Chapter 22: The Villa
Luca had had his things packed so that he could leave London right after Dagmar's trial. Considering that Blaise had the day off from work, it was a little more difficult than anticipated to pull himself away. His grandparents didn't expect him at any certain time, since Luca hadn't known when the trial would be over. He ended up falling briefly into Blaise's bed with him, enough so to need a shower afterward. That went on long too when Blaise ended up following.
They kept on snogging in front of the fireplace. Eventually, Luca sighed. "I should get going."
"I know." Blaise kissed him again.
"Quit making this so hard," Luca lightly admonished him with a playful swat to the shoulder. "I'll see you Friday."
"Mhm. Love you."
"Love you too."
They ended up snogging again before Luca finally extracted himself. He jumped first to Diagon Alley, and then the London Grand Floo Junction. The Balkan connections were a decent trek through the massive chamber. Luca walked between the Belgian and Dutch ports, and then past Germany, Austria, and Hungary. As he did, the languages surrounding him graduated away from English. Skin tones turned more olive, and clothing became more conservative. Luca saw an older woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. His heart nearly burst from sudden awareness of how much he'd missed his grandmother, and that he would see her again so very shortly.
There were connections to Timișoara in the west, Bucharest in the east, and Cluj-Napoca for the north. Luca got in line behind a couple blokes for Cluj. They were pale beneath dark clothing.
The two vampires disappeared into the green flames after organizing themselves. Luca followed. No matter how he braced himself for the long spin, he started to grow nauseous around what he figured was halfway. When the floo room on the other end finally manifested in front of him, Luca nearly stumbled out. The room slightly spun with streaks of green. One of the other fires crackled. By the time Luca's equilibrium returned, he was alone. The vampires had carried on their way.
A large sign welcomed Luca back to Cluj-Napoca: the Heart of Magical Transylvania. The sounds of people out on Stradă crept in, along with warm air. Luca thought he heard a goat or a sheep bleat. The nearby bakery set Luca's mouth into a painful salivation. He'd yet to eat today. The dying morning in London had transitioned to mid-afternoon here in Romania. As tempting it was to fetch something, no doubt Mamaie had prepared all of Luca's favourites in anticipation for his return.
He stepped up to one of the unnamed fireplaces. "Parasca Villa!"
Luca spun some more, hardly daring to blink as he waited for the kitchen and living room of his childhood home to appear. His breath caught when it did. With it, Mamaie looked back over her shoulder from where she worked on something in the kitchen. She wiped her hands on her apron as Luca stepped out onto the hearth rug.
Mamaie beamed as she came around the kitchen table. "There's my little boy."
Luca snorted, for he had long sprouted to well over a head taller than her. He enveloped her in a hug, squeezing before pressing a kiss against her hair. The dry scent of flour clung to it.
"It's so good to be home," Luca said with a sigh. He retained a little bit of the accent he picked up while at school, but figured it would be gone by dinner time as his tongue readjusted to speaking Romanian. "Smells good in here."
Mamaie laughed as Luca's stomach growled. "I'll heat you up some leftover ciorbă."
She headed back into the kitchen. Luca shrugged off his jacket and returned his school trunk to normal size before setting it at the bottom of the stairs. He laid his jacket over the back of the couch, ear craned toward the office at the front of the house.
"Where's Tataie?" he asked.
"Out with your mum, I think," Mamaie replied. "Have a peach cookie if you like. I just sugared them. Don't touch the apple cake. That's for Grigore tomorrow."
Luca already had a peach cookie halfway to his mouth. Habitually at the mention of apple cake, he glanced toward the stove. A dark something vanished out of sight as Grigore ducked down behind it. The cats had already made themselves scarce, sensitive to the mischievous energy that preemptively emanated from the imminent little beast.
While the pot of soup warmed up (Luca earned a tsk and swat from Mamaie for getting in her way while he tried to see what kind of ciorbă it was), he further ruined his appetite by taking another cookie and a pyjama apple. The soup was light anyway, just a leek one. The bowl of it vanished quickly in front of Luca. Mamaie clicked her tongue when Luca filled his hands with even more sweets. He dodged the tea towel she snapped in his direction and skirted for the front door.
