Please review! I never thought I would make it this far in. The following is the final chapter of Part Two (the Sixth year). This jumps ahead and is also a surprising event.
Chapter Forty-six: A Severed Connection
With flying colours Tom Riddle passed the apparition test in May. Some would be doing it over again this summer, including Eileen.
It was a relief to journey back to King Cross alone. Riddle would no longer board the Hogwarts Express. He'd gotten his license and was of age. This summer he'd still be a ward of Wool's orphanage, but at the same time he would spend as little time in London as possible. The Lestrange family was allowing him the summer in their castle.
"Let us talk…In the Drawing room. Not here," Eileen's mother looked around the books, they reminded her of her late husband.
Her one passion besides the house, was money. The widow did not want Graham's memory to be strong. Marie mustn't fall apart. There was the ministry's treasury and her precious little boy. But Eileen, was an oddball. Her daughter was intelligent but lately there was something wrong. Like an animal sniffing out another's weaknesses, Marie had noticed it since the prior summer.
"Eileen, dear…What went on that morning last summer? You were acting funny."
There was no answer as the girl looked up from her reading. Marie Prince stood clad in wispy black robes, silver hair knotted in an elaborate do. She was pretty, except for the hooked nose. Eileen had a beaky nose, more like father's. However, the elixir perfected the shape, bringing it to a reduced size.
"Don't you remember? You were acting strange. You were screaming in your sleep and there was cuts on your arms…"
"Oh that…" Eileen frowned. She had figured out that it had something to do with Voldemort, but even she didn't know what happened.
Marie prompted her daughter again. "It was nothing but – a b-bad dream. A nightmare, mum! Forget it."
"It was funny though." the mother squinted, riddled with doubt.
"To the drawing room then. There is another matter to discuss. It requires our full attention."
Marie strode down the gloomy, neglected corridors of her mansion. The widow and her son did not take up much space, even if the Pureblood crowd visited frequently.
Eileen followed resolutely; picking up that mum was in work mode. What had this to do with the ministry? Eileen could almost smell the galleons. Yes, this was about money. A money issue. Her mother had always been a miser.
Seven-year-old Francis came around the bend, striding languidly looking doleful and bored for such a young child.
"Your sister and I are attending to business. You may entertain yourself. Quietly."
The boy's little face titled upwards pouting. "I want to play! Me and Eileen were gonna do magic tricks. She said she'd teach me. Didn't you Eileen?"
Marie took this much too seriously fuming, "Eileen! How dare you tell Francis he's ready to do magic. He's not old enough to carry a wand!"
"Oh, mother. Really! I was just going to see if his powers have manifest."
"I suppose it was nothing," said Marie calming down. "Francis you go to your nursery till dinner. No. Come with us. I think it necessary to hear what I have to say," and a scorching look was thrown at her daughter.
Eileen wondered what she'd done to make her mother this way.
In the drawing room a gargantuan grandfather clock chimed the hour.
She chose a sturdy hassock; too nervous to sit on the velvet upholstered chairs. But Marie reposed on it like a queen. Francis went for the daybed in the window and in a dull stupor, kicked his legs high in the air and after that was infirm.
"Francis, please sit up straight for me."
He listened, his feet swung, dangling over the edge of the sofa.
"I'm ready for whatever this is mother."
Marie had gone over to the table and from it retrieved a heavy book. She slammed it into her lap.
"This is my Gringotts accounting book. My personal funds. Not the ministry's" her eyes raked up and down, glaringly.
But Eileen was genuinely flummoxed. "So? You've let me have my own bank account since I was sixteen."
"Yes," said Marie in a clipped voice. "However you will not speak with such mendacious pretense in my house! You know very well what I mean."
"I don't!" cried Eileen passionately. It was true, she hadn't realized yet.
"You've been trickling money out of Graham's account since the year before he died. Where did the money go Eileen?"
Tears stung Eileen's eyes. It was sort of true.
"Mother I-"
"Spending the lot on yourself? Become a clotheshorse have you, since blossoming into womanhood? What did you do with over five-thousand galleons?"
"It wasn't me. I can swear it," Eileen began to cry. Somehow she sensed this was going to be the end. And she truly hadn't spent a galleon in months.
"Where has it gone? The money was combined after my late husband's death. That fortune belongs to me!"
"Wonderful news. So you've increased your wealth, by taking Dad's money. You don't deserve it. You were always as cold as a fish to him!"
Marie's small mouth pursed unpleasantly and her demeanor grew more ill tempered. "Don't talk about what you don't understand. I-I married your father for the family connection. The Princes are one of the most esteemed Pureblood families in England. Now what did you with my galleons?"
"I can't explain. I really don't know…" Desperately Eileen wanted to shout the culprit. Tom Riddle demanded every follower to hand over their control of their family's banking. Like a vulture, Voldemort descended on the Prince's vaults and was slowly pinching it all from them.
What he was using it for, was only a guess even to Eileen.
