A quick foray into Longbottom-land
Chapter 37: That curse is for you
Longhampton was a smallish village, even by mixed-town standards. Less than four hundred people lived there – all magical or related to magic – and in its center stood an equally smallish castle.
Longbottom Castle had been built in the eleventh century, and the family had stayed there since then, protecting the villagers who'd come to build their houses around their home, no matter if they were witches and wizards or their muggle families. Not even the Statute of Secrecy had changed that, though the Longbottoms had become stricter in their rules – and, some would say, in their ruling. They'd gone from recognized viscounts of England to discreet protectors of their village, and that had meant keeping an eye on what their neighbors were doing with their magic before the then-newly-minted Ministry of Magic could try and intervene.
The Longbottom family was kind and generally open-minded, but they had always been strict – sometimes even harsh. It wasn't a fluke that Augusta Drennan, with her temper and expectations, had married Dorian Longbottom.
The entire village of Longhampton had always been the House of Longbottom's domain, even when other people had come and built their own houses. The streets were paved with enchanted stones, the main square had several wards upon it, the floo network was handled and protected by the intendant of the family, apparition was forbidden within the walled portion of the village – nothing quite like entire walls to create lasting anti-apparition wards – and should a bold wizard try and attack one of the inhabitants, they would be faced with the anger of the entire House.
They weren't that many of them, but still. Longhampton was almost a fortress in itself, at that point.
That was probably the reason there had been no direct Death Eaters attack on the village during the first war – not until everyone had thought this was mostly finished, not until Voldemort had died and everyone's guard had gone down.
Not until Bellatrix and her cronies – yes, that included her husband – had disguised themselves as villagers with polyjuice and walked right into Longbottom Castle with a sob story about how they'd been attacked by rogue Death Eaters just outside the gates – which, ironically, wasn't even untrue.
Sirius gave David Longbottom a tight smile as the middle-aged man watched them walk through the outer gates of Longhampton from his tower house, and Eleanor looked around politely.
"Never been here before?"
"It's one of the very few places where we don't own anything. We are in contact with the intendant, of course, for when someone wants to buy or rent in Longhampton, but I never came here myself."
Not surprising. The Longbottoms were unlikely to let another House own anything within their turf, least of all the Rowles – if you let in the real estate magnates, who knew how quickly they'd insinuate themselves in the rest of the village.
Even Christian Hawksworth, who'd married Marielle Longbottom and moved to Longhampton, didn't share ownership of their corner house – it was all his wife's, and not because of financial struggles.
While they stopped by the door to David's tower, Eleanor only had eyes for the old houses and tinted glasses, the carved stone tiles and runes-marked doors beyond the inner wall.
She did squint at the well-maintained armor sets – purple enamel and gold lining, three white standing rocks in the center of the torso, the arms of the House of Longbottom – standing by the gates, at the swords resting in front of each of those.
"Seems nice to live here."
Sirius grinned, but David – fifty-four, built like an ox – spoke first.
"It is, if you don't mind a strict set of rules and having an overbearing intendant breathing down your neck whenever it's not the mayor establishing new guidelines or Augusta criticizing the defensive measures. Black would never survive it."
"...Algernon is getting on your nerves again, isn't he?"
Sirius hadn't seen those Longbottoms in more than a decade, and apparently nothing had changed. Frank and David were second cousins, and Algernon Longbottom had always gotten on David's temper – the older wizard was too flippant, and yet too controlling underneath, for David.
David made a face, and didn't say anything more on the subject.
He didn't move, either, which was not how you were supposed to be greeted into Longhampton. No tests, no moving towards the inner gates. Sirius looked the older man – a second cousin once removed, just like Arthur Weasley, who was in fact first cousin with David – over, and couldn't help noticing the crossed arms, the wand in his left hand, the rigid stance.
He wasn't moving, uh.
"Really, David?"
Next to Sirius, Eleanor shuffled quietly, all too aware that something was happening – perhaps guessing what, exactly.
The older man didn't move – stern, strong, steadfast. David Longbottom had been the Longhampton gatekeeper for the last twenty-five years, and maybe he wasn't the quickest or the most dangerous of wizards, but he could endure curses like no one – and the armors were there for those that could not be endured, those that were deadly or maiming.
You could not pass the inner gates of Longhampton without the verbal agreement of the gatekeeper.
