Chapter 2,
In The Year 2015
Most children don't need to have their appearance altered before they head off to Hogwarts, but such wasn't the case for Hydra and Loughness Black. They were special. As a rule they were accustom to being Special in a more favorable light, so this particular case was a disconcerting turnaround. Generally witches, wizards and other magical races had to hide from the Muggles, but not from one another. Again such wasn't the case for Hydra and Loughness Black. Being half elf had its perks. It meant they had more powerful magic than ordinary witches and wizards. It also meant that, compared to them, witches and wizards were, in most cases, quite ordinary. As most elves were still slaves, Hydra and Loughness's parents didn't feel their children would be accepted, and as such didn't wish them to have an unpleasant time at school. It would hinder their learning, and no one wanted that. There was also the psychological damage risk. Throughout their early childhood, the two always felt very accepted, but they did have a close circle of friends and remained comfortably sheltered within it.
They played with Serpensortia Snape, daughter of Mag and Severus Snape, Wulfric Dumbledore, son of Bera Karkaroff Dumbledore and Albus Dumbledore, and Gornuk, a young nephew of Griphook, because Griphook was friends with the Snapes and Hydra and Loughness's own parents. Their friends accepted them just fine, but they'd all grown up together, and that obviously made it different. Remaining, for the most part, out of general society, Hydra and Loughness weren't particularly exposed to how wizarding kind as a whole would view the extremely unconventional relationship of their parents as well as how they, themselves, came into being. They grew up knowing that having both elf and wizard magic made them pureblood squared, and better than anyone else.
This didn't stop them from being kind to their friends, viewing them as equals in their own way. Gornuk had his own brand of special magic that wizards tended to fear, considering they stripped goblins of the right to bear wands. Wulfric and Sortia were both just magical humans, but they were very precocious and advanced, so not at all boring. Hydra and Loughness's parents weren't so confident that the other students at Hogwarts would be as advanced, however. They didn't feel that those students or even some of the professors would applaud the fact that Kreacher and Regulus Black had chosen to magically create children to continue the line of the most Ancient and Noble House of Black. Working with Albus Dumbledore as well as extremely skilled goblin healers, they'd transfigured a sperm into an egg.
Using a Muggle test tube method, this egg was combined with the sperm, ensuring that the resulting child would be half of Kreacher and half of Regulus. They paid a witch who happened to be the cousin of Albus's wife Bera Karkaroff, to carry their baby. Of course the child turned out to be twins, i.e Hydra and Loughness Black. For as long as both could remember they were told how wonderful, beautiful and intelligent they were. How much better than human wizards...more improved. So the fact strangers at Hogwarts may not feel the same was mildly jarring. Loughness reacted with a scathing attitude where Hydra felt more resentful. Resentful of the situation that made them at all freaks. The fact that elves, so much more powerful than wizards and witches were enslaved to them was baffling as well as enraging. Then there was the general prejudice when it came to the concept of two men having a child...and doing it with the help of magic to boot.
Such concepts were also likely to be viewed by the general magical masses as repugnant. This attitude was a far cry from how the twins were raised. Instead they were raised with the firm knowledge that pureblood was the only respectable blood to have when it came to magic. As they were made by two lines of pure blood magic, elf and pure blood wizard, they were, in fact better than pure bloods. They were pureblood squared. They heard the term first from the spirit of their grandmother Walburga. She made it clear that they were the future of the most ancient and noble house of Black.
They were tasked to raise the family name far above any of the other sacred twenty-eight by achieving greatness beyond any others. Loughness decided that he'd be a great Dark lord when he grew up, but Hydra had no idea what she wanted to do. Whatever it was, though, she planned for it to be grand! Before Apparating to King's Cross station, the twins stood together in front of the portrait of their grandparents to which their spirits had been linked by a necromancer. The life sized portrait hung in the library, allowing Orion and Walburga Black to always have a grounded connection to #12 Grimmauld place. Though they could stray from their frame to wander the entire manor at will, it was their anchor.
"How do we look," Hydra asked her grandparents nervously. "Is it super strange?" All day it had felt odd looking into a mirror. Last night before the twins went to bed, Kreacher had placed illusion on both so that none of their elf features showed. Their long noses and ears were still there, but appeared to the visual eye to be fully human instead. Their eyes were still blue, but no longer elf round in appearance. If Hydra touched her face, she still felt its familiar half elf and half human contours, but when she looked into the mirror, only a small human looked back at her. The experience was disconcertingly foreign. She liked the way she really looked. She was very pretty, and though still pretty after Kreacher's illusion, she didn't feel this unreal version of herself was nearly as striking. Nonetheless she grudgingly accepted the necessity if her parents thought it so important. At least sometimes they were wise, after all.
Orion chuckled. "To us, yes, but to those who have never seen you, you look quite human and nothing but human which to them won't be at all strange."
Loughness made a face. "Common," he complained. "We look common."