One day, not far back Eileen had inquired on what he'd done with a particular large withdrawal. Riddle had acted unusually furious and almost jealous of Eileen. This was because Voldemort couldn't actually go to the bank and withdraw the money. With no Gringgott's key, nor an account there, it was impossible for him to do it himself. Gringott's accounts were restricted only to the old Wizarding families. The Gaunts had left no money, living a reclusive life cut off from mainstream wizards.
And Riddle was demanding a pretty sum.
"If you don't tell me…I shall have no choice but to do something I think you will regret," said Marie slowly.
"Oh, what it is it?"
Marie looked to her son with loving eyes, but Eileen found it sickening. "I will not allow you to ruin my son's future. It is not only me you're hurting!"
"Mum…I can't tell you what is happening. But I swear it isn't me!"
Eileen sat down again. Woe be to him, if Riddle bothered for galleons again! He was ruining her life.
Marie paced around the room, wand out. "If you can't explain yourself…I shall have no choice but to desert you. I will write Gringotts and make sure only I may get in the account henceforth. You will be restricted from going there to take my money! And in the bargain I disown you."
"Disown me? Whatever for?"
"You have ruined my son's future. You no longer deserve my good graces, dear daughter!"
"Mum…I'm so sorry. Don't do this. If you d-disown me, Francis will have no one. Nobody but you."
"Is that such a bad thing? I have friends at the ministry and there are the relatives. Francis will still have his uncles, his aunts, cousins. Everyone." Marie seemed to be reassuring herself.
Eileen spoke up again, noticing this weak moment. "Francis! Francis! You want me to live here after I graduate Hogwarts next year, right? Don't you?"
"I- I do. But mum-"
Francis was shrinking like a violet; clutching the waist of Marie's robes and looking like an even younger child. He peered out and regarded his sister like a stranger and not like a sibling, his only sibling he had in the world.
Marie turned to her son and was glad to see this estranged feeling for Eileen. "See? This is for the greater good. I don't know what Eileen gets up to. I smell something rotten in Denmark. Five thousand galleons didn't just disappear….
"It is decided then. Eileen you may spend the summer here. I'll give you time to secure your own place!"
"Mum you're throwing me out?"
She nodded. And with the most sympathetic expression, implored again. "Please don't do this. Look at Francis.
"Francis say something! Don't let her do this to us." In one last act of desperation, Eileen tried to get Francis to vouch for her. The voice of a little boy would surely count for something? But Francis thought wrongly that his mummy didn't love his sister anymore, and it terrified him. Could mummy ever stop loving him? This event would have an impact on him for years to come.
"Francis has not matured to make such a decision. When he is older he will understand…"
Brother and sister were both crying.
"On the fire goes your inheritance. And I am removing you from my will."
A scroll of papers was tossed into the fire.
"As head of the Prince family I demand this tapestry remove my daughter, Eileen Prince born 1927 from the wall. This moves signifies a binding magical declaration of which takes effect in every magical establishment at sundown."
"NO!"
But it was too late. A stream shot out the mother's wand and entwined over the image of Eileen's face. There was a flash and then a hole appeared, a small conflagration erupted. The mark left was as ugly as a cigarette burn.
"There you are disowned."
"It doesn't change the fact that I'm Pureblood!" Eileen was sad, but also angry.
"That will never change." The voice was level and calm. "You're lucky your blood is cream of the crop. I suggest you clean up your act, girl! And stop associating with bad company."
"Bad company?" Was it possible her mother discovered the connection to a group called the Dark Order?
"I mean your friends. Whoever they are. Clearly it was them that influenced you to act unwisely. I'm sensible enough to see this truth, Eileen! Your mother, was never a fool!"
"I-I…I hate you. You'll never understand me. You'll never know what I've been through!"
It was too much to bear. Dramatically, Eileen stole out the Drawing room.
Eileen did not stop running until she reached the end of the expansive gravelly driveway. It felt like she could have run forever, displaced from her roots there was nowhere to turn.
Heaving back sobs, she leant over the fountain.
That day she did not return to Stonewall Estate until dusk.
Inside her bedroom was the wooden chest to transport her wardrobe to and from Hogwarts. It now held her most treasured possessions, all she would be able to take with her. The few things left to her name. There was Marie's lustrous pearl necklace. She'd been planning on giving it back. Defiantly, Eileen clutched it and decided to keep it. It was a valuable item, and at least she still had a small fortune of her own in the bank, but not nearly enough to support her for life.
NOTE: Please review! This helps explain why a Pureblood witch winds up marrying a muggle. Like Sirius Black, Eileen Prince is disowned from her wealthy family. How else could she have wound up on dingy Spinner's End with a muggle?
Also, Eileen's mother is a very unlikable woman. Eileen's father had been the much kinder parent. However, Marie does love her daughter but casts her out due to fear. She thinks Eileen is sowing a bleak future (which is true). Marie is afraid, but deep down there is love there, and not just a black heart. She always loved Eileen, but lost connection with her heart as she got older.
