lii. the tree that flourishes
It took Elara a long time to fall asleep the first night Snape stayed in Grimmauld Place.
Though the wizard taught at her school, he was—for all intents and purposes—a stranger, a silent, sharp-tongued intruder whom Elara had threatened only weeks before, a stranger who now had unfettered access to her home. She didn't sleep well in proximity to strangers, those first few weeks at Hogwarts made less difficult by the presence of other similarly aged girls, but ever since the orphanage, ever since they came for her in the dead of night and dragged her from her bed, Elara had been a light sleeper. She stared at the ceiling every time the floorboards overhead creaked and didn't nod off until well after midnight.
As such, her mood was less than pleasant at breakfast, where she and Harriet ate food prepared by a Hogwarts house-elf named Rikkety, who'd been deputized by Snape to bring their meals from the castle. They saw no sign of the Potions Master that morning, and once the dishes were cleared and their familiars fed, they found themselves waiting restlessly by the Floo for their first minder to step through.
Said minder didn't so much as step through the Floo as come barreling out and collide with Harriet, collapsing into a heap of soot, swears, and bent elbows.
"Oh, shite! I'm so sorry!" the pink-haired witch cried as she leapt to her feet and dragged Harriet upright, nearly dropping the dazed girl again in the process of smacking ash from her robes. "I really did think I had it that time, but I must've turned at the last minute. Figures, I'm dead clumsy—but there you are! Good as new!"
Elara stared at the witch—Nymphadora, her second cousin, who hated being called Nymphadora—and right at her heels the fire blazed green again, admitting the familiar figure of Nymphadora's pretty mum, Andromeda.
"Hello again," the older woman greeted, entering the room with far more aplomb than her daughter. "It's nice to see you well, Elara."
Elara answered her with a tight-lipped nod, suspicious of Andromeda's presence, and wondered if the Headmaster had an alternative motive for asking her here. She introduced Harriet, and was again introduced to Nymphadora— "Tonks!"—before they migrated to the living room on the second floor.
Tonks proved as clumsy as promised, and Elara was surprised to learn that, as unlikely as it seemed, she was a promising new recruit in the Aurory. "I spend most of my time shadowing a mad bugger named Alastor Moody," she explained as they poked about through the ruined furniture. "Told him I had a family emergency today, so he let me off."
"He's going to be displeased if he finds out you lied to him, Dora," Andromeda said from her spot on her conjured chair.
"You'd get tired of him too, mum, if he kept shouting 'CONSTANT VIGILANCE!' at you through the loo door."
Harriet laughed outright and Elara smirked, settling farther into her spot on the dusty sofa by Andromeda. Tonks was invaluable in picking out what was and wasn't cursed in the room while her mum set the furniture back to rights, the witch proficient in the kind of household magic neither Elara or Harriet had seen at Hogwarts yet. It probably isn't taught there, she mused. It's probably something passed on from mother to daughter through the generations.
She felt a small pang of loss at that thought.
Elara watched as Andromeda drew her wand over old wood and torn cushions, returning luster and tying together loose threads as dust lifted into the air and vanished out of sight. Bit by bit, the room emerged from its own ruin; the afternoon wore on and the strange witches who'd invaded her home returned Elara's living space to something of its former glory. To be sure, the defunct wallpaper needed to be stripped, the floors refinished, and the antique chairs reupholstered, but she could see something livable in it now.
A tapestry of the Black family hung on the wall near the hearth, larger than any single tapestry really had the right to be, moth-eaten at the edges and riddled with charred holes, like someone had taken a cigarette to certain branches and burned them off. Andromeda came to stand before it, and when she shooed Tonks and Harriet from the room to see about lunch, Elara stood next to her, since the witch's ploy to get the others out of the room wasn't lost on her.
"Aunt Walburga was overly dramatic for most of her life," Andromeda sniffed, dark eyes flickering over the ruined tree. "She was fanatical about family, right up until they disappointed her. She took it upon herself to 'prune' certain people and keep our House…pure." Andromeda pointed her wand at one mark, whispered a spell and twisted her wrist, pulling back like a tailor threading a needle. Before their eyes, the burned edges spun new fibers, coming together until the name 'Andromeda Gallatea Black-Tonks' came into view. She spun her wand again, and two new branches crept from the scroll bearing her moniker, one for her husband and one for her Metamorphmagus daughter.
