clx. the beetle and the hound
When Harriet returned home, it was already past dark, and the dinner brought by Rikkety from Hogwarts had been eaten and cleared away. That left Sirius and Elara sitting at the dining room table, refusing to make eye contact, the silence thick and unsettling.
"Did his letter say what time she'd be back?"
"No. Not exactly."
They waited.
An hour later, Harriet came through the Floo with Headmaster Dumbledore behind her, the taller wizard ducking to avoid knocking his head on the mantel. "Good evening, Sirius, Elara," he greeted them, his smile genial but somewhat less friendly than usual. "Harriet, why don't you go on upstairs now while I have a word with your family?"
Harriet grimaced but nonetheless nodded, saying, "Goodnight, Professor Dumbledore."
"Goodnight, dear girl."
She went up the stairs, quiet as a ghost—carrying a plastic sack from a Muggle shop Elara didn't recognize. Dumbledore waited for her footsteps to fade, then waved his hand at the shut door, a thin ward laying itself across the entrance. "There we are," he said—and then he turned to the table, took a seat across from them, and the lecture began.
Professor Dumbledore directed the vast majority of what he had to say at Sirius, who listened with ill-tempered intent, his eyes bright and his face flushed with embarrassment. Elara didn't think he appreciated being talked down to, even if Dumbledore managed to leave him his dignity—more dignity than he deserved.
The Headmaster spoke on the value of communication, and the aura of disappointment swelled to encompass Elara in its crushing hold. Shamed, she kept her eyes on the table.
"At least you have a father."
That was what Harriet had said—quietly, but also venomously. Elara had seen Harriet's mood darkening since Sirius' trial and had selfishly hoped it was because of him—but no. Instead, it was because of both of them.
On some level, Elara knew she took her situation for granted. She had access to a fortune, a comfortable house, and two fathers who wanted to be part of her life—while Harriet had money but no home and no blood relatives worth the air they soiled. Harriet had a bedroom that might be taken away from her, a tenuous net of supporters full of shifting gaps, the thought always in the back of her mind that she might have to leave, that she might not be able to stay. Harriet wanted to live with the Flamels but couldn't because they were dying, and she didn't want to admit it. She had nothing solid.
As a child, Elara had liked to think her parents had loved her and they'd gone on to heaven—but she hadn't wished to be adopted, hadn't wished for another family. She'd comprehended her own abnormality and had lived in fear of being taken home by strangers and then returned like a broken doll, so she settled for the rigors of the institution. Before the—the exorcism, the daily life and punishments doled out by the sisters had been bearable, if dreaded. Even so, Elara had kept the intrinsic knowledge of its impermanence close to her heart; one day, she knew she'd walk outside, the doors would shut behind her, and she would not have to look back. It would be a closed chapter of her life she did not need to revisit.
It wasn't the same for Harriet. She hadn't been neglected by the church or the government; she'd been neglected by her family, by her relatives, and she'd have to live with knowing the Dursleys were human rubbish for the rest of her life. Each time someone mentioned her mother, it would buzz in the peripheries like a persistent Snitch, the association of Lily's sister treating her worse than most people treated their dogs.
Sirius made Elara want to scream and rage and cry all in the same breath, and yet he was there. There for her to malign and hate and curse at if she wished. There for her to forgive if she could find that within herself. She took that for granted.
None of it mattered—the money, the history, the house, all the things she and Sirius had been arguing over. Elara would light the match herself if it meant keeping Harriet in her life.
"May I be excused?" she asked Professor Dumbledore when he paused in his recriminations. He looked at her, thoughtful, then nodded—slipping his hand inside his pocket to retrieve her Atlas and gently slide it across the table.
"You may. Thank you for lending this to me, Miss Black. A most intriguing device." He smiled. "Could you ask Professor Snape to come here? I have a few words for him before I depart."
"Of course."
The dingy potions lab was open, so Elara knew Snape wasn't lurking inside. She departed the kitchen and headed up the stairs, grumbling about the climb as she passed the floor with her bedroom—Harriet's door closed, candlelight filtering underneath—and came to the one above it. She knocked on the door to the room Snape had commandeered.
A body shifted within, audible only because of the corridor's deathly silence, and Elara sensed more than heard the man's feet approach.
Snape opened the door less than an inch and glared at her.
"Professor Dumbledore asked to see you in the kitchen," she reported, pretending that glare didn't still scare her a bit, and that she wasn't trying to see behind him. But, really, she couldn't help but be curious considering she hadn't seen the room's interior since early days, back when her great-uncle Cygnus had still been alive. It appeared much the same as before, gray and empty and impersonal aside from a small stack of leather-bound books on the nightstand.
She wondered if those books were Dark magic.
Snape stepped forward and snapped the door shut, almost closing it on his robes.
