(Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—Chapter 6: Draco's Detour)
July turned to August. Verity traveled to Diagon Alley early every morning by Floo powder and returned the same way late in the evening. She had never enjoyed a summer more; after they settled the issue of Montague, the only time she and the twins got near a fight was when they threatened to disown her for getting nine O.W.L.s, and even that ended in celebratory drinks at the Leaky Cauldron.
The Malfoys only acknowledged her existence when food appeared in her room once a day, enough in theory to keep her from starving. She Vanished it every night, because she had no intention of eating it, but she didn't want them to suspect she ate in Diagon Alley with those blood traitor Weasleys.
One morning, two weeks before term, she slipped her feet out from under the threadbare quilt that once belonged to MacLaren and winced as a cold draft bit at them. Five minutes, she told herself. She tucked her feet back under the covers.
Twenty minutes later, she reawoke. Dizzy from standing in a hurry, she sat on the floor instead. She pressed the palms of her hands into the ground and let the cold soak up her veins and hit her brain. Chilled enough to think straight, she pulled her trunk from under the old chair and threw back the lid. Her magenta Weasley's Wizard Wheezes robes stood out brilliantly against the faded attic, and the morning sun shone on the last of the shimmering Floo powder. She made a note to buy more before day's end.
She changed quickly. Sleeping in was dangerous. Draco was waking earlier and earlier these days; she wondered if he slept. It would be better to miss work than be caught. Listening for footsteps before the treacherous journey through the old house was agonizing every time. Hearing nothing, she sighed and continued. After so many days of scraping pins, the already low-quality lock had given way, and "locking the door" just kept it closed.
She rushed down staircase after staircase and through the corridors, neatly dodging the rickety steps and creaky floorboards she'd developed a map of in her head. She slipped between the double doors of the dining room, unscrewing the jar lid. A squeak caught her ear as she stood in front of the empty grate. She froze. Draco? The house settling? Whatever the cause, her fingers scrabbled inside the jar as she gathered the last Floo Powder. She threw it into the fireplace so quickly it went everywhere. Calm down. Calm down.
The door swung open. With a crash, the jar slipped from her fingers as she whirled to see Draco in the doorway. His mouth formed words as he tried to grasp the scene, but nothing came out.
The shock didn't last long. He made it across the room in seconds. Swearing, he dragged her from the fireplace and slammed her against the wall.
"The hell are you doing?"
Between the green fire popping, the robes that might as well have said Treason all over them, and the pounding in her head, she could say nothing.
"Well?" he demanded.
"This isn't what it looks like," she blurted out.
"Isn't it?" he retorted with the most superior sarcasm. "It's exactly what it looks like, you filthy Mudblood." A flush crept into his pale face. "You were talking to those blood traitors you love so much, weren't you? Weren't you?" he repeated.
"No."
Draco swore again and struck her; her head snapped to the side. "Liar!" Tears pricked behind her eyes. "You foul, lying Mudblood, you dare..." He trailed away, overcome by his rage. Draco breathed heavily, swelling with anger, while Verity shrank, one hand to her cheek where an ugly bruise was already forming.
"It makes sense now. You cut your hair because you felt like it!" He shoved her and she fell into the corner. "You felt like it! You were trying to be pretty for them. That letter! At the end of term, I should have seen the signs, you rat. Traitor!" She slid to the floor.
"Please..." she whispered.
He hauled her back to her feet. Then he looked hard at the pink material in his hand. "They gave you this?" he demanded. She nodded, then cringed, afraid of another blow. He simply looked at her, deepest loathing on his face. "Leave my house."
Verity rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. "What?"
"I said get out!" He pushed her away from him so she stumbled. "I don't want to see you again, do you hear me? Get out!"
Verity threw open the door and sprinted away, half-blind from the hot tears. His words chased her as she ran through the corridors; her feet thudded on the carpets and her reflection flashed past in the aged mirrors. Though she couldn't remember her journey, she stood at the kitchen door, both hands on the cold iron handle. As she calmed, she realized her belongings were still in the attic. Reluctantly, she turned.
She was not alone in the corridor. Mrs. Malfoy stood in the second door on the left, the one that led into the reception room. She scanned the hall, then beckoned. Verity followed her into the reception room. The heavy door swung shut, and Verity turned silently to Mrs. Malfoy, praying she would ask no questions about her bruised face or magenta robes.
