I.
Bellona does not go home for the summer, after her first year at Hogwarts.
Instead, Anatole meets her from the train, and together they travel to visit Ukki, in Finland. Maman wrote and promised to meet them in Taivolkoski, but Bellona will not hold her breath. Maman promised she would write once a week, after all, and scarcely managed once a month.
Anatole wrote once a week without fail. Grand-mère, despite everything, wrote once a fortnight, sending her letters with Anatole's. Even Jeanne wrote, twice before Christmas and twice after, which was at least regular. Bellona knows well that Maman loves her, but she sometimes wonders if Maman likes her, or wants her.
Ukki greets them on the huge porch of his huge house, tall and slim and smiling like the sun, just for Bellona. He sweeps her skyward and showers her with kisses, and then he sets her down so that Isoseta Aleksi can gather her close and kiss her cheeks.
"Welcome home, little one," Aleksi says, wrapping an arm tight around her shoulders and guiding her into the house. "How is your new school?"
II.
Ukki and Aleksi are almost as beautiful as Anatole, but Bellona never feels plain while sitting at the beautiful polished spruce table in Ukki's kitchen. Ukki's house is full of light and laughter, full of a loveliness lacking in the self-awareness that makes Jeanne disdain Bellona's dark hair and clumsy feet.
"So these girls with whom you share your home for the school year," Ukki says, in his careful, precise way - Bellona is not sure how old her grandfather is, and thinks it best not to ask. "Do you like them?"
Pansy reminds her of Jeanne, but without Jeanne's beauty and grace, which somehow makes her more annoying. Millicent took a dislike to Bellona from their very first evening in their dormitory, for reasons Bellona still does not understand, but she doesn't mind - Millicent is as coarse and boorish as those boys Malfoy pals around with so much.
Tracey and Sally-Anne aren't so bad, she supposes - they cling together, to avoid Pansy and Millicent, she thinks, and Tracey has that fascination with the Hufflepuff boy with the turned-up nose, but otherwise she does not really know them.
"I like Daphne," she says, because it's true. She does like Daphne, so much so that they've agreed to write letters to one another - Blanchefleur is their only courier, because Bellona knows how private Ukki is, and no matter how much she might like Daphne, she loves her grandfather more. "She knows how to be quiet."
Anatole nods in understanding, and so do Ukki and Aleksi - Bellona wonders if Maman would understand the value of quiet. Grand-mère would, she thinks, but Maman? Tante Leto? No. She does not think so.
"Blaise is my best friend, though," she says. "His mother is Russian. He… He knows better than the others, what it is to stand apart."
Blaise's dark skin also marks him apart from their classmates, so much so that even his fabulous wealth is not enough to buy him much more than grudging tolerance from Malfoy.
"Two friends," Ukki says, "is a very good start."
Bellona beams, basking in his heartfelt praise, and wishes she could have spent more time here than in Valence before she left for school.
III.
Maman, surprising everyone, arrives at Taivolkoski a week into Bellona's holidays.
Ukki seems most surprised out of them all, running down the steps to sweep Maman clean off her feet, laughing his joy to the heavens - how long has it been, Bellona wonders, since Maman visited her father? Anatole visits two or three times a year, but she cannot remember her mother ever coming here except for their visits every winter.
Anatole leans over the railing, his hair falling like stardust over his bright, watchful eyes, and Bellona links her arm through his.
"I'm glad she came," he says, very quietly. "For your sake, ma petite."
Maman floats up the path with her usual ethereal grace, and Bellona immediately feels diminished.
"Less of that, Belle," Aleksi says, arm suddenly around her shoulders. "You are just as lovely as your mama, child. Your human blood does not make you any less beautiful."
Ukki herds them all inside, to his polished spruce kitchen table, and he ignores the way Maman looks askance at the simple, delicious food he puts before them - lingonberry jam, dark bread, tea and piimä , and then pulla and rönttönen with coffee and cream to finish. Bellona misses the richer fare of Grand-mère's table sometimes, but eating Ukki's food is such a rare treat that she cannot understand how Maman has even the slightest distaste for it.
"I will send you lingonberry jam to your school," Aleksi whispers, winking theatrically across the table while Maman nudges her hand away from a third pulla. "And cloudberry, if I can tear it out of Anatole's hands."
"Hush, seta," Anatole laughs, clutching the pot of cloudberry jam to his chest with a grin. "You mustn't reveal my secrets like that!"
"And what of you, Juno?" Ukki asks, sun-bright blue eyes warm when he turns to regard Maman, who is sitting with her arm around the back of Bellona's chair. "What secrets would you have Aleksi and I keep?"
