I stepped out of the fireplace and into a spacious room, with floors of marble and a tall ceiling from which an intricately ornate chandelier hung. The air itself felt a couple of degrees colder here than it had been back at Snape's office, and the wall in front of me had three tall windows overlooking an expansive field of grass, seemingly disappearing into the evening's growing shadows.
I took a couple of tentative, cautious steps, and didn't shriek or jump at all when a house-elf materialized right in front of me with a loud crack.
"Ah, you must be the little Miss' friend," the little creature said. He was older than most of the house-elves I'd seen at Hogwarts, his eyes sunken and his voice gravelly. "Please, wait here at the Floo Room; Tolby will take your belongings to the guest rooms, and alert the little Miss of your arrival."
"Ah... sure," I said, handing him the rucksack and winter cloak —which, as expected, had turned out to be completely unnecessary. He promptly disapparated, leaving me alone once again to explore the room: a large wardrobe, a table with a few copies of the Daily Prophet and other assorted publications, an enormous porcelain vase filled to the brim with more floo powder than any reasonable person could consume in an entire life...
"The 'Floo Room'," I repeated under my breath. "What in the wealth...?"
"Hello, Sylvia," said a voice right behind me.
That time I tensed up, but didn't emit any loud noises of my own. I simply turned around, figuring somebody else must have stepped out of the fireplace just then, but no: it was the portrait hung by its right side that was talking to me.
A portrait of Daphne Greengrass.
"Um... hi," I said, approaching it. The girl in the portrait was the picture of perfection —this time literally. She posed with her back ramrod straight and wearing a clear blue dress, hands resting carefully on her lap. Her plaited blonde hair must have taken a team of hairdressers several hours to engineer, even with the help of magic. She gave me a polite smile.
"You look surprised," she commented. "I figured you would be accustomed to talking portraits by now."
"I am. But it's just... all the talking portraits I've seen before were always of dead people. You are the first I meet of someone who is... still alive?"
Or so I hoped.
She nodded. "But you see, when all those portraits were made, the subjects were also still alive. How else could they have been painted?"
"Guess you're right," I muttered.
This was... weird. She felt like the girl I knew, but somehow not at all like her, at the same time.
"Tell me, Sylvia: did you manage to resolve your matter with Selwyn? I suppose you must have, seeing as you are here now. I assume you joined Daphne's circle?"
I blinked. "You don't know?"
"No, of course not. I was painted during the winter break of my first year at Hogwarts; so I don't have any of Daphne's memories after that point. I do hear bits and pieces, though, being in the Floo Room as I am."
"Right... well, there was this ritual. I was able to prove I'm a half-blood," I half-lied.
"Oh, that's wonderful news then! I would have loved to be there! I never liked Selwyn much myself, you see."
"Not a likeable fellow," I agreed, nodding.
She gave me a bright smile, one that I'd never seen before on the Daphne I knew. "No, he was quite dreadful... I'm glad Daphne invited you into her circle, Sylvia. I always was of the impression that you were one of the witches with the greatest potential in our entire year..."
Bloody hell was this weird.
"...and told my parents so. But of course, they were more concerned with the traditional family ties and what they called 'optics', and would have never allowed me to invite a Muggleborn into my circle. I can see how– Oh! Hello, Daphne!"
I turned to the room's entrance, where the real Daphne Greengrass had just joined us. She wore a flowing, midnight blue dress that seemed to change colour in subtle waves with every step she took. I blinked for a moment, thinking it to be some sort of optical effect; but no, the dress was really shifting colours, reacting to her movements. She gave a cordial nod to her own painting, then approached me.
"Hello, Sylvia," she said.
"Weird," I said as my only greeting, my eyes going from painting to girl and back. "Weird, weird."
She smirked, just as her painting made a chuckling noise behind us.
"Come," the real Daphne said. "I will take you to the North Wing's ballroom, where the feast will take place. Sally and Tracey have both arrived already."
I followed her, leaving the floo and the portrait behind and entering a drawing room with a few short tables and couches, with a décor that I suspected must have been inspired by the Slytherin underwater lobby.
"Did you like it, my portrait?" she asked, her tone sincerely curious.
"Uh-huh. Only she was somewhat... chattier than you?"
She nodded. "That was my first impression as well. But Mother assured me that these portraits are often over-exaggerated, for artistic effect."
"That explains a thing or two about the portraits at Hogwarts, you know," I mused aloud. "And do you talk to her —or... um... yourself— often?"
"Oh, no; that would be unseemly."
