Quick Note: This chapter is pretty full and jumps around a bit! I feel like a lot happens here, so let me know what you all are thinking! Theories? What are you most excited to learn more about? I love hearing from all of you! I hope you enjoy it!
When Eleanor was invited to the Order of the Phoenix headquarters for dinner late that summer, she was admittedly shocked. She was sure that she, an outsider who was fraternizing with the enemy, would be entirely unwelcome. However, she apparently had many fans on the inside to plead her case: Hermione, Harry, Remus, the entire Weasley family. They seemed to have won the vote.
When Eleanor arrived at the headquarters, she was immediately enamored with the atmosphere. She had been there once, briefly and unexpectedly. This time was different, she was welcomed with open arms by all of the inhabitants. She was caught up in multiple different conversations with several people, her head was spinning. She hadn't gotten much social interaction outside of Draco for the past nearly three months. Only once everyone was seated at the long table for dinner (Eleanor nestled softly in between Hermione and Remus) did it finally fall quiet.
"So tell me Miss Cordarri, how close are you with the Malfoys?" Sirius asked, taking a large bite of his piece of meat. The mood changed a bit with his words, Remus glared at his friend from across the table. Eleanor shifted uncomfortably. She was very good at compartmentalizing her friendships and didn't like it when they seemed to mix because she only ever received scorn from either side. She felt like a hypocrite because because of the fights she had with Draco earlier in the summer, but she had to admit that she at least put in effort with both sides whereas Draco simply chose one.
"Less so since the passing of my parents. Draco and I have remained good friends though." Eleanor answered honestly. There was a general grumble of disapproval at Draco's name.
"Have you seen anything out of the ordinary at the Malfoy residence this summer?" Sirius pressed, both Molly and Remus groaned.
"Honestly, Sirius, she is a dinner guest. She did not come here to be grilled. Let the poor girl alone." Molly huffed angrily before smiling at Eleanor widely. "So sorry dear."
Eleanor waved her off. "I know what you're asking. You want to know if Mr. Malfoy is a Death Eater." Eleanor answered simply, she was hurt at this thought. Lucius had never been the most upstanding man, nor was he particularly kind to those he didn't know well, but he was her father's best friend. He had taken Eleanor in, and she knew if it ever came down to it, he would protect Eleanor like she was one of his own so she felt obligated to do the same. "I know Harry says that he was there that night in the graveyard -"
"He was." Harry put in quietly. Eleanor rolled her eyes a little.
"Maybe he was. Maybe you were under a lot of pressure and overwhelmed. I don't know. I wasn't there." Eleanor shrugged, these people were kind and wonderful, so for that reason she tried to keep malice from her voice, but she was fiercely protective of the Malfoys because they had always been protective of her. "All I know is that Lucius Malfoy made a lot of mistakes in the first war; mistakes that he has repented for. He has been by my family's side my entire life, and I trust him a great deal. After raising a family of his own, after loving my parents so much, I don't know, I don't think he could be a Death Eater." Eleanor concluded.
"If you could maybe just look for a shred of evidence-" Sirius tried to bargain.
"Sirius, that's enough." Remus said firmly. "Not the time, place, or person to be discussing this with." Eleanor was grateful that Remus had stepped in.
Eleanor looked around the table warily, waiting for anyone else to start asking her questions about the Malfoys but the majority of those present seemed to be more interested in Remus, who was always protective of the children, but was seldom so forthcoming and firm. Eleanor adjusted herself in her seat, trying to ease some of the tension building up within her. She knew that Sirius knew she was Remus' daughter, but she trusted Remus' word when he said Sirius was the only one.
They all stared back at her like she was a traitor, or at the very least an outsider who had no business being around a top security table. Tonks hadn't given her a kind look all night, which seemed a bit revolutionary for this woman who happily chatted with everyone else around the table. With the chatter around them rising, Eleanor and Remus whispered quietly amongst themselves.
"They don't trust me. Why did they let me in here if they don't trust me?" Eleanor let out in annoyance.
Remus chewed slowly, thinking very carefully through his answer before responding. "I think they are more curious to know what you know about the Malfoys than they are afraid of what you might report back."
"Seems like a dangerous gamble." Eleanor tried to joke, but Remus shook his head slightly to tell her to stop herself in her tracks and shot his eyes over to Moody and Tonks, who were watching the two whisper very closely.
"You have some strong advocates in here." He smiled slightly at Harry, Ron, and Hermione who were joking together. "You four remind me a lot of us when we were younger."
