Happy New Year everyone!

I will apologise. I meant to get these up last week, but we've had some bad news about my grandmother and things are about to get rough. I am planning to do regular updates again and I'm finally starting to get organised and hopefully will swiftly get back into writing as well. I'm determined to get back on track with writing in general so let's see how that goes.

Hope 2023 is your best year yet!

Lots of love,

LSH xx

Finally Belonging Somewhere-Part 106:

Lucius and Narcissa sat there in stunned silence. Meredith had always been the calmer and more rational of the two and, yet, now she appeared to be raging at them and they had been shocked into silence.

"Remember that time when I said that family members could know about me? Do you not remember that? Aurora should have been told about me! She's family… she's my niece," Meredith said as she looked at her brother and sister-in-law, "she should have been told and the fact that you didn't tell her about me is something I will never forgive and I get the impression Draco and Astoria won't forgive you easily either," she said twirling her wand causally in her hand.

"Mer, we never even considered telling her and we only remembered that she didn't know about you until you showed up at the Manor," Lucius said after a few moments of silence had passed, "we'd not even realised that telling her could have caused this…"

"Cut the crap," Meredith said, sounding very like a Muggle at that moment in time, "Cissa's admitted there were times when I crossed her mind. Even if she didn't know about me until now you should have told her before I showed up here. Don't dig yourself into a worse hole brother… I am an Auror remember."

"I have nothing to say really," Lucius said with a sigh, "this is on us because we should have told her before you showed up here and we didn't. That is something that Cissa and I will have to live with now," he said before raising his hands in defeat, "I don't know what else we can do…"

"Make it up to her after giving her some space," came Jen's voice, "she's going to be hurt and may not fully trust you for a bit. In her eyes you failed to tell her about something important and that will hurt her for a while but she will get over it, just don't force yourselves onto her."

Lucius and Narcissa nodded softly as they looked at Jen, knowing that the witch was right.

"We didn't even think about telling her so this is on us," Narcissa said with a sigh, "she's already been through so much and now we've lied to her. I cannot blame her for being angry at us. We do deserve it," she said as she squeezed Lucius' hand, "the best thing we can do is let her come to us now and wait for her to trust us again. As much as that option hurts it's probably the best one."

Meredith stood there with her arms crossed and made a small noise of victory.

"Yes I have spoken to the Laird and Lady and their daughter before I came here. I've been back longer than I let you know about," Meredith said, loving to have the upper hand over her brother, "I was back a full two weeks before I showed up at home. Now if you two can be sensible for five minutes I'm going to track down my niece," she said before turning to James and Cait, asking where the childrens' rooms were so she could go and track down Aurora and make sure that she was doing OK.

She swiftly but gracefully made her way to the wing that Draco, Astoria and Aurora's rooms were on before checking Draco's room, empty, Aurora's room, empty. She then heard voices from Astoria's room and slipped silently into the room and just observed the scene so she could figure out how to explain things to Aurora.

Meredith froze as she realised Aurora was looking at her and she decided to be the one to make the first move. Walking in she crouched down in front of her niece and smiled softly.

"Mummy and Daddy should have told you about me Aurora. My job might have been top secret but family were allowed to know about me and that means you," Meredith said, "they know that and will have had their reasons for not telling you but they should have told you. Please don't be mad at me…"

Aurora sat there in silence and listened to what Meredith was saying before, much to Draco and Astoria's surprise, she held out her hand for her aunt.

Astoria moved out of the way so Meredith could sit down next to her niece and she kissed her head softly.

"Are you going to spoil me?" Aurora asked, "I always wanted an aunt to spoil me," she said and Meredith laughed softly.

"Of course I'm going to spoil you. I have always wanted a niece to spoil and, yes, I did know about you before you were taken from us," she said as she looked at Aurora, "I'm just happy to have you back with us," she said with a smile as she stroked Aurora's cheek before hearing footsteps and looked up to see Lucius and Narcissa stood in the doorway.

Aurora pouted as she crossed her arms and looked at her parents and Narcissa bit her lip and walked slowly into the room and kept her distance. Narcissa's heart breaking as she saw how upset Aurora was, unwilling to speak to them as well.

"Aurora… we didn't mean to lie to lie about Meredith. We'd forgotten about her allowing family to know about her," Narcissa said softly as she watched her daughter and waited to see how she would react to her words, "we should have let you know and we didn't. That was our fault and not yours," she carried on before looking, "Mummy and Daddy love you lots and would never do anything to hurt you."

Aurora remained silent for a while and wouldn't say anything, clearly trying to decide if she was going to forgive her parents or not. She looked around at everyone as silence lingered in the room.

"Come on Rora," Meredith said as she looked at her niece, "they just forgot and would never hurt you deliberately, "I think you should forgive them before their faces get stuck that way forever," she said with a glint in her eye.

"OK fine, but they better not do it ever again or they will be sorry," Aurora said as she looked at her parents, who nodded and promised but only time would tell.