The tests would make sense if David thought Sirius and Eleanor weren't who they were pretending to be – standard protocol in Longhampton, these days, even without any particular doubt on the matter – but the older wizard wasn't testing them.
"Frank called me himself! I was... I was in the middle of a date, and I came because Frank asked me to! Because Emmeline Vance, isn't she another one of your second cousins, actually? ...because something happened to Emmeline and I don't know any more than that yet, so please, will you proceed with the admittance now?"
David didn't seem overly moved by the news of a potential tragedy happening to a member of his extended family – or at least not enough to change his mind. He did frown unhappily.
Damn Longbottoms. All of them were walls when they'd decided on something.
David took a step back – found himself standing in line with the two sets of armor, and Sirius could have sworn they hadn't held their swords quite so high two minutes ago.
"How's Bellatrix, Black?"
Sirius almost – almost – took a step back, almost turned around and left without another word.
He felt Eleanor's hand on his arm, as if she knew what he was thinking.
He didn't leave.
He'd gone through this already, dozens of times in the last years. He had decided he'd move on after his trial – oh, he'd still judge and remember, but he wouldn't get angry anymore, not really. He wasn't... His body was better, now, a better place for his mind to dwell, despite the memories.
Alright.
This was... David was a Longbottom, he was a wall of a man, both in body and in convictions, and he respected Frank's opinion, even when he didn't entirely agree with his cousin. He respected a well-led trial and the evidence it brought.
This might not be an accusation – not unless Sirius made it one.
"She's dead. How's your mom?"
David barely reacted at the implications – oh, yes, it had been a test, actually, to see how Sirius would react, and even if Sirius didn't appreciate it... Well. It wasn't like they'd ever been friends. He could respect the choice, in that light.
Before either of them could do anything, though, Eleanor added:
"Has your sister spent time with my brother, lately?"
That got a surprised look out of David, who blinked at Sirius' date and let out a burst of laughter.
"Two cheap shots, but well-deserved. Come on, I'm testing you for polyjuice and you can go in."
Sirius released a sigh, and looked over at Eleanor with a grateful glance.
All this was about family, yes, but not the way he'd almost fallen for.
Bellatrix was Sirius' cousin, and she was haunting him – and the manor in general – but that was it. David's mother was Callidora Black, the only living member left of her generation in Sirius' family – had his father not been a Longbottom, David would have been a member of the House of Black through Callidora. Eleanor's mother was a Parkinson, sister to Dahlia Longbottom's husband – in fact, Dahlia's daughter had started Hogwarts the same year as Sirius and his friends.
It didn't matter, because Sirius wasn't Bellatrix, and David wasn't Bellatrix, and Eleanor wasn't Thorfinn, that was the point. In Longhampton, family bought you neither favors nor judgment.
This had been a test to see if Sirius was compromised, one way or another – imperius, blackmail, something – and he'd reacted exactly like David had expected him to, so.
The older wizard handed them a small cup of yellow liquid, and sprinkled it with a golden powder – once for Sirius, who drank it with a grimace, and once again when it was Eleanor's turn.
The couple felt a wave of heat blast them like a gust of warm wind, their long hair fluttering briefly from the effect. David Longbottom watched, satisfied, as their image rippled – but didn't change.
"You're clean, you can go in."
The two sets of armor took a step away from the inner gates, which sprang open. David moved back to his tower with the cup, but turned around one last time.
"Oh, and don't try the castle's front entrance. Frank has been... experimenting... with making more armors, and it's not yet quite that. Unless you want to get beheaded, go to Aunt Marietta's house, she'll let you in. Also, Mom's already with Frank and Emmeline, so."
Sirius was busy coughing after drinking the polyjuice revealer – he didn't know why, but it had always been like he was allergic to trutherry powder, which was ridiculous because no one was allergic to trutherry flowers, it would be like being allergic to facts. You were only supposed to react to it if something about your very nature wasn't truthful – it was the trigger in the polyjuice revealer – and lies hardly counted there.
Still, he listened, even if he couldn't answer. David caught the younger man's questioning look.
"She's a bit peeved that you didn't contact her after you got yourself cleared, or about your brother. Not too much, mind you, it's not like you are very close family, but still, as a daughter of the House of Black, she expected you to at least check up on her."
Eleanor patted Sirius on the back as he coughed one last time.
