Chapter Three: Uneasy Introductions
Aubrey blinked several times, her mind referring to each and every article she'd read about Sirius Black in the Dailey Prophet. He was a criminal, having killed thirteen people and had escaped Azkaban prison three years ago. Now…he was dead, and he father. Aubrey's gaze slowly shifted to her mother, who held her own dignity in the palm of her hand tightly, as if she let go, it would destroy her.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Aubrey whispered under her breath, her eyes slowly closing as she realized the full amount of those words.
"I told you, I did it because I wanted you to have a normal life." Aubrey's mother looked as if she were going to cry, but she still held her head high and awaited anything Aubrey was going to throw at her with the best of her strength. Aubrey suddenly felt sorry for her stepfather, had he known this? And then in another way, she felt bad for her mom, what had her stepfather thought of it when she told him.
"Now that you know that, miss Blake, may we continue?" Aubrey turned her attention to the man behind the desk.
"Yes sir." He nodded and lowered his gaze to the papers in front of him.
"You, my dear, have been left with his property, a house which resides in London, and everything contained within that house." Aubrey swallowed, finding it hard to rid herself of the lump, the blockage that stopped her from doing so. "You have the choice of doing anything you wish to these possessions, I could even take you and show you the property if you wished, but before that, I have a sort of a proposition I was instructed to give to you, an offer."
"An offer, but if the house was not for sale, how would any know to offer?" Aubrey's stepfather questioned, leaning forward in his seat and eyeing Mr. Navarre.
"You're right, but… there were a couple that were given permission by Mr. Black several years ago to use the house as they wished, and wish to purchase the property from your step… daughter." He hesitated in saying it, in case there was a different word used. "At a good price too." He added to assure them. Aubrey was about to speak and say she wished to have some of the possessions held within the house when her father spoke up.
"I think that Aubrey would like to meet this couple before she agrees to anything, right?" he looked pointedly at Aubrey for her approval, she couldn't believe he was acting as if everything was ok, but guessed it was partial to the fact that they were in the company of another. Aubrey nodded insignificantly, all in all she would have no real choice in this, her parents would override her every decision. Mr. Navarre watched the girl's actions, much like that of his own daughter when she felt like she had no choice.
"I think it's up to miss Blake… are you sure you wish to meet with…" he looked down upon the papers once again. "Mr. And Mrs. Arthur Weasley?" Aubrey considered it for several moments.
"Yes." She said after moments of silence. "But…" she looked over at her mother, who seemed void of emotion, which enraged her all the more. "I'm not sure I want to allow them to buy it…" her mother's jaw dropped.
"You can't keep a house and the possessions of-"
"I very well can." Aubrey interrupted bitterly, "these things now belong to me, and I'm going to decide what I will do with them." Her mother's shock sent a chill down her spine, it was overwhelming. "I think I'd like to see everything as well… before I make my decision." Aubrey looked up at the man behind the desk with a slight smile.
"Well." He replied with a slight hesitation. "The Weasleys should be waiting outside that very door about now if you wouldn't mind meeting with them first." He pointed out over her shoulder to the door she'd entered in. "and then, we can go see the house after that… but I'll have to send you with someone else, I have a meeting this afternoon." He never expected her to actually want to see the house, but he couldn't turn back now, he'd just have to arrange for someone to chaperone that knew the property so she wouldn't find things she wasn't supposed to.
"That would be nice, but um… Mr. Navarre, if I did agree…. To sell, would I be allowed to… have a few things." he was stunned, and once again hesitated.
"Uh… well, I believe everything is yours even if you decide to sell the house, unless they wish to purchase possessions too, which I don't…I don't know if they do." He stood and gathered the papers from off the desk into a neat pile in the folder. As he stood, it occurred to him that he should check up on Deacon and Samarah, make sure things were ok back at the house. Aubrey stood slowly, and her parents did as well, ready to follow. Aubrey looked pointedly at her mother, dropping her gaze from there.
"You took everything else about my father away from me…allow me to do this on my own, have something, even if it can't be him." Her mother gasped, placing a hand over her mouth and looking to her husband with the words of her daughter.
sSs
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were waiting outside the door as expected, mars. Weasley full of the jitters, questions filling her mind and her nerves racked to the highest they could go.
"Arthur dear, what if she chooses to keep the house? What of…" she hushed herself from speaking. "What of things then, what will we do with…"she stopped herself once again." and poor old Buckbeak, what'll happen to him? He'll be slaughtered and Harry'll be devastated." They didn't even notice the figure now approaching them until it was too late.
"What about me?" Harry asked, his hands shoved deep into his pants pockets. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley both quieted themselves.
"Well, Harry m'boy, we're just worried about you, you've been taking this quite hard as is, and now with this girl… we're just hoping you'll be alright lad." Mr. Weasley placed a hand upon Harry's shoulder.
"And buckbeak? If she keeps the house?" he asked, reading their minds.
"We'll make sure we find him a nice place to stay, maybe the burrow." Mr. Weasley answered.
