"Hello, Dave, Millie, Auntie. Sorry to interrupt—"
Druella wasn't sorry to be interrupted. David Davis was perhaps the most boring of all her third cousins (though that title had been usurped four different times this evening already), and it was all she could do to look like she actually cared about the Ministry gossip he'd been droning on about for the past ten minutes. She was seriously considering refusing to attend these obnoxious holiday parties from now on. It wasn't as though she had any real inclination to catch up with her mother's (very) extended family anyway, and if she was going to seriously pursue a career in academia (which she was, she'd only been at the College in Paris for two years, but she found she was much happier there than she ever had been with the Blacks or the Rosiers), it didn't really matter if her reputation as Lady Druella fell to unprecedentedly low levels due to lack of engagement with her nominal peers. "Not at all, dear. What is it?"
Theophania ("Tiffany") Potter (née Davis) (Druella's sister Claudia's youngest daughter) gave her a look suggesting she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. They hardly knew each other well, of course, but Druella was aware that she had somewhat of a reputation for having little patience for those who neglected the proprieties at events such as these. She had no intention of rebuking her niece at the moment, however — given that if she intended to hereafter ignore the fact that she was supposed to be Lady Druella at these things (which she did), it would be rather hypocritical to point out others' such failings. Besides, the girl seemed to be in some distress. "Have any of you seen Mimi?"
"Mimi?"
"Mira Black, Jamie's ward," Tiffany explained to her cousin, which was likely unhelpful in determining whether he'd seen her, given that he would still have no idea what she looked like. "I swear, we turn around for two seconds, and she's gone."
"Yeah, okay, but what does she look like, Tiff?" Dave asked (predictably).
She held out a hand level with her hip. "Black hair, green eyes, probably up to something — she always is, the little brat. She's three."
So just barely old enough to be dragged along to these things, making a nuisance of herself. If she were Tiffany, Druella would probably be glad for the respite. She did recall (with unfortunate clarity) what an incredible bother Bellatrix had been at that age. Sirius had only been slightly less obnoxious (due largely to not living in the same household as Druella). She couldn't imagine his daughter was any different.
She wasn't in regular contact with Bellatrix these days, but she did recall her eldest daughter writing, positively gleefully, that her favourite baby cousin had impregnated her "step-daughter" — Thom had apparently fathered a child at some point, the Evans girl who had become such a pain in his side in the late Seventies — and there were no other three-year-old Blacks. The clan had already been in decline in the late Sixties, but it had spiralled into near-extinction since Sirius had broken the covenant guaranteeing their survival.
"They do tend to be at that age. I recommend putting a tracking spell on them whenever you let them out of the nursery." Of course, she also recommended not letting them out of the nursery at all, if possible, but that was neither here nor there.
The harried young Lady sighed. "Yes, Mother does too, and I did, which is why it's concerning that we can't find her."
"I don't think we've seen any unaccompanied children at all, Tiffany," Millie informed her. Dave shook his head in agreement. "What were you saying, honey, about the Floo Office?"
Morrigan, save me from mindless smalltalk... "I'll help you find her," Druella volunteered.
It wasn't terribly difficult to find the girl. She might have somehow broken her foster mother's tracking charm and avoided their locating spells, but locating spells were a cheap knock-off of proper scrying, and the child couldn't hide from magic. Well, she might be able to, if she knew Druella was looking for her, but certainly not in the midst of what looked very much like a childish attempt to replicate the Blacks' Yule ritual with a cat, in an abandoned outbuilding just beyond the area which the Farleys generally considered "the gardens". (There was no real defining feature dividing the two spaces, the trees simply growing a bit thicker and the ground less park-like and well-maintained.)
