Excentryke's Musings

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Lost Boy

Part the Eleventh

Lily was wearing her buttery robes again when she had tea with You-Know-Who.  She’d asked him to bring his snake, Nagini, along, as long as she promised not to eat Lulu.

“Oh, Black Card,” she sighed, looking at the hideous snake.  “She’s absolutely enchanting.  May I pet her?”

“She can smell fear on you, my dear.”

Lily was taken a back.  “I’m only a little bit afraid.  She’s so—”  She paused, looking for the correct word, “magnificent.  I know she could easily eat and digest me if she wanted to.”

You-Know-Who hissed something at the snake in a language she could not place.  It sounded like hisses and s’s and it raised the hairs on her neck.

“Nagini says she likes you,” You-Know-Who informed her.

“She does?” Lily asked in surprise.

“She says you know your place.”  You-Know-Who looked at her with his ocean blue eyes.  “I must say I like your place at a tea table with me.”  He took his seat and indicated she should seat herself.  He wasn’t gentleman enough to pull her seat out for her, Lily noticed.

Lily took her napkin and placed it on her lap.  Setting out to make the tea, she made eye contact and began carefully, “I understand you know who my son is.  You knew before I did.”

“Ah, Hartwig told you.”

“He showed me his family tree.  I—‘met’—James Potter.  I can’t imagine myself ever marrying a corpse.”  She took out the steeping tea and swished the teapot.  It then set about to pouring tea into their teacups.  Magic was so lovely like that. 

“He wasn’t a corpse when you married him,” You-Know-Who pointed out.  “He was a vibrant young man.”

Lily wondered just how vibrant he could have been.

“That won’t be your fate, however.”

“No,” Lily agreed.  She had always hoped to call Hartwig ‘husband,’ but that seemed to be more of an impossibility now than ever.  She wondered if she could see Sirius in that role. 

“You can reach much higher than a fifth generation wizard,” You-Know-Who was now saying. 

Lily was confused.  She wondered how You-Know-Who knew.  “I suppose some of your Death Eaters at Hogwarts told you.”

You-Know-Who sat at his seat and accepted honey for his Paris tea.  He picked up his teacup and drank it heavily.  “They did mention something to me.”

“It does seem a little odd to me, given that our parents are brother and sister, but I’ve been assured that’s quite normal in the old families.  Sirius’s own parents are second cousins.—I suppose that makes us even more closely related.”

You-Know-Who stilled.  “You speak of your relationship with Mr. Black.”

“Sacred Twenty-Eight is a step higher than a fifth generation wizard in a coma,” Lily agreed.

“Of course it is,” You-Know-Who stated acidly, putting down his cup.  “Tell me, is Mr. Black respectful to you?”

“He has to be,” she answered, grimacing to herself.  “I’m wearing a vined ring.”  She thought about herself and Sirius.  If it had been just six months earlier they could have hidden in closets and snuck away to the other side of the Black Lake where no one could have found them.  Now he couldn’t even hold her hand.  There was something to what Sirius said to calling a vined ring a ‘chastity belt.’

“You deserve so much better, Miss Black,” You-Know-Who said forcefully. 

“I’m the one who doesn’t like it.”

“He tells you not to like it.”  You-Know-Who looked decided in his opinion.  It wasn’t far off from the truth, but it was only a half truth.  “I’ve heard of Sirius Black from his mother, Madam Black.  He refuses to wear a vined ring.  He doesn’t wear his robes, instead going around in Muggle jeans.  He laughs in the face of pureblood traditions.  My dear Stephagenia, you could do so much better.”

“Whom would you suggest?” she asked.  “A Death Eater?”

“There are certainly candidates among the Death Eaters,” You-Know-Who agreed.  “Your own son has found love and affection among my ranks.”

Lily scoffed.  “He’s a paramour.  I understand that as the grandson of Fleamont Potter, he’s the Potter heir.  He will grow up, he will marry, he will have children—and this love affair will be forgotten.”

“This love affair will not be forgotten, but that is a conversation for another time,” You-Know-Who told her carefully.  “How little you understand your own son.”

“I thought you said I didn’t understand pureblood society.”

You-Know-Who just took her in before lifting his teacup back up to his lips.  His noseless face stood rather in sharp contrast to the china.

“Do you think me a handsome man?” 

The question was so unexpected that Lily almost laughed.

“I see the way of it.”  He set his teacup down again and pointed at the teapot.  It instantly sprang to life and poured him another cup.  It was a small but impressive feat of wandless magic.  “I was almost married once ten years ago.”

