enjoyed reading the gentle nostalgia of an old man letting his words float into the past, just like she was floating towards the Greengrass Estate. (Well, floating on rails, with rhythmic jolts.)
There was an elderly man sitting beside her who looked at her as if he wanted to start conversation, but Larka just timidly shrank behind her book and lowered her head more whenever he licked his lips to speak. Across was a little girl with a bow in her hair and knobby knees in white stockings, who was distractingly verbose, her pitch still juvenilely high. The young man, to whom the girl's torrent of words was directed to, gave such a perfect impression of looking bored that Larka suspected that he was impersonating nonchalance. Amongst the four of them within this compartment, Larka mused, one could see the passing of life.
When the overhead voice announced that they were at Swindon, Larka was internally thankful to be pulled away from her depressing thoughts. She quickly scampered past her companions for the trip, although she did help the old man get his luggage from the overhead compartment, and exited the train with purpose. She quickly flagged down an empty cabby and told him, "Hatherop Lane in Fairford, please."
It was a fairly long ride, so Larka learned about the cabby's past as a music composer in Greece. That was almost as interesting a tale as her book, so Larka nodded along until she arrived in Fairford. She wasn't sure how true it was, but made a note to remember this unconventional story; she knew that Sirius would like it.
The Greengrass Estate was located inside Lea Woods, a stretch of forested land. The winding road leading to the house only revealed itself to those that the Estate welcomed, and even then it was a tricky path to navigate. The woods would not harm her, but it was still an intimidating task to walk through the shower of brittle branches, each moving out of the way at the very last second, as if reluctantly admitting her and trying to scare her off at the same time. Larka hoped that this was not indicative of the owner's attitude. More than once, Larka had to pause and stare at the ground with a stern look before the petulant path shuffled itself into view again.
When she finally reached the esteemed estate, Larka was only a little awed, and thought herself to have behaved very admirably. The Greengrass Estate was known for being completely and utterly overdone in lavishness, and the former Lady of the House's only pursuit in life was to throw luncheons, soirées, dinner parties, fêtes, balls, galas, and the occasional picnic when she was feeling nonconformist.
The front door swung open when she raised her hand to knock. Since the house only admitted her if her presence was explicitly condoned by the owner, Larka assumed that it was an invitation to wait inside. These houses were serious business—a bee could not fly overhead without permission.
Larka stepped inside, and sitting squarely in the middle of the room was a young girl-woman, staring straight at Larka.
Thinly arched eyebrows, on the verge of being over-plucked. A small, dainty mouth that was painted red, on a face that was small and dainty as well. She had, however, dark brown hair, and not the trademark golden blondness that was associated with the Greengrass family for so long—Larka assumed that this was Daphne Greengrass, eldest of the Greengrass children. Daphne's head was adorned by a rather strange bonnet, one that reminded Larka of posters of ladies in the roaring twenties—but Larka supposed the vintage look was what Daphne was going for. At least her kid gloves matched the red of her headgear.
Neither spoke for some time.
Larka was very uncomfortable: should she introduce herself? Excuse her intrusion? But the door was open! Perhaps she should, er, curtsy? But she was the elder, and she was calling up upon Daphne, although really their stations were quite different. Would that make them equals? And wasn't it just a little rude to be staring so much?
"You have a powerful friend," Daphne drawled in a light female mezzo-soprano, "to get my audience."
Larka would hardly call Remus powerful. He was a mighty force in battle, but there was something about the man that simply did not intimidate. Of course, others have always argued with her on this point—she suspected that it was because she would always remember the resigned and reluctantly hopeful look he had when she discovered that he was a werewolf.
"Mother gave word that I must help out in whichever way possible," Daphne continued after a momentary pause, "and Mother is never keen on engaging with outside politics. This is another dark time, and she retreats our family, paranoid of every witch or wizard she knows. But somehow, you drew her out, and had her command me. How Slytherin of you. The Roxburghs had never gathered much influence, so I wonder how you motivated Mother so."