Druella was fairly certain it had been a cider-pressing house at one point. She used to take a book and go hide there herself during these things. (It hadn't taken long at all for the adults to realise that she'd been hiding in the library, so she'd had to be a bit more creative.) It was unaccountably annoying that the child had decided to profane the space with her little ritual. Especially since she was doing it wrong. Not only would it not work properly outside of the Blacks' wards (or without altering it to work through the magic in her own blood, which she clearly hadn't done), but she'd drawn all of the symbols backward on her makeshift altar, which had...interesting implications, to say the least.
Namely, someone had shown her what to do. Someone who was more familiar with the way the ritual would appear from an adjacent plane than this one.
The little shack had fallen further into disrepair in the years since Druella had last been here, its door fallen completely off its hinges, but the girl had set up her altar facing north (that, at least, was correct), so they still managed to take her by surprise.
Lord Potter, specifically. "Jesus Christ, kid! What the heck are you doing?"
She spun around with a little yelp, taking in the sight of her foster parents and brother standing in the doorway (and Druella somewhat ahead of them, inside and two steps to their right, out of the way), seeing her with her hands covered in blood, kneeling beside a dead cat and what appeared to be a purloined kitchen knife, obviously realised from their expressions that she was definitely in trouble, and decided that the best approach here was a blatant lie. "Nothing?"
"Nothing. Really. I suppose you just found that cat like this?" Tiffany said scathingly, which was really no more than the girl deserved. Honestly, nothing... "Where did you even get the idea to—?!"
"Um... In a dream? You weren't supposed to be here, though. Miss Dru? Annie says you're a meanie."
Oh, Annie, was it? Not surprising, honestly, the Black Family Magic would almost certainly have trouble communicating with her directly, unless the Potters had taught her Welsh, and definitely would know that sacrificing the cat here would do it no good. The Dark, on the other hand, tended to be very up on the times, and would probably think convincing a three-year-old to make a 'proper' Yule sacrifice was a worthy end in itself, regardless of whether the ritual actually accomplished anything.
"Annie?" Tiffany repeated.
"Your imaginary friend, Annie?" her husband added.
"Is– Is that cat...dead?" little Harry asked, his eyes filling with tears. The girl nodded. "Mimi! You hurt it!" She nodded again. "Why?!"
She shrugged, obviously confused by his reaction just as much as his parents'. "It's...sorta like a present?" she told him, as the elder Potters fell into a whispered argument about how, exactly, they were going to handle this.
"Tell Angelos that from this plane, all of your symbols are backward," Druella suggested. "And my title is Magistra." She assumed the Dark had been complaining about her by her given name, and the girl had taken her best guess with Miss.
The girl's eyes widened in surprise. Thom's eyes, but a vivid Avada green. (An inhuman, deathly green — Dru wouldn't be entirely surprised to find that Death had arranged the child's birth, or even participated in her conception.) Aside from the eyes, she was every inch a Black, her face and hair a study in contrasts and absolutes — soft curls so dark they would, in certain lights, look blue, falling like feathers against sharp cheekbones and unnaturally pale skin. Her face was narrower than Sirius's, her mouth a shade wider, and there was something just slightly more...finished about her which reminded Dru of Bellatrix (or Druella herself).
Something which made it seem as though...even though she was clearly a child and would necessarily grow up, she wouldn't need to grow into any of her features (Sirius, for example, had had horrible jug-handle ears at her age), all the rough edges and discontinuities preemptively rounded off and smoothed out. Something which hinted she'd be a bit quicker, a bit sharper than other children, and a bit more graceful. "Fae-touched" was the term — unusually, unnaturally gifted (even on a scale of the House of Black).
She suddenly recalled Bellatrix mentioning (in the same gleeful, chatter-filled letter as her announcement of her impending "step-grandchild" — script loose and messy, as though her hand couldn't keep pace with her thoughts, skipping from one topic to another in a way that positively screamed I'm a bit mad at the moment, pay attention to me, Mother) that she would be assisting with the birth. Dru would have to ask her next time they spoke whether she'd...done something to the child, shaping it in her own image as Dru had with her, ensuring the little unformed thing would grow into the most perfect version of itself. (Not that she really doubted the answer would be anything other than, yes, should I not have? Well, it's too late, now...)