"I cannot change Draco's mind, and you wouldn't stay if I could," Mrs. Malfoy said. Her gaze flitted everywhere but Verity, and she wrung her hands. "Perhaps I should have told you the truth long ago, but at least I cannot see you leave my house without letting you know." Verity's bewilderment must have crossed her face. "Haven't you wanted to know who your parents were?"
"Of course," Verity faltered.
"Or why we kept you instead of turning you out? We didn't need another servant. But I convinced Lucius to let you stay." She sighed.
"My sister married Rodolphus Lestrange as soon as they left Hogwarts, but not because she cared about him. He was from a well-to-do pureblood family, and she did her duty by our family. When the Dark Lord rose to power, they were his first and most ardent supporters, and when he fell, they were the last to admit defeat. The fools tortured an Auror and his wife for information about him. They landed themselves in Azkaban."
What did this have to do with her, Verity wondered, but Mrs. Malfoy wasn't finished. "However, about a year before the fall of the Dark Lord, months before I had my Draco, Bellatrix confessed a secret to me. She had given birth, a daughter. But her dedication to the Dark Lord was so extreme, she could accept no distractions. So she abandoned the child in a Muggle town, left it to die. I was the only one to know of that child's existence."
Verity sank onto a chair, gripping the arms. It couldn't be true. Her mother had her blonde hair and wrote for a magazine, and her father used to play Quidditch; she had a baby sister with a perfect laugh. Her fantasies crashed in flames, replaced by the haughty face that jeered at her from wanted posters every morning.
"I don't know where you went or how you survived, but you appeared on my doorstep five years later. I recognized my sister at once. You may not have her hair or her eyes, but in your smile I saw my Bella before the Dark Arts consumed her.
MacLaren already suggested I allow you to stay as another servant, so I chose that. I hid your identity from everyone, even Lucius. I gave you what you needed for your first year at Hogwarts. If you possessed half my sister's talent, you would be an exceptional witch, and I would not keep you from that. I told Lucius the truth then, but he agreed you shouldn't know."
Verity pressed the palms of her hands against her closed eyes until colored light flashed behind her eyelids. "I'm a pureblood."
"Yes."
"Draco is..."
"He is your cousin."
"I could call myself Verity Lestrange, instead of MacLaren, couldn't I?" she asked.
"I suppose." Mrs. Malfoy looked at her sympathetically. It was the strangest feeling, Verity thought vaguely, to be the object of such an emotion in this house.
"I don't want to." Her steady voice surprised her. "They didn't want me; I don't want their name. MacLaren is good enough for me." She stood. "So this is goodbye."
"It is." With a clean conscience, Mrs. Malfoy was calmer, but sadder. "You have become a witch I am proud to call my niece."
Verity smiled wanly. "Thank you," she said. "Goodbye...Aunt."
She walked the familiar path to the attic without seeing it. The realization she would never walk these halls again did not give her the joy she expected. She stood at the fireplace again, holding her trunk without realizing she'd packed it. She knelt and scraped the last of the Floo powder from the glass shards on the dusty floor.
"Diagon Alley."
"Okay, what happened to your face?" Fred asked that night. "You promised you'd tell us tonight." When Verity arrived hours late, bruised and tearstained, carrying everything she owned, he and George respected her wish to postpone explanations, but he couldn't take more waiting.
"That is a long story." She waved her wand and a pair of socks folded themselves and landed on the coffee table. After the shop closed she'd taken over laundry, partly to make up for her lateness, and partly because Fred had mentioned the troubling fact that he'd worn the same trousers for two weeks.
She eased herself onto the only clothing-free spot on the sofa and explained the morning, sentences punctuated by laundry leaping and folding itself. The boys' dark silence meant they were inches from storming Malfoy Manor to let Draco know what they thought of him.
When she got to Mrs. Malfoy's confession, Fred made an angry noise. "You mean that—" his word made Verity flinch, "knew the whole time you were her niece and she let everyone use you as a house-elf? Merlin! You should have been at least as rich as Malfoy, your parents had loads of money, and they were even higher up with You-Know-Who..."
"Freddie, they went to Azkaban right after I was born," Verity said; she hardly wanted him to cause a scene next time he met the Malfoys.
"Old Lucius ought to have set you up. He can afford it."
