She looked up and locked eyes with Lizzie, a similar expression on her twin's face.
"What the actual fuck?" they exclaimed at once.
"Language," muttered Hatty.
"What does yours say?" Lizzie demanded, flipped her parchment so that Cassie couldn't see it.
"It says that I, or I guess we, are descended from the McKinnon family and that I'm the heir?" Cassie said in disbelief.
"Does that mean you have to do paperwork?" Lizzie asked with a strange gleam in her eye.
"I—I don't know." Cassie said helplessly, looking overwhelmed.
She stared down at her results, trying to fully process what she was seeing. She was a McKinnon, her mother a squib. She released her breath and looked at her sister. Lizzie's eyes were wide and her shoulders were set. She was freaked out the same way that she had been when they were ten and their parents had died. She had had the same expression and set of her shoulders when they had sat in the principal's office and been told their parents had died in a car accident.
Cassie gave her sister a reassuring smile—that she didn't feel at all—and motioned for Lizzie to read her results. She wasn't expecting anything different than her own, especially as they were twins, but maybe that was where she went wrong.
"Why're the letters in my name changing colors?" Lizzie asked, her voice full of both fear and excitement.
"Let me see."
Cassie grabbed the parchment from her sister and stared at the shifting colors. As she watched, they changed from red to purple, to yellow and blue alternating. She looked up, perplexed, and from the corner of her eye, the goblin looked intrigued. It was almost scary.
"May I see that?" the goblin asked politely.
Cassie handed him the parchment and Griphook's eyes narrowed. He searched around in his desk for a minute and, finding no answers there, walked out of the room at a brisk pace. The twin's eyes met. Lizzie looked disturbed and panicked with her wide eyes and slightly agape jaw.
Cassie stood up and sat beside her sister, resting her hand on the middle of Lizzie's back in comfort. The taller girl leaned into it and Cassie felt her shoulders relax. Lizzie gave her a grateful smile as the goblin returned. This time with a second one behind him.
"This is Baldrid. They are an expert from the inheritance department."
The twins waved cordially at the goblin as they sat down behind the desk. The goblin gave Lizzie's test a long look and said, "I have not seen this in over a hundred years. This means you are a shifter of shape. I believe you humans call it being a Metamorphagus."
Lizzie gasped. "No?"
"That's not how that works Liz," Cassie giggled.
"Wh—buh—huh?" Lizzie sputtered incoherently.
"You're a Metamorph, like Ton—" Cassie cut herself off. Spoilers after all. "You're like Dora from OoTP.'
"I know what it means!" Lizzie pouted. She resisted the urge to shudder as she heard the incessant theme song to that children's show.
"Then why were you so hysterical about it?" Cassie demanded, though her voice was somewhat teasing.
"Because I'm a METAMORPH!" Lizzie had forgotten about the others in the room until they jumped in surprise. "Sorry for volume."
The goblins looked rather amused. "It is forgiven, human." said Baldrid.
Lizzie gave them a small smile before turning back to her amused sister. "That's why I freaked out!"
"What's the reason again?" Cassie asked. "You skipped the reason again."
Lizzie facepalmed. "I'm a Metamorph and that's really fun."
Cassie wasn't sure if her twin was being sarcastic or not. She was going to respond but Hatty cleared her throat.
"Remember why we are here girls."
"Ah, yes." Cassie turned to Griphook. "What exactly does being the McKinnon heir mean?"
Griphook took out a stack of papers. "Right now, you do not have to do much of anything. Your guardian will have two years to appoint a proxy, when you reach the age of thirteen you will have a chance to appoint a proxy yourself and you will start doing some basic paperwork. During the summers your proxy is expected to teach you how to sit on the Wizengamot. Your other responsibilities and some more information are in this stack of paper." With that Griphook slid the stack of papers across the desk.
"Our parents died, so who's our guardian?" asked Lizzie, rather quickly as if she wanted to finish the conversation.
"I am," Hatty said, stepping closer to the girls.
Cassie noticed that Hatty made a very convincing human and wondered if she had been practicing.
