A/N: To new readers, welcome to chapter one. To old readers, I rewrote the chapter because I felt the original one didn't give the complicated Woodley family dynamics enough credit and there was so much more to say about them. The heart of the story stays the same, though, so don't worry. I just wanted to give the Woodleys more of the depth I know they have.

For visual support and update-updates go check out the tumblr I created for HNTBAW: nhstadler. tumblr. com

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1

THE DEATH OF A LEGACY

MUSICAL MOOD:

taylor swift - willow


"Did I say shit already?"


There was always something heavy about the end of summer. A kind of melancholy that lived in that hour before sunset; in the pale yellow glow that was just a little less golden, a little less warm than it had been a month ago.

All seasons faded, but summer died. Loudly, dramatically, with all the frills.

The water was cold as it washed around my feet, burying them deeper into the sand, but anything was better than going back inside, really; even the very sharp pebble that was digging into my thigh while I was browsing my new school books like the most generic, uninspired Ravenclaw that I was.

To be fair, I did bring one of the maids' WitchStyle with me as well, which I had found on the kitchen counter this morning. I could see the picture on the cover moving even now, covered with sand and half-buried under my rune dictionary: A group of boys coming out of a pub, laughing, stumbling. Not quite the scandalous exposé but apparently anything with James Potter on the cover was guaranteed to sell.

I wasn't going to read the story, of course. I wasn't even curious. Prince Potter and his friends really didn't need more undeserved attention. Also, Katie would fill me in on every detail of the outrageous escapades of Hogwarts' notorious elite anyway, whether I wanted it or not.

"Miss!"

"What?" I snapped around so fast that I accidentally knocked over the pile of books next to me, some of which landed in the shallow water with a sickening squelch.

"Shit!" I lunged forwards onto all fours, trying to salvage my new Potions book from its watery end, but the ocean had already slipped between the pages, soaking the paper with saltwater and sand. "Shit, shit, shit."

"Miss," Federica said again as she climbed over a few rocks to get closer to me, her ginger eyebrows furrowed when she picked out the Spell Theory book, holding it up between two fingers. Helping me fish soggy books out of the freezing water probably wasn't in her job description.

"I can't bloody believe this." I tried to blot the first page of Powerful Potions with the sleeve of my sweatshirt but all it did besides ruining my clothes was to disperse the ink on my name, turning Seth Woodley into nothing but a shapeless black blob in the middle of the page. "Did I say shit already?"

"Several times." Federica held out the dripping copy of Advanced Spell Composition to me. "Also, they're here, Miss."

I could feel her words sink to my stomach like they were actual, physical things - stones or those cartoon anvils. It wasn't even a surprise - I had known that they were coming - but the effect was always the same.

"Do I have time to shower first?" I indicated the ink-smeared sleeve of my white sweatshirt and the stains on my leggings where the wet sand had soaked through the fabric, feeling cold and sticky against my skin. But I knew the answer even before Federica pressed her lips together into a thin line.

"Right. Brilliant."


There was probably a perfectly respectable dress laid out on my bed upstairs. Something elegant, understated yet fashionable but without trying to be, hand picked by Allegra Woodley herself. I saw her before I saw the others; leaning against the pushed open terrace doors with a saucer and cup in her hands, not even a little worried that she might spill tea on her off-white trousers.

She wouldn't, of course.

"I'm sorry," I said as I climbed the steps of the patio we never used, painfully aware of the wet slapping sound my flip-flops made against the stone floor.

"What happened?" My mother arched an eyebrow at me, her gaze trailing from my damp leggings to the oversized Ravenclaw jumper that was stained with ink and sand. I didn't even want to know what my hair must have looked like, really. I had scraped it into an unsuccessful pony tail before leaving the house, but it was half-dissolved by now as the shorter bits had escaped the confines of the hair tie. I could feel them coming loose even as I crossed the terrace, rogue strands whipping into my face.

"Nothing." I pushed them behind my ears. "I was reading and forgot the time."

