Chapter 4, Heads Will Roll

"He's always into everything," Hagatha complained. At last the little elf was looking tired and drained. Walburga thought her face was even getting thinner.

"Are you even eating?" She asked her friend. "I told you I would help you."

"You offered to help when he was a baby! Now he is a little two year old force of nature that happens to never stop talking!"

Walburga's lips twitched. She found Kreacher's constant babbling observations of the internal and external state of his world to be endearing, but now did not seem to be the time to say so. "They don't call it the terrible twos for nothing," she said. "It isn't just for humans, you know. Elves, goblins, acromantulas, everyone is two once and everyone is terrible while they're at it."

Hagatha made a face, then let out a tired sigh as her shoulders slumped.

"He was trying to climb into that huge soup pot this morning! While it was hanging over the fire! He is so fast, Hagatha only turned away for an instant, and there went Kreacher scrambling up onto the pot! When she snatched him away, he actually attempted to squirm out of Hagatha's grip, insisting that he would make the soup better!"

Walburga felt her eyes growing wide with concern. "While it was over the fire?" She exclaimed. "How is he not seriously burned?"

"Hagatha had only just put the pot over the fire. It hadn't time to get hot yet." She sighed. "But she does not believe that Kreacher would know better if it was hot. He is too young."

"So how did you convince him to stay out of it," Walburga asked, eager for whatever ideas worked to use on her own terrible twos some day if she happened to be fortunate enough to be able to reproduce.

"After his third attempt, Hagatha finally smacked his leg hard." She rolled her eyes. "He cried and screamed and called Hagatha a bad elf until she got a headache!"

Walburga couldn't help it. She laughed. "I am sorry," she managed at last through her mirth. "It is just funny!"

"Apparently," Hagatha, who was not laughing, said dryly. Knowing that her friend was becoming vexed, Walburga tried to stop laughing... and failed. "Kreacher is always into things, and is never still anymore the way he was when he was a baby."

"And could not walk," Walburga interjected, still chuckling. "The not being able to walk helps that quite a lot, you know."

Hagatha sighed. "Kreacher was getting into things to some degree even when he could crawl, but he could be easily distracted with toys. Now he is insufferably curious about everything, and won't be kept out of any of it!"

"Unfortunately, this is quite normal behavior for his age," Walburga observed. "So how did you finally get him to stop crying?"

Hagatha sighed again, her expression even more miserable than it had previously been if that were possible. "Hagatha did not, in fact. Instead, she managed to make it worse." The elf clutched her head as Walburga burst into laughter again.

"I really can't help it," she managed at last. "I am s- sorry!" Hagatha glared. "Well go on," Walburga said. "Finish it. It is getting good!" Very well, perhaps she wasn't that sorry. It was funny! "Hagatha told him that good elves who constantly insisted on climbing into soup pots got their heads put on the wall like a trophy."

"Didn't that frighten him more," Walburga asked.

Hagatha frowned, shaking her head. "He seemed morbidly fascinated by it," she complained. Then Balthazar ruined everything by telling me not to say such horrid things to a child, and then Kreacher decided to get frightened. Then he was crying even harder than before! Hagatha can't even threaten a child properly, it seems," Hagatha said dejectedly.

"Well he did eventually become frightened. Isn't that what you wanted," Walburga asked carefully.

"Well yes, but Balthazar behaving as though Hagatha said something wrong, then Kreacher crying about that made Hagatha feel as if she hadn't truly done it properly. Perhaps Hagatha is too mean and vicious. It's just getting to her, these terrible twos!"

Walburga wanted to say that she envied her friend this, for at least she had a child, but she remained silent. What was the point of expressing these emotions when doing so had accomplished nothing thus far. It wasn't going to get her with child, after all.

Little was she to know that her first child's terrible twos would be even worse and that she would no longer be envying anyone for having children. By the time Kreacher was three, he had not out grown his terrible twos. He was still as precocious as ever, curious about everything and into everything as a result, often thinking he could manage them better than his elders.

It was difficult to even have a conversation with Hagatha when he was awake unless he was with Balthazar. He kept interrupting to garner one or the other of their attention, as he spoke as freely to Walburga as he did to his own mother. When he wasn't interrupting directly, he was doing it indirectly by talking to himself constantly in a cheerful but relentless mutter that tended to distract. "I don't even truly get to talk to you anymore," Walburga complained eventually. She and Hagatha sat having tea in the kitchen while Kreacher played on the floor with a large stuffed bear that Orion had given him. It had once been one of Orion's own childhood toys.