Larka wondered as well. When did Remus begin ties with a family as old, powerful, and carefully politically neutral? He was one of the most active recruiters of the Order, and Larka could see him going to the werewolves before he went to Greengrass, if indeed he held much influence. Oh well, Larka was never one for gossip. She really did not care much for Remus's acquaintances and how they came to be.
"But enough of this chitter chatter," Daphne apparently agreed with Larka's inner thoughts. "You won't find it here."
Larka wished to ask Daphne what exactly was the 'it' that she was seeking, for she herself did not quite know yet. All the intelligence she gathered vaguely referred to some wreath of sorts. Hardly helpful.
"We don't have any relics—well, I doubt you would want that awful throne. Too many emeralds in one piece of furniture. It's hardly a relic either, just the usual heirloom that some ancestor conjured up."
"Well, I was thinking of something more like … a wreath of laurel flowers of some sort," Larka said slowly.
Her words stilled Daphne, whose smile slipped just a bit before she brought it back on. Daphne gestured to the table beside her, and commanded: "Have tea. Do you prefer Clotted or Devon? Never mind, you probably can't tell the difference," as she poured the first cup.
Only then did Larka notice the glass tea table for four that was set up. Twelve-inch napkins were folded into swans at the left of the place setting. There was a center three-tiered curate stand, topped with standing room sized scones that made Larka want to gobble them all up. Tiny strawberry cups populated the middle tier, and the bottom was filled with mousse pieces and rum balls.
It had been a very long time since Larka had formal tea—in fact, the last time was the graduation exam from Madam P's etiquette class when she was ten years old. She carefully pinched the handle of the teacup and set her pinkie against it. (Despite her involvement with some of the more venerable pureblood Families in her school years—say what one wanted about the Potters, back then they were among the pillars of society, and let no one doubt the impact of uttering the last name Black—Larka had never once found use of afternoon tea etiquette. Sirius was always more of a coffee person. Larka had learned to accept its bitter taste, and later even began drinking it voluntarily.) She couldn't remember if she was supposed to fold the tea towards her or away from herself, so she slowed her gestured and watched Daphne, who looped her gloved finger through the teacup and slurped a little. So Larka was forced to inconspicuously stir her tea quickly and lay the spoon down on the saucer.
It did not appear, after some moments, that Daphne was inclined to start talking again, so Larka asked, "Would you happen to know if your family has a wreath somewhere? Or perhaps a ring of flowers?"
Daphne drank her tea in silence.
Larka, mindful of being a good guest, drank hers in silence as well, and waited patiently. Patience was somewhat a specialty of hers.
Then all of a sudden, as Larka was inching her hand towards the garlic parsley scones, Daphne spoke. "I was seven when it began. Can you imagine? A seven-year-old little girl, who wanted nothing more than to fit in with the rest of her beautifully blond family, discovering that her hair wasn't the biggest problem anymore."
Larka had no idea what she was talking about. She covertly glanced at the family portrait above the fireplace, and saw that Daphne was indeed the only one with brown hair in her entire family. Lady Anise Greengrass had pale, platinum blonde hair that looked almost silver in the edited photo, and the girl beside her shared her head of pooled pale blonde. The boy was too small to be judged properly, but even at six years old, he was showing the famous saturated gold of Greengrass hair, embodied by the man with his arm around Lady Anise. It was a nice family picture, and just the fact that they had one showed that they were warmer and more loving than the usual pureblood aristocrats. Not in all the infinite rooms of the Black House did Larka ever find a portrait of Sirius's family together.
Larka drew courage from that knowledge—it must have meant that Daphne was more reasonable than the average pureblood, no?
Daphne must have caught her looking at the photo though, for she explained: "Genie has Mémé's famous old gold locks, and Amy has Mother's hair. Amy was always the better person. She started dying her hair brown like mine after she found out that it was a point of agony for me. She'll be Slytherin Head Girl, just you wait."
It took Larka longer than she wanted to admit to figure out that 'Genie' was short for Eugene Aster Greengrass, the little boy who was going to begin school soon, and 'Amy' was a nickname for Astoria Amaryllis Greengrass, who looked like a prettier version of Daphne Laurel Greengrass.
