Seven Years Chapter 26
"Three?" Merula didn't understand what she was hearing meant, but she was sure Joseph had said three.
"How many notices did you get?" Joseph asked, his head tilted quizzically. "We sent three to Malfoy Manor. You got them, right?"
Merula paused, wondering if she should have confirmed the fact that she received two of the letters, but not all three.
"The look on your face tells me no," Joseph said, sinking Merula's half-baked plan before a word could leave her mouth. "Did you get any of them?"
Merula nodded. That she could admit. "Two of them. The… vaults of my parents."
Joseph exchanged a glance with Clarice, but he nodded. "Two would be reasonable."
"Reasonable?" Merula asked, her mind wandering back to the topic of the third vault. "If I had a third-"
"The third vault is…" Joseph paused. "Our records say that it's yours, but there's a specific clause that means you can't access it yet."
"Clause?" Merula repeated the word, a storm of confusion floating through her head at all the rather vague information she was being given. "What clause? And who set it? And who gave it to me? I only have two parents…"
Joseph exchanged another glance with Clarice. "It's a… difficult clause to fulfil."
"Oh for the love of Merlin," A.J. snapped, her voice filled with irritation as she walked over to Joseph and hit him over the head with a textbook. "Trent, we can all tell you're stalling. Get it over with."
"Twelve Ordinary Wizarding Levels or Nasty Exhausting Wizarding Tests," Joseph said, rubbing his head where A.J.'s book hit him. "Set by a certain Sialis Snyde. It's in line with the conditions of the Snyde Vault, but there's no early access clause like with the other two vaults."
"Who is this Sialis? Another of Merula's ancestors?" Deborah asked, her voice confused. "Hold on, didn't Merula say she already had access to House Snyde's vault? What's this other Snyde doing with another vault?"
Joseph looked over to Clarice, for support, for a suggestion, for something, but Merula couldn't tell what exactly. But then he looked over Merula's shoulder and frowned.
"Merula?" Lucius' voice asked from behind Merula.
Merula jumped an inch and spun around, trying her best to avoid having her heart jump out of her throat.
Lucius, or at least a fiery imitation of his face, was in the fireplace, looking rather concerned. "Merula, I see you have returned from Hogwarts."
"Father," Merula swallowed. "Are you…"
"I am in good health," Lucius said, the re-creation of his face in the flames flickering and melting back into regular green fire. "Tell me, how was-"
But then Lucius was gone, his last sentence cut off, and Merula looked around the room as the green flames turned back to their regular colour.
"I think they're changing- oh there we go." Clarice muttered helpfully.
Merula looked back at the flames turning green once more, but she had to grit her teeth when Narcissa's face appeared through the flames.
"Mother," Merula tried to put on her sweetest smile, but it felt unnatural, as if it had been glued to her face. "I was speaking to Father."
"You know better than that," Narcissa spat back, the venom in her voice evident despite the flickering green fire. "He was injured because of your blasted vault, and he certainly shouldn't be using the Floo Network."
Merula bit back a retort, equal parts concerned that her father could hear her and that Narcissa had information about Lucius that she wouldn't share if Merula accused her of going after Potter.
"May I speak to Father?" Merula replied, trying her best to not match the hatred in Narcissa's voice. "It will only take a minute."
The flame-born recreation of Narcissa paused and looked away, with Merula vaguely hearing her father say something about ducking and Germany, but Narcissa looked back after a moment. "Miss Murk?"
"Hello Miss Malfoy," Clarice said, her face looking as confused as Merula felt. "Am I correct in assuming that I'll be taking care of Merula for the rest of the holiday break?"
"I have no intention of having you share the burden." Narcissa said. "As a matter of fact, I recall that Draco spent some quality time under the watchful eye of your sister."
To Merula's right, her roommates reacted poorly to Narcissa's… incorrect statement, with Tiffany and Deborah desperately trying to stifle their giggles and A.J. rubbing her eyes.
At that very moment, there was a loud crash somewhere else in the house, and Merula winced as she could hear faint yelling through the walls.
Narcissa, present only through the Floo Network, didn't seem to hear the commotion, and a moment later a small cloth sack was tossed through the fireplace, landing at the toes of Merula's shoes.
"Eighty Galleons for Merula's living expenses and whatever Christmas presents she is to buy." Narcissa said, her voice distorting as her face flickered out into green flames. "And Merula, behave, or you will hear from us!"
Merula picked up the small sack of coins and emptied it onto the table as soon as she was sure Narcissa was gone, counting the coins one by one. Eighty, as promised.