"Am I a lot like you were?" Eleanor inquired lowly, very aware that no one at the table besides Remus and Sirius knew her parentage.
"In some ways, yes." Remus nodded pensively. "You remind me a lot of Sirius in other ways too. Your humor is very similar. I think you two will get on very well."
"When he stops accusing Lucius of being a Death Eater, I'm sure we will." Eleanor agreed with a quick smile and raised eyebrows. Remus simply shook his head and chuckled.
"Yes, Sirius will definitely like you."
"Should we tell them?" Eleanor asked suddenly, surprising herself when she said it. "I mean, the Order. I want to tell the others separately, if you don't mind."
"It's all up to what you want," Remus responded, careful not to show so much emotion that she feel obligated to reveal their relationship.
"I think we should." She said with finality, causing Remus' face to break out in a wide grin. "I think it will answer a lot of questions."
Once everyone had finished eating, Remus asked the Weasley children, Harry and Hermione to leave so he could discuss Eleanor with the Order. Eleanor shot her friends an "I'll tell you later" look before they could protest, though she wasn't sure how much later she would be telling them. It was still hard for her to accept that she had a father, despite burying hers a few months prior. She was confused still on how she felt, and didn't want to add to the confusion by letting her friends in on it. And she didn't want to risk it getting back to Draco, who she was still afraid of the reaction from. It had been nerve wracking enough to tell him she wasn't biologically a Cordarri, the anxiety it caused her to tell him about Remus was enough to make her put it off.
"As some of you know, I was a bit...absent from Order business for a year or so during the first war." Remus began, then cringed slightly at his choice of starting by bringing attention to his rapid romance with Eleanor's mother. "I know that this raised a lot of suspicion then, and even still now warrants an explanation. Eleanor is my explanation." Oh, Merlin, he couldn't have presented this any worse.
"Oh, Merlin, mate, could you have thought of a more awkward way to reveal this?" Sirius joked, pinching the bridge of his nose. The joke from his friend, and the small laugh from his daughter next to him relaxed Remus' shoulders. For the first time in over a decade, Remus wasn't alone. He had a family. He felt confident. Which was something he hadn't felt since Eleanor's mother…
"Eleanor is my daughter." Remus stated simply, smiling at the young woman next to him, shocked even still at how closely she resembled her mother.
There was a general murmur between members of the Order coming to terms with this new bit of information, but Eleanor only heard Mrs. Weasley say smilingly: "Oh, finally. I'm so glad you decided to tell."
"You knew?" Eleanor asked, trying to remember if Remus said she had known.
"Of course I knew." Mrs. Weasley exclaimed. "Who do you think found you your home with Olga and Darius?"
Eleanor's mouth hung open in shock but before she could ask for more information, Sirius spoke up.
"Now we've got a real spy on the inside."
Eleanor's heart hurt, she had been trying to find a time to confide in her friends about her changing relationship with Draco. She had wanted to come clean and get their advice, but it was becoming very clear that her connection to the Malfoys already put her at risk for interrogation. Having that closer bond with Draco only increased that. She wasn't sure that she could remain neutral and still be completely honest with both parties.
So Eleanor didn't disclose to anyone her feelings for Draco. It felt dishonest, but she wasn't actively lying - which is how she attempted to justify shielding the truth from her friends. In return, she had been only giving minimal information to Draco about who she was spending time with. She would tell him if she was spending time with her biological father, but she had yet to tell him who that was. She never dared mention The Order. She wasn't apart of it, not technically, and while she fiercely fought against the idea that Lucius was a Death Eater, she wasn't completely sure that he wouldn't exploit that information if he had it.
Eleanor had found herself living a double life, unable to completely confide everything to anyone. All of her friends getting half truths and incomplete stories. She was holding a lot to herself, and it was in those times where so much of her life seemed to be going unshared that she missed her mother the most. Her mother would have known what to say; about Draco, about the Order, about the pressure she was feeling from both sides, about Lucius and her inability to prove his innocence, and why she felt like she needed to prove anything, and of course about Remus. Her mother would know how to calm her anxious heart, even if it was just lending a listening ear, but her mother was not here, and she would never be. In consequence, Eleanor was left to be eaten alive by her own thoughts.
Draco noticed how she had been retreating into her own head recently, and he almost desperately would try to bring her back. He felt time running out with them returning to Hogwarts in little more than a week, he felt something needed to be solidified.