"You should be glad that Amy isn't here, she wouldn't have liked you knowing anything about this family. She also hates being called Amy," said Daphne gleefully.
Well, Larka thought, even happy families had their issues. Tolstoy was definitely wrong.
"But my problems don't begin and end with Amy. No. Apparently, Mother had always known it would happen."
Larka still had no idea what she was talking about, but it felt ominous. The look on Daphne's face, though, she knew well—a proud front that she had seen on Novia's face in their girlhood all too often. It had taken her years of adult life to realize that in youth, she had mistaken Novia's brittleness for strength. But Larka was older—infinitely more wrinkled around the eyes—and wiser now, and could see how easily it would be to snap Daphne in half.
"Haven't you figured it out yet?"
"Figured out your 'problem'?" Larka asked, and secretly thought, which one?
"Oh, it's not just mine," Daphne snarled with a satisfied glint in her eyes, like the beast that ripped out its own throat to see blood. "If Sirius Black had left you with a daughter, it would be your problem as well."
"It is fortunate then that he didn't," Larka replied politely. She had spent the better part of her youth dealing with hot tempers, and she was too old to get angry with a teenager.
"All the Black girls are different. Special," Daphne hissed out.
"How so?" Larka asked, and wondered if it was a trick question—the entire wizarding world knew that the Blacks were special, just like the Muggles knew the Queen of England was special.
"You've seen Narcissa Malfoy's hair, that's half black and half platinum blonde? Andromeda Tonks cannot be dragged to a seaside beach if her life was at stake. And of course everybody knows that Bellatrix Lestrange has been mentally insane since fourteen, when she began talking to imaginary people."
Larka blinked. "I assumed that Narcissa dyed her hair that way."
"Yeah, well so does the rest of the moronic world. The older generations are just as bad. It never failed to rain when Dorea Potter was back at the Cottage for more than a week. Ever wonder why the Weasley Burrow is so remote? Cedrella Weasley was a Black, and she sleepwalked every day, setting up tea parties wherever she went. Callidora Longbottom was one of the most normal ones—nothing physically incriminating. But she was mute. By choice. Her voice made things rust, so she refrained from talking. It was a wonder that she found somebody to marry."
Larka wasn't sure if Bellatrix was the only one to suffer from the Black Madness now. "What do you mean her voice made things rust?"
"When she talked, everything became slow and creaky—if she was a worse person, she would have talked anybody into rusting into a living statue, unable to move until they starved to death. Extremely powerful, but utterly useless in battle. Shame."
Larka frowned, "People can't just rust, there's no iron to oxidize, or even chloride!"
Daphne paused, before asking in utter contempt, "How have you been so thoroughly poisoned by the Muggle pseudo-magic? Have you forgotten that just because things behave a certain way naturally, it doesn't mean that we can't make them behave another way with magic?"
Larka hung her head in shame.
Daphne looked at her in triumph as she continued: "I would ask if Sirius told you about his mummy's, ah, scent problem, but that would be gauche."
Larka considered it very gauche to rub it in like that as well.
"So I'll just tell you," Daphne went on, "Walburga naturally emits the sweet, cloying smell of decay. The smell attracts decay as well, of course. Can you imagine growing up in a house of rotting flesh, where every floorboard hides weeds that would claw into your skin and eat you from inside out? No wonder Sirius ran away and Regulus got himself killed."
Gauche didn't even begin to cover it.
Daphne gave a laugh at Larka's look. "Don't believe me, do you? How then do you reason that their entire mansion fell to ruins so thoroughly and completely, when the wards should have frozen it at the moment its last heir exited its halls?"
A glitch in old wards, that's what, Larka thought. She also resented how Daphne said it 'fell to ruins'—it was still a majestic house, especially after all that cleaning! It just looked dilapidated, but that was a conscious choice by the Order, and Larka could do nothing about it.
"Still the Doubting Thomas**, I see." Daphne raised her right arm and for a moment, Larka thought that Daphne was going to strike her, until Daphne's left hand began to unroll her right glove.
It hardly seemed like a good argument, until Daphne reached out to the table and laid her bare hand on the paper swan napkin.