"I don't have secrets, Iskä," Maman says easily, but her hand drops to settle tight on Bellona's shoulder. "You know that."
IV.
Maman came to see Bellona, true enough - but she also came to make sure Ukki and Anatole did not reveal her secret.
Maman's secret is an obvious one, though. It has been obvious since she told Bellona the truth of her papa.
Bellona's papa may be innocent of the crimes for which he was imprisoned, but he is not incapable of such things - and that, at least in part, is what drew Maman to him in the first place.
When Anatole and Ukki bring her out for a long hike and a longer picnic, Bellona asks them. She does not see why she should not - were she at home, she would ask the same question of Grand-mère, after all.
"Did you know my father?" she asks, and Ukki sighs.
Anatole smiles, though.
"He was handsome enough to tempt even Juno," he says. "And mad, I think, or at least so brave and bold that he seemed mad, to more cautious men."
"Was he a good man?"
Anatole considers that, sipping at the coffee Ukki produced from an ugly flask and watching a goshawk wheel in the sky above them as he thinks.
"He wanted to be," Anatole says at last. "And tried very hard to be a good man. You would have liked him very much, Belle, had you known him as he was before the English War."
Bellona has seen scars of the English War, in her classmates, in the absences that haunt every story they tell of their families, of their histories. The English were left to their war, though, because of the way they ignored Grindelwald's march - until the great, lazy Dumbledore finally bestirred himself to stand against the dark one at Nurmengard, just as the Muggles' War was ending. Bellona would not dare to speak such a thing at school, where even her housemates hold Professor Dumbledore in a begrudgingly hallowed regard, but she thinks that he must be a coward, to have waited so long to stand against Grindelwald, to have refused to stand against Voldemort at all.
"He was very charming," Anatole says. "Sharp, but charming. Juno was besotted by him."
"She did not love him?"
"Ah, muru," Ukki sighs, shuffling close enough to drape a blanket over her shoulders - it is dull today, and the breeze is stiff, and he always worries that Bellona will fall ill. "Love for your mama's people is… Complicated."
"Not always," Anatole says, indignant. "But for Juno, and for Leto as well, yes. Complicated."
Anatole's lover is a sylph. His name is Amand, and when he visits, he brings butter cakes and langoustines and chouchen as gifts, and Anatole adores him openly and without reserve. Bellona cannot imagine Tante Leto showering such affection on anyone, save Jeanne and the twins, and Maman-
Well, Maman does love Bellona. She is sure of it. It's just difficult, because Bellona isn't really Veela.
"Were your father anywhere but the English wizard's prison," Ukki says, "I would say, write to him! Know him for yourself! But your letters would never reach him, there, and even if they did, it might only draw you to the attention of his gaolers."
"Ukki?"
"Azkaban is not guarded by wizards and witches, Belle," Anatole says. "What do you know of Dementors?"
V.
"I have a gift for you, ma chouette," Maman says, on their last day in Taivolkoski. Tomorrow, Bellona and Anatole and Maman will leave for London, so Bellona can collect her new books from Flourish and Blotts, and so she can meet Blaise for ice-cream under Monsieur Fortescue's bright umbrellas, and so Madam Malkin can fit her for new robes, because she has grown too tall for her old ones.
Maman's gifts are usually extravagant and very beautiful, but often they are things Bellona neither needs nor particularly wants.
This, though. This is something she desperately wants.
"Your papa," Maman says, uncertain, "he loved to fly. I do not know if he was much good, but he loved it. So do I."
Bellona will never fly as a Veela flies, but she can fly as a witch does.
Because she is a witch. Not a Veela. It is not so difficult to accept that here, with a shining new Nimbus 2001 in her hands, away from Jeanne and Apollonia and Artemisia, as it would be at home in France.
"Oh, Maman!" she cries, flinging her arms around her mother's neck and holding on tight.
Maman holds on just as hard, and Bellona relishes it. See? she thinks at the phantom of Jeanne who haunts her, always. See? Maman loves me just as much as Tante Leto loves you.
VI.
Blaise's mother is so beautiful that, for a moment, Bellona thinks she must be a Veela.
"Mama, come meet Belle," he says, smiling as he only does when they're away from their housemates. "Belle, this is my mother, Sofia."
She kisses Blaise's cheeks in greeting, but offers his mama her hand.
"It's a pleasure, Madame Zabini," she says. "My uncle, Anatole."