He would try to distract her from spiraling deep into her own mind by kissing her, but that almost seemed to worsen it. She was only truly distracted when they were talking, but she didn't ever want to do that, which annoyed him. He was hoping to kill two birds with one stone by exploring her mouth with his.
"Are you ready to go back to school?" Draco asked one night a few weeks after her dinner with the Order, exhausted from trying to elicit some response by kissing her neck for what felt like hours (but Draco was notoriously impatient, so it really wasn't very long at all). Eleanor shrugged at his question.
"Yes and no. I'm ready to get my mind busy, but not ready for … everything else." She let out slowly.
"Where am I possibly going to kiss you at school?" Draco tried to charm her. They were sitting in the parlor of the Malfoy Manor, Lucius was gone which wasn't unusual for the summer, and Narcissa said she was to join him, but Draco was unsure if that was the truth. Either way, the two had the Manor to themselves for awhile before she was leaving again for dinner. But Eleanor was unusually stoic, he noticed she got like that before dinners with her biological father. He wished she would tell him more about that man, or that she would tell him what she could possibly be thinking that was so interesting that she had barely reciprocated any physical contact all night, or that she would just stop seeing him altogether. None of those things happened.
"I'm sure you'll think of places." Eleanor smirked a little, blinking out of her zoned out stare and being brought back to reality and stopping herself from obsessing about all of the things she wasn't telling Draco. She liked him when he was like this. She liked to be pursued a bit by him, she liked playful. Draco was still learning what she did and didn't respond to. She was so unbelievably confusing.
"I've got an awful memory, I can't think of a single place. Where would you suggest?" Draco breathed lowly. Eleanor played with the collar of his shirt, not meeting his eyes. It was hard for her to look at him knowing she would spend the night with people who asked her every hour invasive questions about him and his family. Even though she always refused to answer, she still felt like she was betraying them.
"Hmm, well I suggest my lips, obviously, it's a given." Eleanor chuckled as Draco pecked her softly.
"You know what I meant." He growled playfully, he was trying to show her he was trying to make time for her at school, but she didn't seem to be responding.
Eleanor hummed a little, positioning herself to sit in his lap. "I do like it when you kiss my neck," She continued, then leaned forward to put her lips to his ear, "I don't mind when you nibble a little either." She whispered dangerously low, her voice raspy. Draco nearly groaned, attaching himself to her neck and sucking softly. Eleanor loved this, she did, it broke her out of her head for a while. She had to keep it exciting and different enough so that she wouldn't fall into a lull that would allow her mind to wander. Eleanor barely breathed as Draco trailed his hot lips down to her collar bone, lingering for a moment before reaching the neck of her tank top. His warm hand reached up to pull the material down just a little. His eyes looked up at Eleanor for a moment for approval but her eyes were closed, her neck thrown back and her chest heaving with lusty breaths; heaving further into his lips, deep and quick, pushing herself closer to him. Closer was all she wanted to be. In a near moan, but more of a quiet grunt, Eleanor maneuvered herself so that she was now straddling Draco.
We should stop, Draco tried to convince himself, we need to slow down.
His mind was in a pure place (relatively) however the rest of him, and all of Eleanor, was not. As he stayed suckling on her tender, pale skin, Eleanor began clawing at the hem of her shirt. She pulled it untucked and was trying to slip it over her head as quickly as possible. Draco slowed her hands by grabbing them with his own.
"Draco…" She moaned, picking his face up from her chest and connecting their lips - his slightly swollen, "please?" She let out in a quiet whine.
Draco, who loved more than anything to be in control, found himself relishing in the fact that Eleanor was taking charge in this interchange. He wanted to bask in the experience of letting Eleanor do whatever she wanted solely because she could, because he would let her. But the rational voice in his head told him that she still wasn't in the right place to be making decisions like these. He had originally been kissing her to pull her out of a state of anxious overthinking. This wasn't the cure to her spiraling mind. He knew that, despite how good it felt to be beneath her.
"El," Draco murmured against her lips, eliciting no response from her, "Ellie, we need to stop." He said as he pulled away.
"I don't want to." Eleanor tried to convince him.
"Me neither," Draco chuckled as she left his lap to sit next to him, "but we are taking things slow, remember?"
"I don't get it," Eleanor sighed. "Do you not want to?" She was afraid to ask the question, she was so stained with insecurity. Draco didn't know what to say, how was he supposed to tell her that he didn't want her to regret anything she did to distract herself from her grief and anxiety? How was he supposed to protect her heart from himself while also assuring her that she was very wanted by him?
