"It was your dad's," Andromeda said to the girl, cardigan gathered tight around herself, tea steaming pale into the gloomy sky. They were all grim and grumbling, smothered with headcolds and misery here in the depths of November, but the girl seemed worse off than anyone. Not even her half-breed glamour could hide that.
"I cannot imagine what use it will be to me," she said, that rolling accent always stronger than Narcissa expected, no matter how many pleasantries they exchanged, "unless we can salvage the sidecar for Teddy's use, you know?"
Narcissa was entirely unsure why she had been asked here today, but she would not lie to herself and claim that she was unhappy about it. She had liked Sirius, as much as that was possible across increasing divides between their houses. Bella had put him down, yes, but Narcissa had had no hand in that and felt no remorse. Sorrow, yes, for their ever-dwindling family, but no remorse.
The Muggle contraption that Dromeda had extricated from the weedy pond behind her house had wheels, two of them, handlebars, and some kind of bolted-on part that must have been the sidecar the girl had mentioned. A motor-cycle, she knew, the kind of thing Sirius had gotten into simply to spite his parents and their grandparents, but apparently a more treasured heirloom than any of the worthier gifts left by generations past in the vault.
Belley, Dromeda called Sirius' daughter. Bellona. Not even a proper astronomical Black name, for all her pretensions to mastery of their House. She might have been half-breed and a bastard, but she was uncommonly good-looking, and even Draco had never been able to find fault in her manners. Why, even the grimmer stories of a flaring temper and a tendency to lash out with more violence than might have been warranted only really made her more of a Black, didn't they?
She was as tall as Draco, maybe taller in those sturdy boots of hers, with hair like Bella's had been before Azkaban, lush and thickly curling and dark, dark black - Sirius had had that hair too, when last Narcissa saw him before he went away. That wasn't enough to mark her as a Black, of course, but those eyes - she had the hooded, deep-set Black eyes of dark, dark grey behind those silver-framed glasses.
Andromeda had insisted that the girl looked like Bella, but Narcissa could see only Sirius.
"I'll set Ted to work on it," Andromeda said cheerfully, unwinding her cardigan and tapping Bellona on the nose. "Come along, Belley, let's get you in out of this weather before Teddy realises you've abandoned him."
Narcissa let them lead, and followed. Her shoes clicked loudly on the paved path back to the house, through a lovingly tended kitchen-garden and through a mud room deserving of the name to the parlour.
The girl - Bellona - slipped away to fetch little Teddy, and Narcissa found herself alone with her sister for the first time in decades.
Tea and cakes and neatly sliced sandwiches lay atop the table, a plain little wooden thing marked all over with rings from cups and splotches from spills. Narcissa would have never let it past her own door, but Andromeda had always done things her own way, even when they were children.
Bella would have laughed at Andromeda's grubby coffee table and her scuffed sofa and armchairs. She would have mocked the red brick fireplace and the overflowing box of toys under the window, and the hodgepodge of Muggle and real photographs framed on the walls. Bella had always been more forward than Narcissa, though, for all the good it had ended up doing her, and so Narcissa simply folded her hands in her lap and smiled with every scrap of sincerity that she could muster when Andromeda leaned over to pour her tea. The mugs she had laid out were solid, sturdy things in a plain grey-brown earthenware finish that matched the mug she had carried out to the pond for herself, and Narcissa couldn't quite hold back a frown of distaste.
"Ha!" Andromeda declared. "Not to your liking, Cissy? They were a gift, I'll have you know, and you'll fit more sugars in there than you would one of Ted's mother's good bone china cups, I'll tell you that much."
Nobody but Bella had called Narcissa Cissy in a very long time - and while Bella was in Azkaban, well, there had been no one at all who saw past the reserve and spine required of Madam Malfoy. It would pain her to even consider admitting it, but she had missed it, just a little.
But admitting that she had missed her childhood nickname was the next thing to admitting that she had missed Dromeda, and that would never do.
"A gift?" she ventured, because that seemed safer. "Do you collect such things?"