She'd resisted the urge to 'finish' Andromeda and Narcissa, having been informed by then that giving soulfire to infants was Not Acceptable, and she was glad she had, because they almost certainly wouldn't have borne that extra shade of difference between themselves and the rest of humanity as well as their older sister. (Bella had never felt a need to conform to others' expectations, even when she was the same age as little Mira, here.) She doubted either of them had the ability to affect their own children in such a way, but Bella had always been more like Dru than either of them liked to admit. It had simply never occurred to Dru to tell her eldest daughter that she shouldn't adjust the bodies and souls of newborn infants to develop in the direction of her own ideal image of the person they could be (or that psychologically normal people didn't like being eternal outsiders), because Bellatrix had no intention of reproducing and, unlike Druella, couldn't be coerced into signing a marriage contract demanding she do so.
Obviously it also hadn't occurred to her that she might be capable of doing something similar to a child not her own...though perhaps it should have — in hindsight, Bella had clearly made an impression on Sirius, saving him from that soul-rotting curse Orion had used on him as a child. (Less obviously so than with his daughter, but then, he'd already been seven: far more settled in his developmental course than a bloody neonate.)
(So, one biological parent was a mad Black, the other a mad ritualist; her conception was likely influenced by one or more Aspects; she clearly held the interest of the Dark; and she'd likely also been exposed to Bella's soul before her own had fully formed... Morgen, Circe, and Lilith, poor thing's sanity never stood a chance...)
"She says it's the thought that counts, b'cause that's how rituals work," the child insisted, a stubborn tilt to her chin. "And presents."
"Of course it is. Please tell her, don't you have anything better to do with your time than corrupt three-year-olds?" She switched to Welsh because she suspected the girl would have something to say about some strange adult telling her 'imaginary friend' to leave her alone.
"She says it's rude to talk in a language I don't know, but no, she doesn't, and she's not going away because she's my friend, and if you want to talk to her, please make an illusion for her, because it's rude to make me talk to you for her, too."
That was about the point Lord Potter realised Druella was speaking about his foster daughter's 'imaginary' friend as though she was decidedly not imaginary. "You needn't humour her, Lady Druella. Annie is what she calls the Mimi who does bad things." This was clearly directed at the girl, with a very serious frown.
Druella really couldn't help smirking a bit at that. Clearly Sirius had never mentioned her to him, because she would be willing to bet her disinclination to humour children being childish was at least near the top of the list of traits he would have used to describe her. Though he probably would've put it as, Dru's a heinous bitch and hates children. (Not an inaccurate characterisation, though she did think she'd mellowed somewhat, since she was no longer forced to interact with the nobility on a regular basis.)
"'Annie' is what she calls Angelos, who is one of the less overtly disturbing faces of the Dark. I have no doubt it does try to convince Mira to do bad things, but it is its own being." In as much as any Aspect of Magic was independent from the whole. "And I have no intention of creating a blank for it because, A, it's Yule, surely it has the energy to manifest itself if it would rather speak to me directly, and B, I have a no-sock-puppet policy."
"What the hell are you talking about, Auntie?" Tiffany demanded.
"The Dark attempting—" (apparently successfully) "—to stake a claim on your foster daughter, despite Sirius having broken the Blacks' covenant with it well before her birth?" Honestly, there was just too much history to fully explain the matter at the moment.
The child frowned up at her. "She says to tell you no one asked you, stop trying to ruin her night, and calling someone a sock puppet right in front of them is rude."