"What was that sound?" Merula asked when she was done counting, noticing yet another loud crash, this one slightly closer than the last. "This house isn't haunted or anything, right?"
Clarice groaned and brought her forehead against a wall, doing a rather convincing Dobby impression. "You know what? A.J., go shopping with Merula and have dinner afterward. Don't come back until the sun is set-"
"The sun is already close to being down." Deborah muttered.
"Don't come back until nine," Clarice growled, walking over to the fireplace and tossing in a larger scoop of Floo Powder than normal. "Especially not Merula. If Merula is back before nine I'm going to beat you to death, and if Merula sees…"
Clarice switched to another language, one Merula had no understanding of, but the result was immediate. A.J. and Tiffany each grabbed one of her arms and dragged her to the fireplace, horror written on their faces.
"Where are we going?" Merula yelped, trying to dig her heels into the ground but getting nowhere as Deborah grabbed her by the legs. "Just tell me what-"
Merula didn't manage to finish her sentence, not when she was suddenly tossed into the fire. She was still able to see tiny specks of light in the distance, of other Floo Network nodes, of course, but the fact that she had been tossed into the Floo Network like a piece of firewood meant that she had even less control than usual.
Merula landed with a painful thump, and she staggered up to her feet, angry at herself for being tossed and quite embarrassed that there were several sets of eyes staring back at her from the confines of the shop she had landed in.
"I'm fine," Merula snapped as she crawled to her feet and stepped forward with as much dignity as she could muster, hoping that she could find a quiet corner somewhere to dust herself off before her roommates could arrive. "My friends-"
"Dear," a voice, one that sounded like a concerned mother, like Narcissa when she was dealing with Draco and only when she was dealing with Draco. "Your robes are on fire."
Merula looked down and, indeed, the edge of her robes had not escaped the fire before the effects of the Floo Powder had worn off. And as such, as the woman had pointed out, they were on fire. Just her luck.
Before Merula could say another word or look up, the flames shrivelled up and died, leaving Merula with the delectable smell of ashes and burned robes clogging up her nose.
Slowly, Merula looked up again, sure that her face was as red as the fires behind her, and she wondered if she should have grabbed another cup of Floo Powder and escaped back to Malfoy Manor to change.
But the witch who had spoken to her had stepped forward, blocking Merula's view of the other occupants of the shop and vice versa, and she wordlessly gestured for Merula to follow her.
Merula gave the fireplace a dirty look, almost expecting her roommates to pop out a second later, but the fire was a normal red, not the green that signified a person moving through the Floo Network. Perhaps Merula had accidentally become the second Violet Tillyman. Perhaps she would only pretend to be gone for a few hours rather than a lifetime, or maybe she could move to Germany and figure out what Lucius had ducked there.
Still, with nowhere better to go, Merula followed the woman, kicking herself for not getting her robes out of the fire in time and wondering what it was that Clarice had threatened her roommates with to have even A.J. join in on the Toss a Merula party.
Merula hurried across the floor of the building, realizing very quickly that she was in a shop of some sort, and a high end one at that, given the jaw-dropping prices on display as she followed the woman past row upon row of coats toward the back of the shop, half tempted to dump the charred remains of her robes in the nearest rubbish bin, but ultimately deciding that she could at least guilt trip Tiffany into getting her something, if nothing else. Guilt tripping A.J. was a fool's errand only to be observed from a safe distance, and Merula was pretty sure Deborah had no soul to guilt trip.
"I so happened to notice you're wearing Slytherin robes," the woman said from ahead, snapping Merula out of her train of thought a moment before she would have crashed into the witch. "Tell me, how did you get to know my daughter?"
Merula squeezed her eyes closed and tried to imagine any of her roommates related to the witch before her, but she drew blanks. Tiffany's parents were Muggles, Deborah was from some place named Korea, and A.J. clearly didn't have a good enough relationship with her stepmother to send Merula over. None fit the bill.
"Is something wrong dear?" The woman asked, her voice tinged with concern that Merula didn't need to see to sense. "Is something wrong with Ismelda?"
Merula's eyes flashed open, and she took a long look at the woman before her. In many ways, she seemed small, almost Muggle like, humbly dressed in a sweater that looked handmade. She certainly didn't look like the girl… doing things with Barnaby, and even less like the cool and distant Clarice.
"Uhm," Merula felt her face flame up as she tried to formulate an answer that didn't involve what she had seen in the clubhouse. "I- I'm not with Ismelda."