Before Larka's eyes, the napkin shuddered and soon a small tendril of a green plant began to slip out from underneath the swan's wing, unfurling into a small blossom quickly.
Larka thought that she must have looked as dumbfounded as she felt, because Daphne giggled and then laid her hand on the glass surface of the table.
And behold, the glass cracked in the center, and from its translucent core, the same tendril started growing. The longer Daphne kept her hand there, the more the glass started to crack, and the longer and thicker the plant grew, until it was so tall that it could no longer hold its own weight, and collapsed onto the floor.
Larka had no words left in her, so Daphne started talking for her.
"The Blacks is a female line—the magic runs rampant in the female blood far stronger than the males, which is why the Blacks have always married off their daughters quickly. The origin of the family comes from the Faerie Queene herself, it is believed. The first wizard was a Black, and he was the one who brought magic into this world, like Prometheus."
"Black?" Larka asked incredulously, finally finding her tongue.
"We aren't Black but we do have Black blood, from Mother's side of the family. It wasn't much of a problem in their line until Mother. Mother was the luckiest of them all—her curse was just pure power: power to do magic, power in every word she whispered, power in every thought unannounced. Her magic was so well contained in her youth that they feared her to be a Squib. She never used any of her powers, you know; she could have helped to end the first war, who knows—hell, even this one. Instead she just hides in our estate when the war broke out, laying a web over the estate like a bubble of unreality. For her, nothing was more important than keeping the family safe."
Larka couldn't really fault Daphne's mother for that.
"But she passed onto Amy and me the Black blood. Amy … would have been a Squib, had it not been her 'ability' to suck magic out of things that she touched. That's where I come in. Me, I bring life to everything I touch. New leaves would sprout from a tree struck by lightning, and flowers will bloom from a sheet of steel. I have to constantly wear these special gloves, because I can't touch anything. In school, I would hold an iron ball in my hand as I slept, passing it off to Amy so that she could sustain the day."
Well, Larka agreed that it kind of sucked.
"Amy gets to be Prefect because I give her magic. Which is fine. She's always been the ambitious one, not me. She wants to lead people as the Head Girl, she wants to glorify the Greengrass name, and she secretly wants Draco Malfoy. The ability to cast spells isn't required for any of that. My sister is the sort of person who always gets what she wants. Which is why I always, always call her Amy."
Larka was sympathetic, she really was. She could see how wrong all of this was, and she could now smell the air around Daphne was like decaying wood, like rich nutrients found in thick soil. They said trees bloomed best when corpses were buried underneath, and Daphne was the corpse-laden earth, and Astoria was the tree that grew out of the earth. It was heartbreaking really, but Larka really just needed that wreath. All Daphne had to do was to touch it, make it, and Larka could provide an easy ear as long as Daphne did that one simple task.
It was just awkward bringing it up. "So would you be able to help out? You wouldn't happen to have a wreath that you could, you know, bring to life for me?"
Daphne thinned her eyes, but waved a hand. She then said, "Bring me a steel wreath and one of the laurel branches from the garden."
Larka was sure that Daphne was not directing her, but there was also nobody in sight. Daphne appeared to be talking to thin air. If Larka did not see the plant grow out of paper and glass, she would have really doubted the sanity of Daphne.
A moment later though, the two items that Daphne asked for floated towards them.
"These are the Invisibles. Ever since the Malfoy's head house elf betrayed them, Mother dismissed all of our elves and replaced them with conjurations. Yes, Mother is powerful enough to maintain servants for the entire household."
Larka's unspoken question was answered, but she still felt like she was hallucinating.
As Larka was coming to terms with the lesser-known magic of the world, however, Daphne had pulled off both her gloves and begun to weave the laurel branch into the wreath. As her fingers moved, more leaves sprouted from the branch, and it grew around the steel wires as if it had a will of its own.
In less than five minutes, the wreath was done. Larka was struck by how easy this was. She really ought to thank Remus.
"Anything else you need?" Daphne asked, not hostile but also not entirely friendly either.
Larka shook her head and thanked the girl-woman profusely.
"Just don't tell Amy any of this, if you ever have the chance to be in her presence."