"Thank you Teller Griphook, for assisting us, but I believe it is time for us to take our leave." Hatty bowed her head respectfully to the goblin—Baldrid had left sometime during Griphook's explanation.
The girls scrambled up from the chair they were sharing and followed Hatty out of the office with their inheritance tests in hand. They were met at the door by a rather disgruntled looking goblin who took them back to the main area of the bank. There were more people at the desks than when they arrived, and Cassie rolled her eyes as Lizzie's inability to not be attention-grabbing showed itself again.
Her twin was walking with rather powerful sounding steps and a small smirk on her face, hiding any and all distress or confusion that she had shown in the office. She didn't give any indication that she was new to the Wizarding World, unlike Cassie who was looking around with wide eyes. Cassie really didn't know how her sister was able to play a part so easily, not when she herself struggled to even keep a straight face in card games. She guessed it was just part of Lizzie's personality to be able to go from her usual, dramatic fangirl self, to whatever part she needed to play.
That day in the bank, Lizzie was playing the part of a slightly snobby Pureblood child—one that she had created after reading quite a few fanfictions about the Fanon proclaimed 'Slytherin Trio'. She kept her head held high, shoulders back, a small smirk on her face, but an otherwise neutral expression. She let her steps echo slightly on the stone floor and made sure to not stare at anything too long—she didn't want to become a target for stares and whispers after all.
As the three left the bank and merged with the loud and colorful crowd, Lizzie dropped her "Pureblood child" part. Her shoulders and head dropped, her steps quieted slightly, and her expression became the one of her true emotions: excitement, a little confusion, and slight overwhelm.
"I don't know how you do that," muttered Cassie.
Lizzie shrugged. "I'm a Theater major, remember? Err, was a Theater major." She grinned playfully at her sister. "It's kind of my thing to play parts."
"I thought your thing was to be dramatic and eat chemicals and death playing make-believe," teased the older twin.
Lizzie gasped. "How dare you insult fast food!" Cassie grinned, even as Lizzie playfully shoved her. She elbowed her back and they would have gotten into a shoving match had Hatty not given them a stern look as she pulled them to the side of a building where the crowd wasn't so thick.
"I be's taking you back to the house now," Hatty said.
With that she rested her hands on the twins' shoulders and popped them back home. They stumbled as they appeared in the mudroom and shared a look of loathing. Apparition sucked. They quickly shed their robes and hung them on the hooks Hatty indicated. They dropped their shoes in a navy blue bin and followed Hatty—who had changed back to a house elf at some point—to the kitchen.
Within a few minutes of the twins playfully shoving each other and sticking their tongues out (they were very mature) Hatty set a plate of sandwiches in front of the twins. They grinned simultaneously at her and chimed a very happy "thanks Hatty" before digging in.
They each went to grab sandwiches from the plate and just hold them (there were no other plates set out yet) but Hatty tutted in a manner rather like the way Uncle Charlie used to. Lizzie slid down in her seat at the memory that surfaced. She waved off the look Cassie gave her.
"You be's so very impatient, just like your aunt." Hatty shook her head.
"Huh? What aunt?" Cassie asked, leaning forward.
"Marlene," Hatty said, bringing back two plates for the twins. "She never was very patient."
Lizzie pondered over that for a moment before shrugging and digging into her lunch. As the twins finished, Hatty scurried off to the kitchen. They went down to the basement, sitting on the floor cushions and setting their inheritance tests on the table.
"We should probably actually read these," said Cassie.
"Should we?" Lizzie's head was tilted and she had an ornery glimmer in her eyes.
"Yes you ridiculous prat," Cassie teased. "Wanna do it on three in case there's something terrible that we didn't see before?"
"Sure. One."
"Deux."*
"Tre."
They flipped their tests over and read them. Well, Cassie read hers, Lizzie shrieked.
"What? What is it?" Cassie demanded.
"WE'RE RELATED TO THE BLACKS!" Lizzie shrieked. Cassie winced and covered her ears.
"Can you repeat that a little quieter please?"
"We're related to the Black family!" Lizzie was still speaking rather loudly but it was fine. Cassie gasped.
"How?" she demanded.
"Our dad! He was Marius Archer nee Black!"
