Chapter 13

I have a cousin. Gemini thought. She felt the goosebumps on her arm. Not just a Malfoy now, but a Black. I'm not the last Black!

"Y-you're my cousin?" Gemini asked. She wanted to be skeptical, but there was something about the way Mal—Leo spoke that made her believe him. With black hair, dark eyes, and in a tailored suit that didn't hide his lean but muscled figure, he looked the part of a Black, and there was the way Abigail and the others acted that made her believe it was serious. "Prove it."

As though he predicted she would ask him that, he drew something small from his coat pocket and handed it to her. It was a golden medal hanging on a green ribbon. The inscription on the medal read:

THE ORDER OF MERLIN, FIRST CLASS, IS AWARDED TO

PHINEAS HYPERION BLACK

FOR HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE MAGICAL SOCIETY

GIVEN THIS DAY DECEMBER 23, 1900

"The Order of Merlin was given only to wizards who helped wizards and Muggles until 1920." Gemini noted.

"We're both Phineas Nigellus Black's great-great-great grandchildren, but I'm his son Phineas' great-great grandson. You can guess from that medal why he got disowned." Leo said grimly. He motioned at the couches. "You look tired. I think you'd rather hear the rest of this sitting down."

Gemini sat down on the elegant white couch, and Leo sat beside her. "You see, history only tells you that the House of Black like to keep to their motto, Toujour pur, and they'd blast anyone who didn't believe the same way. But have you ever wondered what the disowned Blacks do? They're a Black by name but they aren't affiliated with the family anymore."

Gemini shrugged. "I assume they just live their lives out in Muggle houses. There are millions of Muggles with Black as their last name, anyway."

"Funny, but no. The disowned Blacks pretty much stick together. Once you get past the disinheritance and the occasional Muggle visitor from the Hitchens family, you learn to get used to it. Generations passed, and the disowned Blacks started using new names to make it into wizarding society without being seen as social pariahs."

"Like Malcolm Carey?" Gemini asked. Leo nodded. "Is that even legal?"

"It's not, but we'd rather not be known as some diseased branch of the Black Family. That, and grandfather once told me he was sure Walburga and Orion Black were using their connections with the Ministry to make it illegal for us to use the name Black." He sighed. "Anyway, my father hated being in the disowned branch of the family. Despite the company his family kept, he believed that since great-great grandfather was the eldest, he should have been the heir to the Black Family's fortune. He was still a pureblood, was sorted into Slytherin, married a pureblood who shared his beliefs, and by the time I was four, we moved away from the group and moved to London. They joined the Death Eaters and proved their loyalty to your mother, who was considered the most powerful Black at that time, even though Sirius Black was already dead."

"Your parents were Death Eaters?" Gemini gasped.

Leo nodded. "They weren't welcome to tables and important meetings, but we were there in the Battle of Hogwarts. They were wearing masks, so to the Death Eaters they were the Blacks fighting for redemption, but to the rest of the world, they were Derek and Sharon Carey. It's more complicated than you think, trust me, I grew up in that house."

"What happened to them?"

"Having a pseudonym seemed to help them a lot, seeing as they were never caught." He shrugged.

"Meaning they escaped?" Gemini's fists clenched. He merely smirked in reply.

"Oh please. They didn't turn into nasty blood traitors like the Malfoys. Because they've got no connection to Death Eaters as far as the Ministry knew, they've been smuggling most of the other Death Eaters trying to escape, including your step-father. I can remember them hiding Uncle Rodolphus in the upstairs attic."

"So they started this plan?" Gemini deduced. "They were the ones who believed Rodolphus, and the ones who revived the Death Eaters? Well, where are they now?"

"They died a few years ago, a bad case of Dragonpox. Would have gotten the same fate if they didn't send me to France to make sure there wasn't a possibility that you weren't who we thought they were and you were sent to some French orphanage and went to Beaubaxtons." He pressed his lips together. Gemini could tell he was contemplating on telling her something, but the smile he gave her told her she wasn't going to hear it. "Guess it's just you and me now."

Gemini wondered what it was, but she was too tired to get it out of him, though she felt like there was something he was leaving out. She changed the topic. "So were you homeschooled or something? How come I've never seen you in Hogwarts?"

"I'm seven years older than you, kid." He grinned. "I graduated months before you even knew about the wizarding world."

Seven? Gemini thought. Leo looked younger than twenty-four years old, yet there was something very mature about him, especially his eyes. "Then your parents must have considered themselves lucky their friends all had friends my age to watch over me."

"It's destiny, maybe. Your friends downstairs watching you this whole time, and me, taking over what my parents started."

"And me?"

"You—you and that prophecy, of course."

Gemini rolled her eyes. It was as if everyone around her knew about the prophecy the entire time, waiting for her to slip up and reveal her parentage. Everyone but me and Arnold.

She didn't bother asking him how he knew. "And you mentioned something about helping me?"

Leo smiled as though he waited for her to mention it. "We are. We've been waiting for you to reveal yourself. We're ready to help you bring your father back—die for you even, if that's going to bring back the perfect pureblood society in this filthy wizarding community of Mudbloods and blood traitors. We're going to help you and then we'll help your father."

Gemini didn't react. "What's in it for you?"

Leo shook his head and laughed quietly. "I know what you're thinking: why are these people risking their necks for me and not expecting anything in return? How can people who have manipulated their way into my life all these years now willingly give themselves to me to fulfill a prophecy?"

Leo cocked his head at the box on the table. Gemini looked at the box then back at Leo, and the curl on his lips dared her to open the box. She did so, very slowly, and saw a long wand lying inside.

"Because you're the Dark Lord's daughter." He said quietly. "You've proven that the moment you escaped the Ministry, and we're ready to fight for you."

Gemini pulled the wand out of the box carefully. Though Leo said nothing, she remembered the week in the Ministry when she helped Harry hunt this wand down, getting hurt with Dark Magic and even hearing the prophecy for the first time thanks to that search. She knew whose wand it was. It seemed to vibrate softly in her hands, and it gave a warm feeling on her palm. But unlike the makeshift wand she used to escape Harry and the other Aurors, the heat felt like a good kind of warmth, and Gemini had never felt more powerful as she held it.

"We've been pulling the strings this whole time." Leo said. "Now, it's your turn, Gemini. What do you need us to do?"

Gemini felt the wand's power like a source of energy. Though she was tired, she had never felt more alive, the wand's contact on her skin like a drug that gave her a quick glimpse of the future.

Finally, she turned to Leo. "How fast can you get me to Hogwarts?"