"Right. Stupid question."
She remained silent after that, which surprised me. It wasn't the first time she corrected me on the finer points of wizarding society, and right now would be when she rushed to reassure me that it hadn't been a stupid question in fact, merely the difference in our respective backgrounds. That she hadn't was... odd.
"Now that I think about it," I mused aloud. "Doesn't Professor Lockhart have a truckload of paintings of himself in his office? Do you think he talks to them?"
She let out a soft smile at that, nodding at me. "He does seem the type, does he not?"
But her merry tone didn't last for long, her face quickly morphing back into a serious, tense expression; and I could see some sort of worry, of concern hidden behind her eyes.
As we continued, we entered a longer gallery room decorated with a procession of... not portraits, not exactly. They were... faces, all of them with their eyes closed, sculpted in some sort of off white plaster and framed into the wall. Noble visages of wizened men and women, all of them looking important and prestigious. Something that was soon confirmed by my host:
"These are the mortuary masks of my ancestors. Each one of them were at one time the head of the Greengrass family," she explained. Then, she pointed at an empty frame and added nonchalantly: "That is where my own mask will be placed, upon my passing."
"Upon your...?"
"My death, of course. That other free spot if for Father's. They apply the cast directly to the corpse's face."
I blinked. "Shit, Daphne. That's not morbid at all."
She gave a slight shrug, then said in a low, sombre tone: "Everybody dies, Sylvia."
"Right," I muttered, taking for once the cautious approach instead of saying what I was thinking, as I looked back at the row of stern figures and the two empty frames, patiently waiting to be filled. That sure, everybody dies, but not everybody had this fact thrown at their faces on the regular.
Although perhaps I wasn't one to talk, with the whole deal about my fore-memories, my strange past life and the family I'd lost hiding always right beneath the surface of my mind. Glass houses and such, you know.
The mood shifted after that, in any case, subtly but irrevocably; and we advanced in a silence broken only by our steps on the marble floors along a couple more rooms —I was noticing the house didn't seem to have any corridors, only rooms that connected directly to other rooms— until we entered a wide, large foyer.
It had twin, winding stairs leading to a second floor, and an enormous glass cupola that filtered the few last traces of sunlight coming from the outside, giving everything underneath a subtle green tinge. But it was the fountain that caught my attention the most.
It featured an oversized statue of a lunarjay at its centre, the bird's wings spread wide and its beak open and risen to the sky, as if it were singing. The spout was positioned inside the beak, a continuous flow of water shooting high into the air. Except that rather than fall down due to gravity —you know, like in any normal fountain— the water in this one twisted into figurines, the flow branching impossibly into two, four, eight separate streams, that all moved and danced in the air, twirling and twisting around each other.
I slowed down to watch. At some points, the many streams aligned just so, resolving into recognizable figures: a blooming tree, a gliding hippogriff, a swimming siren...
I thought about making a comment, praising the... well, the incredible, awe-inspiring sight; but I bit my tongue for once. Because I understood immediately that that was precisely the true purpose of this fountain: to awe me. To impress visitors.
To impress upon them the wealth, the power of the Greengrass family. And to do it in style, too.
You see, I might have been only a Muggle-raised, second year witch, but you didn't need to read ahead that much to understand what was going on here; it was quite enough to pay a bare minimum of attention during class, or at the magical world around us.
Enchantments, the kind that placed a charm permanently onto an object, weren't really, truly permanent. You only needed to have a Sticking charm fail on you once at just the wrong time to learn this fact. How long they lasted depended on a balance between skill and complexity: the more accomplished the wizard or witch, the closer they could get to the perfect invocation, the longer it would last. But by the same token: the more complicated the charmwork, the more skill it required. That's why you could earn a salary by virtue of being a professional charmer, your well honed skills enabling you to cast enchantments that the average wizard wouldn't get to last for even a single breath.
And then there was this fountain.
The enchantments must have been layered one on top of another, to achieve all that visual variety, and yet somehow woven together in such a way that they didn't interfere into each other; all of them keeping a perfect, balanced synchronicity. It would only take one of those to wear down slightly for the whole thing to come crashing down —or splashing down, rather. And yet there it was, still working as precise as a Swiss clockwork.
Plus: water was a fluid! And fluids were famously harder to levitate than solid objects. An object you could encompass in your mind easily enough, but a flow of water was always changing shapes, with no end or beginning to it. Professor Flitwick didn't teach the basics of fluid manipulation until fourth year; and that was only controlling it directly with your wand, not bewitching a bloody fountain to do it for you!