Cassie shrieked in delight. "So we're related to Sirius?"
"And the Black sisters?"
They shrieked in delight. "We're related to the Blacks!" They jumped up and down in excitement and kept cheering and giggling.
Hatty poked her head around the corner to investigate why the girls were shrieking madly and her large eyes widened further. She had not seen such a sight in nearly eleven years. Not since Mistress Marlene and all her friends visited before their last year at school. The house elf's wide eyes shone with tears as she slipped back upstairs, content with the knowledge that the young girls were fine.
"Very much like their aunt," she murmured as she dusted the connecting bedrooms on the top floor.
…
"So if those are our parents, who else are we related to?" Lizzie mused.
"Umm, the Fawleys, the Greengrasses, the Crouches, and a bunch of names I don't recognize." Cassie replied.
"That's fun," Lizzie said.
"Do you want to go through the heir things?" Cassie asked hopefully.
Lizzie gave her a disbelieving look. Her, deal with paperwork? Never. Not if she could help it.
"Right, stupid question. You don't have anything to do with paperwork," Cassie drawled, imitating Severus Snape pretty well.
"Nope," Lizzie chirped.
"Well do you want to talk about how we're obviously gonna fix the Harry Potter world?"
"Yep," Lizzie chirped again.
"Well first we should help Harry get away from the Dursleys," Cassie started.
"Then we should free Sirius," Lizzie continued, plopping down onto a couch.
"In first year we should try to take care of Quirrelmort before he can harm anyone."
"Or the Golden Trio do something too stupid," her sister mused. "I think after first year the world will be different enough that we'll have to reconsider what things need changing."
Cassie nodded in agreement and sat down next to her sister on the navy couch. They must have been down in the basement, lost in their thoughts, for hours because it had gotten darker in the room and Hatty was calling them upstairs.
"Dinner!" the house elf called down the stairs.
"Coming!" they shouted in unison.
Their dinner was spent making silly jokes and talking with the ghost twins who apparently had been exploring the woods around the house. As they finished the last of their chicken caesar salads and mopped up the dressing with their mini baguettes, the sun was setting behind the treeline.
The twins—both alive and ghost—sat in the living room, three of them staring at the fourth as she tried to change her hair color.
"You got it!" Anna encouraged.
"Yeah, not that hard! Just think of yourself with a different hair color," Cassie said with a rather annoying grin. Lizzie glared and the older twin could have sworn that the roots of her hair tinted red.
"Your roots just changed a little!" Lyra cheered.
Lizzie closed her eyes and stuck her tongue out in concentration. As Cassie watched, her sister's hair flashed a vibrant Gryffindor red for a moment before returning to its normal color. The girl's eyes opened and held excitement, though she also looked ready to pass out.
"Are you alright?" Cassie asked gently.
"Yeah, just tired," Lizzie mumbled before falling back against the couch.
Cassie sat beside her sister, Lizzie's head in her lap and her eyes closed.
"Di' I get it?" she asked, her words slurred with exhaustion.
"Yeah," Cassie whispered. "You got it."
They fell asleep curled up on the blue-grey sectional in front of the quietly crackling fire, their features illuminated in the orange light. Cassie's hand was threaded through her sister's hair and Lizzie's hands were gripping Cassie's wrist lightly where it was draped near her head. Both were snoring softly with small smiles on their faces. (They'd later deny the fact that they snored.)
Hatty smiled, taking in the peaceful scene. She made sure to take a picture—a habit born from having the Marauders, Marlene, and the rest of the Gryffindor Girls constantly in the house—before she tucked a fluffy blanket around the twins.
Meanwhile, the ghost twins were playing a rather loud and rambunctious game of night tag, floating through the walls of the house constantly. At least they were playing their game in and out of the house until Hatty gave them a stern glare.
"Young mistresses be sleeping," she hissed lowly.
Somehow, despite the two being ghosts, Hatty was still able to get them to stop their game, even though she couldn't actually stop them. At least, the ghost twins didn't think she had the power to stop them from doing things. But they really didn't want to test that theory so they went back outside to play their game.
*Deux= two in French
Tre= three in Italian