"Lady Potter asked me, actually, and I thought you enjoyed watching people ruin things. And while you know I do consider Aspects of Magic to be little more than characters in a story, I was actually referring to creating an illusion to be remotely controlled by your avatar who is herself simply you pretending to be mortal. Badly." Druella had only met the Avatar in question once. A five-century-old teenager with an obnoxious channelling capacity and a tendency to reference goings-on in recently divergent potentialities, responding to things someone might have said but hadn't actually, her overwhelming impression had been that Angelos was barely even trying to seem mortal any more. "It's silly, and I won't do it."
"Er..." Lord Potter hesitated, probably on the cusp of asking whether Druella was insane. (Everyone who knew her remotely well would say yes, but that had nothing to do with this.) "Aspects of Magic aren't real, Lady Druella," he said, flinching as she turned her glare on him, rather than the small child glaring straight back at her. "I mean..."
"I know what you mean, and you are in fact wrong, in both your specific phrasing and in your intended statement. Aspects of Magic are personalities developed between mortals and magic in order to communicate with each other more clearly, which is, quite frankly, something I've never understood—"
"Annie says you wouldn't, 'cause outsiders aren't really mortals."
Druella ignored the interruption and the odd looks it earned her from the Potters. She was aware that being a seer gave her a rather different perspective on magic than most residents of the mundane plane, but the fact that she was a seer was hardly well-publicised. "—but for the purposes of this conversation, they're at least not imaginary, and I'd imagine at least one or two others are aware of her as well." Persephone, certainly, if that horrid massacre in Diagon Alley was any indication of the girl's mother's relationship with Death, and Thom had been an incorrigible flirt when it came to Magic, but she seemed to recall him telling her once that the first Aspect who manifested to meet him was Hecate, under one of her less-well-known names.
"So, does that mean Katie and Cory are real too?" Tiffany asked hesitantly, as though uncertain whether she really wanted to know.
Called it. "If you mean Hecate and Kore as in Persephone, yes."
The woman flinched. Her husband simply glowered. "No."
"Beg pardon?"
"No, Tiff, they're not real. Lady Druella, I respect that you believe that magic is conscious and that it speaks to you through your gods, and I ask that you respect my beliefs as well, and refrain from filling my wife and children's heads with your unproven superstitions."
Dru couldn't help raising an eyebrow at that, because really? If she were religious, she would certainly be insulted to be assured that he respected her beliefs, only to have them called superstition in the next breath. "I sincerely doubt you have the slightest idea what I believe, Lord Potter."
"My mother was a Black, Lady Druella. I'd say I have a better idea than most people here how Traditionalists view the world."
Wait. Did he not know who she was? It was possible, she'd never spoken to him directly before — she'd spent the majority of the years he and Sirius had been close in Egypt and the Levant, and had generally avoided Black Family Functions after she was no longer required to attend them, as had Dorea — and his wife had introduced her as "my Aunt Druella." Given that she and her niece appeared to be about the same age...yes, she thought, it was possible he had no idea who he was talking to.
She smirked. "Yes, your mother was Bellatrix Dorea, I believe. She was two years older than me, and married out of the Family the year after I married in." Since children weren't included until they turned seven, Druella had participated in more than twice as many Black Family rituals as Dorea. "She was raised on the periphery of the House, primarily by her mother, who was a Lestrange. Cassiopeia once mentioned that they had considered marrying her to Cygnus to bring that branch of the Family back to its heart, but decided against it because she was far too kind-hearted and soft to raise a little hellion like so many children of the primary line tend to be." When Dru had pointed out that she was hardly better equipped to raise a child, Cass had said that she might be a selfish, neurotic bitch who couldn't relate to other people, considered the Blacks to be violent savages to a man, and hated everything to do with children, but at least she wasn't a pushover.