The smell of chickens, livestock, and emerging spring greeted Luca on the porch. Brown, black, and white ruminants dotted the two large fields that flanked the drive. The tiniest ones among them—the piglets, lambs, kids, and calves—all chased each other around while the adults either grazed or kipped in the sunshine. Luca watched them while idly chewing.
Down by the tree line, a smaller road branched off to the left. Luca zipped his jacket higher when he stepped into the shadow of the hills that surrounded the villa. On the corner of the property was the family mausoleum, a stately white building nestled into the forest. Luca's heart and throat started to ache. His feet slowed as if stuck in mud. Although he'd seen his mum's body before his grandparents brought her home from London, this somehow felt so much more final.
A dark mass came out of the shadows at the side of the mausoleum. Even though he didn't really feel like it, Luca smiled anyway as his grandpa's favourite hound came barreling over to say hello. Luca had to dodge Garri trying to jump up. There wasn't really anything to be done for it.
"Buna ziua, Garri!" Luca exclaimed.
He held Garri by the sides of his head before roughing up his jowls. The tan bits of fur on Garri's face and paws had gone a little grey since Luca last saw him. With a pang, he realized anew that it had been almost a year. Luca hadn't made it this way at Christmas. The villa had been baking under the summer sun the last time Luca walked its grounds.
His grandparents had complained for the entirety of July that Mamă hadn't come home. They weren't used to her working as an Auror again. They'd all barely had a chance to readjust to that before things went the way they had. Surely this hadn't been what Mamaie and Tataie asked for in wanting her back. As Luca came up on the mausoleum entrance, his grandpa's voice wafted out from inside. Luca couldn't imagine who else he would be talking to.
He didn't want to startle his grandpa. Luca riled up Garri to the point that he barked. That made for silence in the mausoleum. When Luca headed in, he found his grandpa sitting between two of the coffin platforms on a blue wooden chair. The mausoleum smelled of burnt tobacco. Tataie set his pipe down on the little table beside him and uncrossed his legs to stand. Despite all the emotions Luca dealt with, he mirrored his grandfather's grin before meeting him in a tight hug.
It quickly dissolved, sent on by heavy pats to Luca's back. Seeing both his grandparents and being under the same roof as his mum again was too much.
Up until now, Luca hadn't realized just how terribly he needed something paternal in the wake of everything. Even though Tataie was technically his grandfather, he practically doubled as a father. All the pain, fear, and doubt Luca had experienced since the siege on Hogwarts cut right back open. Thankfully, Tataie didn't mind that it all landed right on his shoulders. He rubbed Luca's back.
"It's all right," Tataie murmured by his ear. "You're home now."
Luca nodded. Eventually, he settled into a sniffle. He wiped at his eyes before Tataie let him go. Although embarrassed, Luca kept a straight spine as Tataie left a hand on his arm. Like Garri, Tataie showed a little more age about him. His hair couldn't go any greyer, but the lines on his face ran a little deeper than Luca last remembered. Tataie didn't look quite as awful as he had at Christmas, though.
"I'm done for the day, if you want to head back inside," Tataie said. "Your grandma and I only planned to put in until noon so that we could be free once you got here."
"Da, sure."
The scent of coffee overrode all, in the house. All of Mamaie's baking had been put away, and the counters were clean again. Luca could hear her moving around upstairs in her and Tataie's room as he took a seat at the kitchen table. A door closed before she came back downstairs.
"I put your trunk outside your door," she told Luca.
"Oh—right. Sorry, I meant to take it up before I went outside."
Mamaie affectionately squeezed the back of his neck in passing. While Tataie poured three cups of coffee, she fetched cream and sugar. Mamaie set them on the table and took her seat beside Luca.
"Well, we did as you asked," she said. "We didn't read any papers or anything about what happened at Hogwarts. It didn't stop news from getting to us, though."
"Rumours, perhaps." Tataie set a cup in front of each of them. "A couple people have asked me on Stradă why Voldemort was looking for you."
"Was he?" Mamaie asked. "Is that true?"