“Oh?” she inquired, a little confused.  “Almost?”

“She left me at the altar.  It was the wedding of the season.  Few called me ‘Lord Voldemort’ then, only a select few of my closest friends.”

“What was her name?”

“Madeleine Malfoy.  She is anathema in society, now, she ruined herself so completely.  Her daughter Lux is at Hogwarts with you.  I believe she is one of your prefects.”

“Lux Kingsley?” Lily asked in shock.

“Yes.  I believe that is her name.  Kingsley was bought to make Madeleine nominally respectable.  The Malfoys took in Lux and she was raised with Lucius, Aloysia and Roman.  She is the fifth Malfoy child.”

Lily frowned.  “And Hartwig is involved with this family?”

“Yes,” You-Know-Who agreed, “with my blessing.”

This certainly displeased Lily.  She didn’t want Hartwig so heavily involved in a Dark family.  She had read The Daily Prophet article about the broken engagement to Narcissa Black.  She now knew that Narcissa was her cousin and she had even exchanged a few letters with her since she had been discovered to be a Lost Boy.  Bellatrix had been a more faithful correspondent.

“The point, my dear Miss Stephagenia, is I have been in want of a wife for many years,” You-Know-Who told her plainly, leaning forward.

Lily looked over her shoulder to where her Wizard Father was in his study.  Unfortunately, they had a privacy bubble over them again, so Alphard couldn’t hear a word, but she liked the reassurance that he was there.

“Black Card,” she warned.

“It’s too soon,” he agreed, leaning back.

“I think you forget our situation.  You’re trying to take over wizarding society.”

“I am very well aware of this, yes,” he agreed, clearly pleased with her assessment of him.

“And I’m—I’m just—I was a Muggleborn six months ago.”

“Let me guess.  Dumbledore has his hooks into you.  Are you sitting here so you may spy on me for him, Stephagenia?”  His ocean blue eyes flashed intelligently.  “I won’t give anything away to you, even if you were my wife.  I know how to keep a private life separate from a professional one.”

She was thinking very quickly.  “Then what possible inducements do I even have to marry you?”

“Access,” he answered.  “Wealth, power, position.  I won’t mark you, my dear.  You could have complete deniability afterward.  I’ll have your uncle sign a wizarding contract that you were forced.”  You-Know-Who gave her a thin lipped smile.  “You’d have to give up Sirius Black, of course.”

That tugged at Lily’s heart.  She’d already given up Hartwig.  She wasn’t in love with Sirius, but she did find him funny.  He made her laugh.

“Think about it,” he suggested.  “Hartwig could walk you down the aisle if you prefer him to Alphard.”

That idea struck her as utterly comical, and she almost laughed.  She ended up half-sobbing.

You-Know-Who sat there for a long moment before conjuring a flask and pouring it into her tea.  “This is terribly confusing,” he realized, though it sounded more like a statement of fact, “for a young lady in your position.  It must be a lot to take in.  Madeleine couldn’t quite take it in and she’d had five years to get used to it.”

“Really?” Lily asked, looking up and realizing there were tears of confusion in her eyes.

“Indeed,” You-Know-Who intoned.  “That’s a bit of Muggle brandy.  It will help calm the nerves.  Drink up.”

He stared her down until she picked up her cup and took a sip.  She liked the burn of it and so carefully drank it down. 

You-Know-Who tapped the teapot until it steamed again.  It poured her another cup and he dabbed some more brandy in it.  She slowly drank it as well. 

“You may wish to go refresh yourself,” You-Know-Who suggested, Nagini curled around his left leg, “before Alphard comes back and sees that I made you cry.”

“Yes.  Yes, you might be right,” she agreed, feeling incredibly unlike herself. 

She got up carefully and went back to her room and looked at herself in the mirror.  Her eyes were all puffed and red and she was sure her breath smelled like alcohol.  She breathed on her hand and smelled it and, yes, it smelled like alcohol.  Going about the room, she cast an anti-puffiness charm on her eyes and then found some wizarding breath mints.  When she came back, Alphard and You-Know-Who were speaking by the mantle. 

“He proposed then,” Alphard asked after You-Know-Who had left. 

Lulu had come out of hiding now that Nagini had gone, and Lily picked her up, scratching behind her ears. 

“Yes,” she agreed.  “He did.  He set it out like a business proposition.”

Alphard breathed in, his shoulders lifting before leveling again.  “This is not what I want for you.”