"Why doesn't the bear growl, Kreacher wonders," the child enthusiastically mused to himself. "And why does it get dirty if Kreacher drags it on the floor when the floor itself is not dirty? Kreacher wants to know, Kreacher does!"

"He does not talk in his sleep!" Hagatha observed in a tone of wonder, staring at her son with a glazed tired look in her large round blue eyes. "One would think that he would not be able to help himself, but somehow he does not talk in his sleep!"

Walburga grinned. "Perhaps his mouth is too tired from its full day of talking and also needs rest."

"Ah," Hagatha nodded. "Hagatha thinks that makes sense. He certainly never naps during the day. If Hagatha can even get him to lie down and be still, he spends his nap time squirming about on his bed muttering to himself about how he simply is not tired and is quite certain he will not sleep until bedtime."

"He is certainly the most unique child I have ever seen," Walburga said. Though she had not seen many children, she was one once, and as such, had been exposed to others. Recently her elder brother Cygnus had had two daughters, a little over a year apart. This could have made Walburga feel even more childless, but Cygnus was older, and he and Druella had been married longer than she and Orion. If she could not get with child eventually, though, she knew that seeing Cygnus's daughters would really begin to sting.

His friend Corvus Lestrange and his wife Esmay had a boy too, around the age of Cygnus's eldest daughter Bellatrix. This made Walburga wonder if she would be as old as Cygnus before she finally had a child. It was unfair that Hagatha had her child already. Kreacher was the same age as Bellatrix Black and Corvus Lestrange's son Rodolphus. This galled a bit when Walburga thought on it for too long as it rather disrupted her comforting ideas of most people not having children until they were in their late twenties. "I so wish we had had our children together!" She could not stop the lamenting words from bursting forth.

Hagatha's mouth tightened. "Hagatha is too tired for Walburga to be silly today," she pleaded. "Hagatha shall have more children and Walburga shall certainly have her own soon and they shall all grow up together with Kreacher as the eldest, leading them all into trouble." She giggled and Walburga smiled, once more reassured by her friend and servant.

The two never could have guessed that one of Walburga's sons would die because of Kreacher's own will and the other would've instead laid down his own life for the talkative elf. Rather than continue talk of terrible twos, the conversation turned to the doings of Voldemort. Corvus's brother had been friends with him at Hogwarts but had avoided him after graduation.

As Corvus and Cygnus were friends, Walburga was aware. No one objected to Voldemort's goals, if he succeeded. Many of them just did not particularly wish to fight a war themselves, Corvus, Cygnus and Walburga included. Their parents had given up for the most part when Grindelwald fell from power and tragically into a prison of his own making, quite literally. "Hagatha's father wrote that he is glad to be out of London, because soon there shall be much deadly fighting because of Voldemort," Hagatha said, biting worriedly at her lower lip. "Does Walburga have concerns?"

"I hadn't thought much of it, actually," Walburga admitted, feeling a bit silly, because perhaps she should have. "I shall bring it to Orion's attention to see if he feels any sort of action should be taken."

Hagatha nodded. "Hagatha just wishes to keep Kreacher safe. And of course any children she and Walburga shall have in the future as well."

When Walburga mentioned it to Orion that night when they were readying themselves for sleep, he remained silent for several seconds as he slipped into his night shirt. His movements were slow and deliberate, and his face was thoughtful. "Does she fear that we shall be attacked? Presumed to be working with Voldemort?"

Walburga's hand faltered for an instant in mid air. She sat in the window seat, briskly brushing her long black hair as she did every night. Was that what Hagatha feared? "I... I do not know. I did not ask," she admitted, embarrassed not to have delved deeper into her friend's concerns due to her own being consumed by children and the lack there of. "Then again, Hagatha always speaks her mind, so I suppose I thought her fears were vague, else she should have been more clear. You can always ask her."

Orion nodded, still thoughtful as he sat down on the edge of their bed. "I will mention it to her and Balthazar tomorrow at breakfast. Walburga cringed. Hagatha hated talking in the morning. As Hagatha had brought up the concern, though, Walburga made no objection.