Andromeda turned to Elara, a soft, sad smile on her winsome face, and Elara blinked, unsure of what to make of her regard. "Muggles have an expression about being able to choose your friends, but not your relatives."
"I know," Elara replied. "I was raised with Muggles."
"Were you?"
"Yes." She said nothing more on the subject.
Andromeda nodded once, then corrected another flaw on the tapestry, revealing 'Marius Cygnus Black' between Pollux and Dorea Black. From Dorea spilled another cluster, expanding the tapestry, the tree growing and twisting like a living thing, making way for Charlus Potter, then Fleamont and Euphemia, James and Lily, and finally 'Harriet Dorea Potter.'
Elara brushed her fingertips over the name and if Andromeda noticed, she said nothing. She regrew other sections and the tapestry flourished, the whole of it shifting until one burned hole came to the center, to the head of the tree, and Andromeda returned Sirius Black's name, added Marlene McKinnon, and then Elara's own.
I wonder if everyone in the Black family knows how to do this. Do they have their own tapestries at home?
"Did you move the grimoires?"
Elara started, eyes wide as she faced the woman. "Excuse me?"
"You moved the family grimoires, did you not?" When Elara didn't reply, Andromeda nodded. "Good. I would recommend taking them to Gringotts. Dora or myself can accompany you, if you wish."
"…why?" Elara asked, confused. Dumbledore had said he wanted to remove or neutralize anything dangerous in the house, which would definitely include the grimoires. Why would Andromeda offer to help hide them? "Didn't Professor Dumbledore ask you get to rid of things like those?"
"Professor Dumbledore asked me to help watch over you and Harriet, with the warning that you were quite resentful of needing adult supervision because of your emancipation." Andromeda chuckled when Elara glared. "The Headmaster himself is a half-blood, but he understands something of pure-blood eccentricity and the nature of our…histories. The family may have descended into bigotry and madness, but it needn't stay there; you are the Head of the House of Black now, Elara, and under your direction it will either flourish and thrive in the new millennium, or it will die. That said, growing does not mean forgetting one's roots or destroying your beginning, and Albus understands that."
Andromeda reached out to tuck wayward strands of hair behind Elara's ear and brush dust from her cheek. Elara bore the touch, though she knew Andromeda must sense her hesitancy.
"I may have been disowned when I married a Muggle-born, but Ted is…gone now, because of the Minister's laws. The Blacks are my family, for all that I wished I could sometimes choose my relatives differently. I believe the Headmaster asked for me to watch over you and little Harriet because while he cannot condone our old magics, not in the presence of impressionable children, he doesn't wish to strip your identity from you—or from Harriet, who doesn't have any family left now, aside from you."
Andromeda twirled her wand, whispering the proper incantation, and the tree moved once more to bring the Potter branch of the family nearer her own, both Elara and Harriet nearer the top, like the fresh, new growth of a real tree, full of potential to bring the branches higher still, or break and splinter with rot.
"I'm not an official member of Albus'…group, but I have been informed something of Harriet's past and the hardships she faces. There's a lot of weight on her shoulders, and there's also a lot of weight on yours. The Blacks are the oldest magical family in the kingdom, and people will look to you to model how pure-blood families are meant to carry themselves in the coming years. It's a burden I ran away from, because while I love my husband and my sisters, I was also eager to marry outside the family and distance myself from the politics. You don't have that option. You will have to be strong, for your own good, for Harriet's, and for the rest of us as well."
Elara swallowed, lowered her eyes, and nodded. Strong. Elara didn't know if she was strong so much as determined, and that determination had gotten her away from St. Giles', had returned her to the House of Black, had seen her through Cygnus' death and her first year at Hogwarts. It had steadied her through the revelation that her father was a madman who'd betrayed her best friend's mum and dad, a man who'd made Harriet a target of the Darkest wizard alive.
She hoped it would see her through more trials yet.
Andromeda touched her again, a light pat on the shoulder, before she turned away. "I'll just go check on those two and make sure Dora hasn't broken what's left of the china."
Andromeda left, and Elara remained behind, lost deep in thought as she studied the restored Black tapestry and considered the witch's words.