"The only thing we collect in this house is mess," Andromeda said, not sounding in the least upset about it. "No, no, Teddy's a menace on my mugs and plates, so I always tell people that if they're bringing me anything back from their holidays, let it be mugs - we'd run out, otherwise. These ones are from Japan. Nothing like the real tea sets they use over there, this is made purely for tourists, of course, but Belley knew better than to bring anything dainty in here for Teddy's use."
Narcissa had come across the girl, of course, because for all she was a half-breed who'd been raised abroad she did understand what was expected of her and attended a clever selection of parties. She seemed to spend half her time sitting outside Fortescue's, chatting over the railings and kissing the cheeks of half of everyone who passed her by, because she had certainly been there every time Narcissa ventured to Diagon Alley.
"She and young Blaise and Daphne were in Japan, oh, it must be a year ago now - Blaise had some sort of business and the girls tagged along. Any excuse, and more power to them, I say!"
"That would be Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass?" Narcissa asked. "Draco has been courting the younger Miss Greengrass, Astoria."
"So Daph said, last I was talking to her - I'd call her a gossip, but I don't like to be a hypocrite. He's getting on well?"
"Very," Narcissa said, taking a sip of her tea while she considered how much she ought to say to Dromeda on the subject of Astoria Greengrass, a cool little madam who had Draco eating out of her palm like a fool. He was a clever boy, and usually far more cynical, but something about the girl had turned him upside down. "She is very… Suitable."
"Oh, so I've heard," Dromeda said, nodding firmly. "Daphne's a dear, but the things Blaise and Belley have to say about her sister… Well, we'll leave it there. Scone, Cissy?"
Andromeda always did make lovely scones. Mother had discouraged them from spending time in the kitchen, unless it was so they could learn how to manage the house elf, but Andromeda's little rebellions had been legion. Narcissa had never much minded the time Andromeda wasted in the kitchen, because Mother hadn't liked them eating sweets and cakes in case they became fat, but Andromeda always shared her spoils. Bella always said-
"Bella always said what Mother didn't know wouldn't hurt her," Andromeda said, nudging the jam pot toward Narcissa. "Neither of them will know any of it now, so you might as well indulge that sweet tooth, Cissy."
Narcissa indulged, jam and cream on one of Andromeda's perfect scones and an extra sugar in her tea. Andromeda nodded approvingly, her face so much like Bella's but soft in a way Bella's had never been, with lines by her mouth from smiling and what looked very much like a child's stocking repurposed to tie her hair away from her face.
Bella had never wanted children, but she had been excited for Narcissa when she was pregnant with Draco. What sorts of aunts would her sisters have made, in a world where they all were free, all were close? Even if this olive branch of Andromeda's proved sincere and something could be salvaged from the wreckage of thirty years of exile and recrimination, it was too late - Draco was a man now, and Andromeda's Nymphadora, Narcissa's only niece, was gone beyond reach.
"Your husband," she ventured. "He's out?"
"Fishing with young Dean, I understand," Dromeda said, as though Narcissa should know who in the world Dean was. She watched, helpless, as Dromeda produced a prettily enamelled tin from behind her armchair. It contained a cake that smelled of caramel, which Andromeda promptly portioned out and foisted upon her. Narcissa didn't remember the last time she'd had anything quite so delicious.
"Quite. You see ah- Bellona? A great deal?"
Andromeda always did have a scowl that could strip paint. She looked even more like Bella than usual when she was angry.
"If you're only here because you think you can use me against Bellona in this silly little war you're waging, think again, Cissy," Andromeda warned her. "She's the last master of the house's rightful heir, and I'll be damned if I see you squander what's hers to get that scab you're married to out of trouble again."
"I am only curious," Narcissa said coldly, more stung than she'd dare to admit. "I have only met her once, I believe, and that only in passing, and when I do see her it's generally at leisure. I confess to some little concern as to the fate of our family in such… unorthodox hands."
"Why?" Andromeda demanded. "Because her mother's a Veela instead of a Goyle? Go boil your head, Cissy, if you're going to be a bigot."
"I'm not- I would not have come if that was all I wanted. It isn't about the inheritance, I've made as much peace as I can with that, Dromeda."
If Andromeda made her admit her shameful weakness aloud she'd boil her head.