Luca masked his hesitation behind a sip of coffee. Sitting in the kitchen of his childhood home with the man and woman that had raised him along with his mum incited another weird shift of reality. They'd never had any idea that, hidden away in this Romanian valley, they'd brought up Voldemort's son. They'd in a way brought up Voldemort himself.
He told them everything crucial about who he was and what had happened at Hogwarts because of it. The kitchen's silence in the wake was horrible. Although Mamaie tried not to let her emotions get away from her, the whites of her eyes reddened with irritation. The lines on either side of her mouth became more pronounced. Tataie rested a hand on Luca's wrist. His grip tightened to a nearly painful level.
"This last month since the siege hasn't been awesome either," Luca said. "I'm here, though. I'm not in danger anymore. It's kind of unsettling to realize I was before, and I just had no idea."
"It is." Tataie cleared his throat to make rid of the raspiness in his voice. "We must have kept you well-hidden for this to take so long. I'm very sorry that happened. I don't think it's what any of us expected."
Luca shook his head. When he toyed with his bottom lip, he could feel all the mamelons on his teeth from the intensity. "It doesn't make you think about me any differently, does it?"
"Goodness, of course not," Mamaie said. "You'll always be our little boy. Nothing can change that—not who you are, not where you came from."
"I don't really know what to do with it all. I was used to the idea I'd probably never know anything about what came before I was here, but now I know I was kidnapped. I was born in the Greek Isles on the back of a creature that looks like an island. My bio-mum wanted me. She looked for me. I have an older sister. I'm a Parselmouth because Voldemort is. I'm living where my roots are, as far as he goes. We've gone to the same school. I know about his family—where they lived, how they lived, and what their names were. The island-creature that I was born on is sleeping in the lake at Hogwarts right now. I've talked to Dagmar, and we're okay. Everyone's talking about me. It's just a lot all of a sudden."
Tataie squeezed where he still held Luca's wrist. "Two weeks away couldn't have come at a better time, ei?"
"It really doesn't bother you?" Luca asked. "I don't mean to disrespect you by being curious about all of it. It really shouldn't matter. It was only the first year of my life. You two and Mamă are all I know. You're my whole life."
"We prepared for the possibility your bio-mum might eventually track you down." Mamaie sipped her coffee. "It was always normal for you to be curious. This was partly why we all made the decision to be honest with you about being adopted. We didn't want you to be caught by surprise by someone showing up out of the blue—or something like this, I suppose. Whatever your heritage, you shouldn't be cut off from that. It's why we let you choose between attending Beauxbatons or Durmstrang."
Luca nodded slowly. That had been an agonizing decision. As tempted he was by the possibility of tracking down his bio-mum or potential siblings through Beauxbatons, he was also terrified of rejection. He'd opted instead to honour the educational traditions of the family that chose him. The little identity crisis ten-year-old Luca went through over that had nothing on this most recent one.
"I haven't talked to Hildegard yet," Luca replied. "I'm really conflicted about it. It's not good timing, when Mamă just died. I don't want to feel like I'm only interested in Hildegard because I have this new void in my life. I also don't want to feel like I'm moving on from Mamă, like she wasn't my mum and now that my real mum is here, who cares. Plus the first time me and Hildegard met was not good. She saved my life, but I wasn't sure that's what she was there for. We've both spent the last sixteen years wondering about each other. She's going to trial tomorrow, so I don't even know if she'll be free. Did I waste my one chance to meet her by not doing so before she sits in front of the Wizengamot? Dagmar and I talked about visiting the island together. There's another creature there that can show me what the first year of my life was like. Apparently it was happy. I just—I don't know. There's so much to think about."
"There sure is." Tataie hummed in thought. "Should she go free tomorrow, will Hildegard be at Bellatrix's trial next week?"
"I don't see why she wouldn't."
"Unless it's too soon, we could meet her with you?"
"I don't know." Luca shrugged. "I doubt I'd be in the right frame of mind for that. I'd rather focus completely on what Bellatrix's trial means for Mamă."
"Fair enough." Tataie sipped his coffee. "I doubt we would be either, but I would look past it if it was important enough to you."