So yeah, that they could not only have, but maintain a thing like this sent a clear message; one that any magic user would be able to quickly grasp. A statement not only of wealth, but of power: magical power, at that.
I didn't say anything, and Daphne didn't comment on the fountain, but as we kept walking past all that amazing, exquisite ornamentation I couldn't help but feeling... small. Like I didn't belong, didn't fit in this world, not really. Like I was an interloper. It was something I hadn't felt ever since the beginnings of last year.
My eyes went to my host's magical dress, then to my own 'good' robes —the same stupid ones Daphne must have seen me wear dozens of times already— as I remembered that conversation with Snape at Diagon Alley. Back then I'd thought that he was exaggerating; that sure, the pure-bloods might have had more money and stuff, but I could still fit among them if I put effort into how I presented myself. Do that, I figured, and then my superior magical abilities would cover any remaining gaps.
But seeing this made the truth evident: I was not only poorer than the Greengrasses, I was infinitely so. My best attempts at dressing appropriately would only serve to make them smile condescendingly at me, if not laugh behind my back. And my magic... well. It was evident that they had magic in spades; they didn't need mine.
And that rankled, that realisation: Daphne didn't need me at all. She never did. It was me who needed her; who needed her support, her clout.
Her power.
I had wanted to breach the matter of the owl, but now I didn't know how. I couldn't imagine what I could say, how I could explain it. Because I was starting to realise that to her, it must have all looked the same. What was the difference between gifting an owl, or a brooch, or a bloody apartment? To her, money was inconsequential.
It was a hard concept to wrap my head around. So I didn't say anything, limiting myself to clenching my jaw as I walked in silence by her side, trying to stem the sudden tide of emotions that had flooded me. And Daphne didn't seem like she wanted to break the silence either, still mulling over something herself.
I heard the music first, the soft tunes of a violin accompaniment coming from the room ahead, and then we turned a last corner and the ballroom opened in front of us all of a sudden. A two-stories high, cavernous chamber with dozens of exquisitely dressed wizards and witches mingling around, talking and joking and with cups and morsels of food in their hands.
There were tables full with platers, spread around in a cocktail-like arrangement; but it was the rooms' decorations that grabbed my attention the most. I was half-expecting something both excessive and suitably Christmassy —sort of like the Hogwarts' Great Hall— but the Greengrasses had opted for a more sober, down to earth look.
And I meant that literally, because the entire floor of the ballroom was covered in a layer of dirt —an illusion, as I realized the moment I stepped on it and felt the true marble flooring underneath my feet. That, plus the few trees scattered around the place and between the tables —their branches decorated with large, plump golden apples that seemed to shine under the light of the many candles and sconces— it made the feast look like it was taking place deep within some wild, forgotten forest.
It had a hint of the old pagan traditions, the ones I'd studied about in History of Magic but that I'd never witnessed myself, never seen as anything other than facts in a textbook, despite knowing that the pure-bloods still clung to as many of them as they could get away with, often with a grasp so strong it looked as if born out of desperation.
So this was what Yule was all about, then. Uh... pagan, obviously. I could almost imagine Snape's eyes rolling at my surprise.
"Father looks busy. Come, I will introduce you to Mother instead," said Daphne, taking me back to the present.
For some reason I had expected Lord Thaddeus Greengrass to look just like Lucius Malfoy, perhaps out of a subconscious belief that all rich blokes would simply have great hair. But the man my friend had been looking at was balding and thin, dressed in sober yet expensive robes. A man who was talking to... uh... was that Minister Fudge?
Daphne took me away from them, past some of the other guests and towards a woman who was evidently holding court in a manner reminiscent of some of the older Slytherin students in our common room, surrounded by a small group of friends and sycophants —hard to tell which was which. Her dress was of a vibrant green, her hair so blonde it was almost white.
She was also noticeably younger than her husband.
"May I introduce you to my mother: Evelyn Greengrass," said Daphne. "Mother; this is Sylvia Sarramond, the friend I told you about."
"Nice to meet you," I said, doing a shallow and probably graceless bow under the combined gaze of all the adults.
All but Daphne's mother herself, apparently; because I rose my gaze to discover she'd just given me a cursory look, followed by a curt nod of clear dismissal. Then she took hold of Daphne's elbow and guided her a couple steps away.
"Where were you, Daphne?" I heard her say in a cold tone. "Did you perhaps forget already what we agreed on, this very morning?"