“There’s so much good I could do as his wife.”

“Do you really think you’d have influence over him?”

“Who has more influence over a wizard than his wife?”

“He’s not your typical wizard,” Alphard argued.  “He wants a wife because he wants release and he wants a male heir.  He also wants the prestige you will bring him.”

“Perhaps I can use that to my advantage.”

“Do you really think yourself that politically minded?” he asked her calmly.  “You grew up among Muggles.  Your Muggle father taught at the local college.  Your mother was a housewife.  There was no intrigue to your life.  You weren’t even sorted into Slytherin like the rest of the Blacks where you would have had proper political training.”  He ran a hand down his face.  “I fear you are not prepared for a political marriage to one in his position.”

“I can’t have who I want,” she admitted, coming fully into the room and sitting down.  “I will never have Hartwig Potter.  Even You-Know-Who said his attachment to Lucius Malfoy won’t even be set aside for a marriage and children.”  She wondered where the Potters had gone wrong raising him for him to become such a fairy. 

“You have Sirius Black.  Walburga says he’s been less troublesome since he started going with you.”

That was at least something.  “Yes, but do I really want to marry my cousin?  It’s fine for now, but long term?”  She was still fantasizing about her son, but she couldn’t help that.  She’d loved him for so long…

“Poor Sirius,” Alphard mused.  “I understand from Walburg, he’s fancied you long before you were a Lost Boy.  He was willing to get disinherited for you.”

“He should have told me that before then,” she suggested to Alphard.  “He never even spoke to me except to joke until it was discovered I was Stephagenia Black.  He’s like all the rest.  They all wouldn’t speak to me before because I was a filthy Muggleborn, but they all came crawling once my heritage was discovered.”  She spit the last part of this out.

Alphard looked at her kindly.  “Now they have the pleasure of knowing you.  The Dark Lord is one such person.”

“But I gain from a relationship with him,” Lily argued.  She thought of how she might have to kiss him and wondered if she could drink brandy first.  It made everything slightly fuzzy.  Even this conversation was slightly fuzzy.  “I gain a great deal.”

“You gain a great deal being the next Madam Black,” Alphard told her, coming and taking a seat beside her.  “Your husband will be in the Wizengamot.  You will have a place in society like no other lady except perhaps the next Madam Malfoy or Madam Prince.  Your children will never have to hide in the shadows—”

“Maia Gaunt doesn’t have to hide in the shadows,” Lily argued.  “She’s You-Know-Who’s niece.”

“She doesn’t carry his name.”

“His name’s not Gaunt?”

“No,” Alphard told her carefully.  “While the Gaunts are Sacred Twenty-Eight, I believe that the Gaunts were the Dark Lord’s mother’s family.  I don’t know what the Dark Lord’s name is.”

“Well, shouldn’t we find out?”

“I wouldn’t ask him.”

“Then who would know?”

“Abraxas Malfoy.  They were close friends in Hogwarts.  Everyone knows they want to join their houses in marriage.  The Dark Lord should be marrying his daughter Aloysia when she leaves Hogwarts.”

Lily’s eyebrows rose.  She was peripherally aware of Aloysia Malfoy.  She was a sixth year Slytherin.  Very pretty.  She was supposed to marry You-Know-Who but You-Know-Who wanted to marry her instead?

She couldn’t ask Abraxas Malfoy then.  She’d have to ask another Malfoy, and it couldn’t be Aloysia. That left Lucius, and the only way to get to Lucius was through Hartwig.

Lily lay down for the rest of the day, letting the feeling of the brandy pass.  Sirius flooed in later in the afternoon, but Lily didn’t want to get up. 

“Shouldn’t you be out flying?”

“I wanted to be with you,” he whined, sounding like a kicked puppy.  He lay down next to her on the bed so that their shoulders brushed and lay his head down on the same pillow.  “We should run away this summer.”

Lily was too tired for this.  “Don’t propose to me today.  Any day but today.”

“Do you want Madam Puddifoot’s?” he asked in horror.

“No,” she told him, reaching up and touching the edge of his sleeve.  “I just have too much to think about.  I have a headache.”

“Take a potion.”

“Not sure it’s that kind of a headache,” she responded truthfully.  If there had been a house elf in the flat, she’d have asked it, but they didn’t have one.

Sirius looked at her cross-eyed and then sat up.  “Have you been drinking?  Does your father know?”

“No,” she answered, not sure what part of the question she meant.