The woman looked confused, her head tilting slightly. "Then… Clarice? But you're so young. What are you doing with my little Clar-"
"Hello mother," Clarice's voice cut the woman off, followed by a quick burst of language that Merula didn't understand, but given that she caught Ismelda's name and the fact that the woman she was talking to sighed angrily and shook her head, Merula could assume that Clarice has so helpfully filled her mother in.
"But I don't quite understand," Miss Murk said, her eyes looking down at Merula. "How did you get to know a child so young?"
"Merula's roommates with me," A.J. said, suddenly popping up from behind a shelf, giving a little wave before she ran a hand through Merula's hair, ignoring Merula's attempts to fight her hand off. "Incident with some numbskull I… resolved."
"Oh I see," Miss Murk said, pausing for a moment. "Clarice, might I ask which one of you girls is responsible for your friend's current predicament?"
Merula almost allowed herself a smile as both Clarice and A.J. looked down, and she took the opportunity to wave around the charred remains of her robe like it was some sort of cape a ghost would wear.
"Great plan C," A.J. muttered, clapping in a slow, sarcastic manner. "Threatening us with an Pumpkin Fizz ene-"
"You clowns tossed her," Clarice shot back. "And now we can't even have her go out without cooking her with a heating charm."
"I don't taste very good," Merula muttered, her mind suddenly on food. Sitting on a train for several hours gave her an appetite that she wanted sated an hour ago. And though being tossed through a fireplace after seeing the scene of Barnaby and Ismelda was an experience that made Merula want to empty her stomach into a discreet place, it didn't change the fact that she had nothing to throw up apart from hunger cravings and spite. "Might I recommend eating Draco? He's fatter than I am."
Both A.J. and Clarice chuckled at that, and Clarice paused. "Mother, do you still have my old robes? We're in a bit of a hurry. You know how shopping season is."
"As a matter of fact, I do," Miss Murk said, her eyes bright. "Now what's the magic word?"
"Accio Hogwarts robes," Clarice said, a little smirk on her face as an identical set of robes to the one Merula had before landing in the fireplace popped into her hand. "See? The right words do make a difference."
"Now Merula," A.J. said, picking at the edge of the toasted robe. "Let's give Miss Murk your little accident and go. If the others ask then-"
"They won't," Clarice said. "They'll probably be facefirst in a pile of food even before we get there."
"Tiffany maybe," A.J. said as Merula removed her burned robes and replaced them with the clean, unburned set Clarice had handed her. "But I'd expect Deb-"
"Deborah thinks all English food is garbage," Clarice shot back. "This is the first time in months she'll even have anything she's remotely happy with."
"Ah," A.J. said, rubbing her chin before nodding. "That's true. I wonder what our bill is going to look like."
"You can do the conversions into Galleons once we're all done with the food." Clarice said, nodding to Merula. "Now come along before the two gluttons bankrupt us."
Merula was glad when they finally got inside some building in a cold part of Muggle London she had never been to before, though she wondered why the building had so many red and gold decorations everywhere and why there were metal lions outside. Were they being marched into a Gryffindor trap? Was this revenge for what she did to the Weasley? And if it was, why did the air smell so good? Were the Gryffindors going to tie them to chairs and starve while they feasted?
Merula had her answer when she stepped through a circular doorway at the end of a long flight of stairs, and her ears were instantly assailed by a hundred buzzing conversations, most of them in a language she didn't understand.
But A.J. had pulled on Merula's arm, and when she looked up she saw Deborah and Tiffany sitting at a quiet table in the corner, a large pile of wooden… things neatly stacked on the table.
"Oh for the love of Merlin," A.J. muttered as she walked over to the table, gesturing for Merula and Clarice to sit. "Tiff, at least use a fork."
Merula winced as Tiffany tried to say something, but given that her mouth was full Merula could only make out a muffled babble and the sight of a mouthful of chewed food.
"Finally some good fu-" Deborah said, pausing when her eyes met Merula's. "Finally some good food. Hey Merula."
"What are you eating?" Merula asked, looking down at the red covered table around her. She wasn't comfortable sitting at a table with such blatant Gryffindor colours, even if she wasn't at Hogwarts anymore. "What's the best thing to get here anyways?"
Deborah paused as she held up what looked like two miniature wands in her right hand, a look of amusement on her face. "It doesn't really matter. The best thing here for me is watching you idiots disappoint me with forks."
"It's quite alright," A.J. loudly whispered to Merula. "Deborah is… well it's her time of the mon-"
"I will gut you," Deborah snapped with hissed malice. "And I'll shove so much Orange Fizz up your-"
Merula almost fell out of her chair when Deborah's mouth disappeared, silencing her mid-rant.