Her voice was scolding, her tone low enough that it was clear it was a private conversation, but loud enough that it was clear she didn't particularly care if any of the other adults around them heard what was said. In any case, her court quickly turned around to give them a modicum of privacy, looking at the contents of their wineglasses as if they had become irresistibly interesting; all the while acting as if they were suddenly deaf or something.
And I was still there in the midst of them, awkwardly rooted to the spot.
"I'm sorry, Mother," mumbled Daphne, sounding contrite and withdrawn for the very first time ever since I knew her. "I went to meet Sylvia and bring her–"
"Yes, you do always seem to have an excuse at hand to leave the Belby boy on his own, don't you?"
"No, Mother; I just–"
"Enough. You promised that you would spend time with him tonight, and I don't want to hear any more excuses. You have the entire year at Hogwarts to play with your half-bloods."
I felt my face flush, my jaw tighten. When Daphne returned to me, her gaze down, it took me a veritable effort to move again, walk alongside her; my hands tightened into fists.
"I'm sorry you had to hear that," she said after a beat. She sounded honest, but a part of me could only bristle at how the girl had remained silent at her mothers' words. Like she approved of them, tacitly.
Daphne's gaze went to a boy across the hall, one that I'd seen before at Hogwarts, sitting at the Ravenclaw table. She said in a tired tone: "I do need to spend time with Marcus Belby, I'm afraid. I did promise my parents that I would."
Her half-bloods.
Like we were her pets. Like we were her playthings.
"That's fine," I heard myself reply, robotically. "I see Tracey and Sally there, I'll go meet with them."
Daphne worked her lip for a moment, as if considering whether to say anything more; but I took the decision off her hands by nodding at her and walking away, with purposefully wide strides towards...
Towards the other half-bloods, I guessed.
I tried to convince myself that she didn't really think that way —Daphne, not her mother; fuck her mother. That she had been simply been too cowed, too polite to be a contrarian in front of an adult parental figure. And hadn't I done pretty much the same thing, when Crabbe had called Hermione 'mudblood' right in front of my nose?
Yeah, I tried to convince myself that Daphne would still see us as equals; that she wouldn't submit to the same poisonous world-view that so much of the pure-bloods in wizarding Britain did. Because of course not, of course she wouldn't see us as mere pets.
But it was hard.
Harder, being there at her family's estate, seeing the wide gulf in wealth and power that separated us. It's not that it made me feel insignificant, but that it made me feel like we existed worlds apart, despite being housemates. Like we would never connect, never truly understand each other well enough to be true friends. Because now there was this... this huge thing between us, that I had intuited but never fully seen, never fully grasped while at Hogwarts. This thing made out of endless ornate, palace-like rooms; of animated fountains and top-ranking Ministry officials.
Trying to distract myself by looking at the other guests only cemented that thought further, with every new face that I recognised from seeing on the issues of the Daily Prophet that the upper-years left lying around the common room —and that was yet another difference: I suspected Greengrass wouldn't need to scavenge for free copies of the newspaper.
Here was an old Newt Scamander, in deep discussion with a young man who probably just about left Hogwarts, there was Celestina Warbeck with a wineglass in her hands. Here was the captain of that one all-female Quidditch team. And there... there was who I heavily suspected to be the one, the only, the great Horace Slughorn, carefully sampling canapés off a long tray.
And here was... me. Just me. Orphan, poor me.
"Merry Christmas!" I said when I reached Tracey and Perks, because I was feeling sort of rebellious by then. It had the welcome side-effect of pushing both Flora and Hestia Carrow away from our group —after a look of disgust by one of them. And good riddance.
"Hi," greeted Tracey.
"Sylvia, you are here!" said Sally.
"Sorry if I'm late. It's all Snape's fault, he wouldn't allow me to leave any earlier."
"No, it's fine, we just arrived ourselves," explained Sally.
There was an awkward moment of silence after that, as if none of us knew exactly what to say next, how to start breaching that distance that had grown within our ranks. As if we were too out of practice. I noticed Tracey's eyes going momentarily to my earrings.
I decided to force myself to speak; I had wanted to try and be more forthcoming after all: "There are some news I need to tell you about."
"Shouldn't we wait for Daphne first?" asked Sally.
I turned my gaze to the heiress. She was still talking with Marcus Belby, smiling and doing all the right gestures, as if she had chosen to spend time with him of her own volition rather than being pressured by her mother.
"She's busy, we'll tell her later," I decided, quickly urging the girls to follow me towards the trunk of one of the trees where we wouldn't be overheard. "There have been more attacks at Hogwarts: house elves got hurt, apparently."
