The Mirror and the Web
"A family is like a forest: if you are outside it seems impenetrable; if you are inside you find each tree has its space." (Akan Proverb)
Eleanor's eyes followed the line of Lucius' wand; and to her surprise he was pointing at a name that positively exuded wizarding flavor. "Desiderius Wermuth," she read with some measure of relief and looked at him with a raised brow. "What about him?"
The blond wizard stood up straight and sheathed his wand. "You haven't heard about the work of the famous Mr. Wermuth?" His explanation was interrupted by the clatter of porcelain that sounded quite insistent in the huge, high-ceilinged room. Eleanor looked around to see a house elf set out a small table near one of the windows for tea.
She felt Lucius hand against the small of her back. "Perfect," he said. "Let's sit down for a bit, and I will tell you what I know about Mr. Wermuth. And then perhaps you can tell me why he is listed as your maternal grandfather when everyone who has read his famous biography knows perfectly well that he never married and died childless."
He walked her over to the window and helped her into her chair before dismissing the elf with an impatient wave. Eleanor poured them both some tea and then looked expectantly at her lover. "So, what is so special about this 'famous' wizard?"
Lucius took a sip and cast a calculating glance at her over the rim of his cup. "On second thoughts," he said. "Why don't you tell me first what you know about him? After all, he was your mother's father, you must know at least something."
She gave him an indulgent smile. Of course he would try to turn the tables on her, even on an insignificant matter like this. "Fine," she humored him and picked up a small cucumber sandwich.
"This is actually rather a juicy tale, like so many in my family's history. Tradition has it that my grandmother Matilda was quite an adventurous and independent witch in her youth. Instead of searching for a husband once her schooling was complete, settling down and having children, she announced to her family that she was not happy with her level of knowledge and power and that she wanted to become an apprentice first.
You can imagine that her behavior was regarded as quite shocking and outrageous in her time when only wizards became apprentices, and that it caused her parents much grief and embarrassment. But as in so many other things she got her way. In this case she just packed some clothes, her magical possessions and some of her father's galleons and left home in secret one dark and stormy night.
She traveled all the way from Innsbruck in southern Germany to Basel in Switzerland, and one morning arrived on the doorstep of Mr. Wermuth whom she asked to teach her the arcane art of fashioning instruments for skrying. Obviously, the master wizard was rather taken aback by this unusual request, and his famulus, a wizard by the name of Sebastian Ruetli, tried to dismiss my grandmother with some rather arrogant and insulting remarks.
Matilda promptly turned him into a toad, whereupon Mr. Wermuth showed himself suitably impressed by her abilities and attitude and accepted her as his apprentice. My grandmother gracefully returned Mr. Ruetli to his former shape – she would have to do this several times more over the next two years as the famulus and her never really hit it off – and moved in.
Whenever my mother told me the story she grew rather vague at this point, but I had occasion to see a portrait of my grandmother at the old Sartorius house in Cologne and I think this it how it happened:
Picture a young witch of about twenty or twenty-one, slightly buxom, with an impish smile, waist-long chocolate-brown hair, deep blue sparkling eyes and all her curves in the right places. She is intelligent, funny and determined, following her master quickly and aptly in her skills and learning fast."
Lucius interrupted her with an exaggerated leer. "Picture her? I already wish I'd met her!"
She playfully tapped his shin with her foot under the table. "Behave yourself, Lucius! You're talking about my dear deceased grandmother. I'm afraid her descendant will have to do."
The wizard leaned forward. "Well you seem to have inherited some of her traits, particularly the part about being headstrong and having all the right curves in all the right places," he growled and wriggled his eyebrows at her.
She shook her head in mock exasperation. "Do you want to hear this story or not?"
He lifted a placating hand. "Of course, but you must promise me to pursue this sideline further, say, perhaps tonight?"
She finally had to laugh. "Promise," she said. "Provided you remind me nicely."
He smirked at her. "Let me surprise you…"
Eleanor suppressed an anticipatory shiver of pleasure, took a sip of tea and resumed her tale.
"Well, anyway, it appears that after about two years Mr. Wermuth was so impressed with his young apprentice that at the sprightly age of one-hundred and twenty-one he decided to break the habit of a lifetime and become my grandfather."
Lucius' eyebrows shot up. "One-hundred and twenty-one!" he exclaimed. "Well, I always knew that Mr. Wermuth was an exceptional wizard, but that is a rather extraordinary feat. Now I am really jealous of the man!"
