Eleanor was scared.

The writing on the wall, the horrible sight of the petrified cat, and the words from Draco Malfoy's mouth, still ringing in her ears, had given Eleanor a perpetual feeling of spiders beneath her skin, shifting and crawling. The castle was no longer this warm comfortable place that only needed Eleanor to prove her goodness, and was now an entity of its own, with something lurking beneath its surface.

Eleanor was glad to have Daphne Greengrass in the days that followed Halloween. Ron, Harry, and Hermione had been carted off by Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall, no doubt due to the fact that they were the only ones at the scene of the crime. Eleanor didn't have to think too much as to why, though. Despite the odd whisperings cropping up that placed blame on the Gryffindor trio, Eleanor was well aware of their propensity for sticking their noses in places they didn't belong. She hadn't yet had a chance to talk to them about how they had managed to find the scene before anyone else, but she was planning on cornering them on Friday to demand some answers.

In the meantime, she had taken to avoiding Draco Malfoy again. His awful proclamation, shouting threats to muggleborns, had churned something new in her stomach. Though Daphne's analysis of the situation, and her earlier assurance that Draco was merely attempting to maintain the image expected of him from his parents had made Eleanor sympathetic and forgiving, this last moment eroded something deeper in their friendship. Eleanor could no longer assure herself that these thoughts were something Draco could overcome. She was reminded of the boy she first met, scathing and cruel, desperate for power and careless with the pain he threw around so casually. Eleanor could no longer ignore who Draco Malfoy had been, and who, it seemed, he remained.

Her distance from Draco was surprisingly easy in many ways. For one, Eleanor was still adjusting to the outlook that Daphne had given her on her other classmates. She no longer assumed that everyone hated her from the start due to her mother, and, with it, she felt her self-imposed isolation thawing with her fellow Slytherins. She spent more time with Pansy Parkinson, and the quiet Tracey Davis in their dorm. Milicent Bulstrode still glowered, so Nell made little progress there, but she was happy to have a new assortment of girls to chat with during meals, or to study with during quiet evenings spent in the common room.

Blaise Zambini was another new friend. He was close friends with Pansy, and was surprisingly easy to talk with. Though he had that arrogance for which the Slytherins were so well known, he didn't seem too wrapped up in pureblood politics, so Eleanor found herself entertained rather than intimidated by his long speeches and casual criticism. It was almost like how Draco was when he was relaxed, but without the silly playfulness that Eleanor was most fond of.

In all honesty, Nell did miss Draco quite a bit, despite how easily she had separated from him. Without their Saturday quidditch practices, and with her new study partners in Daphne and Pansy, Nell didn't need Draco the way she had in the year prior. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly melancholic about it all, she wondered how she had ever even convinced herself that they were friends at all.

But then she'd look at the box, the one left by her mother, and she'd be reminded of all of the letters sent back and forth over the summer, which would in turn remind her of the forbidden corridor, and Draco's worried face, and something in her heart would ache until she distracted herself with something else. And Eleanor didn't have anyone she felt like she could talk with about it all, when the ache would become too much to bear. She wrote to her father, but he had always been lukewarm at best toward Draco, so he mostly spent his response happy that Eleanor had befriended Daphne, and suggesting that she spend more time with her. He told her that if Draco really cared, then things would work out in the end. A nice sentiment, but a useless one.

And when Eleanor would ask Daphne for her thoughts, Daphne's best advice was to just ignore what Draco had said, and go back to talking to him like nothing had happened. If she wanted to spend time with him, then she just ought to. Daphne didn't seem to understand Eleanor's insistence that she couldn't just ignore Draco's words, and that she felt a moral obligation to not tolerate his behavior. Though Daphne had endless knowledge of the people around them, Eleanor found, at times, that Daphne enjoyed having the knowledge just for the sake of it, and didn't seem too motivated in interfering or taking any sort of stance. She never agreed with the pureblood politics, but she didn't display any sort of desire to do anything about it, either.