"What?!"
"But didn't you deal already with... the Heir stuff?" asked Tracey.
"Yes!" I replied, not bothering to hide my indignation. "Dumbledore dropped the ball, it seems."
"So the Heir's still around?"
"I don't know? I mean, I don't think so; I believe it's just the monster acting on its own, which might actually be worse," I explained, the girls' faces growing more worried with my words. "I hope the Headmaster will get his shit together and fix it soon, but in the meantime we should always stick together; cover each other's backs and never become an isolated target."
"And nobody else knows this? Maybe I should tell my parents, if it's so dangerous," said Tracey, shaken, and looking across the ballroom towards her two parents. Well, towards his father, at least. I didn't recognize the tall, dark haired witch to his side —wearing a burgundy three-piece suit with a cape on top— but I figured she probably was her mother. That, or her father's mistress.
"They might decide to keep you from returning to the school," argued Sally. "Besides, the story says that the monster only targets Muggleborns."
Tracey went silent at that, her expression a mix of guilt and relief, but I wasn't so sure myself. Because yeah, that's what the legend said all-right, but could it be trusted? I feared that it was only Tom Riddle's orders that had ensured the basilisk's targets in the original timeline all had the same particular blood mixture. Or had Salazar Slytherin conditioned the creature so thoroughly that even after a thousand years it would still pass on a tasty morsel, just because they happened to be pure-blood?
Not that the girls were pure-blood themselves either —except for Greengrass. They were half-blood. And me... well, suffice to say that if the basilisk had seen fit to attack the elves, then I myself must definitely be in the menu too.
But speaking of menus; we were forced to stop discussing the touchy matter and move into more inoffensive topics, because soon enough the welcoming cocktail ended and the Feast proper started. The tables were rearranged with the help of some magic spells, and we found ourselves sitting at what was evidently the designated kid's table.
Daphne presided it, of course. And I had to give it to her: she was an excellent actress; if it had been me sandwiched between Belby on one side and the Carrow twins on the other, I doubt I could've kept the disgust from showing across my face.
I myself was next to Tracey and Ernest Macmillan, of all people; with Cassius Warrington sitting right across me. I didn't have much to say to any of them: Warrington because he was two years my senior —which for kids our ages, it might as well mean we belonged to different generations altogether; and Macmillan because he was a Hufflepuff and —like Belby— so far I had only been vaguely aware of his existence as yet another face in the Hogwarts' halls.
Besides, I had a more immediate conundrum to focus on: that of deciding which of the three silver spoons of different sizes I was supposed to use to eat the bowl of steaming hot mushroom soup placed in front of me. My fore-memories weren't going to come to the rescue here either, as my only experiences with fancy dinners were the couple of disastrous dates I'd endured with that bloke Julien —or was it Jules?— Whatever, I mostly remembered that it was just too easy seeing through his act, that of pretending a higher station than what he really was.
But now I was realizing that the posh restaurants he'd taken me to, back when I'd been an adult, were posh but modern, going for fancy minimalism; while this... this was posh and old-fashioned, everything covered in layer after layer of obtuse etiquette.
In the end I simply pretended to fuss with my serviette as I waited for any of the other guests to give me a clue, then I promptly followed their lead. The clatter and clinking of cutlery and plates quickly filled the ballroom, along with the soft melody of the enchanted instruments, conversations drifting back and forth. I found it odd at first, as if something was amiss; until I realised that I was just missing the wild noise, the racket that always filled the Hogwarts's Great Hall every evening. I'd gotten so used to it that now I could only find this much gentler version as somewhat unnerving.
And then there was the food itself:
I eyed the piece of meat on my plate with suspicion, poking it softly with my fork. Blanketed by a smooth layer of gravy, it reminded me of venison or something along those lines. But then again, to the best of my knowledge venison didn't have hard, chitinous scales.
My confusion must have been obvious, because Macmillan clarified in a low voice: "It's dragon."
"Dragon? Aren't those protected in sanctuaries and such?"
He shrugged. "There are some allowances, but... Well, I don't know how it is, but you can't really find this much dragon meat in Diagon Alley, can you? The Greengrasses must have imported it from somewhere else."
Right... probably skirting whatever Ministry laws there must be about killing dragons and selling their meat, as it was. Bold, doing that when one of the guests was the very Minister of Magic himself.
Or perhaps that was precisely the point, I ruminated: to deliver a pointed message merely through the choice of menu.
But whatever the Greengrasses were up to, I had my own reasonable concerns regarding eating dragon meat: "Hmm... this is magical food, no?" I argued. "What about its magical properties?"