Eleanor grinned. "What? Do you think you won't be still alive and capable when you have reached that tender age? I am very disappointed with your lack of faith in your prowess. Are you trying to dissuade me from marrying you?"
The wizard gave her an appraising glance. "You know, I am sure all this can be attributed to the – ah – talents of your grandmother. So once I have married her granddaughter, I am certain I can look forward to a similar experience."
She took a bite of her sandwich and Lucius watched her eyes crinkle with amusement. "You know, in that case you might not like the rest of the story. It seems old Mr. Wermuth had soon overtaxed himself, because he was found dead in his bed a little while later, with an expression of serene peacefulness on his face.
Matilda stayed on for a few more weeks, but ended up fighting so badly with the famulus that she finally packed her belongings and a few items Mr. Wermuth had left her in his will and made her way home to Innsbruck, where her parents eventually took her in, only to find out to their embarrassment that their daughter had brought back one other souvenir from her apprenticeship: she was now pregnant with my mother.
She decided to have the baby and her parents tried to keep the whole shameful event under wraps by pretending that her daughter was really my grandmother's sister. Matilda played along until she felt that both she and the baby were ready to travel. She then left Innsbruck for the last time in her life and moved to Cologne, where she found employment as a governess with the Sartorius family. My mother and my father grew up together as children while my grandmother taught the Sartorius boys magic.
When Mr. Ruetli wrote his master's famous biography a few years after the events he did not mention the hated Matilda or the toad episodes at all. He was probably unaware that Mr. Wermuth had actually fathered a child shortly before his death. If he did know, he obviously chose to protect his master's privacy and suppressed the information. And that's how the famous Swiss master of skrying bowls and crystal balls ended up on my family tree."
Lucius looked quite thoughtful now. "Do you know anything else about your grandfather's work?"
Eleanor drained her cup of tea. "Outside of what the Ruetli book mentions, you mean? Not really. My grandmother had already been dead a few years when I was born and my mother and father were making an effort to live like muggles, remember? So telling me tall tales about wizarding grandfathers wasn't really part of their educational concept."
"Yes, regrettably so," nodded the blond wizard. "Let's go back to the family tree. I want to show you something."
He led the way back across the empty, echoing floor to the mural and scanned the complicated branch-work of the vast drawing. "Here," he said, and Eleanor saw his slender fingers point to the names of his parents. "Lavinia Malfoy, my mother, had an older sister, Cassandra, who was married – over here – to Theobald Wermuth, a nephew of Desiderius." His hand traced out the connections.
"Now, through these relationships my family always knew that Desiderius had a second talent that he managed to keep hidden from the public: he was a very capable mirror maker. In fact, in his sixties he crafted a mirror of unsurpassed power, a mirror he secretly sought to replicate in his later years. In this he failed, despite all his efforts. The mirror was called the Mirror of Battle."
Eleanor looked at her lover. "Neither the Ruetli biography nor my family ever mentioned anything about a mirror," she said.
"Well, they wouldn't," answered Lucius. "The Mirror of Battle is supposed to be a formidable magical weapon, the use of which was forbidden even at the time Wermuth crafted it."
She sighed. "A weapon, and a banned weapon at that! Why am I not surprised you know about something like that?"
Her lover stared at the family tree for a moment. "Because I researched what I could in order to gain leverage and influence with Lord Voldemort after his return. We believed at one point it would prove to be a means to defeat Potter, Dumbledore and his miserable band of meddlesome do-gooders."
The red-haired witch paused. "But you didn't. Why not?"
"Because we were unable to find it. Wermuth put a 'blood of kin' spell on many of his magical possessions. Only members of his blood-line could locate them, and the last known member of his kin was Cassandra's son, who died eleven years agoshortly afterhe had accidentally picked up a female werewolf at a club outside Prague during a full moon. He never had a lot of sense. Anyway, she turned him and a month later the local auror squad took him out with a bunch of silver bullets."
Lucius clasped her arms. "But now here you are: direct descendant through your mother of the famous craftsman himself! Blessed be your adventurous grandmother!"
Eleanor kept her face carefully expressionless as she looked at her future husband. "You do not mean to retrieve the mirror to get back into Voldemort's good graces, do you?" she asked slowly.
His pale grey eyes widened, then his lips compressed in anger. "Of course not! How can you even think that? Above all I am Malfoy. Threaten my house and I will be your sworn enemy. I will never ally myself with Voldemort again, as long as I live."
She laid her hand on his chest with a smile. "Nemo me impune lacessit," she quoted the Malfoy family motto. "The serpent will always bite the heel of the one who tried to set foot on it."