And, of course, when Eleanor told Ron, Harry, and Hermione that she wasn't talking to Draco, all they said was good riddance .

So, instead, Eleanor spent the week after Halloween trying her best to distract herself. The box from her mother was a perfect tool for this, an impossible mystery that required Eleanor's full attention when she worked on it. Hermione had suggested earlier in October that it may require some sort of code-word, so Eleanor had taken to reading aloud from her textbooks while studying in the presence of the box, just in case some random combination of words might be the key. She was quite proud to have come up with such an efficient method of multitasking.

On Thursday, Eleanor was doing just that, reading aloud from A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot. But suddenly, and for the first time, Nell's bed curtains were being rustled by someone on the other side.

Through them, came Daphne's voice. "Knock knock."

Nell laughed. "Who's there?"

"Daphne!" she said, as if surprised it weren't obvious.

Nell was too tired to explain the joke, so she pulled aside the curtains to reveal Daphne, standing in her emerald silk nightdress, her long hair braided back.

"Can I come in? I've a question about the madrakes."

Nell nodded, and Daphne climbed up onto Nell's four-poster bed, sitting by the end and flipping through the Herbology textbook that had been tucked under her arm.

Absently, Daphne glanced over at the iron box. "Oh! How cool; you've got a Pandorette. From your mother, then?"

Eleanor's jaw fell open, and all thoughts rushed from her head.

"What?" Daphne asked, concern crossing her delicate features.

"You… what?" Nell said.

Daphne pointed at the box. "Your Pandorette. That's what it is, isn't it?"

Nell's brain finally caught up. She grabbed the iron thing and shoved it forward between them, tossing her textbook aside. "You know what this is?!"

"Er– yeah. I mean it looks like a Pandorette. Are… don't you?" she asked, looking at Nell as if she thought she may have lost her mind at some point over the past hour.

"No! I have absolutely no idea what this rotten thing is. My mother left it for me in her Gringott's vault, which I only found this summer, and I've been spending the last four months trying to open the blasted thing. You seriously know what this is?" Nell said this all very fast.

Daphne smiled a bit sheepishly, before picking up the box gingerly. Nell watched as she ran her hand along the long edge, before pressing in with the side of her nail, dragging it in a practiced way. It took a moment for Daphne to locate whatever it was she was looking for, but once she did, she smiled, and pointed with her other hand.

A red glimmer had appeared at the top of the box, dim but steady. "Yep! Definitely a Pandorette."

Nell wrenched her eyes from the red glimmer to stare at Daphne. "You're… you're incredible."

Daphne blushed and waved away the compliment. "Oh, come on, then."

"I… I don't even know where to start. What is a Pandorette? How did you know? Why didn't anyone else… wait! How in the bloody hell do I open it?!"

"Oh!" Daphne said, her eyes scrunched up in thought, as if choosing from the questions that Nell had shot rapid-fire at her. "Well… who did you ask?"

"Everyone! Draco, Hermione, Hagrid, Harry, Ron, the rest of the Weasleys..."

Daphne smiled. "Well, of course none of them knew."

Nell gaped at her.

Daphne continued, "Well, none of them would have had a Pandorette, would they? Oh, well, here… Pandorettes are magically charmed boxes that are passed down in old wizarding families. But they're only passed down from mother to daughter, and, er— they're usually only in wealthy families, you see? Draco wouldn't know because he's not his mother's daughter . And, now that I think about it… doesn't Narcissa have two other sisters? There's Andromeda, who's the oldest, so she likely got their Pandorette if they have one… and doesn't she have a daughter?" Daphne trailed off, before remembering that she was meant to be explaining.