"I do, El, really." He told her sincerely. "You have a dinner to get to." He nodded at the grandfather clock in the corner that showed she was already five minutes late for dinner at the Burrow.
"Shit." She mumbled to herself, getting up quickly and trying to straighten her clothes before rushing to the fireplace.
As she disappeared in green flames, Draco was left to wonder if he was doing the right thing for the both of them. He didn't know what she needed from him and he didn't know what he needed from her. They were so young still, and her with so much to deal with. He knew he couldn't take advantage of her vulnerability, even if he cared for her deeply, it still felt manipulative.
But he had to admit, he really, really wanted to.
Hermione was the first one to see Eleanor when she came through the Floo. Dinner was at the Burrow that night, just the Weasleys plus Harry, Hermione and Remus. Eleanor was relieved, she wasn't sure she could stomach the entire Auror office asking her about the Mafloys, especially after what happened with Draco only moments before. Eleanor wasn't even sure she could tell Hermione, or what she would tell her if she did. What base is that? Is that even a base? It kind of felt like it was in between. Does it count if she wanted to go further? Why didn't he?
"'Mione." Eleanor hugged her friend, still having a bit of Floo ash on her shoulder. Hermione went to swipe it off in their hug when her eyes were brought to dark red and light purple speckles all over the side of Eleanor's neck.
"Eleanor," Hermione gasped out, her brown eyes wide with shock as she continued staring at the clusters of kiss-shaped bruises, "what is this?"
Eleanor felt all of the color drain from her face, her stomach iced over and her hand clapped to her neck. "I-I … err … ummm…." Eleanor began stammering, no words being able to find their way out of her mouth. How was she going to explain this one? Her eyes filled up with tears of embarrassment and shame. She shouldn't have kept this from Hermione. "I don't know what I was thinking." Eleanor's words fell out of her mouth as if they were tripping over each other. She truly didn't know what she had been thinking, it felt good, it was a distraction, she was able to think about something else rather than her dishonesty towards her friends, she felt close to Draco even though she felt that she had been betraying him.
"Eleanor you didn't…" Hermione trailed off, she tried to be a supportive friend but the judgement still lingered in her eyes and voice.
"No, no, no, no." Eleanor waved her hands wildly as she frantically tried to think of a way to dismiss bad assumptions from her best friend's mind, but were the assumptions bad if they were almost right? Not almost right! Draco refused! Why did he refuse? "It isn't what you are thinking, we just - I just - he just -"
"Sucked on your neck?" Hermione asked, a bushy brow raised high on her tanned face. Eleanor's cheeks her bright red as she looked down at her shoes. Her skirt was hanging crookedly so she adjusted it a little to appear more normal, Hermione noticed this as well but didn't say anything. Eleanor gulped a little, unable to look at her friend. Somehow, despite Hermione being only an inch or two taller and much more slender, it still felt like she towered over Eleanor. "Come on, I have some concealer, I'll help you cover them up. Viktor would leave them all of the time." Hermione chuckled a little as she led Eleanor the back way to the powder room so that she wouldn't be ambushed by the Weasley brothers.
Eleanor sat on the toilet, with her hair pulled to the side as Hermione dabbed a makeup sponge over Draco's little love notes.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Hermione asked.
Yes, more than anything Eleanor thought, but instead shook her head. Hermione was loyal, she wouldn't tell anyone if Eleanor asked her not to, but it was easier to keep her friends in specific boxes if they were all in the dark about the other. It made it harder for Eleanor to balance, but it kept her social circles neat and tidy.
"At least answer me this: was it a one time thing?" Hermione pressed both with her words and with the sponge, causing Eleanor to hiss a little.
"Erm … well technically, this was a one time thing." Eleanor nodded, dancing with her words a bit to satisfy Hermione while not being totally untruthful.
"Technically? What do you mean 'technically'?"
"This was the one and only time he's left any evidence." Eleanor conceded, admitting to herself that it felt good to give at least a little bit of information to Hermione, her heart seemed a little lighter. Hermione smirked down at her friend. She'd seen her kiss her fair share of boys, but this one shocked her a little. Eleanor loved to tell Hermione these things, and her not disclosing any feelings for Draco was out of the ordinary. Hermione almost felt guilty for making Eleanor feel ashamed for her feelings, but it was Draco after all. Perhaps Eleanor's feelings of shame were valid. "It's been a long summer." Eleanor breathed out.