"Yeah, I... Cgh! I'm not yet up to date on the whole Lord Black thing. I have to... I don't know. Find time for it all. Especially the Wizengamot thing. Keep trying to get up to date on the current law propositions, but then Narrow Lane gets attacked or someone I know is ambushed by an asshole in a white mask..."
Eleanor shook her head, but didn't comment – she chose to focus, instead, on the reason for their visit to Longhampton.
"Thank you, Mister Longbottom. Sirius, he said something about Marietta Longbottom? Do you know where she lives?"
The wizard nodded, his throat still a bit sore, and waved without looking back as they finally stepped foot into Longhampton proper.
The village was small, and they soon reached the castle itself. Sirius raised an eyebrow at the three sets of armor by the main entrance – two more than he remembered – and they stopped in front of a thin – but elegant – village house across the main square, right next to a bakery-coffee-shop mix.
A tall and broad-shouldered old witch opened the door before either of them could ring the door.
Eleanor gave Marietta Longbottom a slight smile, and Sirius nodded at her shortly. The elderly woman looked them over, from head to toe, and silently stepped outside. They followed her to the castle's main entrance, then – and stopped a few feet away from the armors, still.
"Wait here a moment."
Sirius and Eleanor shared a questioning look, but didn't ask.
Marietta took one more step. The armors shuddered, their swords rising up by a few inches. The old woman scowled and presented both her hands, her wand out of sight.
"Stand down, you damn clinkers! You know my blood and my magic, you know the name of your castle. You will stand down, you will let those guests in, and you will resume your guard. And you will not behead anyone who doesn't try to force entry, for Godric's sake!"
The armors stopped moving, but didn't get back into a resting stance.
Eleanor couldn't see the old witch's face then – she stood ahead of them, her back turned – but something in her shoulders told the younger woman that she was getting fed up with whatever spell malfunction Frank Longbottom had worked into his home's guards.
"I will get you replaced by stone gargoyles if needs be! Sod tradition, if it stands in the way of a Longbottom walking into their ancestral home! Now stand back and let us pass before I decide to call Frank over with explosions he will not be able to overlook!"
Both Sirius and Eleanor took a step back, then – just to be sure. Neither of them knew Marietta Longbottom well enough to guess how serious – and pissed – she was with her threats.
They didn't have to find out, though, because the armors rested their arms and blades, and the old witch huffed.
"Well, finally! Come on, you two, before they change their minds! They barely listen to the family, no need to give them more opportunities to attack."
They hurried past the armor sets and into Longbottom Castle.
Eleanor asked, not certain she'd get an answer but curious nonetheless:
"What are they supposed to do, normally?"
Marietta led them through a side door and down a brightly-lit, but narrow, corridor – so different from Black Manor or Grimmauld Place, Sirius thought, where everything was large and dark.
"Well, the armors reflect most spells, and they react to a selection of Dark Arts curses and otherwise threatening gestures, stepping in between the intended victim and the attacker. Their swords are normal enough, but since those can be deadly on their own..."
The corridor was too long for it to be natural, Eleanor noted in a corner of her mind – the castle itself wasn't big enough to accommodate such lengths, and there were only two doors at the very end of it, so it wasn't the result of magically-added rooms either. She'd have to ask, but she was getting answers to another of her questions, so now wasn't the time.
Marietta Longbottom huffed once more, and finished thus:
"Frank's gotten a tad paranoid since he came back. Can't really blame him for that, but he found that the two guarding armors at the gates and the two others on the main square weren't enough, so he decided to make a handful more, except no one has created new ones in six centuries and the family grimoire on the matter is a bit... obscure, full of weird references we've lost the meaning of. Right now he's only managed to make armors that just attack anything within range unless someone by Blood tells them not to. Repeatedly."
Eleanor frowned.
"Runes and Enchantments?"
She hadn't taken Ancient Runes in school, but she did know that the complex chains used in enchantments could create disastrous results if you got one of the associations wrong.
Sirius quipped in before Marietta could answer.
"No, not with bloodlines involved. I'd say Alchemy and Enchantments."
"Close, for both of you. Alchemy and Runes, a volatile combination, and Frank took neither at Hogwarts. He's not half-stupid, though, and he's always been good at fiddling around even when he doesn't have the theory to back it up, he'll figure it out."
They reached the end of the corridor.
"Just hope no one gets run through in the meantime, right?"
The old woman threw a grim glance at Sirius before opening the left door.
"The villagers learned to stay out of the way after a runaway toad got cut in two three weeks ago."