"Then why bother, Cissy? You can't stand Ted because his parents were Muggles, you can't stand Teddy because his father was a werewolf, and you can't stand Belley because her mother's a Veela. Why come here if you have no interest in my family beyond your mercenary greed?"
I'm so lonely, Dromeda was far too pathetic to even consider, so Narcissa sniffed to give herself a moment to think.
"You and Draco are the only family I have left," she said instead. "If that should expand to include your grandson, well, that can only be for the good."
Dromeda's face softened, and her hand twitched toward Narcissa as though she might have reached out to her were it not for the return of Bellona, this time with blue-haired Teddy on her hip.
Did he look like his mother, she wondered? She supposed that she would never know.
"This is your Aunt Cissy, Tedzer," Dromeda said, reaching out to take the child from Bellona. "Say hello, good boy-"
Narcissa was startled by the presentation of a small, slightly sticky hand, but she shook it all the same, matching the great solemnity a three year old could produce.
"- and now we're having tea. Come and sit, Belley, and pass over the lingonberry, good girl."
Narcissa watched as they sat, Andromeda tucking the boy in beside her on the sofa and Bellona pouring and doctoring tea for them both and herself without needing to ask how many sugars, how much milk.
"You're Draco's mummy," Teddy said, once he had climbed down out of Andromeda's lap and positioned himself directly in front of Narcissa. His hair was now a silky black halo of curls that could've fallen out of Narcissa's memories of Regulus. "I've met Draco."
"You have?"
"With Belley and Nev," he said, smashing an entire biscuit into his mouth at once. Narcissa tried her best not to laugh, and managed to limit herself to a smile - Draco had had that habit too, when he was little, until Lucius chided it out of him. "Do you know Nev?"
"Nev…?"
"Neville Longbottom," Bellona clarified, a flaming scarlet flush spreading in splotches all down her cheeks and neck. Narcissa hated her for a brief, burning moment, because she blushed just the same way when her temper was up.
"Belley's beau," Dromeda said, grinning. "He's with his grandmother this week, but he's due back Wednesday, which means no one will see either of them until Friday, of course."
"Dromeda!" Bellona shrieked, diving forward to cover Teddy's ears. "We will have you all for dinner on Thursday just to prove a point!"
Narcissa couldn't believe it. Bellona might not have used her rightful name at first, but no one who knew their wizards could have looked at her and seen anything but a Black. The Longbottom boy of all children would have looked at her and seen Bella, particularly. What sort of Veela glamour induced a man into loving the imperfect mirror of his parents' doom?
Perhaps she was better suited to helming the House of Black than Narcissa had anticipated. How else could one explain her taking something that couldn't be willingly given?
Being pregnant was not the nightmare Jeanne had anticipated, when she and Elias made their alliance, but it was hardly comfortable either. It was particularly uncomfortable when she found herself sitting on a concrete wall in the falling night, waiting for Belle's beau to speak.
Troyes was a beautiful city, and truly the only option for the first conclave in a decade. Halfway between La Valentinoise and La Melusine, it was as close to neutral territory as existed in France, really, and Jeanne cast her eyes up to the tower of Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul while she waited Neville out. He was a calm, patient man, but Jeanne had grown up with La Valentinoise at one shoulder and Giorgos of Piraeus at the other. Between her grandmother's tendency to blow hot and cold and her grandfather's mercurial moods, all born of Grindelwald's long-ago War, she knew well how to wait out a darkness like this.
"I shouldn't have done that," he said at last, lifting his hand to the thin light so they could examine the shiny, swollen knuckles together. "Belle hates when anyone causes a scene. I've embarrassed her, haven't I?"
"I would not say embarrassed," Jeanne said, and meant it - Belle had been glowing too much with pride to have been embarrassed by Neville when Grand-mère exiled him from the ballroom. "I think she was very moved by how passionate your defence of her was, but you know how much she hates violence now. I think perhaps she might have preferred you not to hit Sébastien, but it did end the discussion as you intended, so I will talk her around in your favour."
"Hmm. Yeah."