"A lot has happened?" Hermione kept her question light, leaving it open to Eleanor to choose what to tell her. Eleanor had certainly changed and withheld many of her thoughts and feelings, Hermione never wanted to push her into sharing.
Eleanor wanted to tell her everything, how Remus was her father and how her and Draco's relationship was changing, and how she didn't feel like she was properly honoring her parents, and how her mind was swimming and overwhelmed with the conflict between Draco and her friends. But instead she said nothing.
"So, you meet with your Head of House this year to discuss future career plans," Remus began slowly as the two sat on the Weasley's front lawn. Molly had begun to scold the Twins and somehow Ron had gotten wrapped into it, who Harry felt he needed to stand by. So Remus and Eleanor made their escape to the lawn to have a few quiet moments. "Do you have any idea of what you want to study?"
Eleanor groaned at his question, on top of everything else, she didn't necessarily want to think about her absolute lack of a plan for the future. Realistically, she could live off of her parent's fortune quite comfortably without ever having to work, but Eleanor wanted to work, she just didn't know what she wanted to do.
"I'll take that as a no." Remus chuckled, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. "It's alright, you will figure it out."
"What did you study?" Eleanor asked softly, hoping he would give her some guidance. Had her parents been alive, they would have.
Remus stiffened a little. "Honestly, my goal was simply graduating. I knew that I wasn't likely to get hired anywhere due to my … well, you know." He gestured vaguely up at the moon. This was something that Eleanor had forgotten about. Remus cleared his throat once, hoping to get off the subject of his hairy little problem. "Any news about your parents?" He asked softly, he seemed to want to jump from one harsh topic to another, he winced at his own insensitivity.
To his dismay, Eleanor shrunk away from him and his question. "According to the Ministry, my parents dropped completely dead in the Department of Mysteries for absolutely no reason at all."
"They are still telling you that?" Remus' brows knit together.
Eleanor started pulling up the grass at her sides and looking away. Tears filled the brim of her eyes. Draco and her friends were nice distractions, but the lack of answers was always swimming in her mind, always taunting her, her parents were gone with no explanation as to why.
"Yeah, I send a letter every week, every response is the same. 'We're so sorry, Miss Cordarri, the tests we have run were inconclusive. We will contact you when we are able to provide an official answer.' It's a load of shit." Eleanor mocked the letters in a monotone voice. "Sorry." She added hastily for her language without really meaning it. Remus waved her apology off as he searched her face for an indication of what she wanted or needed from him in terms of comfort. "I don't know what I am supposed to do."
"Couldn't you talk to Lucius? He's known for pulling strings in the Ministry." Remus suggested reluctantly, he didn't want to admit that Lucius Malfoy could give her something that he couldn't.
"I haven't seen him all summer," Eleanor explained feebly. "I don't think he wants to see me."
Remus felt the Sirius inside his head besmirching Lucius. Part of him wanted to say that this was proof that he was conniving with Voldemort, or that he was involved, or, best case scenario, he just didn't want to deal with a grief stricken teenager. But Remus swallowed those comments, he swallowed his hatred from Lucius and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Everyone deals with grief differently." He paused. "Next time you see him, you should ask."
It so happened that the next time Eleanor saw Lucius was a little less than a week later. She was at Malfoy Manor getting ready to leave with Draco to Blaise Zabini's End of Summer party. For longer than Eleanor would like to admit she stood in front of the mirror trying on different bathing suits. For some reason this party felt more important than the last one. It felt like there was something riding on it this time, maybe because her and Draco were actually an item - were they an item? What were they?
Eleanor sighed, hoping that she would get drunk enough to not compare herself to the other girls that splashed around in Blaise Zabini's pool. Eleanor slipped a light cotton, grey, swinging dress over her high necked white bikini top and high waisted, floral bottoms. She slipped her feet into two strapped sandals and sprayed her face with a Muggle product Hermione had recommended for keeping makeup on. It surely wouldn't be as effective as a charm would have been, but seeing as they weren't at school Eleanor would have to make do. Her brown hair was getting long and was rather easily tangled. She hadn't gotten it cut in a long time, and it was starting to hang very low on her back. She never did anything with it, she just let it hang there around her face or tickling the back of her arms.
Draco swung his body into her room, leaning on the doorframe. He watched her for a moment, watching herself in the mirror. He could see the mild displeasure on her face as she wiped something from the corner of her eye and flattened the sleeves of her dress against her shoulders.