"What about them?" replied Warrington with a shrug, as he smoothly cut a thin slice. "It promotes healing and is fortifying; you will study dragons next year."
I hesitantly cut a little piece myself and placed it in my mouth, chewing carefully. It tasted... like chicken, but heavier. More filling and savoury.
"Chunky chicken," I muttered to Tracey, who hid a smile and replied with a shushing motion, eyeing Daphne.
The heiress was far away from us that there was no way she could've heard us, but still I figured it would be wiser to refrain from criticizing her family's choice of main course, being their guest and all. Not that they deserved all that much respect from me, I thought.
But still, Daphne herself was my friend... wasn't she?
I shook my head slightly, as if pushing the conflicting feelings out of my mind, and took another bite of dragon meat. An animal that I'd never seen before in real life, but that I was now eating.
Dragon was hardly the only magical food served that night, it turned out. There were also some semi-transparent eggs, a side-dish with some kind of frog-shaped leafs that crawled around slowly, attempting to escape the bowl, and the Yule Logs they served as desert came directly from some of the branches of the trees around us.
I managed not to embarrass myself through the evening, and when the music picked up —some of the adults and most of the older teenagers crowding the open dance floor by the centre of the ballroom— we instead retreated to play a few rounds of Exploding Snap. We were quickly joined by some of the other young kids around, which made for a more lively competition, but it also meant we couldn't discuss any of the topics that were more private to our circle.
But slowly, little by little the guests trickled out, and at some point bloody Belby left with his parents, so Daphne finally joined us for good. And a while after that, she must have judged her presence was no longer needed, because she suggested we left the ballroom to go to her own rooms.
"I had Tolby move your guest rooms close to mine," she said as we left the remnants of the feast behind; you know, as if that was a totally normal sentence. "That way we can stay close together, and you won't get lost on the way to your rooms."
Something that was a very real risk, given the sprawling size of the Greengrass Estate. She took us through an elegant library, shelves filled to the brims with tomes of all kinds, then upstairs and down a carpeted corridor —the first corridor I saw since my arrival— until we entered a smaller drawing room with walls painted in a soft green hue. There were a couple of comfortable-looking couches, some chairs and tables, a set of shelves surrounding a desk... It evidently doubled as a play room, judging by the handful of dolls and other toys on some of the shelves.
The room ended in a short hallway, with a few doors leading to what I figured were the bedrooms —I could glimpse the end of a four-poster bed through one of the open doors. It all felt surprisingly homey, as if here, so deep within the mansion, the Greengrasses could afford to lower their standards of polite order and stately luxury just a little bit. Just enough as to allow one to breath a little lighter.
My eyes went to the framed pictures decorating the walls. To one of them in particular: a candid photograph of Daphne, sitting at the Hogwarts Library as she read from a thick textbook, studiously taking notes with her fancy quill.
"You had it framed already?" I asked. Because she must have only received it this very morning.
"Oh, of course! It's a lovely picture," she replied. "Thank you so much for it, Sylvia."
"I loved mine too," added Tracey. Her picture had been one of her atop her broomstick, playing Quidditch and twisting in mid air as she intercepted a flying quaffle. "It looks like I'm a professional player!"
"How did you take them?" asked Sally. "I never noticed when you took mine by the lake!"
I gave them a mysterious smirk. "Oh, but where's the fun if I just went and told you?"
"It must have been that first year Gryffindor," commented Tracey. "The one with the camera? I don't remember his name."
"Spoilsport!" I protested, slapping her shoulder, but without heat. She winked at me.
And I felt a tension, a knot deep within my body loosen just a bit.
Daphne invited us to sit down, while she walked up to a Wizarding Wireless set on one of the tables.
"This was also a Yule gift, from my mother," she explained as she fiddled with its controls. Soft, suitably Christmassy tunes filled the air. "I was thinking about bringing it to Hogwarts after winter break."
"Might liven up our dorm," I agreed.
"Did you receive my gift, by the way, Sylvia?"
Her gift: the owl. I nodded, unsure as to how to breach the issue. After a beat, I went with: "It must have cost you quite some money."
Daphne's hand made a dismissal motion. "Oh, that's not an issue."
"But it is, for me," I said, causing her to pause and blink at me. I bit my lip, then decided the cat was already out of the bag, so I might as well forge ahead: "It's just... I appreciate it, of course; but I'd rather you don't gift me things that are so much more expensive than what I can give you. It makes me feel..."