"Of course," Larka promised, "not a single word to anybody in your family." She could not promise telling no tales to Sirius, who would tell Remus because he gossiped like a teen idol, who might or might not tell his female correspondence, who was after all bosom friends with Lady Anise Greengrass. But not a word from her mouth directly. "But why even tell me all of this?"
"Well if you're going to know my secret, then it's only fair that you know all of ours," Daphne clucked.
"But you didn't need to tell me your ability at all." Larka congratulated herself on not tripping over the word 'ability'. "You could have just made the wreath elsewhere."
Daphne seemed to ponder over this for a second, before shrugging, "You're right, I didn't need to spill everything. That's probably what Mother and Amy would want."
"Which is why you didn't do it," Larka said in understanding.
"I do love my sister," Daphne said, as if she saw this as a challenge to her relationship with Astoria.
"Of course," Larka nodded. There was no doubt about that: how could Daphne not love something that she created herself? But just because she loved her sister did not mean that she didn't hate Astoria as well, if only a little, if only in secret.
Larka never felt more grateful towards her own parents as she took her leave from the Greengrass Estate. Her family was a wholesome one, and when she fell into the arms of her mother, she did not prefer somebody else. When she became the pet of her father, it was not out of some Electra complex, and although her father did collect strange things sometimes, it never took him away from his grounded life. And if she did need objects to instill self-worth, it was a healthy amount. Wasn't there some saying—that only somebody coming from a happy family would know how to build a happy family?
Understanding this, it was only natural that she was saving Sirius, from more harms than just one.
* As it turned out, the Four Ovidian Trials was a fable that enjoyed a heightened if brief popularity in the late nineteenth century, when the renowned anthropologist Andrew Lang collected a series of seventeenth century ballads concerning the Trials. The Teal Fairy Book (1885) contained three variations of the story, and the Azure Fairy Book (1887) contained two more. Following these two books, a children's nursery rhyme of four stanzas from the sixteenth century reprised, until it too fell into the backwaters of popular culture. By the time the 1920s hit, the Trials again withdrew into obscurity. Larka Janet Roxburgh experienced some difficulty in acquiring the Teal Fairy Book and the Azure Fairy Book, as they were underground publications that Lang gave out at the end of his lectures in Merton College. Larka was able to find both in a used book store, old copies of the books where the margins were filled with doodles and mathematical scratch work. The common theme of the Four Ovidian Trials was the intelligent man falling to prey of some force of nature, and the task of saving him falling to the 'noble savage'. The Four Trials usually involved four animals and four relics: a wreath with flowers, a mantle of green material, a chain of blackened iron, and a pebble of touchstone. Otherwise, the tale was dry, the wordings vague, the sentences rambling, and the accompanying pictures incredibly grotesque, as if Lang had, in a fit of mad genius, reincarnated himself as Goya. It was apparent why Lang did not find commercial fame until the publication of his Blue Fairy Book, which was illustrated with more conventional aesthetics.
** Doubting Thomas was a figure famous in the wizarding world as well, although it referred to a different Thomas. The one known in the wizarding community was Thomas Didymus Thomas the Second (1571–1610), a Muggle-born wizard who famously refused to believe in magic. Instead, he maintained that he was constantly hallucinating things floating and otherwise behaving not as things should. He attempted to check himself into an insane asylum, but was rejected on grounds of functionality (and that the asylum was full). He turned to painting instead.
Author's Note: The original story is called The Maiden with the Rose on her Forehead, a Portuguese fairy tale. It's actually an incredibly morbid tale (as a lot of fairy tales tend to be, being folklore before they were fairy tales, and much before Disney made fairy tales suitable for children). A mother kills her daughter just because she thought her daughter showed the rose on her forehead (the mother got pregnant while sleeping in her brother's garden...hm...hmmm...). And instead of burying her, the mother locks the corpse inside a chest and hides it. And later when the brother married, his wife and mother-in-law found this dead girl, and of course, instead of being appalled at a chained corpse and think about whether the prince/brother was sane/psychopathic, they of course get jealous of the girl and burn her...
Of course, the girl doesn't die, but still. Scarred for life yet?