"Arthur!" she scolded. "The burrow is not a place for a wild animal, we barely have room for the animals we deal with already." Harry grinned and Mr. Weasley chuckled, the Weasley children, especially the twins were quite the handful, and there was now way Mrs. Weasley wouldn't suffer from several heart attacks with a full grown Hippogriff in her backyard, let alone the house. The door they'd been waiting to open suddenly creaked open.
sSs
A small black cat plodded down the stairs without a sound and ventured into the study, where it found deacon alone reading a book. It began curling around his legs and purring incessantly, he pulled the book away from him and looked down on it, shaking his head as it jumped into his lap.
"C'mon Sam, get off it, I'm not in the mood to deal with a feline." The cat barely looked up at him with its green eyes before rubbing it's ear against his elbow, purring louder and louder. "C'mon Sam…" he laughed, running a hand down it's spine and consequentially making the cat arch it's back and collapse into his lap. Laughter came from the doorway and deacon looked up to see Samarah standing there, watching the antics going on in front of her.
"You think I'd be that friendly with you? You'd be nuts!" Samarah voiced through her laughter. "You'd think you'd bloody well be able to decipher your own cat from my Animagus." She shook her head. " And you call yourself smart, you're an utter disgrace to the Ravenclaws."
"Yeah?" he retaliated. Sweeping the cat off of his lap quickly, but gently. "And you don't quite fit in with the Slytherins either." He tossed a book at her and she guarded herself from being hit, it hit her hands and dropped to the floor. She quickly picked it up and walked over, trying to knock him upside the head with it, but he blocked quite well and went in for the tickle. Immediately the book was dropped from her grasp as she gasped for air in her surprise.
"No fair." She shouted, as she tried to get away. He let go and stared at her with his mock evil eyes, but made insufficient with the grin he also wore. "What's with that stupid grin… wait, I guess it goes with the stupidity of your everyday happenings, no difference there." He grabbed his heart and gasped, falling backwards. Worried, Sam tried to grab him, but missed and he fell back into his vacant chair.
"It's not like I don't know my own cat Sam, It's dark in here and I couldn't see the small bit of white on her neck." Sam rolled her eyes.
"Right… anyways, I just came to inform you that I was going into the kitchen to get a snack, not running away." He chuckled.
"A real joker you are…" he laughed a bit more and she turned to go, but he stopped her, leaning forward in his chair. "Hey Sam!" she turned at the doorway to face him, her eyes glimmering in a spooky way in the light from the window, interrupted by the shutters.
"What now, my keeper?" he looked all serious and questioning.
"What, seeing as you like to give me your approval of the girls I'm interested in, what do you think of Hermione Granger?" Her eyebrows lifted and she looked at him as if he'd turned all pale and ghost-like.
"Hermione Granger?" she snapped, "is you kidding me, the bloody girl's a mud blood." He frowned.
"Oh, come off it Sam, don't pull the whole 'purebloods are better than mugglebourne's' thing on me, you don't even know if you're pureblood." Sam breathed deep, knowing he was right, she didn't know that kind of thing, all she knew was that her mother was a pureblood, but what if her father, this Riddle guy, wasn't… Sam made a mental note to check records about it when she got back to school. "Plus, she's better at magic than most other people, that's more important than blood." Sam rolled her eyes.
"You're a grown male, you can make your own decisions, don't let my judgment get in the way, besides, whatever I say, you're going to go ahead anyways, opposites you know." She paused and looked down as the cat shuffled passed her feet with a mouse in its greedy little teeth. "You're good and I'm evil right…" she walked out and left him by himself.
Sam walked into the kitchen, a little bitter, of course, but she was always bitter when it came to Deacon. Deacon, put simply, was as pure as they came, he had perfect Grades, pureblood parents and had already been offered a position in one of the Top secondary Wizarding Schools, while Sam, had nothing. Her mother was dead, her father was… she didn't quite know, she had grades that were only about average and she didn't even know what she wanted to do when she finished school, and everyone just expected she'd become one of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's minions.
sSs
Ron and Ginny awaited their parents in the main lobby sort area, Ron had a bitter look upon his face, though grateful that his brothers weren't there to –bother- him at all. Ginny looked at her brother and was getting fed up with his mood.
"Oh Ron! What's wrong with you? You've been acting like a total Prat since we got here." Ron looked indignantly at his sister.
"A Prat?" he paused and scowled at Ginny. "You even know what you're talking about?" Ginny rolled her eyes and looked at him expectantly.
"Oh get on with it, what's bothering you?" He leaned back casually in his seat.
"Thank Merlin it's not Fred and George." He paused a few seconds and suddenly sat forward in his seat and pointed off towards the elevator. "But why does Harry get to meet this person and we have to wait here, and do nothing at all, it's absolutely Boring…" Ginny rolled her eyes again.
"Harry…gets to meet –Her- because Mum and Dad think it'll give him some sort of closure, what do you expect? To meet the poor girl and she'll fall madly in love with you?" Ginny almost giggled merely at the thought.