"I am not in the least surprised that she would whole-heartedly have adopted the beliefs of her husband's house, if only because, from what I saw of her on the few holidays we both attended, she found the Blacks' practices ethically repugnant." Not that Druella had disagreed. She'd come to adopt a more nuanced view of light and dark over the decades she spent with the Blacks, but she still objected to human sacrifice as a matter of principle. "Nor am I surprised that she raised you under the impression that her natal family's traditions are nothing more than heathen superstitions, but if you truly understood how Traditionalists view the world you would not call them such — because you would know that regardless of whether magical consciousnesses are extensions of a more alien independent consciousness belonging to Magic as a whole, or whether you believe them to be merely the product of human belief making an impression on magic, which reflects what they want to see with no true agency of its own, gods do exist, and can and will arrange for your untimely and humiliating demise if you deny that fact too vehemently in front of their worshippers."
Lord Potter looked torn between suspicion and uncertainty. Tiffany looked as though she had just realised as well that her husband had no idea who Druella was. She abandoned her attempts to soothe her troubled son (honestly, it was only a cat...) long enough to say, "Jamie, love, this is Druella Black, née Rosier."
"Druella Rosier, formerly Black, Niece," Dru corrected her. "My marriage contract dissolved when Bellatrix killed her father."
She saw it click, the inference being made, comprehension dawning. "You're Bellatrix's mother?"
"Yes. Though I find it incredibly demeaning to be referred to as though my only value lies in having produced offspring. I spent twenty-five years living in the heart of the House of Black and participating in their Family Rituals. Believe me when I say that you do not understand their beliefs and even if you did, they are hardly an exemplar of the beliefs of most Traditional houses. My own personal views on the matter are even further removed from what I imagine your mother taught you about Traditionalists and their gods. I would never deny their existence or that they hold some degree of influence over magic in the Mundane Plane, but given the choice, I don't hold with such nonsense as religious observances, nor do I believe them to be truly independent beings."
"So you don't think they're real," Potter said firmly.
"Morrigan, protect my sanity from idiot wizards... Yes, they're real."
"You just said you don't believe they're really beings!"
"Real as a technical term in magical theory means a feature of our plane of reality, Lord Potter," Dru drawled, trying not to let her exasperation become too obvious. "As opposed to invented — imaginary — or infernal — unable to be directly observed from this plane, much less affect it. It has nothing to do with whether a consciousness is a genuinely independent being, or from whence they developed. Aspects of Magic are real in much the same way gravity is real. I don't worship or follow them. I consider them to be unnecessary intermediaries between myself and Magic, which unavoidably distort meaning to communicate with humans on human terms. They are, however, a fact of reality, regardless of their origin, and several of them are apparently in contact with your ward — which should surprise exactly no one, given that both of her parents were god-touched themselves. Nor is it a matter which requires immediate action."
"Oh, yes, my goddaughter hearing voices telling her to kill animals is completely normal, nothing to be concerned over," Potter snapped, with a frankly unwonted degree of sarcasm.
"Well, given that she's three and that cat is nearly half her size, if I were you, I'd be more concerned with how she managed to capture and kill the animal without suffering so much as a scratch." Druella suspected compulsions, which suggested the child was an incipient mind mage — an altogether more dangerous proposition than an otherwise average three-year-old whose imaginary friends happened to be actual gods. Most gods were relatively responsible; Kore and Hecate would likely try to prevent her doing anything too obvious or destructive on behalf of the Dark. A small child quietly developing a gift for compulsion which she might use at her own childish discretion to obtain whatever juvenile desires she might have was, on the other hand, somewhat terrifying. Especially if she'd already developed the strength of will to overcome the survival instincts of another predator, forcing it to remain docile while she killed it. (Even if it was only a housecat.) "Mira?"
"Huh?" Apparently the child hadn't managed to follow their conversation.
James rephrased the question for her. "How did you get the cat here, Mimi?"
"Oh." She shrugged. "I just...made it follow me? and then lie down in the circle and stay still." While she stabbed it. Multiple times. (Druella was fairly certain she'd never killed anything before, if only because this particular sacrifice was so poorly executed.)
"How did you make it follow you? Was it magic?"