"Oh! Right, sorry – and as for Hermione and Harry, well, Hermione is muggleborn, and so was Harry's mum, right? And… well, for the Weasleys… they, er, likely didn't have the kind of money to have ever afforded one. Molly Weasley, right? I think she was a Prewett… they weren't particularly wealthy, right? And, well, it's more than just them not being able to afford it, you see… they wouldn't really have a need for one…"

"Daphne, please. What are they for? How do you open it?" Nell asked, desperate at the answers finally at her fingertips.

"Oh! Sorry — you know how I get," Daphne said with a smile. "They're quite old magical objects— meant for preserving and passing down invaluable family heirlooms. Only the most important family treasures. Well, at least that's what my mum used it for. She passed ours down to me when I got my Hogwarts letter."

"You have one?"

"Yes!" Daphne laughed, as if Nell had told a joke. "Of course! I'm the eldest daughter, afterall. Ours has this funny charm, a lot of them do, I think. We have this old tiara in it, it's goblin silver and has these wonderful enchanted jewels in it… but if you don't return it to the Pandorette within five minutes of removing it, the Pandorette will summon it back. Took out a clump of hair the first time I opened it." She giggled, patting a spot on her head.

"How… how do I open it?"

"Oh!" Daphne said, and stood up. "Just a moment."

Nell held her breath until Daphne returned, pushing through the bed curtains again, her fingers tight on something that glinted in the candlelight.

"It's… well it's a bit unrefined. The Pandorettes are old, remember?" She held out her hand, and Nell saw a shiny, pointy sewing pin. Daphne picked up the box again and did the thing with her nail so the red glimmer reappeared. "You… er— it needs your blood in that spot there. It's a bloodline thing, you see. It will recognize your blood as your mother's daughter. My mum had this whole speech, but I can't really remember it…"

Nell stared at the pin, her excitement past any discomfort over the implications. "Will… can you?"

Daphne smiled gently. "Sure."

Nell closed her eyes and held her hand out to Daphne. She felt Daphne's steady hand wrap around Nell's palm, then a sharp pinch against her index finger.

"Sorry," Daphne apologized automatically when Nell winced. Nell opened her eyes and watched as Daphne pressed Nell's finger, and the small bead of red blood against the glowing spot on the Pandorette.

After so much unending mystery and a lifetime of disappointment, Nell honestly expected nothing to happen. She had given up on the idea that things would work out.

But she was wrong.

The box opened like an accordion, and in the light, Nell could tell easily it was bigger on the inside. She stared in, the candlelight flickering against stacks of notebooks, papers, and boxes.

And on the very top of it all, a letter.

She glanced back at Daphne, who suddenly looked quite concerned, if not a little uncomfortable. It was as though she realized what Nell was looking at in the same moment that Nell had.

Daphne began to move, and said, "Well, I'll leave you to it, then."

But before she could go, Nell grabbed her by the wrist. "Would… would you stay, actually?"

Nell felt a glimmer of deja vu to when they had been on opposite sides, Daphne pleading with Nell to join her on the grounds so she wouldn't be alone.

Daphne smiled kindly, and settled back across from her, still holding her hand. Nell picked up the faded parchment, the letter with pointy handwriting. The letter that bore her name across the top.

July 10th 1980

My dearest Eleanor,

If you are reading this, it is likely that I am dead. Although I hope as I write this that it is instead something we are reading together with a laugh over a bottle of wine on your seventeenth birthday… But I must write this instead because of my fear of the other option.

Today, the only person that I still trust in our world, the wizarding world, has sent me word that Lord Voldemort is hunting me down. It appears that my attempt at escaping from my past has failed. So I've left this behind for you, safe in Gringott's, so that someday you might understand. I will not pretend that I am not afraid of what's to come, and that I am not aware of the power of the man I will be facing. But it is my only chance, and I have to do this. You may not understand now, but someday, you might. Life is a series of choices, and most may be inconsequential, but there will come the ones that define you. And this is one for me. And I hope you can forgive that, someday.