My mother frowned, her eyes focusing on something behind me, and I turned my head to see Federica hurry across the lawn with my stack of books, half of which were still dripping water.

"Elizabeth." She sighed, mostly exasperatedly, but I thought there was a trace of softness in it too; like she couldn't entirely fault me for avoiding the house for as long as I had. "Hold this."

She passed her tea to me, the dainty cup jangling dangerously against the saucer as I took it, and then reached around my head to pull out the hair tie. I could feel my hair fall around my face - slightly wavy, slightly messy, not quite touching the tops of my shoulders. I knew that the trimming job Katie had given me in our dorm bathroom just before the summer holidays wasn't exactly neat, but my mother didn't comment on it as she combed her fingers through the tangled strands.

"What about my sweatshirt?"

I could have been talking about the fact that the cloth was stained and the sleeves soaked with salt water, but we both knew that that wasn't what I meant.

My mother's eyes scanned the dark blue letters across my chest for a second before she cut her gaze up to me again. "There's nothing we can do about that now," she said and it could have meant both; my unfortunate choice of clothing or the uncomfortable elephant in the room that inevitably came with it and seemed to double in size whenever my grandparents were around.

"Here," she said and then slid a single pearl-topped pin out of her hair. Hers was even lighter than mine; the frosty sort of blonde that ran in the Malfoy family. "This will do." She tucked my hair behind my ear and fastened it with the clip, the metal pressing against my skull.

It probably wouldn't do. Even if I had been dressed appropriately and not like I had just rolled out of bed, I didn't know how to do this; how to be a Woodley. But there was nothing to be done and, so, I took a deep breath and then followed my mother inside.

"Look who I found," she announced to the room like I wasn't leaving a trail of wet sand on the polished wood floor, and I could feel all eyes on me as the hum of conversation ebbed away into the soft classical music that played in the background.

They were all there, of course; like an imposing still life: My aunt and uncle seated on the couch next to my Grandmother and Vala and Cassandra perfectly poised in two of the upholstered armchairs, while my father and Grandfather were standing in front of the fireplace.

"You are late," my grandmother said, her voice clipped like a slap to the face, and then her gaze dropped and her nose wrinkled in disapproval as she took in the logo that sprawled across my chest.

"I know. I'm sorry."

There was no use arguing or apologising. Not when I had the audacity to crash family tea-time in a Ravenclaw sweatshirt. This went beyond failing to dress properly; this was sacrilege. Like wearing a T-shirt with the words 'atheist' to church, only much more audacious.

I sometimes wished that I was; audacious, radical, unapologetically defiant. That anything I did - my glaring inability to do what was expected of me - was on purpose - a glorious rebellion against my ridiculously posh pureblood family. But it had never felt like a choice; that I always felt too awkward, too strange to live behind this mask the Woodleys had carved out for me and that just didn't fit, no matter how hard I tried.

"Well, you're here now." My father set his tea cup down on a sidetable before ambling up to the cluster of furniture in the middle of the sunroom.

We were all going to pretend everything was fine, of course; my unsuitable getup and the uncomfortable tension in the room. The Woodleys' disapproval was never straightforward, never loud or vulgar. It was more of a silent judgement that was conveyed by looks and snide remarks alone; comments that sounded pleasant enough on the surface, specifically shaped to cut only deep enough to wound, never to kill.

"Nice entrance, cousin," Vala drawled under her breath, looking entirely bored with the situation as she flipped a page of the magazine in her lap. "Very dramatic."

"Thanks." I rolled my eyes and took the only free seat that was left, right across from Grandmother. Grandfather had come up behind her, his hand gripping the backrest of the couch, but his gaze was on me and I could feel my face grow violently hot as he, too, studied the stitched lettering on my sweater.

Elvira, the maid whose gossip magazine I had borrowed and then drowned, had set down a fresh plate of mini sandwiches on the low table even though the old one was still untouched, and I felt my stomach growl.