She tilted her head towards the room she'd just revealed and took a step back.
"That's where you want to be. I'm heading back home. Think to ask Frank to let you out himself, if you don't want an unexpected shortening at the door."
Eleanor watched the old witch making her way back through the corridor – which was much shorter, all of a sudden – while Sirius ducked into the large water room she'd just led them to.
He greeted neither Frank nor Alice, his eyes falling first on Emmeline Vance and Callidora Longbottom, née Black.
The blood had ensured his immediate attention.
Eleanor took a step in, too, but stayed by the door – she didn't know the Longbottoms at all, had maybe met them half-a-dozen times before the attack on Longbottom Castle, and Emmeline Vance was an employee of her family's business amongst dozens of others; they'd talked before, crossed paths, but that was it.
Other than Sirius, the one she knew the best in the room was Callidora Longbottom, and that woman was of the same generation as Marietta Longbottom or Eleanor's Parkinson grandfather, Lemuel – she wasn't someone she'd spent a lot of time with.
Alice Longbottom threw her a glance – the witch nodded, tense and worried, before focusing back on the woman bleeding in her home. They'd known Eleanor would come with Sirius, they'd seen her in the mirror, and they most likely knew she'd joined the Order recently. She wasn't a surprise.
The priority, here, was Vance. The witch sat ramrod straight – as if a single twitch would become her end – on a chair someone had conjured from another room, right in the middle of a shallow basin – most likely used to wash clothes on a normal day. The water by her feet was tinted with dislocating blobs of scarlet.
She had a large spider-like clothes monstrosity sitting across her collarbones – legs fading into her robes, obviously a transfiguration curse using someone's own clothing to attack them – its fangs sunk into her flesh.
In three long steps, Sirius was by her side, staring at the blood seeping drop by drop from small cuts under the spidery bundle of fabric – not much blood, not big wounds, but it didn't seem to slow down, from what Eleanor could guess. It had already happened when Frank Longbottom had called Sirius, almost half an hour ago – and it was still bleeding.
Eleanor forced herself not to look away, even if she wasn't used to blood, even if she didn't like seeing anything that had to be painful. She'd signed up for the Order of the Phoenix, now, and even if she wasn't fit for a battlefield – not like Sirius or his cousin Nymphadora – even if she could help in other ways, she'd have to see people get injured.
Or worse. Better to – maybe not get used to it, but – face that fact now than when someone's life would hang on the line.
Callidora Longbottom's voice cut through her unease – also stopping Sirius short in whatever he'd been thinking of doing.
"Don't get any closer. That curse is for you."
The old woman's young cousin threw her a look – Eleanor could imagine his dry expression easily enough, even from where she stood – and scoffed.
"I'd gathered that, thanks. My full name carved on her skin tipped me off, somehow."
Callidora sniffed, looking down her beak-like nose. Her gray hair was long and curled, swept around her head in a complicated up-do, but Eleanor had a stinging feeling that should the older witch let it down, she'd bear a strong resemblance to the ghost currently haunting Black Manor through that feature alone.
The sniffing, however, was Narcissa Malfoy and Sirius himself in a nutshell.
"I'm sorry, I was under the impression you'd been overlooking things lately, Lord Black. Where could I have gotten that impression, I wonder. But on the matter at hand, I've looked Miss Vance over while we were waiting for you. There's no underlying effects, no hidden curse, but the bleeding will not stop, not until the curse..."
Callidora gestured at the spider-thing.
"...finds its intended target..."
There she pointed at Sirius himself.
"...You. You touch this curse, it'll latch onto you instead and leave her alone. Of course, since you are the target, I can assure you that mild-though-uninterrupted bleeding won't be the only thing to happen to you then."
Eleanor made a face, and decided to come over anyway. Knowing Sirius, she doubted his first proposition would be to do just that in order to free his... friend – were they friends? Eleanor assumed so, since they were both part of the Order, but maybe they weren't, not that that would change much of anything considering Sirius' intervention – but it would be his second or third choice if they didn't find another solution, and he wouldn't hesitate either.
Jumping in front of a flying curse was just the kind of things he did, even when he wasn't the target – and sure, generally he knew what to do to counter it, so it wasn't idiotic recklessness, but still.
What she saw, the moment she was close enough to actually distinguish more than the obvious bleeding, was a thin, loopy calligraphy stretching over Vance's collarbones – and, indeed, it did say "Sirius Orion Black" – and oozing sluggishly, the cut skin underneath red with irritation. The upper border of the woman's dark green robes had become heavy with blood, turning it blacker than green.