Silence once more, broken only by the tolling bells of the quarter-hour. Neville's hair was almost Veela-fair, a hallmark of his being so outdoorsy, and shone silver in the soft, duskfall light. No one would ever mistake him for a true Veela, though, especially not against Sébastien Auclair. Why had Grand-mère given Sébastien such stupid ideas! They all knew she had objected to Belle and Neville's engagement - indeed, she had done so to their faces, and stridently - but to attempt direct sabotage was truly too much. Bellona had loved Neville for ten years now, and if Grand-mère could not accept that then she had no place in their lives.
Sébastien was a friend of Jeanne's - had been a friend of Jeanne's. To be so stupid as to believe, purely on Grand-mère's word, that Bellona was not only available but interested in a marriage pact, that was unforgivable. Especially since Veela so rarely married at all!
"I should find a Healer," Neville said at last. "I think I broke something in my hand."
"Hmm," Jeanne agreed. "Apollonia has begun her training and seems to be doing very well indeed, if you dare trust yourself to her care."
"She offered," he admitted. "Said I should call her Polly, too."
"America is ruining her, I think."
In truth, it would be the making of her - it made Jeanne sad, to see how they all flourished as soon as they left Valence and la Duchesse's heavy shadow.
"What am I like!" Neville said suddenly, rounding on Jeanne and looking smotheringly guilty. "You shouldn't be sitting out here in the cold!"
Jeanne rolled her eyes - of everyone this side of the Alps, only Belle had not gone entirely to pieces when Jeanne had revealed her pregnancy. They all seemed convinced that she had become delicate and fragile the moment Elias put a child in her, and Neville was not above the panic.
"At least take my cloak," he said, swinging it from his own shoulders to hers before she could object. It was a gorgeous thing, summerweight tweed in a soft blue-grey with a lavender fleck through it - Belle's doing, no doubt. "Elias not with you tonight, then?"
"Oh, a summer conclave is a festival for them," Jeanne said, more wistful than she'd ever allow in Grand-mère's hearing. She loved Valence, loved her mother's family, but the formality required of here was stifling after a youth spent between Athens and Ankara. She missed Yaya's house more than was polite or prudent to admit, so close to Valence. "They are in Silleon this year - Çiğli, in Anatolia. It must be marvellous. I would not deny Elias that, even if we were bound to one another by anything more than the baby."
Jeanne could not wholly understand the way Belle and Neville turned toward one another like flowers to the sun, the way Ukki's eyes trailed sadly in Grand-mère's wake, even now. But Elias was her dearest friend, after Belle and Pheme, and they would love their baby well together - as well as Jeanne's parents always loved her.
"Belle's ring," Neville said, and Jeanne knew him well enough by now that she did not question his sudden diversion. "Did she ever tell you where I got it?"
"She said it was your grandmother's, I think. A family heirloom of some sort."
His smile was a sharp, small thing. Bitterness looked so strange on him.
"I had it made," he said. "The emeralds are from Gran's ring, but the diamonds are from my mum's. They were both heirlooms, been in the family since long before we settled in Guernsey, and I knew that if I gave her either one of them whole, the family would… Object. They're- the way they talk to her, Jeanne! The way they talk about her! So I took some of Gran's ring and some of my mum's, and I had a ring made for Belle. I wanted something beautiful enough for her, so I went to that jeweller she likes in Rennes, and it's hers. It's not some Longbottom heirloom now, it's hers, but they still talk about it like she stole it."
"Neville-"
"I know he's your friend," he said. "But when your grandmother- he said she gave Belle to him. Like she was an heirloom of the House of de Poitiers to be passed over to a suitable curator."
"Our grandmother," Jeanne said carefully, "has never understood Belle's worth."
Neville sniffled, and Jeanne realised that he was crying.
"All I want," he said, "is for her to be happy. Us being together, that makes us happy. I don't see why so many people have so much fucking trouble with that."
Jeanne dug her hand into the pocket of Neville's cloak to find - yes, a paper bag of pear drops.
"Have a pear drop," she said, "and cheer up. A black eye will do Sébastien little harm, and what family that matters is thrilled to see you finally set a date. Come, now, have a sweet and we will go back inside, hm?"
"I won't face your grandmother looking like this, J," Neville said. "Belle would never forgive me for allowing her to see that she'd scored a point on us."