Like the first spark of tentative flame, warm gratitude swelled up in Luca's heart. It bloomed into such an acute form of love that Luca could hardly believe he'd experienced any anxiety in tandem with it. However uncertain he felt right now, solid ground remained beneath his feet. This man and woman, despite not being related by blood to Luca, were his family. That had not changed, even though everything else did.
Luca had no idea how to properly express that. Both his grandparents seemed to understand what he meant by laying a hand on each of their shoulders. Mamaie rested her cheek on Luca's right, and Tataie pat his left. Luca had to give them both another hug when they'd all stood.
Tataie put his coffee cup in the sink. "You had better come see all the new babies. There are only a couple heifers and ewes pulling up the rear."
Luca brightened. "I saw them running around—"
"Go put your things away first," Mamaie sternly said.
With a sigh, Luca's shoulders slumped. "Da, okay."
Luca changed into more proper clothes for tagging along with Tataie through the mucky fields. A twill shirt wasn't quite enough to shield him against the weather. Luca threw a puffer vest overtop, and then had to go searching even deeper in his closet for some rubber boots.
The babies were all very cute. The Muggle farmhands were annoying as always, ribbing Luca about his mysterious and probably-posh international education. The treats Mamaie brought out for everyone at the end of the workday (rugelach filled with Turkish delights) were delicious. So was dinner (potato moussaka and homemade bread). A full and warm belly nearly had Luca nodding off on the couch after helping clean up and putting food out for the cats and dogs. About a handful of the cats followed Garri inside, although most of them retreated back out with puffed tails because of Grigore.
A grumpy-looking white Persian named Baz followed Luca upstairs when Mamaie shooed him to bed. Baz sat in the bathroom doorway and watched Luca brush his teeth.
"Why so angry, Baz?" Luca teased him.
Baz just kept on purring as response. Luca left his bedroom door open in case Baz wanted to sleep in there. Baz eventually trailed in, opting for the desk instead of the bed. Luca's room was at the front of the house, so Baz sat and watched the livestock.
In what felt like a blink, morning had replaced twilight. There was a tapping sound. Luca furrowed his brow when cat chirping followed.
Luca sighed. "Baz."
Another tap came.
"K-k-k-k-k," Baz went.
"Fuck's sake."
The owl at Luca's window stared at him when he looked. He didn't recognize it, although it held what could only be a newspaper. It flew off after Luca took it.
Luca had forgotten that he'd asked Blaise to send him the Prophet this week. As much as he would've loved to continue avoiding the press forever, he needed to know now just how the truth had been laid out. The Prophet had announced on Friday that each daily publication after the Death Eater trials began would consist of special editions centred around them.
Luca leafed through the paper a little bit on his gradual way downstairs. Mrs Malfoy had also been cleared on all charges. Luca's stomach flipped a little to think that Hildegard probably sat in front of the Wizengamot right this moment. It flipped back the other way when Luca found a picture that included him in the photo section. He, Blaise, Draco, Theo, and Daphne all looked toward the left of the frame. Judging by their nervous expressions and the chain of clenched hands, they watched the vote for Dagmar's verdict.
Small noises sounded from the kitchen. Luca assumed that to mean that's where he would find Mamaie, but he nearly dropped the paper when he reached the corner landing of the stairs. The kitchen had gone quiet with his arrival since Grigore made himself scarce. The same could not be said for the mess he'd made.
"Oh my god," Luca said loudly enough for Grigore to hear where he ducked down behind the stove. It was important that his mischief be acknowledged today. "Grigore! You absolutely awful little man."
Naughty pleasure emanated from Grigore's spot as Luca cleaned up. He'd gotten into the pantry, which in turn meant the flour and icing sugar. Pots and pans laid out everywhere, as did cloves of garlic. Grigore had taken care to unwrap each one before placing them, sprinkling the paper over the living room furniture. Little white footprints showed Grigore's path across the couches and Tataie's chair. The slice of apple cake on Grigore's designated table needed to be replenished.
It satisfied Grigore more to see the cleanup be done without magic, so it was nearly a half-hour later that Luca left the house. A dull thump sounded from inside barely a heartbeat after the front door closed behind Luca. Armed with a slice of savoury cake in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other, Luca hoped the next disaster wouldn't be his to deal with.