Eleanor sucked in a breath – she'd thought to help, to get a better look and see if her suspicions were right, but this...
"...Does it hurt a lot?"
Vance, she'd thought earlier, was tense and immobile – the reason was obvious, now that Eleanor could see the wounds for herself. The woman was trying to keep calm and quiet, not to move. Not to disturb the cursed spider that had sprung from her very clothes.
Looking at her face rather than at her collarbones told Eleanor enough, really.
Vance nodded, biting into her lower lip. She had unshed tears in her eyes.
Behind the poor witch, Frank Longbottom grimaced – he still had the streak of blood they'd both noticed through Sirius' mirror, though that had started flaking off his lower jaw.
"We tried removing the spider with scissors when Emmeline got there, but it bit into her then. It stopped moving after that."
Next to Eleanor, Sirius was rummaging through his pockets for something. His tone sounded preoccupied by something else.
"Did you see who did this to you?"
Vance shook her head slowly, realizing she'd have to speak up if she wanted to give more details. Eleanor could see her unclench her jaws, with how hard the woman had been gritting her teeth.
"I didn't..."
Vance sucked in a breath and closed her eyes for a moment.
"...I'd been working on the... on a through-room all morning. I'm almost finished, just have to link up the doorway to the keys. It was almost noon, though, so I left to go back home, because I have a contract this afternoon..."
There her eyes slid towards Eleanor, whose eyebrows most likely didn't look very convinced the witch should go to work before a while.
"I'll excuse you to my father. He can put someone else on the job for today."
Vance blinked, surprised – but her surprise didn't last, quickly replaced by another jolt of sharp pain.
"Right. I, uh, I don't know who it was, but she got me just outside my home. The usual Death Eater, with mask and hood, so... I can say it was a... a woman, because of the voice when she cursed me, and she wasn't very tall, but that's all I have."
Callidora Longbottom – here, Callidora Black, because her presence had more to do with her ease with dark magic than with her marriage, though that one gave her enough trust to weigh in – added:
"There's something familiar about that magic, but I'm not sure what exactly. If you'd actually been on the other side, Sirius, I'd have guessed it your work."
Eleanor glanced at the two Blacks after those words, unsure of how Sirius would take them.
He was scowling, but not too aggressively – and, oh, he'd put on a pair of dark grey gloves which looked like satin, but were likely much more expensive and magical. Eleanor had never seen the silvery spiderweb pattern that covered them before, but it was clear he wasn't putting them on to be thematically appropriate here.
"I'm not thanking you for that one, not even sarcastically, cousin."
He looked back at Vance – got closer, his gloved fingers hovering an inch away from the curse.
Before Eleanor could ask what he was planning on doing, exactly, Alice Longbottom spoke up, effectively stopping him before he could actually do it – whatever it was, but Eleanor had a feeling it involved touching the spider. Because of course he would.
"Those are a lot more expensive than the office's regulation safety gloves."
Sirius's hands came to rest – slowly, carefully – on the spidery fabric of the curse, and nothing happened. Or, to be precise: the silvery pattern on the gloves shone brightly, but the curse itself didn't react.
"Yes, well, I'm obscenely rich and not bound by the aurors' rules anymore."
Alice Longbottom raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. Sirius decided to take that for a concession, and not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Of the three of them ex-employees of the Auror Office, only Alice was working hard to be reintegrated. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what she thought of his absolute refusal to get back in there.
She and Frank had spent months thinking him a traitor, before Bellatrix had gotten to them.
He hadn't thought of that, when he'd forced their subconscious into releasing themselves from insanity. He wasn't even certain of why they'd trusted him, still.
Back on the task at hand:
"Emmeline, anything feels different?"
The woman gave him a pained smile, and Sirius sighed.
At least the gloves were doing their job: keeping the magic inside of them and outside of them separate, like a safety net. The curse didn't recognize his touch as his – as its target's.
Now, what to do? The gloves only meant he could do the same things the others could without getting jumped by a spider, and they hadn't found a solution, so...
"Uh. Anyone has an idea of how the thing is targeting me, actually? Because if we could get it to jump on literally anything else..."
Frank stroked his lower jaw, scrapping off the last blood flakes in the process.