So, she had compounded her shame.
Thirty years ago, when Juno came home pregnant and mourning for a man yet living, Métis could never have foreseen this. She had thought that Juno would have the good sense to limit the girl, to see her made useful to the clan, would arrange for her a union with a Veela boy of good stock to try and breed the human out of her.
But no. Anatole had interfered, just like Aleksi before him, and so here they were, watching Juno press Bellona's hand into her wizarding beau's as though that was something worth celebrating. Celebrating! Métis could have wept, were it not for the fierce, sharp-fingered grip Invidia kept on her arm. They all had turned on Maman for daring to tell the truth, for being so cruel as to point out that in marrying a human - and a pureblood wizard at that! - Bellona was leaving herself without a place among Veela, but Métis was not afraid of the truth, no more than Artemisia was.
Jeanne's little girls - perfect Veela children, with silver-bright hair, Pietas with her Greek father's dark eyes and Suadela with her Basque father's dense curls - should be shame enough for Bellona. Could she not see what she was doing? Their clan had been decimated during the War, and had never recovered, not really. It was so selfish of her to turn her back on them, especially when it came at the price of breaking Maman's heart!
Juno and Anatole were clutching at one another, wet-eyed and fiercely proud, as they watched Iskä wrap the long ribbons around Bellona and her beau's hands. Aleksi, too, was embarrassing himself, that was to be expected - but Leto? Jeanne? Apollonia?!
Letting that girl go to America had been the gravest mistake of Métis' life.
Iskä ought to have been ashamed, letting wizards into Taivolkovski. Had he no regard for his mother's memory? For Maman's feelings? There was a reason Maman hated the path Bellona had chosen so much, a real and justified reason, and here was Iskä, who should have felt the same, who should have understood, throwing that all aside as though it were nothing, just so Juno's daughter could have her party! And not only to allow it, but to encourage it, to play a leading role in the damned festivities - had he never once considered how much this would hurt Maman, who he still professed to love?
"You look fit to pop, cherie," Invidia said quietly, tugging Métis a little closer when Bellona's new husband leaned in to kiss her, raising a cheer that shook the canopy above them. "Surely you have made your peace with this all by now? It is not as though Belle is a threat to your position, so there is no need to be jealous."
"Why should I be jealous of the half-breed? What has she that I do not?"
"A life," Aleksi muttered. He was standing on Invidia's other side and spoke quietly, just barely audible above the cheering. He turned his falsest, most sickening grin on her when she reached across Invidia to seize his arm, which made her pause. "Smile, Métis - it's a wedding! Have you never been to one before?"
"Veela don't marry-"
"Your grandparents did," Aleksi said. "My parents. Just because your mother says something does not make it true for everyone, child."
Métis kept her jaw locked when Bellona and the wizard made their way down the aisle, stopping here and there and everywhere for kisses and teasing and kind words - from the boy's wizened little grandmother and the fat old man sobbing huge, wet tears into his moustache, all the way to Bellona's little friends, Blaise and Daphne, in the row ahead of Métis', no one else seemed anything but thrilled.
"Even if Europa was right," Invidia said, once Bellona was gone by, "surely you have friends who are not Veela who have married, no?"
The whole place was infested with Bellona's friends . It had been the same when Jeanne presented her little girls, friends pouring in to sully the quiet and beauty of Valence. Métis had never needed friends the way Juno and Leto had - she had found worth in herself, in her own strengths and accomplishments, and had never felt the need to seek out reassurance from her peers.
"Weddings," she said coolly, "are not a frequent feature on my social calendar."
Apollonia - Polly, she wanted to be called, as though that were in any way acceptable for a daughter of Valence - had discovered a whole wealth of friends when she went to America to study. The journey to America had been bad enough, undertaken without Métis' knowledge and funded by the twins' interfering father. How bitterly she regretted choosing Sufjan! He had been her sole rebellion, chosen to sire her children because she had been young and stupid and wanted Maman's attention away from Juno, and she had thought him a fine choice right up until he started writing to the girls-
No matter. Apollonia's head had been turned, but at least Artemisia had the good sense to remain in Valence. She alone of the four girls seemed to understand what they owed their grandmother.