He laid his hand across hers. "We will retrieve the mirror to defend this family and to keep us safe. We will make the Dark Lord himself fear us."
Lucius paused, reaching for her and turning them both towards the mural again. "Look at this," he said, and she felt the passion in his voice. "The dreams, the pain, the love, the magic that are woven into this tapestry of lives! And we will continue it – for your house and for mine."
Eleanor craned her neck and looked up at the mad tangle of names that filled the wall; and for a moment she thought she could see patterns and a destiny, warp and woof of generation after generation, a living, breathing work of art with every life stitched into it in the colors of cruelty and mercy, laughter and tears, love and hate, achievement and failure. She felt strength in this pattern, a life-force that would not be denied.
She nodded slowly, finally understanding the man who stood at her side: the past mattered, family and ancestry mattered; but she also knew that she would always view the odd muggle in this fabric as an enrichment, like a curious bead or a whimsical piece of embroidery perhaps, whereas to him it would never be anything but a stain of shame.
His voice broke her reverie and she realized that his thoughts had taken an entirely different turn: "It's time we began making plans for the handfasting."
She looked over at him and lifted a brow in surprise. "Don't you think we have rather a lot on our plate at the moment?" she asked. "After six years I don't mind waiting for a few months more to make sure we don't have a bunch of uninvited Death Eaters show up at the ceremony."
Lucius shook his head. "Don't you understand, Eleanor?"
He indicated the family tree with a lift ofhis chin. "This is all we have. This is all we are. This is what makes us strong. If we are family, if we are Malfoy, we can defeat anyone. We always have, throughout the ages, through the centuries of persecution and the Time of Burning until this very day."
The witch felt warmth spread through her at the earnestness of his confession that he truly wanted her by his side as his wife. She had to admit that he had a point. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and being aligned as loyal members of a fighting team gave them the best chance they had against Voldemort's servants, who were mostly impelled by fear and selfishness.
She turned and faced him. "Then let's do this quickly," she said, adding with a grin. "We could always elope…"
For a moment he caught her mood and pulled her against him. "Now you're talking," he growled as his lips captured hers and his hands slipped into her robes.
She sighed, feeling the stress, fear and anger of the day dissolve at the taste of his mouth and the solid feel of his body as she wrapped her arms around him.
As she expected him to deepen the kiss, however, he pulled back, so he could again focus on her face. "But Malfoys don't elope," he declared firmly. "And neither should Sartorius."
She blinked, licked her lips and cleared her throat. "They don't?" she asked, feeling a stab of annoyance at having to talk again when she could think of a dozen better uses for her tongue just now.
His grip on her tightened to emphasize his point. "No, they don't," he repeated. "They invite all those witches and wizards who are now whispering and gossiping behind our backs every time we turn around, who give us dark looks and secretly gloat at the demise of the house of Malfoy, all those who think we are a disgrace and that we are finished.
We will not slink about and crawl and hide and avert our faces in embarrassment. We will throw a wedding that will become proverbial in the years to come. We will feed these people on delicacies that will make the food of the rest of their days taste like ashes. We will present a Manor that will make the men frown in anger every time they pick their last measly galleon out of their purses. We will have you wear robes that will make every witch green with envy at the sight of their own most expensive fineries."
Eleanor swallowed at the vehemence of his declaration of defiance. She doubted that it would make them many friends or allies in the months to come, but she remembered her annoying encounter with the two silly witches at Flourish & Blotts and could see where he was coming from.
She had spent most of the summer at the Manor and occasionally at Durmstrang where the recent events in England were not viewed as particularly alarming or important. No one had treated her any different. But Lucius had tried to reestablish his position at the Ministry and resumed his business affairs over the past few weeks, and she could imagine to what extent he had been made to feel an outcast and had to put up with people's hypocritical sense of superiority.
She nodded and placed a quick kiss on his lips. "Fine Lucius," she said. "Let's knock their pointy wizard shoes off! I'm in! What's the date?"
He shrugged. "It'll take us a few weeks to get everything organized. You pick."
Eleanor did a few quick calculations and then smiled. "How about a date you're bound never to forget: Halloween, your birthday?"
For a moment he regarded her gravely, but then tightened his arms in an embrace around her. "I think I'd rather remember that day for something else than Narcissa's annual charity ball at St. Mungo's and the death of my mother. We'll make it the 31st of October. That will give us eight weeks to prepare."
He felt his lover shift against him. "Two months, and Durmstrang starts next week. It will kill us. You realize of course, we'll have to buy at least three additional house elves to pull this off, and we may have to threaten to pay them, too!"
