xxvii. the house of black
Elara yanked on her trunk to get it over the crack in the sidewalk and scowled.
It was a long walk to Grimmauld Place from King's Cross, made all the more difficult by the thin layer of half-frozen snow that stuck to Elara's shoes and the trunk's wheels. She could have gotten a taxi, of course, but Elara hadn't thought of that before and didn't have any Muggle money on her person. Besides, she wanted to avoid the Muggle world, just in case the orphanage had reported her as a missing person.
Father Phillips would probably tell the cops I'm an escaped nutter.
Elara crossed the quiet square with the looming faces of townhouses watching her progress. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place appeared right between Number Eleven and Number Thirteen, rather woebegone and weathered compared to its neighbors, the whispered, tinny sound of a television fluttering out someone's cracked window. The neighbors flitted by their windows, ignorant to Elara's presence, and the many shuttered eyes of Number Twelve remained dark, haunting. She mounted the steps, huffing all the way, and ignored the serpent-shaped knob in favor of rapping on the door itself.
"Kreacher," she said aloud with a glance up and down the street, seeing no one. "Kreacher, open the door. Please." When nothing happened, Elara smacked the door with more strength. "Kreacher."
The knob creaked, twisted, and the door popped open an inch or so, allowing a sudden gasp of moldy air to escape, like breaching the vault of a forgotten tomb. Elara wrinkled her nose and quickly stepped inside. The house-elf's milky eyes gleamed in the low, sputtering light of the gas lamps once the door came closed again.
"The blood-traitor's daughter is back."
"Yes," she said, sighing. Kreacher had warmed to her—somewhat—over the summer hols, but it seemed he was back to referring to her as the blood-traitor's brat. "It's nice to see you too, Kreacher."
The elf grumbled and sneered but otherwise refrained from making a comment. "Master Cygnus is not well."
The handle of Elara's trunk slipped from her sweaty hand and thumped on the dusty carpet. A knot had begun to twist itself into her middle not long after leaving Grimmauld for Hogwarts and it doubled itself now, tightening until Elara felt like she might be ill. "Can I—can I see him?"
"Kreacher will ask."
"Thank you."
He frowned and turned away, his pale body hunched and off-kilter as he tottered down the hall and up the stairs. Elara picked up her luggage again and went to find her room. She ignored the glassy-eyed stare of dead house-elves on the wall, a spider hanging from one's bulbous nose. Elara would have to do something about those heads, something that wouldn't set Kreacher off into a full-blown fit and yet still removed them from her sight.
The room Elara had inhabited since that summer was, ironically, bedecked in faded banners of crimson and gold, a Gryffindor lion embossed on the wall—right between a few posters with scantily dressed models that pouted when Elara pinned sheets of parchment over them. She would tear them down if they hadn't been stuck to the wallpaper with a spell.
It was in this room that she had found the journal, the one she took to reading between assignments at school or on the long train ride into the city. The writer had been particularly fond of code names and she had no idea who used to inhabit the space she now utilized. Cygnus himself had only come to live at Grimmauld some years after Walburga's passing, when his illness had worsened beyond its initial stages, and thus didn't know much of the house's more detailed information. Kreacher could tell her, were he not the most intractable of people Elara had ever had the misfortune of meeting.
She settled down and took out the journal in question, a tattered thing with a magical shop's logo branded into the inside cover along with a series of nonsensical doodles. It was not a diary—not the sort Elara had ever seen—but rather a book of thoughts, funny anecdotes, ideas, and bits of copied lectures. What she found particularly compelling were the parts detailing Animagi and their transformations. Whoever had owned the journal had a penchant for rude humor and was an absolutely brilliant wizard.
Elara thumbed the weathered pages, considering the scribbled handwriting and the careless blotches of ink. She'd considered the possibility of the book belonging to her father—he'd lived in this house too, as far as she knew—but Elara couldn't reconcile the image in her head, and dozens of Black sons had lived in the house over the years. "Padfoot" wrote with vivacity, wrote about pranks and a boy he fancied named "Mooney" and how much he loved Quidditch; Sirius Black was a madman who killed thirteen people with one curse and supposedly laughed. The journal couldn't belong to him.
Feeling sick at heart, Elara set the journal aside and exhaled. She rubbed at her wrists and wished the cold didn't make them ache so.