Anatole introduces himself, and he and Madame Zabini chat for a few minutes before they depart, as agreed. Anatole will fetch Bellona's books and her potions supplies and her new robes, Blaise's mama will do whatever it is improbably beautiful witches do, and Bellona and Blaise will sit together in the late August sunshine and eat ice-cream while Monsieur Fortescue tells them wonderful stories.
If he slips them an extra scoop each with a wink and a finger to his lips, Bellona won't tell anyone. She notices the whisper of a French accent on Monsieur Fortescue's voice, after all, and plays her own accent up for his amusement.
Blaise just smiles, warm and bright as he so rarely is, and says nothing. She feels almost as comfortable with Blaise as she did this summer in Taivolkoski.
"I wish," Blaise says, when Maman and Anatole are coming from one end of Diagon Alley and his mama is coming from the other, "that we had somewhere at school where we could sit like this - maybe with Daphne."
Daphne could not come today, though she was invited - her parents do not wholly approve of either of her friends, she had confessed, and wished that she might have more to do with Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson. Old money. English money.
Bellona has, when she can, looked into her papa. If she is right - and she thinks she is, from what Anatole has told her, what little she could drag out of Ukki over dark bread and lingonberry jam, what Grand-mère confessed in beautifully penned letters - then she is old money, too, and old English money at that. She wonders what her life would have been, had her innocent-but-not-incapable papa not ended up in Azkaban.
She cannot imagine growing up anywhere but Grand-mère's house. She cannot imagine holidaying anywhere but Ukki's house on the river in Taivolkoski. Where did her papa grow up? Where did he spend his summers, between school years?
She wishes, just a little, that she might ask Professor McGonagall. Her papa was in Gryffindor, when he was in Hogwarts, so surely Professor McGonagall knew him well? But it is safer not to reveal her truth to anyone at all, even if she is sure that some of the teachers already know.
"We should look around the school," is all she says, "and see if we can't find somewhere to hide."
VII.
The common room buzzes with dirt and slander, and Bellona feels sick.
"Come away, Belle," Blaise says quietly, nudging her toward the door. "They aren't worth it."
Mudblood. Oh, they take it to mean Muggle-born, but it has not always been so narrowly applied. Bellona has heard it hurled at her feet, in wizarding Toulouse and in le vingt-et-unième arrondissement. Dirty blood is not necessarily Muggle blood.
Is Bellona, half a scion of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black (there is a motto, she checked) and half a de Poitiers of Valentinois, dirty-blooded? In the eyes of her housemates, how can she seem other?
And Blaise - Blaise's mama is not so normal a witch as he would claim, Bellona knows nearly-human well enough to understand that plainly. Even if he were not as dark as she is pale, would the others count him dirty-blooded?
"I hate them," she says bitterly. "I thought I was away from this sort of- of nonsense, that I had left it behind with my cousins, but it seems that there is no escape."
Her wand, clutched tightly in her hand, sparks silver and rage. Its core is one of Grand-mère's long silver hairs braided with the white-gold of Ukki's. Grand-mère gave hers to remind Bellona of her true self, Ukki as an endorsement of this path of hers, so unusual in their family. If their blood in her veins is dirty, then she will revel in it. She will thrive on it.
"If I find the fool who has unleashed this nightmare-" she begins, angrier than she can ever remember being, but stops when Blaise presses his hand to her shoulder.
"I'd calm down, if I were you," he warns her. "I can't imagine anyone else would take you growing feathers quite so well as I am."
She darts away to the nearest mirror, and is stunned by the fringe of downy grey-black pinfeathers sprouting at her temples, the long, sleek, blue-black primaries showing through her hair.
"Perhaps I am more a Veela than I thought," she says aloud, drawn back from panic only by another touch of Blaise's ever-cold hand.
"Perhaps we ought to go to the library, and not risk being caught like this just outside the common room," he advises.
She writes to Maman instead of doing her homework.
I am scared. I am frightened. I do not know what to do. I miss you.
VIII.
Hermione Granger is petrified, and that seems to shock even the worst of their year into fear.
"Granger is so smart, though," Theo Nott says, sitting opposite Blaise, beside Daphne. Theo is not so bad, mostly, now that he has outgrown Pansy and Malfoy and their fools. "This must be something really bad, to have gotten the jump on her."
"Not necessarily," Daphne says, not looking up from her Charms notes. "All it had to do was catch her unawares."
Bellona feels a little sick at the very idea - she admires Hermione Granger in the same way she admires Grand-mère's younger sister, Invidia. Fascinated, but a little fearful. She does not know the other girl well, has only ever had Potions and far-away first year Flying with her, but she knows of her. She knows, as everyone does, just what Hermione Granger and her friends did last year.