Sirius hopped off the bed and went into the flat’s bathroom.  He came with a little vial with yellow potion in it and declared, “Hangover potion.  Drink this right up.  Tastes like sludge, but well worth the effort.”

She pushed herself up and took it in her hand, looking at it suspiciously before she downed it.  It didn’t taste like sludge.  It tasted like raw eggs.  She handed back the vial and slid back onto the bed.  Closing her eyes, she fell into a light sleep.

When she woke back up, her head was perfectly clear.  Looking about, she saw that Sirius was in a chair reading a copy of Witch Weekly.  “Ah, there you are,” he greeted.  “It’s been about ten minutes.”

She sat up and stretched.  “I feel so much better.”

“What did you do?  Sneak the cooking wine?”

“Something like that,” she answered vaguely. 

“And in nice robes, too,” he muttered, eyeing her.  “No, not the cooking wine.”  He was casually wearing bellbottom jeans and heeled boots with a polo shirt.  “Stephagenia—”

“I’m a Black, Sirius,” she argued.  “Certain things are expected—”

“That never stopped me.”

“Well, I don’t have the luxury of growing up in a pureblood household and knowing how and when to break the rules,” she argued back a little viciously.  “I must do what I’m told.”

They fell into silence, and she looked down at her hands that she had torn apart her thumbnail with her teeth in the last hour.  She needed another magical manicure.  Why couldn’t she seem to break this nasty habit?

“Stephagenia, I—”

“Save it, Sirius,” she said tiredly, running the back of her hand across her forehead.  “I don’t want to hear it.”  She breathed in deeply through her nose.  “These robes are absolutely crumpled.  I should get out of them.”

“I could watch,” he suggested playfully, but she wasn’t in the mood.

She flicked purple sparks rather harshly toward him from the tips of her fingers.

He fled from his chair, tipping it over, holding up his hands.  “Okay, okay.  Only joking, Steph.”  He went to the door, opening it, and then closed it on his way out.  Lily was then blessedly alone.

She carefully got out of her good robes and steamed them with her wand before hanging them up.  She put on a pair of day robes, taking her hair down as it was rather mussed up before putting it back up in a simpler style.  When she came out, Sirius was gone.

The next morning, Alphard was reading The Daily Prophet when he looked up.  “This is rather curious.”

“What is it?” Lily asked, sipping her tea.

“Orion has put through an amended law through the Wizengamot.  Christ only knows why.”

“What is it?”

“Well, legally, a wizard can only marry a witch or a female being or sentient creature.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.  Such as a centaur or a werewolf.”  He folded over the paper.  “Now it’s been changed to a ‘witch’ or ‘wombed person.’  What in God’s name is a ‘wombed person’?”

“A person with a womb,” Lily defined.

“That’s a witch.”

“Yes,” Lily answered carefully.  “Unless the person is a hermaphrodite.”

Alphard looked startled.

“Both male and female.”

“Never heard of such a thing.  Do they exist in the Muggle world?”

“They do,” Lily answered carefully, “but they’re very rare.”

“Well, I can’t imagine a wizard marrying a man-and-woman person,” Alphard reasoned.  “How absolutely bizarre.  What was Orion thinking?”

“He was thinking something,” Lily decided.  “Why don’t you ask him?  He’s your brother-in-law.”

Alphard looked bemused.  “I wouldn’t dare to ask him anything, let alone this.  I wouldn’t ask him for an umbrella in a rainstorm!  I barely speak to the man.  I always speak to my sister and let her convey any message I may have.”

Lily hummed.  What an odd relationship all the Blacks had with each other.

“So you don’t even know if Mr. and Mrs. Black approve of the fact that Sirius comes over and we hang out in Gryffindor.”

“Oh, they approve,” Alphard told her plainly.  “I’ve had a long letter about it from Walburga.  They think you’re the making of Sirius.  I think they just might be right.”  He looked at her.  “He’s a far better choice than the Dark Lord.—You don’t even have to choose either of them.  You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“When did you marry Mother?” she asked in curiosity.

“Your mother was a pretty little thing in Gryffindor,” he remembered fondly, “three years behind me.  I met her at a party when she was twenty-one.  I was twenty-four.  We married two years later.  We were much older than eighteen.  We’d lived in the world a little bit.  Taken a look about us.  We’d left our Hogwarts’s loves behind.  It’s often healthy to do that.  Nothing wrong with a schooltime romance, but sometimes it should be left at school.”

Lily thought of Hartwig and her heart clenched.  She wondered if she would ever fully get over him.