Stupid question, of course it was magic. "Did it stay quiet while you killed it, or did it try to get away?" It was possible she'd used something like a freeform charm to keep it in place, though not, in Druella's opinion, likely.
The child shrugged again. "I told it to stay still. Animals always do what I say."
So, yes, she'd compelled the creature strongly enough to overcome its natural instincts even while being (rather ineptly) stabbed to death. "Can you make humans do what you tell them to do?"
"Mmm...sort of? I can't make Harry give me the last biscuit because I said so, but I can make him want to give me the last biscuit, so he does, and I can't tell Betty to just leave me alone, but I can make her not see me so she'll look for me somewhere else, and I can't tell Charlie to just stop crying, but I can make him forget he's hungry or wet so he'll go back to sleep. Aunt Tiffany and Uncle James usually just ignore me unless I ask them to do something they already kind of wanted to do anyway."
Not surprising — conscious beings were more resistant to direct compulsions than unconscious creatures, even as small children. She probably didn't have the channelling capacity to enforce her will on them, even over minor issues, though Druella would be willing to bet she was close. "Do you know when people are lying to you?"
The girl nodded.
"Always or only sometimes?" Always would suggest a degree of empathic awareness, while sometimes would more likely mean she was only aware of conflicting thoughts unintentionally projected by the liar in question.
"Always. Do you? Annie said I shouldn't try to lie to you."
"Not the same way you do, but yes." Can you hear me thinking right now? she asked, deliberately projecting the thought into the mental space between herself and the girl. Perhaps a bit too loudly and/or clearly, as the child flinched before she nodded.
"Just that thought, though. Not all of them like Harry and Betty."
Can you reach out and think back to me, if I let you into my mind? She reached out beyond her habitual occlumency barriers to maintain contact with the thought that time, allowing the child to seize onto the projection when she noticed it — the legilimentic equivalent of grabbing her hand. She'd never done so properly before. Druella could feel her wondering what the strange Dru-lady meant, even as the mental equivalent of her grubby little fingers adjusted instinctively to match the natural frequency of Dru's mind.
Like this, she added, mimicking the little twist of magic to reach across the connection between them to the part of the girl's mind still resonating at its own natural frequency, and slipping the idea into the forefront of her consciousness, before quickly withdrawing from the chaotic mess of inaccurate perceptions, half-formed understandings, and nonsensical ideas which was a child's mind. (The youngest person whose mind Thom had introduced her to was Narcissa, when she was ten. Dru had been appalled by how completely disorganised it had been, but the three-year-old was orders of magnitude worse. Ugh. Bad idea, Dru...)
That felt strange, how did you do that, what was that, am I doing this right? Is that how Annie and Katie and Kore talk to me? Can other people do this?
Dru let a hint of amusement filter into the extension of the girl's mind which had infiltrated her own. This is called legilimency, yes, you're doing it correctly, albeit rather clumsily — not unexpected, if this is your first attempt to enter another mind directly (which it clearly was) — the mechanism by which your friends communicate with you is similar, though not exactly the same (explaining soul resonance to a three-year-old sounded like an enormous headache, so she left it at that), and yes, other people can do this. Your grandfather, for one.
I have a grandfather? Uncle James never said I have a grandfather... the child thought indignantly. From the confused tangle of associated thoughts, she had been under the impression she was an orphan, with no living biological family to speak of, which was certainly not the case.
Rather than continue this inane conversation, Druella copied a chunk of information about the girl's parentage and most immediate family (only the basics — trying to assimilate everything Druella knew about the history of the House of Black through legilimency had knocked Thom out, and obviously it hadn't been his first attempt to perform legilimency ever) and their current whereabouts, and pushed it at the child. Teasing it apart and actually attempting to comprehend it would, she judged, keep the little troublemaker occupied for at least a few hours.