Jeanne's father, her almost-a-Lamia Greek father, tells stories of Cerberus and his descendants, and Bellona knows just how dangerous the great beasts are. Even without the other challenges they overcame, their taming of a Cerberid is enough to settle Hermione Granger and her friends as fierce in Bellona's mind.
Whatever it was that caught her unawares, or got the jump on her, it must be formidable indeed. And that makes Bellona very uneasy.
Blaise nudges her with his elbow, sharp eyes flicking up to her hair - and yes, there is a soft green-black primary peeking from the crown of her milkmaid braid. She tucks it away into her bag, fretting again, and calms only when she spies Blanchefleur amidst the cloud of owls flocking to their masters.
Three letters. Anatole, Grand-mère, and, most importantly, Maman.
Do not be afraid, my little love, Maman writes. You have always been more than either your papa or me, and that is not something to fear.
IX.
She hits Vincent Crabbe in the face when he calls her a dirty half-breed.
He did not start it - he is not intelligent enough to start anything, Bellona thinks. Malfoy started it, as he always does, cutting razor-close to her secret truth because he knows, and she wishes he did not. She wishes more than anything that he of all people did not.
But he does, and so he has developed a particular skill for setting his idiot friends up to snipe at her, since he cannot always get away with it - Professors McGonagall and Sprout and Flitwick in particular are liable to call him up on it, she has found, they and Professor Lockhart, who seems to have taken a shine to her.
"You'll be next, once the mudbloods are gone," Vincent Crabbe sneers, "you dirty half-breed," and Bellona's fist is cracking his nose against his cheekbone and there are feathers sprouting in her hair again.
Blaise hauls her away, catching her under the arms and heaving, and he and Daphne and fair-weather Theo shepherd her away from the storm of rage brewing two corners away from the common room.
"I am not dirty," she fumes, held back from thumping the wall only by Theo getting in the way. "I am not! I am a de Poitiers of Valentinois, and I am a-"
"A Black," Theo says, "of Grimmauld Place."
That calms her more than Daphne's shushing or Blaise's scolding, if only because it shocks her so thoroughly.
"What did you say?" she manages, more frightened than she has ever been in all her twelve-years-and-eleven-months of life. "What did you say?!"
Theo's smile is an ugly thing, just then, and he shrugs.
"You don't know who my father is, do you, Belle?" he asks in return. "Let's put it like this - he was just as put out as Lucius Malfoy and his cronies when the Dark Lord fell to Harry Potter."
Bellona's father was not one of Voldemort's men, but his family were all neck-deep in that nightmare. Even the mad one, his cousin that she so strongly resembles.
"I've seen photographs of Bellatrix Lestrange," Theo says. "You're enough like her for it to be obvious to anyone who knows what she looks like. But since she only had sisters, you must have come by that face another way. Which only leaves two options."
Maman, in her letters this year, has revealed a great deal about Bellona's papa.
And about her papa's brother. Death Eater.
"My father is not an evil man," she says, fear replaced by annoyance. "Maman would never have looked twice at him if he were."
Blaise huffs, somewhere behind her.
"There isn't a witch or wizard in England who'd believe that, Belle," he says. "Your father is infamous. More even than the known Death Eaters."
"Which is why," Daphne says, "we'll never reveal your secret, Belle. It's not safe, and we very much want you safe."
X.
"A basilisk," Anatole says on a low whisper, when she and Blaise and Daphne tell him of the great drama that concluded the school year. "My God!"
Theo is standing a little way away with his papa, who is looking at Anatole as though he has done some great insult, and Bellona wishes she could draw her wand. Theo smiles, shrugs an apology, and Bellona manages to smile in return - with a papa so sour looking as Monsieur Nott, it would not take a great deal to turn Theo into another Vincent Crabbe, and Bellona does not think she has the patience for any more such idiots.
"Harry Potter saved the day," Blaise says, eyes rolling, "again."
Hermione Granger's friends risked life and limb to find the Weasley boy's little sister, and to end the terror plaguing the school. Would Bellona's friends do the same, if called? Blaise, perhaps, but Daphne?
Theo would not, but that is understandable. He was not raised to be brave, as she and Blaise have had to be.
Hermione Granger glances their way as she passes, her Muggle parents flanking her, and Bellona smiles as brightly as she can. She would like to have a friend as fierce as Granger, she thinks, if only to keep her from becoming an enemy.