“I’m going to Florean Fortescue’s with Severus today,” she informed Alphard. 

“Are any of your friends witches?”

“Yes?” Lily asked more than answered.

The day was a bit breezy and no one was out on the streets again.  The Daily Prophet had been full of The Takeover, per usual, and everyone didn’t want to be out in case they were caught in the conflict.  Lily, however, felt like she had immunity.  Death Eaters wouldn’t dare to hurt her now that You-Know-Who had made his intentions known, and she lived in Diagon Alley.  All the shopkeepers knew her by sight.

Severus was already there waiting for her, and she purchased their ice creams (Severus never had any spare galleons for such luxuries).  They settled in and Lily looked at her oldest friend.  He was just as greasy as always.

“Is Hartwig a Death Eater?” she asked carefully.

“No,” he answered.  “No, but he is favored.  The Dark Lord got a law passed for him.  No one knows what Potter offered in exchange.”

“Law?  What law?”

“No one’s entirely certain.  It’s rumored to be this recent law in the Wizengamot, however.  It’s the only law that needed enough push behind it for the Dark Lord to get involved.  The marriage law.”

Lily nearly gagged.  “The one about ‘wombed persons’?”

“Yes.  It doesn’t make any sense.”

But Lily wasn’t listening any longer.  It made perfect sense.  Lily was a Black.  She carried the metamorphmagus gene.  She could have passed it on to Hartwig.  If he could change the law so that ‘wombed persons’ could marry, then he could marry his paramour, Lucius Malfoy, which would explain the broken engagement with her cousin Narcissa.

She must have been staring at Severus in horror because he was calling her name.  “Steph.  Stephagenia.”

She shook herself.  “Sorry, Severus. I got lost in my thoughts for a moment.”

“What do you know?” he asked her carefully.

“Know?  I know nothing—” which was technically true.  She only suspected.  But if this was the truth—knowing Hartwig wanted nothing to do with her, even when he hadn’t been sure whether or not she was his mother.  He really didn’t fancy witches at all.  He was such a puff that he would go to these extreme measures to be with a wizard.

“Stephagenia.”  Severus was looking at her worriedly now.

She cast a silencing bubble.  “You-Know-Who asked me to marry him,” she said, changing the subject.  “So did Sirius, sort of.”

Severus looked surprised.  “You don’t seem unhappy about either of these proposals.”

“No, not unhappy.”

“You can’t mean to marry the Dark Lord and be a spy against him.”

“Whyever can I not?  It would be the perfect opportunity.  He even knows I don’t love him and would only marry him for the advantages it would afford me.”

Severus deflated.  “I would much rather you marry Sirius Black, and I hate the boy.”

“Think of all the good I could do.”

“Think of all the trouble you could get into,” he argued back, reaching out to her and gripping her sleeve, careful not to touch her.  “This is dangerous, Steph.”

“No more dangerous than any other spy’s work.  Women do this all the time, sell their body—”

“Your body,” Severus seethed, “is not something to be sold.”  His black eyes looked into her green gaze.  “Surely you see that.”

She deflated.  “What else am I good for?”  Her voice was small and weak.

Severus looked gobsmacked.  “Stephagenia—Lily—you are worth all the witches of Hogwarts put together.  You’re wonderful, you’re beautiful, you’re intelligent—”

“I’m a Black, I’m Head Girl, I’m a black card, I’m a Lost Boy,” she listed off sarcastically. 

“Yes,” Severus agreed desperately.

She laughed hollowly.  “Yes, all those things.  I’m Stephagenia Black and Stephagenia was no one until January of this year.  She was ‘Baby Girl’ on a birth certificate.”

“If you want to go back—”

“There is no going back,” Lily half-sobbed, drying a tear that fell from her left eye.  “Hartwig now won’t have me more than ever.  I’m a pureblood but he’s forever lost to me.  I’m dating my own cousin—”

“There are other wizards out there.  I can introduce you to some very eligible—”

Lily looked at him in disbelief.

“There’s Barty Crouch Jr. in Ravenclaw,” Severus gave as an example.  “He’s friends, not close, but friends, with Maia Gaunt and Hartwig Potter.  His father is in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.  He’s tapped to become Minister of Magic in a few years.  They say he might be going with Apricot Selwyn, but who would want a Selwyn when they could have Stephagenia Black?” he asked in all seriousness, and that was just the problem, wasn’t it?

She was a name now, a list—she was no longer a person.