"Are you sure you want me to have grown up in high pureblood society?" she asked, balancing George's last shirt on the tower of clean laundry. "Don't you think growing up exactly like Draco might have made me a bit more like him?" Fred had no answer. "Still, what am I supposed to do?" she asked with a sigh. "I can't go off and—live in the Shrieking Shack!" With a wild gesture, wand forgotten, to accompany her point, the shirt flew off the pile again and hit Fred.
George looked up from the Daily Prophet crossword for the first time, overlooking the shirt on his twin's face. "Sure you could!" he said. "We're in talks to buy out Zonko's, and you'd be perfectly placed to run it for us."
Verity laughed. "Sorry to disrupt the business prospects of Weasley and Weasley, but it's not my taste."
Halfway through George's protests that they could remodel, Fred cut in. "Move in with us!"
"FREDERICK WEASLEY!"
"Oi," he moaned, rubbing his ears, "did my mum teach you how to do that? I meant the floor above our flat—it's only storage now—no trouble—set it up for you—" He hastily explained he in no way meant to suggest anything like what she was suggesting he was suggesting.
She softened. "What would your mother say?" She picked up the clothes and headed for their rooms.
"Lots," said Fred, disappointed but not defeated. "Let's get married so you can move in without any hassle."
"Fred Weasley!" The clothes tumbled out of her arms, and she dove under the table after them. When she reappeared, her face was pink. "I'm not even of age!"
"So I'm ahead of myself," he relented. "But you must be at least vaguely pleased, because you haven't hexed me." He gave her a winning smile.
"Vaguely. Remember, my specialty is potions, not hexes." She swept out of the room, blowing a kiss.
"Well," Fred said, satisfied, "I'm almost engaged."
"That's a good start. Congratulations, old boy." George shook his hand vigorously. "Still, I'd be careful what I eat tonight. Snape probably taught her Seventeen Ways to Poison Crazy Redheads first year."
Three days later, Verity stood in the kitchen of her tiny studio flat. She ran her hand over the polished countertop and the white cupboards. Breathing in, she smelled hot gingerbread and a faint strawberry from the pen by the sofa bed, where several tiny pink balls of fuzz hummed peacefully.
It was too quiet.
"Fred! George!" she yelled, stomping on the floor.
"Coming!" Fred's voice came through the floor. A minute later the twins knocked on the door. Verity pointed her wand at it, and it flew open.
"Took you long enough." She whirled her wand at the gingerbread on the stove. A knife flew from the caddy, landed in the pan, and began to cut with jerky motions.
"Traffic was bad," George said. Verity rolled her eyes. Bad traffic up the stairs; what was this world coming to?
"Bother kitchen spells!" she cried as the knife stopped short. She tugged it out and cut the gingerbread by hand. "Laundry I'm wonderful at, but I never could cook except like a Muggle. It's embarrassing."
"I'll get Mum to give you lessons," Fred said, sneaking his arms around her waist.
"Watch your hands while I've got a knife, Mr. Weasley," she threatened, slapping them away.
"By the way," George said, sticking his arm into the Pygmy Puffs' pen so they could tumble around his hand, "laundry the other night, helping us put this together, kitchen spells today, I'm surprised the Ministry hasn't picked you up yet. Underage magic and all that."
Verity's jaw dropped. "You're not serious? Oh Merlin, no."
Fred and George burst out laughing.
"What?"
"When have I ever been serious?" said George. A Pygmy Puff crawled into his sleeve. "You're fine; if they were sending you to Azkaban they'd have done it days ago."
"Isn't there a Trace on underage magic?"
"Course, but it catches magic done around under-seventeens." Fred reached stealthily for the gingerbread.
"For all they know, it was us the whole time," George said.
Fred swore at the top of his lungs and stuffed his burnt fingers into his mouth.
Verity whirled around. "What've you done now?" He shook his head and nodded at the innocent pan on the counter. "Serve you right," she laughed, turning the cold water on.
As Fred ran his hand under the tap, George tugged the Pygmy Puff out of the back of his collar and returned it to its pen. "Like I said, if you cast spells around overage wizards, the Ministry's got no way to tell who's done it, so you're off the hook. They don't even check if you live with adult wizards."
"Imagine how much paper they'd've wasted sending letters to our house, eh?" Fred grinned.
"I could have used magic at Malfoy Manor every summer!" Verity complained. "I thought I'd be arrested if I levitated a dust speck!"
"You learn something new every day, don't you," George said airily. "For example, today Freddie here learned the dangers of cookie sheets."