My Eleanor. You were a miracle. From the day I met your father, to the day I realized I was pregnant with you… all of these were miracles that I never deserved. I'm so sorry that I may not be there for you as you grow and make your way through life, but there is nobody that I trust more to raise you and give you the love you deserve than your father. He is a good man, and I know you will see it too.

I hope that the world you live in is better than the one I inhabited. I know that I will never deserve your forgiveness, but I hope, for the sake of your heart, that you are able to someday move past the pain I have caused.

If I had the time, I'd write you a hundred letters, but I've been on borrowed time for many years now. I hope the contents of this Pandorette, our Pandorette, will answer any remaining questions you may have.

If my advice holds any meaning to you, then I will leave it here:

- Love the people around you, and be more generous with your heart than I was. As your father's daughter, I'm sure this will not be hard for you.

- Question everything you are told to believe.

- Always help those that need it, but cannot ask for it.

With all of the love that I have,

Ottilie Hemlock

Eleanor didn't realize that she had begun to cry. Heavy wet tears coursed down her face and landed in her hair as she finished reading the first and last words ever meant for her from her mother.

She raised shaky wet eyes to Daphne, who pulled her in for a hug that dragged a new round of tears out of her. Eleanor was quiet as she cried, and Daphne patted down her hair, with so much tender calm that Nell finally began to settle.

"I'm sorry," Nell said finally, as she straightened herself up and wiped away the wet streaks from her face.

"Don't be," Daphne said, with a gentle smile. "Between me and my sister and my mother— at least one of us is breaking down any given Sunday. It's nothing I haven't seen before."

Nell laughed, in spite of her tears, and handed Daphne the letter to read, to see what she could make of it, and to put some distance between her and a wound that she had forgotten she had.

As Daphne read, Nell sorted through the contents of the Pandorette.

The first thing she found was a long thin box. It was unmistakably for a wand, and looked similar, but not exactly, to the one Nell had received herself from Ollivander last year. She opened the box and pulled back the silk fabric, but found the velvet inlay empty. She looked at the lid, and found a sole word written in silver. Sickersnapper .

She set it aside, and dug through the Pandorette for the next box. This one was a small square thing, similar to jewelry boxes she had seen her father give her aunt during Christmas. She opened it to reveal a modest gold necklace with a rectangular charm, no bigger than a silver Sickle. She brought it close to her face and read the engraving on the gold pendant. The name Hemlock, below a sort of crest. She handed it to Daphne.

"The Hemlock crest, I'm guessing," Daphne said, putting the letter down on the bed. "It's pretty." She handed the box back to Nell, who set it aside.

"I think this was my mother's wand box," Nell said, handing the other box to her. "Do you see that, though? Why is there writing? What's Sickersnapper? "

Daphne shrugged, reading over the silver inlay. "Some old families would name wands that were passed down. It might be the name of your mother's wand. Do you have it?"

Nell shook her head. "They didn't find… er— my mom's wand was not on her when they found her."

Daphne nodded gravely, handing the box back.

The next thing Nell extracted was a stack of three textbooks, held together by twine. She read the titles on the edge.

- Wandmakers of the Millenia by Lysander Oak

- The Wrought History of Dragon Poaching and Slaughter by Peeta LaDon

- Beasts: The Most Fearsome and Wicked by Thornbrook Vicious

Nell handed the stack to Daphne, who read the titles as she did, before laying the books down next to the necklace and the wandbox. Nell looked back through the Pandorette, and decided to tackle the most numerous of the items that remained. Notebooks, stacked in tall piles, at least ten, all well worn and no doubt used.

She pulled out the topmost one, a battered old brown thing with wrinkles along the front cover, the binding frayed.

However, when she opened it, the lined pages were empty. She flipped through it, but there was nothing inside, the wrinkled old pages all blank.

"It's empty," Nell said, handing it to Daphne, who took it with curiosity.

Nell pulled out the next notebook to the top, but found it just the same as the first. Clearly well used, battered and old, but entirely blank.