'Like I owe you,' I thought. But I simply shrugged, refusing to say it out-loud. Not that it wasn't clear enough, at any rate.
"Oh," said Daphne.
There was a moment of awkward silence after that, and I cursed myself for plunging us back into this right when our little group was finally perking up for good, after all the fuss from Hallowe'en. But I didn't feel that guilty over it, because the truth was that this... difference in our relative status couldn't really stand like this. It couldn't remain something that only I was aware of, could it? Something that only I felt the impact of.
"But you're keeping him, right?" asked Tracey. "You better!"
I nodded, which seemed to mollify Daphne somewhat. "Of course."
"What are you calling him?"
"I'm thinking Teegee. Short for Telegram."
Aaand none of them got the joke; all the girls puzzled as they eyed one another, as if looking for a clue.
"Teegee sounds... good?" said Sally at last.
I sighed and leaned back on the couch, closing my eyes. "Wasted, I tell you. My wit is wasted on you three."
There was some confused chuckles. But when Daphne sat down herself, she was acting somewhat... odd? It took me a few seconds to place the uncommon expression on her face: she looked sheepish, as if ashamed. It was so strange seeing her like that, that for a moment I wondered if it was one of the Golden Trio masquerading as her, somehow having managed to Polyjuice their way into the Greengrass feast.
"I... must apologise, Sylvia," she said to me. "For not being considerate enough with my gift, and the obligations it placed on you; and for what my mother said. It was quite impolite, and I am sorry you had to overhear that."
Then it was my time to pause and blink.
"It doesn't matter," I replied reflectively. But then I shook my head slightly, because that was a lie. It did matter, after all...
"It wasn't your fault, but thank you," I amended; and this time the words rang true. I quickly rushed to talk about something else: "What's with this Belby anyway?"
That got the interest of the others too, all of us looking expectantly at the heiress; we had been wondering about it during the entire dinner.
"Marcus Belby? Oh, my parents are considering a betrothal, and–"
"Wait, what?!"
"Belby? Are you serious?!"
"You mean, like an engagement?!"
Daphne paused for a beat at our combined cries of surprise, then resumed her explanation in a measured tone: "Not quite an engagement yet, although that is the expectation. My parents want me to marry a pure-blood, and my father insists it be a matrilineal marriage, so that my children inherit our family surname. But that of course rules out the heirs of the most respected families, such as Draco Malfoy. Marcus Belby is a good, suitable match, and his family would accept the terms of the marriage."
She said all that in a flat, even tone; like it was all very reasonable. But also like those weren't her own words, her own thoughts. Like if she could repeat it to herself a few more times, she would start believing it.
"Tell me you aren't going through with this," I said. "Daphne, it's not right to have your marriage arranged already! You are only twelve! Hell, it's never right for your family to force you to marry–"
"Force? Oh, no, Sylvia; they aren't forcing me. They only want us to spend time together, but if we don't like each other, we won't have to marry."
"Well, that's easy then. Just tell them you hate each other. Problem solved."
"I won't do that," she protested. "If I reject him, I might not get as good a match again. There aren't that many pure-blood wizards our age that would accept a matrilineal engagement, and I vastly prefer Marcus to the likes of Gregory Goyle."
I clenched my robes in my hands, in an effort to calm myself, not to grab her shoulders and violently shake some sense into the girl. I had the feeling she wouldn't appreciate that.
I said: "You don't need to marry any of them, Daphne; you can just wait until you find some boy you fancy. Or some girl! I mean, you are still too young to know for sure if you even like boys!"
"But–"
"And forget about Goyle, or stupid Belby. Plenty of fish in the sea, y'know? What's wrong with marrying someone who isn't a pure-blood? Hell, you could marry a Muggle; or not marry at all!"
"You are being silly," she said, shaking her head. "I'm the Greengrass heiress. Of course I need to maintain my family's blood purity, and to bear children of my own."
"That's rubbish, Daphne! You are your own person, not a... a mare for them to pair and breed! If your family can't understand that, then–"
"No, Sylvia, it's you who don't understand!" she exclaimed, raising her voice and losing her composure for the first time ever since I'd first met her; the polite and demure Daphne Greengrass all but disappearing. The sight was so unlike her that I subconsciously edged away from the girl. "I have responsibilities, and I'm not going to shirk them! I have a family, I'm not like you!"
Funny, how Daphne herself looked surprised at the very words she'd just said out-loud. A surprise that quickly turned into horror, as she no doubt realized she'd just thrown my orphan status straight at my face.