Kreacher arrived with a sudden pop! and she jumped, startled, giving the house-elf a reproving look as he grinned nastily. "Master Cygnus is awake."
"Thank you, Kreacher."
The elf disappeared as Elara stood, straightened her clothes, and headed up to the proper bedroom. She knocked on the door and the occupant called out entry, voice as weak as a summer breeze, and Elara eased into the room. The dark remained omniscient with shadows as thick as shrouds, the smell of sick and ash heavy as a morning fog. Elara strode forward without waiting for invitation and brushed her fingers against the base of the candlestick sitting on the nightstand. A grunt rose from the bed when the candle came to life.
"Brat," Cygnus rasped as he turned his head on the pillow and his black hair clung in limp coils to his pale skin. Elara pulled the shade low around the candle to dilute the light and her great uncle sighed in response. "Thank you."
"How are you, Uncle?"
Cygnus didn't respond. His eyes gleamed in the flickering light, two bright spots in and otherwise blurred countenance. Elara felt the sudden urge to tear away the shade and cast the light fully upon him, just so she could see him, so she could see how much worse he must have gotten in her absence, but she'd been raised with better respect, even if she resented that place with every bone in her body. Cygnus wouldn't tell her and it was better if she didn't ask. "How was your trip?"
"Fine. Uneventful."
He harrumphed. "How is Slytherin House treating you?"
"Fine." Elara fidgeted, bringing her fingers together, studying her nails. "I have some friends and my studies have been going well."
"Ah, yes. The Potter girl and the Mud—Muggle-born." He narrowed his eyes. "I do hope you haven't alienated the students from the old families?"
"No, but they are a bit…." Elara trailed off and Cygnus chuckled. The sound was heavy, wet, and painful.
"They will grow out of their idiocy with age," he said. "They confuse bigotry with House pride and forget a man's fortunes can dwindle in a single afternoon." Cygnus coughed and turned from Elara, facing the dark. "The blue potion, if you'd be so kind…."
Elara jumped up to retrieve the asked for mixture, then returned to her seat. At Cygnus' prompting, she continued to share stories of her time attending Hogwarts and he coached her to speak up or to speak more, because telling a good tale was part of knowing how present oneself. He scoffed over recollections of Draco's behavior and stated that "Allowing Narcissa to marry Lucius Malfoy" had been one of his stupider decisions in life. "He may be pure of blood, but he and his father Abraxas are the greatest of cross-eyed dolts."
She pressed her lips into a firm line to swallow her laugh and if Cygnus noticed, he chose not to comment.
"To that end, I actually have a gift for you…." Elara's great uncle shifted and she heard the fine scratch of paper moving on paper before he found the missive he wanted and extended it to her, bringing his trembling hand into the light. Elara stared at the pale, wasted thing and felt something twist in her middle again. His skin was paler than the parchment and just as thin and dry. "The letter, brat."
"My apologies." Elara took it from him. She opened the page and held it closer to the single candle, squinting against the dark to decipher the words scrawled there in a very official manner. It was some kind of legal document and the jargon therein confused Elara, since her vocabulary leaned more toward the romantic, poetic styling of religious dogma. "This says I've been—."
"Emancipated," Cygnus said with a sigh, as if he'd grown tired of watching Elara try to read. "It took a great deal of gold and persuasion to manage it for a girl your age. What it means is that upon my death you will become the proxy-Head of our family, and you will not be forced into some lesser household—or, Merlin forbid, taken in by one of my daughters. You will be recognized as an adult in the eyes of magical law."
Elara stared at the paper in her grip until her eyes blurred. "I don't have to go back to the orphanage." She had no plans of ever returning there, but it had always been a possibility, a threat looming in the back of her mind like the ominous rattle of handcuffs and the slow intonation of priestly chanting. She didn't have to fear ending up somewhere just as despicable in the Wizarding world.
"No, you don't."
Careful, as if handling a priceless heirloom, Elara folded the letter and held it to her chest, repressing the prickling sensation in her eyes that threatened tears. Cygnus wouldn't appreciate that. "Thank you."
He didn't smile, but he did watch Elara, his gaze glassy with pain and his sunken skin wet with fresh perspiration. "You will do the House of Black proud," he said. His words rang with certainty, the kind of certainty only men like her great uncle—men who'd walked in the upper echelon of society and had sampled the fruits of indulgence—could achieve. "The least I could do was assure you were not taken away from it."
x
Cygnus Black died three days after Elara arrived at Grimmauld Place.