He scowled her right back down the stairs and kept going once she stopped at Harriet's door, disappearing into the darkened stairwell. Distantly, Sirius spoke, and Professor Dumbledore interrupted him—and then all noise disappeared behind the ward, swallowed whole like Jonah and the whale. Elara sniffed in annoyance and knocked on Harriet's door.
"Come in."
Harriet was at her desk when Elara stepped inside, sorting through the letters that had arrived while she was out. She looked up at Elara—and flushed, dropping her eyes back to her hands, fidgeting with one of the scrolls.
"I wanted to apologize for earlier," Elara said, closing the door. "I shouldn't behave like that. It's insensitive and intolerable."
Harriet shrugged. "It's fine. You didn't do anything wrong. I—I was just upset."
"You have every right to be upset." Hesitating, Elara decided to stop dithering about and walked forward, hugging Harriet close. Harriet's arms went around her waist and squeezed, bony elbow digging into her hip. Elara rested her chin atop her head, tucking a thick, wayward curl back behind her ear.
"I won't fight with him anymore. I promise," Elara whispered. "I won't give Professor Dumbledore the excuse to remove you from the house. I won't argue with Sirius."
"You don't have to promise that. It's silly. Everyone argues and fights sometimes."
Elara just held her tighter. "I'm sorry."
"It'll be okay, Elara. You don't have to be sorry."
They pulled apart, and Harriet cleared her throat, then started to tell her about the latest missive she'd received from Lockhart. Elara listened to her—but she also listened to the house, and heard when tired, ponderous steps made their way past the landing. They paused outside the door for a solid minute before moving on.
x X x
In the wake of Headmaster Dumbledore's visit to Grimmauld Place, a few changes were implemented.
The most prevalent change was Professor Lupin's relocation to the house, ostensibly to act as a nanny or a buffer between Elara and Sirius, though Elara made it her goal to be respectful and polite to her father, especially in Harriet's presence. Lupin's move also allowed Snape to spend less time at Grimmauld, which had apparently been more taxing on the wizard's time than either Harriet or Elara knew. The only indication of his residency now was the occasional fumes escaping from the lab or the creak of floorboards above their bedrooms in the dead of night.
Harriet continued to ignore Snape's presence, though not as aggressively as before. She even gave him a genial greeting when they crossed paths once in the library. Snape hadn't said anything in return, of course, but he hadn't run like Harriet had Spattergroit either.
One week after the incident, Sirius sat them—Elara, Harriet, and Remus—down in the lounge and introduced what he described as a "perfect family bonding experience."
Elara thought whoever let him make decisions was an idiot, and if the Headmaster was the one who fed him this idea, she was going to slip a packet of Cockroach Clusters into his lemon sherbets.
"No more meals from Hogwarts," he said with a defining finger in the air, wagging it for effect. "This isn't a boarding house—malevolent bat in the attic notwithstanding. We're going to start cooking our own food."
"Sirius, you don't know how to cook," Remus pointed out with a bemused sort of expression. It was far too indulgent, in Elara's opinion. He had the authority to put an end to this madness; they were all going to starve, for pity's sake.
"I can learn!" He scratched his trimmed beard, glancing at Elara, then away, seeming to have trouble knowing where his gaze should rest. "And we'll figure out some chores among us—with Mably and the other rotten bastard of an elf. It's the stuff families have to decide and complete together."
And so, a perfectly average Thursday afternoon found the four of them out under the unbearable summer sun, walking to the closest Muggle supermarket in their most passable Muggle clothes. When they finally reached it, Elara stepped through the automated doors next to her father and froze, both wearing what Harriet would later describe as identical expressions of comical incredulity.
Elara had never been to a supermarket. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd ventured outside of St. Giles' or the neighboring church before, and a Sainsbury's was not the type of establishment the sisters would have brought their charges to. Anything that represented life outside the religious sphere had been frowned upon.
For lack of a better word, the market was aggressively…Muggle. The air was nice and conditioned, but the lights were harsh, the grating noise of metal wheels and chimes hurt Elara's ears, and the antiseptic smell stung in her nose. She glanced at Sirius, and he seemed to be enjoying himself.
Of course he is. I'm in hell.
"All right, here we are! I have our list—!" Sirius took a rolled-up parchment from his trouser pocket, earning puzzled looks from the housewives out for their midday shopping. He studied the teetering stack of baskets by the door. "We take one of these?"
Harriet hooked a finger around the handle of an empty trolley and pushed it forward, holding her face stiff as if desperately staving off a giggling fit. "Use this."
"Oh. Err—is this ours to keep, then? They have so many."
"No, Sirius…."
Remus took control of the trolley as they meandered through the aisles, and Sirius made his incompetence known from the start, staring agog at the colorful wrappers and packaging, his expression approaching mild fear. Elara didn't know what anything was either.