"I– I'm sorry," she muttered. "I didn't mean–"
I sighed, shaking my head. "No, you are right. I can't understand it."
Because yeah, I might remember having had a family in my fore-memories; but it was nothing like hers. Our responsibilities back then had been only to each other, not to the family as a thing. Because my family surname had never been in the history books. We'd had no Estate to our name, and no Minister had ever visited us. We'd had no rooms full of mortuary masks, no ancestors to judge us with their dead stares.
Back when I'd first met Daphne last year, I'd quickly realised how her parents must have trained her, must have instructed her into being this little politician, this little princess. And back then I'd found that as somewhat amusing.
But now, now I was starting to realize the true, horrifying shape of it. The depths of it. All this pressure she must have been subjected to, just by virtue of living here, within these walls. A pressure to conform, to become what they needed her to be. A pressure that would bend anyone out of shape, turn them into something else.
All the wealth and magic and luxury in the world, all at the cost of being yourself. Of getting to choose.
She was right. I couldn't understand. Of course I couldn't.
And yet...
"But you have to find a balance," I insisted, my tone softer this time, trying to find the right words. "You can't just be... the Greengrass heiress all day, all the time. You also need to find a way to be just Daphne too, or... or someday you might grow to hate your family."
There was a deafening silence after that, broken only by the absurdly festive music still coming out of the wireless. Daphne's gaze was down, her eyes watery and her body still as a statue. Sally and Tracey were frozen too, as if trying not to breath too loud, and probably wishing they'd never agreed to this sleepover in the first place.
Of course, I couldn't manage the impossible feat of being polite for a single night. I couldn't manage to be a proper guest; to simply keep my thoughts to myself, my mouth closed.
"I think she's right, Daphne," said a new voice, breaking the silence.
We all gazed at the newcomer: a rail thin, young girl with messy long dark hair. She was barefoot, wearing a dressing gown over some pyjamas. But her eyes...
For a moment, I wondered if she had fore-memories of her own too, if like me she'd had a life before this life. Because her eyes felt deep, her gaze somehow mature beyond her years. Or maybe it was just those faint, dark circles under her eyes that made her look older.
Daphne was the first to react, quickly rising up to walk up to her. "Oh, Tori! I'm sorry, did we wake you up?"
"No, I was already awake. I told Mother that I was feeling better than this morning, but she insisted I miss the feast. I asked Tolby to bring me some food."
"You shouldn't have. He'll get into trouble."
"What for? It was me who asked... So, are these your friends from Hogwarts?"
Daphne nodded, motioning the girl to approach and sit with us. "Yes. This is my sister Astoria. Astoria, these are–"
"No, wait! Let me figure it out," she said, eyeing us. She pointed a finger at me first. "You must be Sylvia, obviously..."
"Hey! What do you mean, 'obviously'?" I protested in mock anger.
But she ignored me, turning towards the other two girls: "And you... you're Tracey, and you're Sally-Anne!"
"Close," said Daphne. "She is Sally; this is Tracey."
"Oh... you looked more like I imagined Tracey would. My sister told me many stories about all of you."
"Any of them juicy?" I asked, wiggling my eyebrows.
"No. She never tells me the truly juicy things." She narrowed her eyes. "But now that you three are here..."
A mischievous smirk bloomed across Tracey's face: "Oh... so she never told you about that magazine that Livia Ashford asked her to hide from the prefects?"
"Tracey, don't!" said a blushing Daphne, her eyes suddenly wide.
Astoria looked like Christmas had come early... or, well... like Christmas had come twice, I guess: "No, she didn't. What was it?"
"Well, it was this Muggle magazine with... uhm... pictures of some boys that–"
"Tracey!"
In the end it was Astoria Greengrass who probably saved our circle from stepping too deep into the disaster we'd been spiralling around for all these past weeks. She saved us through embarrassing stories at first, which then morphed into more earnest ones as the night progressed. And when we returned to the topic of families, to that dragon-headed monster, Tracey admitted that she was worried her parents didn't like each other that much, anymore. And I told them of the Mirror of Erised, admitting for the first time what I'd seen reflected on its surface: a family.
I didn't tell them that I remembered them from before this life, of course. But in the end that didn't change the truth at all, did it? Because in the end, the family that I'd seen in the mirror wasn't mine; not really. Not any longer.
But it was okay; because when I went to sleep on my four-poster —in the massive guest bedroom adjacent to those of my friends— I realised that despite it all, despite all of our differences and our missteps... that Christmas Day had been the first one where I hadn't felt alone.