Tataie's pickup was gone from under the carport. Luca headed for the clinical barn, where Mamaie had mentioned she'd be today. She and her assistant, a young Muggle woman from nearby Plopi named Irina, were busy with a barn full of babies due to be either ringed for castration, inoculated, or both. Luca ended up tilting his head back to finish his coffee and then stuffing the last of his breakfast into his mouth so that he could help.
While Irina released a handful of babies out to their pacing mothers, Luca lowered his voice to Mamaie. "Your domovoy is a terror."
"Oh, he's my domovoy now?" Mamaie nudged Luca with a playfully austere look. "I had a feeling he might be worse than usual. Considering how the last year went for our family, we could use all the luck he can offer for the one ahead."
Luca thought about the mausoleum with a pang. "Da, true enough. It probably didn't help that I brought everything I did home on the eve of his day."
"It was good timing," Mamaie said. "That energy will be cleansed away. We start fresh tomorrow."
Luca felt heartened by that assertion. "Blaise sent me a copy of the London newspaper this morning. I've got it here for whenever you're interested. I didn't trust Grigore enough to leave it in the house."
Mamaie chuckled. "Smart."
Tataie returned later, similarly intent to avoid the house. He popped into the clinical barn to discuss hay and grain with Mamaie (he'd renewed the usual agreement with Vasile to trade a year's supply for meat and harvest labour). After that, Luca tagged along on a lap around the fields so they could check for any signs of lynx or wolves. They tended to hang around a lot during the birthing season. The pair of 452 rifles Luca and Tataie slung over their backs were (mostly) just for show for the Muggles. Since none of the farmhands were around, Tataie pulled his wand out instead to put up warding spells wherever they found tracks.
The two of them talked on their way around about everything Luca had told Tataie and Mamaie the night before. Now Tataie had time to digest it more properly, he had questions. Luca clarified and elaborated what he could, offering to give Tataie the copy of the Prophet to read once they were all settled in for the evening.
Given Grigore's behaviour today, that wasn't due to be easy. Sure enough, Mamaie had found her way back to the house late-afternoon to begin preparing dinner and was ranting up a storm about sticky little fingerprints all over the windows. Luca went upstairs to change out of his farm clothes, then joined his grandparents on the back porch. Grigore thankfully hadn't gotten into the mici that Mamaie pre-made the night before. While the sausages cooked on the barbecue, Mamaie and Tataie passed the Daily Prophet back and forth.
Luca answered more questions between mouthfuls of buttered bread. The Prophet had essentially published transcripts of Dagmar and Mrs Malfoy's trials, and then committed the rest of the issue to speculation. Luca realized then that the outcome of Hildegard's trial would be known. He headed inside to fetch the messenger he shared with Blaise.
"Hildegard got off," he told his grandparents when he returned. "No Azkaban."
Tataie hummed. "How do you feel about that?"
Luca just shrugged. Of course he was happy for Hildegard's sake that she wouldn't have to rot in that horrible place, but it made things a bit more complicated for him again. He still had a decision to make about how to proceed with her.
He went back and forth a little bit with Blaise (Mamaie and Tataie asked him to say hello for them) before taking a walk down the road to the mausoleum. Mamaie and Tataie offered to give Luca space to visit alone with his mum.
While grateful for that, it was also a little intimidating. Mamă was only the most recent one laid to rest in the mausoleum. Its silence felt full and loud with all of that history greeting Luca. It was a little less unsettling when he lit all the torches with a wave of his wand. He had to brace himself before gesturing his wand toward Mamă's coffin next.
"Revelio," he said.
The top of the coffin down to the widest part faded away, turned invisible. Luca's breath caught in his throat. Mamă's face tilted toward him, and her hands laid over each other on top of her stomach. The preservation magic centred around her wand—held in her right hand—did almost too good of a job. Her few grey hairs had disappeared, and her face smoothed out. By Christmas, Mamă wouldn't hardly look any older than Luca. Her pinky and ring fingers on her left hand already showed some signs of regrowth.