"They must be charmed," Daphne explained. She pulled out a self inking quill that had been bookmarking the Herbology textbook they had long since abandoned, and wrote a quick word on one of the pages. It sat, Daphne's handwriting loopy and neat, dark against the white, but nothing happened.

"How strange," Daphne said. "They must have been charmed to hide what was already written, but they aren't charmed to hide anything new."

"What do you think that means?" Nell asked, pulling out the rest of the notebooks, handing half to Daphne, as they both flipped through them, looking for evidence of anything still there.

"I'm guessing that your mum didn't want anyone to read what she had written," Daphne explained. "But the notebooks aren't special, or anything. You can buy diaries, you know, that will hide any words you write into them so they can't be read by anyone but you. But I don't think that's what these are."

"Why would my mother leave these if I can't even read them?" Nell groaned.

"It certainly feels like an unnecessary precaution. You said you got this in Gringott's? So your mother hid what was in these notebooks, inside a Pandorette that only you'd be able to open, inside of a vault of the most secure wizarding bank in London?" Daphne asked.

Nell nodded. "I've been learning that she doesn't like to make things easy."

"These better have, like, the coordinates for a giant stack of treasure, or some spells that, I dunno, make you the most powerful witch in existence," Daphne said with a laugh.

"They're probably just a bunch of old recipes she didn't want anyone else to see," Nell joked, relieved to have felt her mood move past the grief that had filled her from her mother's letter.

"Do you know the revealing charm?" Daphne asked.

Nell shook her head.

"I can look it up this week? Or, maybe, you could ask Hermione Granger." Daphne laughed. "That girl seems to know everything."

"Not a bad idea," Nell agreed.

Together, they put aside all of the notebooks, and Nell dug back into what remained.

There were only two things left now. One was a folder, tied together with ribbon, containing a variety of documents that poked out of the edges. And the other was a small bag.

Nell picked up the bag, no bigger than a coin purse. She opened the drawstring, and found a vial inside containing some sort of shimmery floating not-quite-liquid not-quite-air. She held it up to the light.

"Oh!" Daphne said. "I think that's a memory."

"A memory?" Nell asked, looking closer into the vial, as if the dancing blue might reveal something.

"Yes! Witches and wizards can extract memories to preserve. You put them in these big vats called Pensives so you can watch them over again," Daphne explained.

"Wonderful! Where can I find a Pensive?"

Daphne paused, thinking. "I don't know if there's one at Hogwarts. They're a bit like Pandorettes, you see… they're usually in old pureblood families. They're quite expensive."

Nell sighed. "And, I'm guessing, they're the only way to view these memories, aren't they?"

Daphne nodded slowly. "I'm sorry, Nell. I'd offer our family's for you to use, but my mum has it locked up and doesn't even let me or Astoria use it. She says it's too personal and I have to wait until I'm older."

"Makes sense, I guess. Maybe Draco would let me use his over Christmas or something. Or maybe the Weasleys have one."

Nell put the vial back in the bag, and returned to the final item, the folder.

She pulled it out, and removed the ribbon carefully. The first papers the folder opened to were articles cut out from the Daily Prophet. She read the titles, handing them to Daphne as she finished.

OTTILIE HEMLOCK SUSPECTED IN BRUTAL MURDER - February 12th 1979

Bones family found dead - Edgar Bones, wife Thalia, and two children slain.

GEM AND ASHIPATTLE HEMLOCK REPORTED DEAD BY DAUGHTER

Workplace accident leaves Ottilie Hemlock the sole heiress to the Hemlock family.

ILLEGAL POACHING RING ATTACKED: 32 WIZARDS FOUND DEAD

Suspected work of Death Eaters or inevitable attack from the beasts? See below for comment from Lucius Malfoy.

Eleanor ran through article after article, murders of witches and wizards and muggles. The only two that named Ottilie, however, were the first two. The report of the murders of the Bones family, from which Edgar Bones had apparently been staunchly anti-Death Eater. And the second article which reported on the death of Eleanor's grandparents.