She woke early in the morning to the sound of house-elf sobs echoing in the narrow corridors and entered her great uncle's bedroom to find that he had, presumably, expired in his sleep sometime the night prior. At a loss, she sank into the armchair by the bedside and stared as Kreacher howled and Elara patted the elf's heaving shoulders. Cygnus' death was sudden, though not unexpected. Had he not introduced himself to her by stating his condition was fatal? Elara knew that, had seen how shaky his handwriting had grown, how tired he sounded, and yet she'd hoped for more time. Just a little more time.
Having been a man of thought and foresight in life, Elara's great uncle had made arrangements for his inevitable end and had left detailed instructions for Elara—or Kreacher, had she not been home when he passed on. Elara liked to think herself passably clever and well-read, but she was still only eleven, and she had never dealt with a death in the family before. She appreciated the tidy, bulleted instruction scrolls as she'd appreciated everything given and taught to her by Cygnus in the short time of their acquaintance.
Letters were written and sent out to Cygnus' specifications, Elara managing to coax her great uncle's ancient owl—Percival—out into the frigid weather. St. Mungo's was contacted, a death certificate issued, and the mortuary received a new occupant. Elara spent much of that first afternoon sitting small and uncertain in the overlarge leather chair of Cygnus' solicitor, Mr Piers, who became Elara's solicitor and managed the arrangements and the obituary for the Daily Prophet. Elara returned to Grimmauld Place and spent time in the library, trying to muddle through the legal diction with a dictionary. She wished Hermione was there to help. She wished Harriet was there to make her laugh.
Two days later, Elara found herself walking up a flight of iced steps as the air escaped her lungs in puffs of white and she struggled to hold onto both her umbrella and the handrail. Around her rose the dark, snow covered tombs and markers belonging to wizards and witches long dead, the sky cloudy but bright with the sun hidden in the silver whorls, the silence broken only by Elara's slow tread.
The cemetery in the borough of Hertsmere had belonged to the magical folk of Britain for generations, before Merlin was born or Hogwarts was built, before Hadrian's Wall rose—before the Romans even thought about crossing the water. Most of the old Wizarding families aside from the Lestranges had mausoleums or plots there, and the Blacks were no exception. Cygnus had chosen one of the spots that lay in the shadow of the Black tomb itself, by his wife Druella and his brother Alphard, and the gravedigger had already prepared the site by removing the ice and spelling a barrier over the plot that stop more snow from falling. Elara paused when she came in view of her destination.
A priest stood at the head of the waiting grave, a bible in his hands, his pointed hat stuck to his stooped head with a spell. The church and magical kind had a long and often vicious history together. The Catholic miracle workers had more often than not been wizards who—in ages past—would use their abilities to heal the sick or inspire the wayward, and the clergy had been known to harbor witches attempting to escape persecution. Elara knew Hogwarts had a small chapel not far from the dungeons, a place where the Fat Friar lingered—not that she'd ever been there.
Elara swallowed and kept walking.
Aside from the priest and the gravedigger, four other people stood on the patch of grass cleared of snow, waiting for the service to commence. A blond wizard bent to mutter into the ear of his wife, both dressed in black robes tooled in silver, the latter wearing a gilded cameo at her throat that bore the Black crest. The two witches who stood on the opposing side of the grave were less polished than the first pair, the older witch obviously a Black, with her patrician beauty and practiced posture, her hair lighter than Elara's and her expression soft. A witch several years older than Elara waited with the woman, streaks of vermilion coloring her brown hair.
Closing her umbrella, Elara stepped past the ward and found several pairs of eyes swiveling in her direction.
"Ah, Miss Black," the priest said with a kindly smile, though Elara couldn't quite meet his gaze. "Are we ready to begin, then?"
"Yes, sorry," she replied. She would have told them it was a long walk from the road and even longer walk from the train station but refrained, a lump growing in her throat.
A magical funeral service proved similar to its mundane counterpart. Elara had never attended a funeral before, of course, but she'd seen them happening in the cemetery that adjoined the church's lot next to the orphanage and had listened to the voices on the wind, ashes to ashes, tearful widows, people shaking their heads and whispering "such a shame." Cygnus' funeral was quieter than that, no one aside from the priest speaking, the snow still falling silent below the mausoleum's eaves, the gravedigger smoking at a respectful distance, waiting.