"No, I just don't want to sit here… waiting for what seems like forever." Ginny scoffed.
"Ok, whatever…"Ginny Knew her brother too well, he was Jealous of Harry in ways, and this was one of them, Harry got to meet Sirius's daughter and they had to wait in the lobby while it happened. Ginny to began to feel a sort of resentment towards Harry, they'd known Sirius as long as he had, even though they hadn't written him letters. "You do have a point though,…" she added almost incoherently.
sSs
Harry approached the Weasley's with a questioning look.
"What about me?" he questioned them, having caught the end of their conversation barely and wondering what exactly they'd said about him. Returning from a trip to the bathroom, Harry had obviously missed out on more than he ought to have. Mr. Weasley hesitated in answering, but Mrs. Weasley was more on the ball.
"We were just talking about how you're going to adapt to all these changes… I mean, losing your godfather and finding out about his illegitimate child." Harry ignored the way Mrs. Weasley was obviously hiding something from him, he didn't really care anymore, and things didn't really seem to matter anymore.
"Oh…" he answered in a low tone, propping himself up against the wall. Just then, the door in front of them slowly opened and the man that had greeted them earlier came out, leading three people behind him.
"Ah… Mr. Weasley…Mrs. Weasley…Harry." He greeted them himself and then moved to the side to allow the family to see them. "This is Mr. And Mrs. Ayres and their daughter Aubrey." Her eyes immediately fell on the couple as he introduced her and she gave a lighthearted smile, extending her hand as an act of courtesy. Harry watched her with curiosity. She looked so much like Sirius, just as a girl, her hair was the same color, her eyes… her skin, the smile… it was a little creepy to him. Her eyes next fell on him, he knew she probably knew whom he was, but not exactly who he is and what he had to do with… her father.
"Arthur Weasley." Mr. Weasley offered. " This is my Wife Molly Weasley and this is Harry, Harry Potter." Aubrey then offered her hand to him with a slight hesitation, as if she felt inferior. He took it, but his eyes never faltered from hers, he was fixated with them, all of it reminded him of Sirius.
"Harry Was Mr. Black's Godson." Mr. Navarre filled in as their hands separated. "Why don't you acquaint yourselves while I find someone to accompany you, to show you the property." Mr. Weasley looked at him with a small shock, a questioning look, and received a shrug.
"Very well…" Aubrey's father said very demandingly, feeling a bit uncomfortable, but he knew that if he said no, Aubrey would just go against it and she had every right to, even though he hated the attitude she'd taken lately, she had every right to be mad. Mr. Navarre disappeared and didn't return, though another showed up shortly.
"Kingsley?" Mr. Weasley questioned under his breath as the man joined them.
"Kingsley Shacklebolt, I'll be showing you the property I've been informed, and am up to the task… Shall we?" The Weasley's were slightly dumbfounded, but not as much as Harry, who wondered why Kingsley was giving the tour of the house.
"Ahh…" Harry tried as he tried to stop Aubrey from going with a hand upon her shoulder, she turned with great surprise. "I…I really hope you'll consider selling to the Weasleys…" he said under his breath, making her strain to hear him, it was a shock to hear him speak at all. She nodded, knowing it was a very likely thing for her to do, she had no means of caring for a house, when she already occasionally forgot to feed her owl, and had the attention span of a child, too adventurous to even think of keeping the house at her age.
"I...i'll think about ti." She answered, leaving the family there without another word, even though it was because she had no words to speak, she'd taken in too much these last few days.
sSs
Harry ventured onto the train with less troubles than he'd begun the summer with, the house had been sold to the Weasley's, actually, to the Order. Kinglsey had given the tour because he knew the house (or so Harry thought) and to keep Kreacher from causing trouble. The house elf had scared the living daylights out of the poor girl when he appeared in the kitchen during the tour, he was beginning to be sickly, like he'd lost a zest for life and was purposefully trying to rid the world of himself (muttering incoherent nothings of her being Sirius's daughter and how she'd be just like him.) and Kreacher had been given to Aubrey's family because of the blood relation and how he was bound to that bloodline.
Harry sat in the cabin with Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville. Ron and Hermione were fighting over who knows what, and Harry sat staring out the compartment window while Ginny read the morning's Daily Prophet. Neville sat nearly precariously on the edge of his seat, watching Harry and wondering whether or not to speak to him.
"Hey Harry…" he finally ventured, and Harry turned to look at him. "How was your summer?" Neville wore a tiny sized fake grin, awaiting an answer.
"It was okay, how about yours?" Harry answered and returned the favor, though he didn't really want to listen right at the moment. Neville went on to tell him everything and anything he'd encountered, including his mishap when he went to retrieve his books from flourish and Blotts. Harry happened to look over toward the compartment door and a figure stood there. He recognized the girl, but her eyes went wide and she disappeared off to the left.
sSs
to my: well, to my one reviewer...
Serb-Maco : i'm really glad you liked the last chapter, it's going to get real realinteresting after this chapter, i guarantee you.
sincerely, Afireinside