"Ah but some day you'll rise far above the rest, and they will all see you as far more than human...far more than them. They shall all envy you, and bow to you if they are wise," Walburga proclaimed. As she spoke, she drew herself up, bosom swelling with the fervor of the belief in her own words. She was beautiful with gleaming black hair and porcelain skin. Her slender proud visage struck awe and fear into the hearts of...anyone and everyone in whom she wished to strike emotion.
Hydra hoped to be at least a little like her some day. She at least had the gleaming black hair and porcelain skin, which she supposed was a start. Walburga's portrait in the front hall looked nothing like this, for at the end of her life when she'd had it made, she was old with grief and ill. Believing that Orion and Regulus were both dead, when in fact only Orion was, she had allowed her health to go and a disease of the liver claimed her life far too early. Anyone unaware that the portrait in the hall and the one in the library were of the same woman would never know.
"Make us proud, and we'll see you on the Christmas break," Orion said, smiling warmly at both Loughness and Hydra. Like Walburga he looked youthful in death, but he had died rather young at the hands of Voldemort in a freak accident aka murder attempt gone wrong. When Regulus learned what Voldemort had done to nearly kill Kreacher he'd gone to his father who had in turn gone to the Lestranges. Bellatrix, Rodolphus and Rabastan were nothing if not loyal, and family always came first. Though they were horrified and sickened to know that their precious Dark Lord who was to save them from Muggles was instead breaking up his soul while sacrificing his own in the process, they knew he must be stopped. As it turns out, if one has several Horcruxes, killing curses don't work on them as they should. When Orion, Regulus, Kreacher and the three Lestranges attacked Voldemort with the killing curse, he was able to turn it, causing it to strike Orion instead. Voldemort was able to read their minds, and he'd seen it coming so was ready. As a result, Orion was dead, leaving the others at their Dark Lord's mercy. As he wasn't at all merciful, that didn't end well. He'd chosen to apply the strategy of keeping one's enemies even closer than friends. As a reminder to himself, Voldemort allowed his once faithful followers to live with a few modifications. The Lestranges were compelled to worship him even more utterly than they already had. As for what had been done to Regulus and Kreacher, that was still a mystery that they could not remember.
"If you need to talk before then, write us and Kreacher or Regulus can read us your letters," Walburga said.
"And you shall dictate replies to them as well in case we need advice," Loughness asked.
"Of course!" she nodded.
"I hate having to pretend," Loughness complained.
"You aren't precisely pretending," Orion said. "You simply aren't telling the entire truth." It would literally hurt Loughness not to be able to brag to all the other students about why he was better than them, Hydra thought, trying not to smile.
"Your parents believed I would have a problem with your mixed blood. Did you know that," Walburga asked.
Hydra and Loughness exchanged a look. "But you're the one who said we're pureblood squared," Hydra objected.
Walburga nodded, smiling sagely. "Sometimes your parents are stupid, Dear. They're men, though, what can you expect?" Orion made a sound of objection and Walburga shot him a dark frown. "Do shut up, Orion." Her gentle smile returned as she gracefully turned back to face Hydra and Loughness. "I had an issue with your parents being gay. It complicated many things, and the fact I had no idea until I was dead was even more vexing. Had I been aware before everything went to hell and Regulus disappeared, I could've fixed things, but the men, Orion, Regulus and Kreacher, chose to keep things from me which got Orion killed and Regulus tainted." Hydra tried not to cringe at the scathing reference to her father's vampirism, the method in which he'd been able to avoid death at Voldemort's hands as well as in the lake of Inferi.
"I never had an issue with the concept of your mixed blood, because it makes you stronger and as a result, the blood of the most ancient and noble house of Black stronger. It's mixing with Muggles that dirties the blood. Mixing with weaker blood is the detraction, so how can mixing with more powerful blood present as anything other than an improvement?" She smiled once again at Hydra. "Remember, dear, men are stupid. Loughness, I expect you to be wiser than both of your parents and your grandfather as well."
Loughness bowed to Walburga with a hand over his heart. "I shall be, Grandmother," he vowed solemnly before flashing Orion a quick apologetic glance. Orion grinned sympathetically and Loughness returned the smile with a relieved one of his own.
"Loughness, Hydra, it's time to go!" The voice belonged to Filius Flitwick. He was taking them to the train station because Kreacher and Regulus wouldn't wake until sunset.
"Yes, Professor Flitwick," Hydra called. They'd have to get used to calling him Professor Flitwick instead of Filius, so may as well start now. Waving to her grandparents, Hydra turned to go, then remembered that she'd nearly left her salamander! Rather than an owl, toad, or cat, Loughness had decided that as Pure-blood squared children, he and Hydra required more unique magical pets. Salamanders weren't at all easy to obtain, though, so at first the Daddies had refused him. Loughness was good at throwing loud fits until it eventually boiled down to, give him what he wanted or kill him. So they had salamanders. The pretty things were slender and quick with skin like silk at a cool temperature. Often they remained coiled around Hydra and Loughness's wrists like bracelets. They'd decided to take them to Hogwarts that way. If anyone saw them at the train station, Muggles and wizards alike could assume they were very realistic jewelry. It was easy to have people believing what their minds would readily accept, after all.