"You're very boring, you know," Aleksi said, reaching forward to lift Pietas away from where she was tugging at Jeanne's skirt. "No friends, no hobbies, now that Anatole and Bellona cannot be bullied, no life outside your duties to Valence and the clan . How do you spend your time when you're not begging your mother for attention, Métis?"
"Aleksi," Invidia scolded him, which was good - Métis had never liked her uncle, not as Juno and Anatole did, but he and Iskä had never treated her any differently than they did Leto. Where was this coming from? "Save it until Bellona has cleared the room, my friend."
"Bad enough that Europa cannot bend her stubborn pride enough to find happiness in Bellona's joy, but you? You cannot even delight in your own daughter's successes. You ought to be ashamed."
"How dare-"
"I had hoped to avoid this today," Juno said quietly, rounding on them all with a look like Fiendfyre in her eyes, "but Aleksi dares because we are all entirely sick of you, Métis, enough that I will slap that scowl off your face if you do not remove it. Now."
"Neville Longbottom had nothing to do with anything that happened to our families during the war," Invidia said quietly, pressing her hand flat to Anatole's chest when he turned to join this assault. "None of the people here today had anything to do with it. Even if they had - if Balder can welcome them here, to this place of all places, why can you not offer them a smile? We are not asking any more than that."
"You have never known war, Métis," Aleksi said, bouncing Pietas on his hip. "You and your brother and sisters are nearly unique in this room for that. Consider that when next you think to regurgitate Europa's bile."
"I am not-"
"What Aleksi means," Invidia said, waving Juno and Anatole and the rest away, even putting little Pietas into Juno's arms, "is that your anger, your hatred - it is unearned. It is misplaced. Bellona least of everyone deserves your silly misbehaviour."
"The wizards-"
"The wizards who killed my parents at Orléans are nothing to Bellona and her friends," Invidia said. "The wizards who killed Aleksi's father in Riga are nothing to Bellona and her friends. The wizards who burned Taivolkovski are nothing to Bellona and her friends. Even if they were - you lost no one at Orléans. You lost no one here at Taivolkovski. The grief Europa and I bear for Feronia? That is not your grief, even if Europa has shoveled it onto you girls from the cradle."
"Our family-"
"Your family," Aleksi said, flushed like the dawn in the height of his temper, "is your father and me. Your brother and your sisters. Your mother and Invidia. Your nieces, your grand-nieces. Your brother- and sister-in-law. Your daughters, both of them. You cannot claim a family you never knew, pupu. You cannot claim a grief that is not yours. Stop using that to excuse your jealousy of the girls - Bellona and Jeanne and Polly, they owe you no apology for living a life beyond the bounds laid down by your mother."
"Your unhappiness is not the fault of any of these wizards or witches, chérie," Invidia said, her hold on Métis' arm gentling. "I am very sorry that your mother has convinced you otherwise."
It felt strange to sit in this room, where last she had seen Papa, framed by the family tree from which he ended up hanged, and look down into eyes so similar to his.
Similar to her own, of course, with downy-soft hair the colour of starlight above them, but the little sliver of Bellona's heart not given over to truly overwhelming joy was full of grief. How thrilled would Papa have been, to meet his grandson? As excited as Maman had been, and twice as demonstrative, no doubt.
"Alright, sweetheart?" Neville asked quietly, taking up his place on the arm of her chair, tugging down the baby's blankets just enough to expose his face. "Hello, lad, how are you?"
"We are both quite well," she promised him, leaning up for a kiss - gladly granted, as always. "Who was that at the door?"
"Minerva and Horace. He only had a little bag with him, which means he's gone overboard and doesn't want everyone else to know so he's charmed it to hide everything."
"Maman will kill him if he outdoes her."
"I don't think anyone could outdo your mother, Belle. She's gone insane since we told her you were pregnant - Horace will just have to accept defeat for once."
"Dear old Slug," she said, her grief softened by the reminder that even without Papa's presence, her son would not want for love. "I suppose we had best go down, hadn't we?"