"Cassandra, darling, tell your grandparents who you met at Cambridge." Aunt Helen arched her dark eyebrows at my cousin who perked up in her chair so suddenly that she almost spilled her tea. Next to her, Vala only rolled her eyes at the magazine in her lap. I doubted that she was actually reading my mother's Sorcièrété, mostly because she had been staring at the spread on countryside aesthetics for a full ten minutes already.

"Oh, yes. I ran into Asher Macmillan last week."

"Asher." Grandfather frowned and turned to my father who had just poured himself another cup of tea.

"Justus and Charlize's oldest, I believe," he said as he added milk to his cup, his spoon clinking against the china, and Grandmother nodded.

"A very good family."

What she really meant was old-money pureblood family, but even my unbearably posh grandmother knew that it wasn't socially acceptable to say such things in public anymore, especially for the Sacred Twenty-Eight.

"Indeed." Aunt Helen shot another meaningful look at her daughter while her knee was pressing into her husband's leg like she was trying to push him off the couch. Uncle Ludwig didn't seem to notice, though, with his attention entirely focused on the plate of mini-sandwiches rather than the expertly hedged conversation.

The Woodleys definitely had perfected the art of saying things without actually having to say them.

Cassandra continued to talk about Asher Macmillan who apparently was studying magical law, and I leaned forwards to pile a few of the sandwich squares on a napkin, almost upending the entire thing as I pulled my legs up onto the chair. All of them had cucumbers in them, of course, and I carefully began to pick them out without destroying the integrity of the entire sandwich.

"What on earth are you doing, girl?" Grandmother's voice cut through the conversation like a knife and I looked up at her, still pinching a flabby cucumber slice between my thumb and index finger. Judging by the absolutely horrified look on her face, one might have thought I had just burned my bra in front of her while screaming 'fuck the patriarchy'.

Experience should have told me to keep my mouth shut. Any sort of resistance to my family only made things so much worse than just sitting through it. But, of course, I had never been very good at self-preservation.

"I don't like cucumbers."

Next to me, Vala snorted and my grandmother's nostrils flared as she snapped her head around to look at my father. "Charles, I can only hope that you have reconsidered sending her to Madame Esher's."

I almost dropped the slice of cucumber as I cut my gaze up to my dad. He glanced back at me, then at Mum who had come up next to me, her hand resting on the back of the chair and her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Elizabeth stays at Hogwarts, mother," he finally said, clearly exasperated, and I felt the tension in my shoulders relax a little. "We've discussed this."

"For heaven's sake, the girl can't even properly sit through afternoon tea. How do you expect her to -"

"That's quite enough, Cecilia." Grandfather's voice wasn't loud, but it was enough to leave utter silence in its wake, and I met his gaze. I sometimes forgot that our eyes had the exact same colour - muddled greys that felt just a little too cold - and the realisation rattled me every time.

"I talked to Horace at the club last weekend," he continued as he stirred his tea and then, quite languidly, tapped his spoon against the rim of his cup before taking a long, slow sip. "He thinks you are well on the way to becoming Head Girl next year."

He regarded me for a long moment and I could feel my family's eyes on me as I shifted in my chair. My right leg had gone numb and the napkin with the mini-sandwiches was still on my lap, threatening to end up on the impossibly expensive Persian rug.

"Do you want that? To be Head Girl?" He asked as he arched one grey eyebrow at me and I could feel the Woodleys' attention on me like the heat of a thousand suns. Cassandra especially was staring daggers at me like I had purposefully hijacked her monologue about Asher Macmillan and was only surpassed by the look of utter disapproval on my grandmother's face.

But, despite all that, and the Ravenclaw sweatshirt, and the cucumbers, and the death glares, I lifted my chin a little as I looked straight at my grandfather. "Yes."

He nodded, unsmiling, but something in his expression had changed - something I thought I had seen on him before but wasn't entirely sure I hadn't imagined - and my mother's hand slid down a little to brush against my shoulder.