"Alo, Mamă," Luca quietly greeted her as he sat down in the blue chair. He knew he couldn't wake her, but it still felt too disrespectful at the moment to just barge in with anymore energy than that. "Good to see you again. I wish I could've come sooner, but—well, I'm sure you understand with me still at school and all. Tataie's probably told you all about how that's been going. It's been okay. Er—not great, actually."
It struck Luca as so strange that Mamă hadn't lived long enough to know about the things he commenced to tell her. Since all Mamă could do was listen, Luca found it much easier to spill his heart and guts about all of it once he got going. He wanted more than anything to know her opinion about this weird space between him and Hildegard. It probably wouldn't even be so weird if Mamă was still around. Their paths had crossed at Azkaban. Could Mamă have ever imagined when she accompanied Potter out there to conduct interviews that she looked in on the woman whose son she had raised?
"I wish you could tell me what to do." Luca rested his hand over where his mum's laid. "I think I'm handling it so far as best I can. I'm glad me and Dagmar are okay. It felt natural when we met up. I don't know about Hildegard. You always said it would be up to me about meeting my bio-mum if she found me, but what about now? You know who she is. Maybe that wouldn't be such a big deal if you were still here. I would've wanted you with me. Maybe you would've gotten along with her. I think she and Luzia are friends. . .or were. Luzia doesn't say much about how she feels about Hildegard anymore. Especially now. I bet she's being careful around me."
Luca paused, studying his mum. What sorts of things might she say in response? Luzia never mentioned anything to me. Or: Luzia and I talked about it over lunch on Friday and—
"I miss you." Luca's eyes grew heavy. "I miss you a lot. I can't believe I have to go the rest of my life without you. I can't believe how close we came to never meeting at all. Or maybe we would have, just on opposite sides of things. I've wondered a lot who I would be if Hildegard raised me. I probably wouldn't be much different of a person, but what if Voldemort had survived past 1981? Hildegard was scared people would want to kill Dagmar because she had part of Voldemort's soul inside of her. If the war was worse, would that have been the case for me? Do you think you might have joined the hunt, like you did that strigoi that turned out to be Voldemort?"
Silence.
"I guess it's pointless to think about," Luca said with a sigh. "I just can't help but be curious. I'm glad my life while with Hildegard was good and happy. I don't think anyone would want to imagine me being hurt or sad as a baby. It's so confusing, is all. I hope you would know that if I ever reconnected with Hildegard, I could never forget you. You're my mum. She would have to understand and respect that for us to have any sort of chance at a relationship."
Night had fallen completely when Luca left the mausoleum. He just ignored whatever Grigore had done now to turn the house upside down before heading upstairs. He hadn't had much chance to talk to Blaise since he arrived, which Blaise expected from previous experience. That didn't make Luca miss him any less. The end of the school year could not come soon enough, so that Luca could stop dividing already limited time between two homes.
Luca had locked his messenger back into his trunk so that Grigore wouldn't be able to get to it. After fetching it, he happened to glance at his bed. There was a flat, round bump in the centre of it.
He pulled the cover back, then gasped. "GRIGORE!"
Little powdered footprints completely covered the sheet. The icing sugar clung to the blanket as well. The round thing Luca had noticed was Mamaie's best pan. Inside of it, among twigs and dead leaves, was a dead bird one of the cats must have brought up on the porch.
Luca set the pan on his desk and ripped the sheets off his bed. As he thundered back downstairs with the pan and its contents, he could practically feel Grigore vibrating with excitement. "Grigore, you'll be so lucky Mamaie doesn't drag you out from behind that stove by your hairy little toes. She won't want to use this anymore! And you can have your bird back."
With a wrinkled nose, Luca picked it up by a wing and set it on Grigore's table. Normally that would offend him, but that Grigore got such a rise out of Luca was all that mattered right now. The kitchen was a disaster again, of course—even without the muddy pan in the sink. Luca wondered if there was even a point to cleaning it up until after midnight.
Waking happened in similar fashion to the previous morning. Luca faded in from deep sleep to the sound of tapping at his window. He'd shut and locked his bedroom door to avoid Grigore sneaking in, so no cats were there to show interest in the owl. Luca yawned while accepting this morning's copy of the Prophet. He jarred awake, startled, as he looked over the cover.