As soon as she was distracted, Druella isolated the child's consciousness from her own, gently disentangling them and reforming her barrier between them — she had no desire to actually hurt the child. She probably shouldn't have taught her to establish contact directly, but it would only have been a matter of time before she figured it out for herself, and if she had already been infiltrating the minds of those around her, the Potters would have needed to know, if only to have their own children inspected by a mind-healer. They might want to anyway, they clearly found it disturbing that the girl had already been experimenting with altering their children's externally-directed perception or focus on top of direct and indirect compulsions — compelling someone to want something, rather than to do something, was generally considered a more difficult skill, though it actually required less force of will if the legilimens was subtle about it — but those were truly superficial effects, and not nearly as potentially dangerous to the target as deeper intrusions or alterations.
"She's a mind mage?" Potter said, presumably hoping the answer would be no, despite it being very obvious that she was.
"A baby mind mage, yes. Empathic, like Thom. Is this truly surprising?"
"Well..."
"Morgen, Circe, and Lilith, next you're going to tell me you'd be shocked to realise she's a parselmouth or inherited Sirius's magesight, or the Black Madness, for that matter."
"Can we go back to her using legilimency on my children, Auntie?" Tiffany asked, clutching at her son, who clearly had no idea what was going on. He kept shooting preoccupied looks at the dead cat (though he had at least stopped crying).
"She's only been using superficial effects on them, not truly legilimising them."
"Are you sure? How do you know?"
"She didn't know what I was talking about when I asked if she could slip a thought into my mind just now. I had the impression that she's aware of everything they're projecting, but she certainly hasn't been gaining access to their deeper thoughts, or anything beyond their immediate sphere of attention. I wouldn't be surprised if she starts experimenting with true legilimency relatively soon, though. If I were you, I'd ship her off to Mann and make her Thom's problem."
"We're not handing her over to a thrice-cursed dark lord, Druella!" Potter objected.
"Why not?"
"Yes, Jamie, why not?" Tiffany repeated. "He is her biological grandfather, isn't he? I know she's your goddaughter, but we're not prepared to handle a three-year-old mind mage who's willing to kill things for the voices in her head! She's already completely unmanageable, and she's only going to get worse!"
"I don't— We can't hand her over to someone who's just going to encourage that sort of behaviour!"
"Why not?" Druella repeated. "I'm admittedly not on speaking terms with him myself—" She would never forgive him for not bringing Cygnus's abuses of Bellatrix to her attention before he could do the same to Andromeda. She'd actually told Bella, when she'd been searching for a solution to the tynged the Evans girl had turned back on him, that she would walk into the Void before she helped that bastard with anything. (It wasn't as though she'd ever really liked being alive anyway, and Bella knew it.) "—and he might actually be a worse parental figure than myself, but he and Bella certainly won't let her run wild with mind magic, or be cowed by her potentially invoking gods against them. And Bellatrix really is very good with children—" She actually liked the little monsters, chaotic and unsubtle and horribly energetic as they tended to be. "—I'm sure she'd be delighted to foster her 'step-grandchild'."
Honestly, she suspected Bella intended to show up and take said child to foster at the age of seven, regardless of whether the Potters agreed. She was the only remaining heir of the House of Black, and Bellatrix was technically its Head now, despite their seat officially remaining vacant in the Wizengamot since Arcturus's death. She might be willing to let someone else care for the girl for the "boring" years, but she would ensure the child was raised properly when she was old enough for a serious education.
"No. In case you've forgotten — both of you — we're on opposite sides of a war!"
"So, because you want to keep her as a hostage?" Druella sincerely doubted that would work — Thom was about as likely to cave to pressure applied through the child of a daughter he'd never acknowledged and hadn't even known about until a year before she was executed as Dru had been to help save his sanity. He probably wouldn't be moved even if they had a hostage he knew and liked. And Bella would simply steal her back if they attempted to use her as leverage (and probably burn the Ministry offices to the ground with feindfire in retaliation, or something equally dramatic) — but it was at least a...somewhat logical reason, coming from someone who was entirely unfamiliar with the psychology of his enemies.