Elara wrung her hands until creases appeared in her leather gloves.
The priest stopped speaking and drew his wand. He enacted several spells without uttering a word, a soft yellow light phasing over the coffin before the gravedigger left his post and lowered Cygnus into the earth. The waiting witches and wizard conjured flowers to toss down, which Elara couldn't do, being underaged and scarcely trained, so the young witch with red in her hair passed a carnation to her with a smile. Elara flushed before adding her flower to the others. Magic returned the dirt to its proper place, resowed the sod, and Transfigured a blank sheet of marble into a stately headstone embossed with the family's motif and Cygnus' name. The ward fell with a soft pop! of displaced air. Snow speckled the grass.
It was over. Cygnus was gone.
"Miss Black."
The blond wizard spoke as he and his wife turned from the fresh grave without a glance in its direction. Looking at him, with his haughty sneer and cold eyes, Elara was struck with a sudden rush of déjà vu, though she couldn't quite place where she'd seen the man before.
"My name is Lucius, of the Most Noble House of Malfoy, and this is my wife, Narcissa, Cygnus' youngest daughter."
Elara's eye twitched at the excessively formal greeting—though she realized where she'd seen him now; Draco was a foul little carbon copy of the wizard before her. Hermione never said a word against the Malfoys, but life in St. Giles had drilled the importance of subtext into Elara's head; Hermione said nothing against the Malfoys and nothing for them, her eyes always blank whenever Draco opened his trap to wax poetic about his vaunted father. Cygnus claimed the Malfoys were weak-willed, wealthy and impeccably bred but unable to do anything more than ride the coattails of others. Really, Elara hadn't met anyone who had something nice to say about the couple now looking down their noses at her.
"Hello," she responded, fidgeting with her sleeves. When Elara declined to say more, Lucius cleared his throat. She doubted they knew her name.
"Yes, well. I have been led to believe you resided with Cygnus at—." He hesitated, like he had the name on the tip of his tongue and couldn't quite spit it out. "At—?"
"Grimmauld Place," the wife—Narcissa—put in. "Aunt Walburga's, Lucius. Uncle Orion cursed the place so thoroughly the name escapes those who aren't current residents or Blacks."
"Of course," he drawled. "How remiss of me. Nevertheless, with Cygnus passed and your father's continued incarceration, we will be able to make arrangements and take you into our home—."
"She doesn't have to go with you." The witch with brown hair and kind eyes wasn't looking particularly kind as she left the grave's side; her stare hardened as she studied Lucius and found him wanting. She addressed Elara next. "Hello. I'm Andromeda Tonks, Cygnus' daughter, and this is my daughter, Nymphadora—."
The younger witch flinched and the red in her hair suddenly turned a poisonous green. Elara blinked, shocked and more than a bit alarmed.
"She's a Metamorphmagus," Andromeda said by way of apology. "Dora, you know better than to—."
"Well, don't call me Nymphadora in front of people—."
Lucius released a low, genteel scoff and raised his chin as Narcissa looked anywhere but directly at her sister. "You clearly have your hands full, Andromeda. It would be best if we—."
"I'm not leaving Grimmauld," Elara said, freezing the others in place. Malfoy's brow furrowed.
"You don't expect your new guardian to move in, do you?"
"I don't require a guardian."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I have no intention of being ridiculous, Mr Malfoy. I don't need a guardian because I've been eman—." Elara had to form her tongue around the unfamiliar word and felt heat rise in her cheeks, feeling young and naive and about two centimeters tall in Mr Malfoy's eyes. "Emancipated."
"The Ministry does not emancipate eleven year old pure-blood girls!"
Elara already had a hand in her robes, retrieving the folded copies of the legal notice Cygnus had left for her. She all but threw the first at Lucius and, for good measure, handed another to Andromeda, who accepted the note with something like sadness in her careworn expression. Lucius, meanwhile, was looking more and more thunderous with every line he read. Finally he snatched the letter from his own face and shoved it toward Narcissa's.
"This is the kind of unbecoming behavior we've come to expect from Cygnus. He was old and half mad with fever toward the end—."