Luca thought it was a picture of himself at first. He had absolutely no memory of ever posing with a cup or wearing a waistcoat, so this had to be Voldemort. He wasn't much older in the photo than Luca was now—certainly not yet twenty.
Nausea touched the back of Luca's throat to meet the photograph's eyes. They still retained the same coldness, but hadn't gone from brown to scarlet yet. Luca reached up mindlessly to touch the cowlick on the right side of his hairline. Voldemort once had the exact same one.
The photo's caption read 'Tom Riddle, who would eventually become known as You-Know-Who, as pictured during his employment at Borgin & Burkes in Knockturn Alley'. Luca had honed in on it, but it only comprised of one corner of the page. He hadn't even noticed an actual picture of himself next to Voldemort, their faces similar sizes fit for comparison. Above the two of them were Hildegard and Dagmar. For half a second, Luca couldn't even tell which one was which. One was taken during some sort of party, and the other on what could have been Monday morning judging by the light colour of robes. Luca's instinct that the first was a younger Hildegard and the second Dagmar turned out correct.
The party photo had been taken in 1991. It was some sort of function at Malfoy Manor. Hildegard had been twenty-nine at the time. She showed some signs of age between then and Dagmar now at eighteen, but it was nothing compared to what the last seven or eight years had done to her. The biggest picture on the front of the paper was of Hildegard from yesterday. She looked so tiny in that chair before the Wizengamot, trembling and with a wet face. The headline made Luca nervous: 'Doppelgängers Among Us: The Mother of You-Know-Who's Child Goes Free'.
Even just a glance over the front page's articles came up with at least five mentions of Luca's name. He was very glad to be so far away from London today. However, Luca could only imagine that every student at Hogwarts had already seen this. Dread set in to find out how that would fare him, Monday after next.
Luca dedicated the day to homework, so didn't show the paper to Mamaie and Tataie until later on. That became the routine they settled into for the rest of the week. Blaise wrote Luca in their messenger as soon as he heard the outcomes, and then the paper would arrive the next morning to elaborate. Mr Malfoy didn't go to Azkaban on Wednesday, but his magic faced permanent restriction of use. Mr Nott received the same verdict on Thursday. Since he never had any sort of leadership role in the Death Eaters or used his social clout in the war's interim like Mr Malfoy did, Mr Nott's case would be reviewed again in 2004. His wand wasn't due to be snapped in the afternoon, like Mr Malfoy's was.
As a break from his homework, Luca made some lunch to take out to Mamaie and Tataie. Tataie was out in the middle of the field, but Mamaie stopped working after inspecting a lump on one of the cattle yearlings.
"What was it, then?" Luca asked after they'd both taken bites of the sandwiches he'd prepared. He sat on the fence, and Mamaie leaned against it beside him.
"Just a bruise." Mamaie shrugged. "The cattle yearlings are very uppity this year. Look at them over there."
There was just shy of ten of them, and all roamed the field together in a packed herd. Luca had already noticed how the adult cattle avoided them if they could. The new mothers seemed to always stand between them and their offspring.
"I wonder what makes them do that," Luca said. It wasn't every year they formed something like a gang, as though they actually had a culture that changed over time. "It's not like they need to worry about not having enough food or water."
"They're teenagers. Apparently they're all the same, no matter what species they are."
Luca laughed as Mamaie nudged his leg with her elbow. He grew anxious toward the end of it, for he'd actually come out here for a reason that might be relevant to that.
"I think I'll get the guest house ready this afternoon," Luca replied. "I was wondering, though. Would it be okay if Blaise stayed in my room?"
Whether Luca needed to be bashful or not over that, he still felt warm about the cheeks. He pretended to be interested again in the yearlings when Mamaie looked up at him. She hummed.
"Please?" Luca steeled himself to ask. "It just seems kind of silly to make him bunk with his mum. We already share a bed whenever I visit him in London. We've been in a serious relationship for over a year now. We're in love."
"An unmarried couple sharing a bed," Mamaie mused. "What will they come up with next?"