As much as I liked to pretend that I didn't care, that none of this mattered to me, I felt the knot in my stomach loosen just the smallest bit.


The wind had picked up. The waves were rougher, crashing on the beach beneath our house, their sound carrying all the way up to my room. I had left my windows open after releasing Archie for his nightly outing, letting in the cool evening air as I leaned against the ledge, taking deep, salty breaths.

There was movement in the twilight - the glow of a cigarette behind one of the trees in the garden - and I watched Vala for a moment as she hid in the shadows of the fading light. My cousins looked decidedly like Woodleys, both of them, even though they didn't carry the name; pin straight dark hair and slightly upturned noses that could be found on many of the paintings that lined our grandfather's study. I had never quite fit in, even before I had single-handedly destroyed my family's legacy.

"Elizabeth?"

I turned away from the window and pulled the curtains close just as my mother walked into the room, closing the door behind her. She had thrown a cream-coloured cashmere cardigan over her shirt; the absolute epitome of casual-yet-effortless-chic, like she was born to be flawless.

"You're still packing?" She said as she looked around the room before picking up the soggy sweatshirt I had discarded on the floor before, her thumb brushing absently against the stitched R.

"Yeah. It's a lot." I took in my room, which was a veritable mess. Essentially, I had spent the last week sorting my life into piles: heaps of books and jeans and underwear that sat next to each other on my bed. There were also the neatly wrapped boxes that contained my new uniform skirts and sweatshirts and a cluster of tangled jewellery with my golden Prefect pin on top. "I always forget."

My mother had carefully draped the Ravenclaw sweatshirt over my desk chair before ambling up to the foot of my bed where the slightly oversized luggage lay open, still almost empty. Her gaze dropped and she reached out to run her hand over the soft blanket that was already in the suitcase, taking up a little too much space to be practical. It was dark green - Slytherin green - with a tiny silver snake and my initials stitched into one corner.

I watched her trace the silver threat that shimmered in the dim light, feeling a shiver as a particularly cold gust of wind blew into the room. "We gave this to you." She looked up at me, her fingers still clenching the blanket. "Before your first year."

She sounded surprised and I felt a tiny stab behind my chest, both for her and for me. Because it could have been so easy, but it just wasn't.

"Yeah." I tried to smile and then began to rearrange one of the jumper piles on my bed, if only to give myself something to do. "Bernice likes to sleep with the windows open. Even in the dead of winter."

My mother laughed - softly, genuinely - and then sighed. "I do miss it sometimes. Hogwarts."

She padded the blanket absently, smoothing out the corners she had disarranged, and I wondered who she had been before she became a Woodley. Sure, I knew who her friends had been, and how she had met my father, and that she had been Head Girl, but there must have been so much more.

For a moment, I wanted to ask her, but talking about school with my parents always felt a little too strained - too weird - and so, instead, I said, "You're not really considering sending me to Madame Esher's, are you?"

"No. Of course not." She had stepped away from my suitcase, her arms crossed in front of her as she took one last cursory look around my room before cutting her gaze up to me. "Your grandparents are leaving. You should come say goodbye."

I watched her leave the room, feeling an odd sort of tightness in my stomach. My curtains were billowing dramatically with another crisp gust of ocean air and I turned to look out the window again. Vala wasn't there anymore but there was another figure standing alone on the terrace, grey hair windswept as he looked out onto the dark water.

My grandfather was an imposing man; always larger than life, impossible to live up to, impossible to be close to - like he only existed from afar. Most of my memories of him were like that - aloof, remote, almost as though he was only half-real.

But I sometimes remembered it; how, when I was little, Grandfather used to read in his leather wingback chair in my grandparents' vast library, pretending to not notice as I was hiding behind the towering shelves, watching him through the gaps between the books. I had always expected him to be annoyed with me - to send me away - but he never had. We had never talked about it, of course - not then, not now - but it had almost felt like there had been some sort of silent understanding between us.

Like we had agreed to be alone together.