"You... You're right. You weren't there when Emmeline got cursed, so it's not like it could be a proximity target... I think voodoo practitioners have ways of singling out an absent target using locks of hair, a bit like we do with the polyjuice potion?"
Callidora objected before Eleanor could intervene, but Sirius noticed her obvious interest.
"Do you see a lock of hair anywhere, or any other kind of body part? Voodoo puts a curse inside a substitute that's then linked to its target through the lock of hair, and the target suffers a weakened form of the curse as a consequence. If it was that, we'd just need to perform an unhooking ritual to cut the connection, but this is transfiguration, not voodoo. The curse's body is in the moving fabric, not somewhere else."
"Arithmancy."
Everyone, shut silent by her quiet comment, looked at Eleanor.
"The root of it, voodoo, portkey, apparition, targeted curses, even conjuration, anything that goes and latches on something not present around the caster. It's arithmancy. Just because practitioners don't necessarily know the base theory doesn't stop it from being arithmancy."
Alice groaned, and Sirius guessed she'd taken Arithmancy in school. She'd probably figured out what Eleanor was talking about.
"Essential identity!"
Eleanor nodded.
"Exactly. Everything has an essential identity, though some are more... marked than others. Witches and wizards are particularly marked, all magical beings are, but everything else can also be targeted if you know its essential identity. Voodoo uses locks of hair because it contains the owner's essential identity, apparition relies on you knowing the place and having felt its essential identity before, conjuration goes and call forth an object that we know to exist – or else it's only an unstable make-believe that will disappear after a while. However, arithmancy allows us to figure out something's essential identity from a sample, so we can keep that knowledge even when we don't have the sample anymore. Whoever did this might have had access to a strand of your hair, Sirius, or perhaps to some blood, and they extracted a magical identification from it to target you in their curse."
"...So the curse would react to my touch because it'd recognize my essential identity?"
"Basically."
"Wonderful. Does this mean they could make polyjuice of me without any hair or nail clipping, because then we have a problem."
He had a problem anyway, because if whoever did this could make more targeted curses like this one, Emmeline might not be the only one used as a courier. But polyjuice would be even worse.
Eleanor shook her head.
"No, they can't. A magical identification isn't always a good enough substitute, and it never can replace a potion ingredient. They are also unlikely to efficiently share their findings with other people, because you need a very high arithmancy level to use magical identification in a spell. You're safe on that point."
On that point.
Which still left the matter of Emmeline. The spider, the curse.
Sirius was willing to let it jump onto him if necessary, but if he could avoid whatever grisly fate the curse meant for him, he was also all for that.
"Does this new knowledge tell you how to deal with our situation, though?"
Eleanor shared a look with Alice before looking him back in the eyes:
"A magical identification is much more fragile than any object's natural essential identity. If I can grasp it in the curse's construction, I can destroy the link to you and then everything else will unravel because the curse relies on it to function."
The witch didn't reach for her wand – she put a hand flat on the curse across Emmeline's chest, and offered Sirius her other hand.
"Without the gloves, please. I need to compare your presences."
Sirius didn't hesitate – took off his right glove, took her hand in his.
Eleanor closed her eyes and started frowning, her lips moving with a quiet humming that didn't let him distinguish any words. James had taken Chants in third year, so Sirius recognized that Eleanor was using a looped aria, but he could only guess at what she was doing exactly. Most likely, she was coaxing the curse into revealing what made it work.
Sirius' eyes fell back on their hands while Eleanor continued chanting.
She had short nails, he noticed. Shorter than his, even, like she systematically cut her nails whenever they started growing even by a millimeter. Sirius wasn't sure why anyone would do that, and he wasn't sure why he was noticing it now, either.
Eleanor's hand in his twitched, and Sirius looked up, to her – to Emmeline behind her, too.
Just in time to see the spider crumble on itself, shapeless fabric once again. Its prisoner let out a sound of relief, almost a gasp, and everyone waited with batted breath...
The spider didn't reappear. The curse had been well and completely unraveled.
Emmeline was free and safe, and tension oozed out of her stance as she collapsed on her chair. The front of her robes was a mess, bled through and twisted in ways which hadn't existed before a Death Eater had used the clothes to give form to an abomination. Alice and Frank immediately took to checking her once more – this time, they were able to actually do something to help.
They would need to close the cuts, wash the blood, find her new robes...
Eleanor staggered, and Sirius caught her before she could stagger towards the ground.