Luca sighed to himself. It'd been a long shot, but he still had to try. He thought it might not be as big of a deal when they were both men, since there wasn't any chance of a baby coming out of it—no evidence. If Mamaie and Tataie didn't know Luca was gay and he had a 'friend' over, would they have raised a fuss?
"Mamaie." Luca wasn't ready to give up just yet. "Blaise and I already talked about how to behave when he's here. We're not going to be affectionate or anything out of respect for you and Tataie. It'd be a stupid thing to do anyway, in front of the Muggles. Can't we have the nights to be ourselves? I already have a limited amount of time to see him before I have to go back to school. With everything I've been dealing with the last month, I really need him."
That seemed to soften Mamaie, but Luca didn't let his hopes climb too high. Granted, they hadn't been high to begin with at the beginning of this conversation. Luca was just going to have to deal with being touch-starved and upset until they all went back to Britain to sit Bellatrix's trial on Tuesday. Then he could throw himself at Blaise and try to forget that this part of the world made him hide such a huge part of his life.
"Okay."
Luca pulled himself out of his emotional spiral with a blink. "What?"
"I said okay." Mamaie shrugged. "Blaise can stay in your room. I'll talk to your grandpa and make sure he knows it's fine."
Although Luca didn't want to push his luck, he couldn't help feeling a little resentful he needed to ask at all. "I bet Tataie wouldn't care if I was with a girl. It would be no one's concern what I do, but the end of the world if anyone thought she might give it up."
"It was like that when I was your age." Mamaie broke off a piece of her bread crust to toss to a chicken pecking the ground nearby. "Then things became strange with the Soviets. They're strange all over again, now the Union's collapsed. Durmstrang sounded like an entirely different place for you than it was for your grandpa and I back in the thirties and forties. You'd think the Romanian magical community was far enough away—that Durmstrang was far enough away—from all that Muggle business, but their history and culture and all of that has a way of finding us wherever we are."
"If that isn't the truth." Luca thought too about Voldemort in relation to that statement.
"Britain is a lot more socially liberal anyway, isn't it?" Mamaie asked. "That's why you were more comfortable being yourself there, da?"
Luca nodded. "Blaise and I never had to worry about things like holding hands in the hallways at school. It's still kind of a novelty for the Muggle-borns there I think, so there were definitely some stares. Nobody ever said anything, and it was an open secret that Dumbledore was gay. I don't think anyone wanted to end up in his office for teasing us."
"Probably not." Mamaie chuckled.
"The stupid thing is. . ." Luca hesitated, for he didn't want to offend Mamaie's sensibilities after coming this far. "All of us were equal at Durmstrang as far as gender goes, but there was a weird culture about sexuality. It was acceptable for the girls to hold hands and kiss and stuff because girls are just affectionate anyway. The boys, though, all of that had to be kept an arm's length away. We were boys. No touching unless it's one of the girls. But a lot of them were very bendable on that if they wanted contact badly enough.
"Not that I'm telling you that's what I was up to when I was there." Luca grew warm anyway when Mamaie studied him. "I was just approached. A lot, actually."
"Did they know?"
"Hard to say. I've always been a bit more—well, I guess you'd call it flamboyant. I got called pretty a couple times, so that could have something to do with it."
Mamaie hummed in thought as silence fell anew between them. Luca never thought something like that would actually be spoken between them. If he was completely honest with her, those sorts of encounters had definitely helped Luca realize which way he went. He liked to feel wanted by the fitter boys, and enjoyed teasing them in his more immature days. The few he gave it up to were mostly disappointing—all takers, no givers.
"I suppose people are all the same, no matter where you go in the world," Mamaie said. "The only real difference in a more conservative place is what we talk about, and how we react to people not like ourselves. Would you have told us sooner that you were gay if that wasn't the case?"
"Da," Luca said right away. "I knew for sure when I was fifteen or so that I wouldn't be bringing home any girls for you all to meet. I thought about doing it anyway to avoid disappointing you."
"You'd never disappoint us." Mamaie's tone softened. "We've only ever been proud of you. You're too smart, hardworking, and kind for us to feel any other way. Blaise is a good man."
A wave of want to see him came over Luca with that sentiment. "He is."