"What? No! It's just— I wouldn't expect you to understand, but he's evil, Druella! I wouldn't let him raise a dog, much less a child! And Bellatrix is worse!"
Druella rolled her eyes at him. "She categorically is not."
"I know you're her mother, but—"
She cut him off with a little scoff. "I know you believe that the Dark Houses have no sense of honour or morality — they believe the same about you, by the way — but Bellatrix takes the responsibility a liege holds for his people far more seriously than any other British noble I can name. Thom, on the other hand, is a muggle-raised orphan who grew up half on the streets, with muggle thugs and thieving cutthroats as examples of success to live up to. I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him without magic. Bella, however... I will not claim that she's not missing a few limiting phrases, but she would not willingly harm a child, were she to be charged with raising it, or any of her own people, for that matter. She's certainly the more destructive of the two on a battlefield, but she would inarguably be the better parental figure."
"It doesn't matter! We're not sending her to Mann!" the man snapped.
"Fine then, I wish you the joy of dealing with her. If you change your mind, send me a letter, Tiffany. I'll forward it to Bellatrix for you."
"Thank you, Auntie," the girl murmured, the glare fixed on her husband suggesting that she might send such a letter regardless of whether he changed his mind. "And thank you for bringing this problem to our attention before it grew entirely out of control."
"Think nothing of it, dear. You did, after all, save me from David's interminable prattle. Mira." The girl, sitting quietly on the floor with her eyes closed, her focus clearly turned entirely inward, most likely trying to sort out everything Dru had given her on her family, failed to respond. She reached out a mental probe of her own, forcing it into the proper register (based on the impression she'd gotten when the girl legilimised her), slipping the thought, Mira, don't reach out to the mind of anyone who doesn't tell you that you may, into her immediate thoughts.
The girl startled badly, opening her eyes and blinking in confusion, instinctively trying to follow Dru's probe back to her own mind. She held it off. No point letting her get attached when Dru was attempting at this very moment to take her leave.
If you go too deep in someone else's mind, you can forget who you are, and they probably won't be able to remind you and help you get back to your own body, she advised her, on the assumption that only other mind mages would welcome a three-year-old legilimens practising on them, and they would be able to disentangle her clumsy attempts to overtake their consciousness. It was possible that Hecate or Kore might help her, if she ended up too deep in the mind of a non-legilimens, but it would be better if she simply avoided the problem entirely.
She could feel the child's understanding and assent, it wasn't really necessary for her to nod and say, "Yes, Magistra."
"Fortune's favour, then. To you as well, Lord Potter, Tiffany." She turned to go, return to the party, at least long enough to bid her mother and the Farleys farewell, then, her eye catching on the little boy, scared and confused, recalled, "If I were you, I'd say no when the mind-healers suggest obliviating your son of this night as a solution to his nightmares about dead cats. Making children simply forget having witnessed traumatic events truly ought to be considered criminal malpractice. Ask them to use DISCs — Deeply Integrated Systematic Constructions — to deflect his attention from this particular incident instead, stopping him from dwelling on it without leaving a large and obvious hole in his memories surrounded by negative associations to dwell on instead. And when they ask what the hell a DISC is, tell them I called them lazy idiots for not keeping up with recent articles in their own area of expertise."
It was hardly a new concept — Thom, she was quite certain, had been using a similar technique to deflect attention from the fact that the public face of Thom de Mort was, in fact, the Dark Lord since the mid-Fifties — but therapeutic applications of it had only recently begun to be explored.
"We'll consider it, if Harry does have nightmares about this. Thank you, Auntie."
Potter just nodded. As she swept out of the crumbling little shack, she heard him mutter to her niece, "Is she insane?"
"Probably, yes, but that doesn't mean she's not right."
Tiffany, Druella decided, might currently be her favourite out of all of her siblings' children.