"Up he comes, so," Neville said, gathering the baby up, kisses and cuddles all the way, before holding out his arm for her. "Here we are, love, come on now-"
It had been a week, and Polly and Seamus' skills were unparalleled, but Belle was still sore. Not even the best midwife in France and the finest Healer St Mungo's had produced in decades could erase all Belle's aches and pains.
"Blaise has your chair ready for you," he said. "I made sure before I came up. You alright?"
"I hate the stairs," she admitted. "I miss my broom. How soon can I sit on it?"
"As soon as Seamus and Polly say you're healed up, as well you know. Come on, up-"
Once she was on her feet, she was fine. It was the getting up and getting back down that was the problem.
The stairs were not so bad as they might have been, but the shallow steps down to the kitchen nearly finished her - Neville didn't breathe a word, though, only stood steady with the baby in one arm and her on the other until she felt well enough to go in and face everyone.
"I am so glad Daphne came early enough to do my hair," she murmured, which made him laugh - fair, given Daph and Blaise had barely left Grimmauld Place at all, this past week, except to sneak home for clothes and showers while she was sleeping.
The kitchen was warm. Belle's chair, the good armchair by the hearth, was set with extra blankets and cushions to make it more comfortable. Someone had put a frothy cup of Butterbeer at hand for her, and a plate laden high with Amand's caramel cake and Jeanne's macarons and, unfortunately, Hagrid's rock cakes. Augusta and Minerva were mocking Horace for something, under Pomona's beneficent gaze. Maman and Sofia were laughing at whatever story Arthur had just told, earning himself a scolding from Molly in the process. Leto and Polly and Aleksi, Blaise and Daph and Invidia, Su and Zach and Justin, Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione, Ernie and Tracey, Seamus and Dean and Padma and Tony and Parvati and Lavender, especially Anatole and Amand, already pink-cheeked with champagne and holding out their hands for the baby.
"Go away, you," Belle said, letting Anatole kiss her cheeks but batting him aside to take the baby from Neville. "Let me get comfortable."
"You are hoarding him!"
"Bringing him upstairs to feed and change him in peace is not hoarding," she grumbled, scowling at them all as they began to converge. "Where are the girls? They will not chide me so!"
Jeanne's girls would, of course, Suadela the most but tiny Rumina next after her. Pietas would only turn her enormous black-brown eyes on Belle, shining with tears, and she would of course be allowed to usurp Neville's place on the arm of the chair so that she could see the baby best of everyone. Polly's little Clementia would only hide behind her cousins, as once Polly had hidden behind Artemisia.
Speaking of - where was Jeanne? The girls were almost certainly in the garden with Léon, Polly's quiet Beausoleil husband, and there was Kolya perched on Blaise's arm, one hand rumbling Blaise's perfect collar and the other swinging Daph's pink sunglasses cheerfully by the arm. That had been a surprise! Jeanne's girls having different fathers had surprised no one who really knew her, with her political mind and her lack of care for romance, but Belle had still felt the need to take Daphne aside and asked if she had, once again, missed some crucial context when Jeanne and Blaise announced over dinner that they had decided to have a child together.
Belle did not play favourites, not even with her godchildren, but Kolya would have competition from no one but Teddy if she were so inclined.
But where was Jeanne?
"Where is Jeanne?" she asked, and did not miss the way Maman and Leto and Polly and Aleksi and Invidia all looked anywhere but at one another. "No, no, none of that, you are all terrible liars - where is she? She is not in the garden, is she?"
"Not this garden," Anatole said, and was stopped from sharing anything further by the as-ever late arrival of the Tonkses. Teddy, who was changing less and less of his face every time Belle saw him these days, looked so much like Remus that her breath caught. "Aha! Late again!"
"And still better looking than you, Anatole," Teddy agreed easily, ducking under Anatole's accusing finger to greet everyone else. "Wotcher, Belley - how's my little man?"
"You know, sweetheart," Neville said mildly, settling more comfortably on the arm of her chair, "I'm beginning to think that this baby of ours was born by committee, the way everyone's staking a claim."
"We will never want for babysitters," she agreed gravely, leaning against the solid, warm bulk of his thigh. "Will we, Teds?"
"No comment. Is that Harry? Right back, Belley."