"I think I would know better, Mr Malfoy, seeing as I was there," Elara replied. Her voice reflected more bravery than she actually felt, considering Lucius Malfoy had been—was—a Death Eater, and Cygnus had no reservations about telling her those who pledged themselves to any wizard in such a manner were unpredictable and most certainly dangerous. She knew her great uncle had been more than a bit racist, but Cygnus had recognized his own failings and had made an effort to teach Elara what it meant to be a pure-blood without falling victim to one's own pride like the Malfoys.
Her gaze flicked toward the silent grave and a fresh stab of misery jolted her heart, Elara's eyes dampening of their own accord. She spent ten years in the orphanage and these people never spared a thought for her, having thought she was dead from infancy—and now they cared. Now they wanted a say in where she lived and whom got control over her life, but Elara wasn't having any of it.
"If you don't mind," she said, breath hitching. "I'm going to go home now."
"Listen here, girl, we don't accept this kind of insolence—."
"Narcissa, tell your wretched husband to let the poor girl be—."
New waves of civilized and grossly well-mannered invectives came hissing from Lucius' mouth while Elara took the opportunity to turn and walk away. She could feel the gaze of the witch who didn't like to be called Nymphadora lingering on her back.
The snow crunched under Elara's boots. The priest and the gravedigger had Disapparated the moment they sensed a family feud on the rise. Elara had left Grimmauld the Muggle way that morning after discovering Kreacher still weepy and inconsolable, balling into a pair of trousers for some inexplicable reason, but when Lucius snapped "Get back here! You haven't been dismissed!", Elara shouted "Kreacher!" and the house-elf appeared. She stuck out her hand and, without another word, the glowering imp took hold of her and Apparated them home.
x
It was much later, after night had fallen and silence had settled good and thick about Grimmauld Place, that Elara cried.
She sat at the table in the kitchen, folded as small as she could be in one of the stiff chairs with her arms wrapped about her legs and her nose buried in the crook of her knees. Tears painted damp patches on the hem of her skirt and Elara sniffled. Elara hadn't known Cygnus very long, and yet he'd shown her great patience, had given her all the tools she needed to succeed, and Elara appreciated that more than any pity she'd ever gotten, any half glances from the nicer sisters who said "Poor dear" and tried to ply her with extra desserts while never doing anything. After all, they knew what would happen, had agreed with Father Phillips, had turned a blind eye when they dragged her from her bed in the dead of night and—.
A part of Elara wanted to yell, throw a tantrum or be overtly hysterical like Kreacher had been that morning. The sisters had taught her tears were a sign of weakness, and weakness was a sin—much like everything else, if she were being honest. So Elara sucked in a ragged breath and let out a sharp, short scream, just because she could. The sound echoed and one of the portraits out in the hall squawked. The tension in her chest ebbed, and Elara laughed, tired and lonely and yet inordinately pleased with herself for shattering the silence, if only for a second.
Somewhere farther in the house a clatter came and Elara paused, listening, hearing the approaching mutter and thump of familiar feet. The kitchen door swung open seemingly of its own accord—then Kreacher came into view, foul tempered as ever, carrying her owl in his arms. The owl, for his part, looked most displeased with this arrangement and shot filthy, accusing glares in the elf's direction.
"The Mistress has mail."
"Thank you, Kreacher," Elara returned. The elf sniffed and let the owl go. The bird landed on the table with a screech, beating his wings, and Elara reached out to soothe his rumpled feathers. Harriet's voice played in the back of her mind, the bespectacled girl trying to give the scowling avian a name—monikers like 'Zeus' and 'Bacon' and 'Berk' after he smacked Harriet in the face—because "All familiars need names, Elara!"
Bits of broken snowflakes melted until Elara's fingertips as she stroked his feathers and the owl stuck out his leg. Attached to it with a clumsy bit of twine was a letter from the aforementioned girl and Elara smiled when she took the letter in hand. She remembered to write.
The owl fluffed his plumage. Elara studied him and, unbidden, a name fell from her lips. "Cygnus."
He nipped her cool fingers in approval.
A/N: In canon, Ted Tonks fled rather than submit to the Muggle-born Registration Commission and subsequently died. In my 'verse, where Muggle-borns are registered and controlled by the Ministry, it is likely he fled to protect his family and is either dead or has left the country.