"I… I didn't know she killed the Bones family," Nell explained, looking back to the first article. Her mind was a swarm of memory back to the first year, and the short friendship she had with Susan Bones on the Hogwarts Express.

"Do you know Susan?" Daphne asked. "I think Edgar was her uncle."

"I met her on the train last year," Nell explained, her voice a bit pinched. " God , no wonder she hated me when she found out who I was."

"What do you mean?" Daphne asked.

"I… I didn't tell her my last name, at first, during the train ride at the start of term. But she heard it during the sorting and hasn't talked to me since. It was one of the reasons I thought everyone knew about my mother. But… I guess this explains it," Nell said with a grimace.

Daphne sighed, and read over the article again.

"Do you think my mother included these other articles because she was the one responsible?" Nell asked, handing over the ones that hadn't named Ottilie in them. "I mean, they don't name her or anything. Why else would she include them?"

Daphne shrugged. "Maybe they're just crimes she was accused of by Aurors – that's the Ministry Law Enforcement. I mean, the Prophet can't just accuse people without reason."

Nell nodded, and returned to the folder for the two remaining documents, which weren't news articles. They looked instead like some sort of certificate, formal and on thick paper. Nell read the one on top.

HEMLOCK, ASHIPATTLE AND GEM formally request the courting of their daughter,

OTTILIE HEMLOCK

with one,

LUCIUS MALFOY

of MALFOY, ABRAXAS AND KAMOSE.

Please respond posthaste with your agreement or decline.

"Is this some sort of arranged marriage proposal?" Nell asked, shocked. "Oh god, for my mother and Draco's father?"

Daphne looked it over. "Er— yes. But it appears it was rejected… Merlin, it was dated for when your mum must have only been a baby. They sent it over the second they had her, it looks like."

"Is that a pureblood thing?" Nell asked.

"A really, really old one," Daphne explained. "Even most of the oldest families around today gave up on the whole arranged marriage thing ages ago. I mean, there's certainly expectations around marriage. But the whole arranged thing, and from when your mum was only a baby… that's practically ancient."

"That's so weird," Nell said.

The next and final page was identical, but instead of requesting the engagement of Lucius Malfoy, it was requesting the courting of a Sirius Black, of Orion and Walburga Black. Nell handed it over to Daphne who scanned it.

"Also rejected. Looks a few years after the other one," Daphne explained.

"Who's Sirius Black?" Nell asked, distantly aware that the surname Black sounded familiar.

"Oh… he's a Death Eater. In Azkaban now… he murdered a whole bunch of muggles and a wizard," Daphne explained.

"How awful," Nell said with a shiver.

"Actually… you know Draco's mum, Narcissa? She was from the Black family. They're probably related," Daphne said.

"Oh! Right!" Nell said, suddenly remembering. "Draco told me last year… Narcissa had a cousin named Regulus. They were both on the Slytherin quidditch team. But Draco said Regulus died. Maybe Sirius was another cousin, or something."

Daphne shrugged. "My mum doesn't talk much about the Blacks. Other than Narcissa and her sisters, I mean. Sirius wasn't in that part of the family, I think, or else she probably would have mentioned him."

With everything all read over and nothing left to reveal, Nell packed the Pandorette back up. She felt suddenly exhausted, as though she had just finished running the whole length of London, or had just flown the whole borders of Hogwarts.

She looked up again at Daphne, unsure of how to properly express how grateful she was for everything she had done for her. "Thank you," she said. "I mean… really. You've been such a help, and well, with everything. Thank you."

"Oh anytime!" Daphne said with a smile. "But you owe me tomorrow with these Mandrakes," she said, winking and holding up the Herbology book that had been the whole reason that any of this had happened. She left Nell's bed, and Nell stayed, drowning in endless thoughts, and yet even more questions.