"What an odious brat he has turned out to be," Belle said, overwhelmed with pride. "Now, Anatole, come here - where is Jeanne? She should be here. She will kill poor Léon if he lets the girls dirty their clothes before they eat."
"She will be here when she is here," he said, unusually cryptic. Anatole had not a subtle bone in his body, outdone within the family only by Maman and perhaps Aleksi, so his reticence annoyed her more than anyone else's.
Still, there was a party. Horace handed over his tiny bag, tapping the side of his nose and suggesting that perhaps they open it later. Hagrid had sent his gift with Ginny, trusting her more than Harry to assemble the swinging chair between the two apple trees in the garden - Ginny and Harry themselves had, predictably, bought a toy broom. Belle could not even be angry with them, since she had bought the first brooms for each of the Potters, and Ginny was more than owed her vengeance at this stage.
"I give it six months," Ginny said, leaning all the way down to kiss the baby's brow. "He'll be in the air before he's walking, mark my words."
More gifts - family, enough to get lost in, and Belle's heart was so full that she almost did not wish to leave when the time came for the baby's next feed. She liked the shared quiet of his nursing too much to sacrifice it, though, and leaned on Neville all the way to the sitting room by the front door, keeping him close all the while.
"Gran's in bits," he said, sounding delighted. "And Anatole! Bless them."
"I thought I would miss them more today than I do," she said, softly, not wanting the baby to hear. "Everyone who should be here, but is not."
Neville hid his face against her hair for a long moment, sitting up only when it was burping time.
Belle regretted very much that she was not healed enough to sit a broom - Neville was absolutely delicious like this, singing off-key as he bounced baby around the room until he burped, and if she could not ride a broom she could hardly ride-
"Was that the door?"
Baby in arms, he slipped out to answer the door, and Belle tucked away her regrets for later discussion with Neville and Neville alone. She could hear some sort of commotion out at the door - guests, apparently, but she could not figure out who the latecomers could be. Unless it was Jeanne? But who might she have brought with her? Everyone else they were expecting was here already.
"Now," Jeanne said, poking her head around the sitting room door with a serious, worried frown furrowing her brows. "You must promise not to be angry. If you are angry, though, it was Ukki's idea and so you must not be angry with me."
"You girls are far too old for this nonsense," Ukki said, shouldering past Jeanne and dropping to his knees before Belle with the grace of a man half his age. She shrieked and threw her arms around him, for he had been ill last year, and unable to fly far since - how had Jeanne managed this?! "Oh, pupu, how happy I am for you - for you both! For you all."
"I am so glad you are here!" Belle cried. "Oh, Jeanne, this is where you have been? Why should I be angry?"
"Well, because we are late, of course! The stupid Porty-Key did not work on time! And-"
"Because she did not only fetch your grandfather, little one."
Grand-mère was even lovelier than Belle remembered, somehow. It had been many years now since they had been together, and longer still since Bellona had seen her grandmother look anything but angry, so she hardly knew where to look. Her perfect face, softened now by age and, maybe, by loneliness. The perfect gossamer of her hair, the perfect, elegant fall of her long black skirt-
The ancient lace of la Belle Diane's shawl, wrapped around the baby in Grand-mère's arms.
"It has been a very long time," Grand-mère said. "And I know that I have no right to any part of this, but may I at least ask his name?"
Belle straightened, releasing Ukki, and guiding him into the armchair nearest at hand, and then she shuffled aside as best she could to make room for Grand-mère on the sofa beside her.
She had forgotten how alike they looked in profile, she and her grandmother and all the rest of their family. The de Poitiers nose was unmistakable.
"Auguste Anatole," she said. "For Neville's grandmother and- well, who else?"
"Who else indeed," Jeanne huffed. "He has been insufferable all week."
"Auguste," Grand-mère said, adjusting the shawl to wrap the baby better. "A fine name for a de Poitiers of Valence."
"We've been calling him Auggie," Neville volunteered, leaning against the doorframe and watching oh-so carefully. Belle could not have loved him more if she tried. "Auguste seems a very big name for someone so little, don't you think?"
"Auggie," Grand-mère said, and Belle was sure that she was smiling. "A fine name for a Black of Grimmauld Place, too, no?"