"Are you alright?"
Her answer was quiet – unheard by the Longbottom couple and Emmeline, who had their own worries; only Sirius' distant, much older cousin was looking at them right now.
"I'm supposed to do that with charts and the space to write my calculations, not just wing it like I just did, but it would have taken too long and I don't have my instruments on me. I... took a shortcut. I might be a bit disoriented for some time."
The witch had her eyes closed, as if looking at anything right now would prove too much.
"Whoever did this... They are very good with arithmancy. I only managed my shortcut because I had your essential identity through my other hand; I could rely on the echo between you and the curse to find exactly what I needed to undo..."
It wouldn't hurt, Sirius supposed, to keep supporting Eleanor, lest she fell without warning.
Back with the others, the two of them caught the end tail of an argument about Emmeline going back home – or, as much of an argument as you could make against a Longbottom while staying in Longhampton.
"Spend the night at your brother's. You shouldn't stay alone, and you'll have Longhampton's protection. You are not going back to Little Loxton after someone ambushed you near your home!"
Emmeline made a face.
"I could just use the floo, I don't have to go on the street."
Frank let out a sharp, dishonest laugh.
"What of when they attack your flat itself?"
Emmeline almost retorted that it was her job to build wards into people's houses and thus her flat was as secure as possible, thank you very much – but she remembered who she was talking to, and bit her tongue. Longbottom Castle was as old and warded as any other ancestral homes, and yet Frank and Alice had been tortured to insanity in that very place. Wards weren't always enough.
She sighed and threw a look at Sirius.
"Fine, but what do I tell Conrad? I have his name branded on my chest, it's very obviously not a random Death eater attack."
Callidora looked the younger witch over with a critical eye, her focus latching on the cuts – they'd finally stopped bleeding, but it was true that it was far from a common wound.
The oldest witch in the room shook her head.
"You'll be fine. The curse, the spider was dark magic, but the cuts are regular wounds. Alice can give you something to close them up before you go to your brother, it shouldn't even scar. You might still have marks for a day or two, though it won't be readable once we get rid of the blood."
Alice nodded.
"Right. Emmeline, stay the night, please. We'll see about later... later. Tomorrow."
Meaning, at the Order meeting. They wouldn't outright say it with Callidora in the room, but they all knew – and, to a point, so did the old witch, if the look on her face was to be believed, even if she didn't quite know the details, the where and the when and the who exactly...
Callidora changed the subject.
"Frank, will you lead us back out? I do not fancy a decapitation by one of your pet projects."
Said wizard started, a look of unease on his face.
"Sure. Sorry about that. I'll figure them out, I swear. Sirius, Miss Rowle?"
The four of them reached the front door without another word being uttered.
Once Frank had assured them safe passage – the armors seemed reluctant, and Eleanor spied both the looks of distrust on Sirius and Callidora's face – and bidden them goodbye, Callidora stopped her young cousin from leaving with a hand against his chest.
They looked each other in the eyes for a short time – Eleanor silent, patient, waiting, watching by Sirius' side – and the old Black witch eventually spoke:
"Do you need help with the Lordship, Sirius?"
He took a moment to answer, face carefully blank.
"...An alderman for the Wizengamot might be welcome, but they must be of our blood and cannot have loyalties to another noble house. I cannot appoint you for that reason, and our family tree has wilted to almost nothing since the Dark Bastard came into play."
Callidora's face twisted into displeasure at the reminder – good work on preserving pureblooded families, that! – but she shook it off.
"And I suppose you'd have more reasons to dismiss those who are left, such as your brother... No matter, the blood can be distant as long as it is present. I'll look into my great-aunt Iola's descendants. She married a muggle, back then, and of course Grandfather Phineas didn't like that, but they might still be close enough in blood..."
Sirius, surprised at the offer for help – he wouldn't have asked, and Callidora most likely knew that, which was why she hadn't waited for him to actually say it – couldn't think of a single reason to refuse it.
"I... Alright. You can owl me the results of your research and I'll take a look."
Callidora nodded, as if she'd already decided her cousin would accept her help even before offering, and this was no more than a formality.
"Good. I'll leave you to your courting, then. Miss Rowle."
Eleanor and Sirius both froze at those words. When they broke out of it to share an awkward look, Callidora Longbottom – née Black, with the ruthlessness of her blood family and the presence of the one she'd married into – had long made her way back to her own home in Longhampton.