"You almost ready?" Draco asked, his voice quiet as it travelled through the cool air of her bedroom. Eleanor looked over at him and offered a shy smile.
"Just about." She returned lowly as stepped away from the mirror. She decided at the last minute to at least pin her hair back a little, to offer something different than her normal, hanging hair. She pulled pins from a small container that sat on the nightstand and began to section off a piece of her thick, wavy, brown hair. She was aware of Draco watching her. It didn't make her uncomfortable so much as nervous. She was afraid that if he looked for too long, he would realize she was not quite so beautiful as he seemed to believe and would leave her for one of the Greengrass sisters. "I'll grab you when I'm ready." Eleanor told him, shifting uncomfortably on her feet. Draco nodded once, though Eleanor couldn't see, and slipped back into his room.
He could tell she was nervous, he couldn't place about what. She had been frustratingly distant the closer school got. He was wracking his brain wondering if this was the way it always had been and if he had gotten used to their intimacy in the early weeks of summer, or if she was pulling away. He couldn't understand it, she was angry with him for doing the same thing at the beginning of the summer. He felt like a fool, she made him feel like that a lot.
Draco took some deep breaths and reminded himself that she was about to walk into a party filled with people she didn't know or particularly like. That was what was most likely causing her nerves to be on edge. He sat in his room and flicked through a book about rare plants for potions that Eleanor had brought home for him a week earlier. It was a little slow, he had to admit, he wasn't a fan of Herbology, and he knew that Eleanor knew that and was hoping to pique his interest in it by using potions. She liked to do that, to take care of him in weirdly subtle ways that she didn't think he would understand, but he did.
Eleanor's stomach was in knots, she worried about the people, she worried about what they would say about her last drunken experience at the Zabini home, she worried they would all be talking about Sirius Black, she worried she would hear some sort of information on Voldemort. Would she tell the Order if she had? Was she only protecting Draco, or was she protecting Draco's friends too? Was she only protecting Harry, Ron and Hermione, or was she protecting the entire Order? She didn't know, she had no idea where her morals started and where they ended.
She tried to shake the nerves from her shoulders. She pulled her eyes away from the mirror. With all of the other things she had to worry about, she had to force her looks to not be one of them. She turned off the lights in her bedroom and bathroom, she grabbed any overnight essentials that she would need to drop off at her home, where her and Draco would undoubtedly stay, before heading to Blaise's.
Eleanor left her room in a sweep and bumped into Lucius Malfoy, a face she had not seen since her parent's memorial.
"Lucius," Eleanor let out in surprise. He looked the same as always, Eleanor almost expected him to look disheveled, though she wasn't sure why. "How are you?"
Upon seeing Eleanor, a wild look flared in Lucius' eyes for a fraction of a moment. Eleanor could only barely see it, see the emotions he was easily able to hide. He was unsure of how to look at her, the pride and joy of his dearest friends, without feeling an extreme amount of guilt clutch at his chest. He knew she wasn't theirs, not biologically. But she somehow still looked like them, he still saw her as the spitting image of Olga and Darius even though she hadn't a drop of their blood coursing through her veins.
"It's been a busy summer." Lucius conceded. "Going out?" He questioned. Eleanor's thick eyebrows knitted together at his brief response, he noticed her confusion.
"Draco and I were going to head over to the Zabini's for the evening." Eleanor confided, unsure if she should have told him where they were actually going. Lucius nodded once. A desperate look appeared in Eleanor's eyes, like she wanted more from him. "Lucius, could I ask you a favor?" Her voice timid. Lucius raised his eyebrows, waiting for her request. "There has been no information on my parents and how they died all summer. I … it's really difficult for me to fully grieve them if I don't know why I am doing it." Eleanor sighed a little, looking at her sandal-clad feet. "I don't know if there is anyway you could hustle along the process. I know you have a lot of influence in the Ministry, and I just … I need answers." Eleanor spilled out.
Lucius' first instinct was to get defensive, to interrogate her on how she knew that he would be able to find out the information on her. He wanted to stick with the story that had been crafted, or rather the lack of story. Consistency was key in this situation. But her wide blue eyes that he had seen at all ages of life, and the fact that she somehow looked just like them caused him to let out a sigh of defeat. "I'll see what I can do." He murmured with a swift nod, then swept away from her quickly without a look back.
The guilt would eat away at him knowing that he could not doing anything, knowing that he knew exactly what had happened and he would not give her answers.