"Now now," Clarice said, her fingers holding a pair of slender sticks that ended in a small, golden ball that looked like a Snitch rolled in some sort of seed, the display almost as impressive as the wandless magic she used to silence Deborah. "Let's be civil here. You can't afford that much Orange Fizz anyways, and I need A.J. to be able to walk."
The table, mostly Tiffany, giggled at that, while A.J. just smiled and shook her head while Merula scratched her head, suspecting that Clarice was talking about something she didn't want to know about but not quite having the proof for it.
"Why don't you try the shrimp rolls here?" Clarice asked, turning her eyes to Merula. "They tend to have good shrimp, isn't that right, Deborah?"
"Fried or steamed?" Deborah replied, her mouth having obviously been restored to normal when Merula's head was turned. "Actually, you know what, Merula's going to be bloated if we eat too much fried stuff. Merlin knows how many egg tarts are in Tiff right-"
"Hey!" Tiffany complained. "Do you have any idea how many of those yellow balls Deborah had? It wasn't pretty!"
"The Golden Snitches or the hedgehogs?" Clarice asked, expectly picking up a small, pale dumpling with the two mini-wands and devouring it in one bite. "Doesn't matter either way. I'll find out when I see the bill."
"Merula, why don't you try one of those?" A.J. asked, pointing to the little wooden basket that Clarice had grabbed her dumpling from, jabbing a spoon into the container and rising with what seemed to be the last of the dumplings. "Open wide."
"I'm not Draco," Merula grumbled as she grabbed the spoon and shoved it into her mouth, her face flushed with embarrassment from being treated like a child.
The dumpling was thin. Quite thin in fact. So thin that Merula instantly regretted her life choices the moment one of her teeth came into contact with the dough and the contents of the dumpling came spilling out like any potion made by Longbottom.
The taste was delicious, but it also burned her like it was made of fire or lava, and Merula grasped at the table for something to soothe her burning mouth and throat, something that one of her friends was more than happy to provide, given that something Merula recognized as a tea cup was shoved into her hand.
Merula downed the cup, and she coughed once before glaring at A.J., now looking halfway across the large dining room, as if she didn't just hand Merula liquid fire in a spoon.
"Hey Merula," A.J. said when she turned back around, her voice amused as she pointed to someone in the distance. "Isn't that your Ravenclaw friend?"
Merula glared at A.J., feeling offended that she would try such an obvious trick on someone who knew better, and she crossed her arms. "You knew that was going to be hot, didn't you?"
"Yes, but that's not important right now," A.J. replied, waving a hand half-heartedly. "Tell me, isn't that your Ravenclaw friend over there? What was her name? The redhead, I mean."
Merula frowned at the mention of Marietta Edgecombe, a surprisingly good ambusher despite being both very pale and having Weasley red hair, but she couldn't see anyone who fit the description, even when she stood up to look. It was easier at Hogwarts, of course, when the walls were a dark stone, but trying to find a redhead in a room where all the walls were covered in red decorations was hurting Merula's eyes, and with every passing second she felt more and more like an idiot for not calling her roommate out on her trick.
And then Merula spotted Marietta, sitting at a table halfway across the room, and looking positively furious staring right back at her.
"Huh," Merula muttered, half to A.J. and half to herself, irritated she would have to admit defeat and astonished why another Witch was at the same Muggle restaurant at the same time. "She is there after all."
"Maybe it's fate," Clarice suggested when Merula sat back down, trying to not think of the almost murderous look on Marietta's face or the fact that Merula vaguely recognized two of the other girls at the other table. "Maybe you and that knock-off Weasley will become… partner-"
"Please don't," Merula could feel her face burning as red as the decorations or a Weasley's hair. "Just, can we just avoid talking about it?"
"Sure," Clarice said, pausing for a moment as she turned to a passing cart, returning with a small platter with two dark green blocks in it. "Merula, why don't you try this? I heard from Deborah that it's very good."
Merula, for all intents and purposes, agreed with Deborah that the rice in the little green package was very good. She did not, however, enjoy the fact that the table informed her halfway through choking down the wrapper that banana leaf was not supposed to be eaten.
Such were the joys of having friends.
AN: I was hungry while I was writing this. Pardon the dim sum train.
AN 2: Wow. I got a review. Haven't had one of those in a while. I'll start to add titles, but only starting in what I consider to be book 2 (years 3-5) with a fairly different cast compared to what I'm focusing on in the early years.
Read, review, blah blah blah.