"Why can't we go to the grocer on Carkitt Market?" she complained, crossing her arms against her middle. The irrational thought kept popping into her head that here, in a Muggle space, she might come across someone she knew—someone from St. Giles', and they'd recognize her. She kept tugging on her gloves and looking over her shoulder, an uncomfortable lump lodged in her throat.
Glowering at the packet of crisps in his hand, Sirius grumbled about "security," and something obscene that Elara took to mean that Dumbledore had discouraged him from wandering about the Wizarding quarter with Harriet in tow. She sighed and watched as Harriet picked through Sirius' selections and set some things back, picking others.
"What are you doing, Harriet?" Remus asked.
"Well, if we want something edible for dinner, we're going to need more than Mars bars and fish oil." Sirius dropped something else in the trolley. "Sirius, put the bread crumbs back. We're not doing anything with those."
Harriet directed Remus to the next aisle, Sirius chucking a package of dried egg noodles back on the shelf. Both he and Elara watched with furrowed brows as Harriet and Remus redid Sirius' list and made impromptu meal plans, the trolley steadily filling as they roved about and made choices. Sirius backed into a display of tinned tuna at one point, knocking it over, and Remus had to hustle him away when he whipped his wand out on reflex and almost used magic in front of the Muggles.
Leaning against the trolley, Harriet said, "Somewhere in Scotland, Albus Dumbledore is laughing his beard off."
Elara agreed.
An hour or so later, groceries and necessities were gathered, and Sirius satisfied his curiosity for all things Muggle, proving familiar with the currency when he counted out the pounds to give to the cashier. They each lugged a loaded sack outside, found a convenient alley, and Remus shrunk everything down so they could fit the miniaturized groceries into their pockets. A breeze cut through the oppressive summer heat, and as they started walking home, Elara had to acknowledge it hadn't been an entirely awful afternoon.
"I never knew Muggles tinned so many types of food," Sirius commented to Remus, turning to keep one eye on Harriet and Elara. "Did you, Harriet?"
"Yeah. But Aunt Petunia didn't like stuff out of the tin; she wanted everything made fresh." Then, under her breath, she added, "She saved the tinned food for me."
"It's not fresh in the tin?"
"No. It has preservatives."
"What's the point of that, then?"
Their conversing meant Sirius didn't see the woman approaching them, but Elara did, tensing on instinct when Remus stiffened and touched Sirius' arm. He whipped forward as the woman came closer.
She was dressed as a Muggle, but Elara had been around enough magical people to recognize their ostentatious style, and this woman wore a raffish, lime green pantsuit and carried a crocodile-skin handbag. She had talons for nails and bottle-blond hair coiffed and curled within an inch of life, her glasses studded with multicolored jewels and gems. She simpered—exposing three gold teeth—when Sirius scowled and stepped in front of Harriet and Elara.
"Mr. Black?" the woman—witch—asked. Sirius didn't answer in the affirmative, but she kept going. "How do you do? I'm Rita Skeeter and I—."
"I know who you are."
Skeeter's smile faltered, but the keenness in her narrowed eyes intensified. "Then you know I write for the Daily Prophet? I've been trying to get in contact with you, darling, ever since that mockery of a trial. I want to write your side of the story, Mr. Black—Sirius, can I call you Sirius?"
"No."
"No?"
"No, you can't call me by name." Sirius stuck his nose in the air. "I know who you are, and I've told you and your editor I don't want anything to do with your bloody rag of a paper."
The witch affected a fake gasp. "But Mr. Black," she said. "Don't you think it would be best to show your side of things? To let the public see the family man behind the scenes?"
"No."
"But—."
Whatever inveigling Skeeter hoped to continue with got cut short when Sirius growled a low, irritated curse. "I told you to bugger off."
He thrust his hand out, then down, not touching the witch—and suddenly she vanished with an orange flash and a yelp. Sirius smirked as he tucked his wand back into his sleeve.
"Sirius!" Remus hissed, his face aghast. "What did you do?!"
"Just a bit of harmless fun. It didn't hurt her—just sent the daft bint off to the last place she Apparated from."
"I know what spell you used, Sirius Black, and that is Dark magic!"
"Barely even! Steady on—!"
Remus snatched hold of him with one hand and used the other to hurry Harriet and Elara ahead. Harriet looked amused—and Elara had to admit, it had been a clever bit of magic. "Merlin help us, doing Dark magic in front of the children! What are you thinking?! You'll be lucky if you aren't reported—!"
From behind them, Harriet and Elara heard a long, drawn-out sigh.
"Why do I feel I'll come to regret this?"
A/N:
Elara: "Dumbledore said to stop being an edgelord and go downstairs."
Snape: "…"
Snape: "Okay."