magnolia18

The Dark Lord’s Daughter

Part the Eighteenth

Harry booked an appointment with Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, though he knew it would do little good.  He knew his evidence was hearsay, but he wanted it to go on record.  Harry also wanted to leave Magnolia out of it.

Madam Bones had a spacious office and she welcomed him in, offering him a cup of tea.

“Thank you,” Harry murmured.

“I understand I am to congratulate you on your lordship, Lord Gaunt,” she offered.  “You inherited the title through your mother, am I correct?”  Yes, there had been a spread in The Daily Prophet about him and the title, along with the picture of him and Roman shaking hands.  He was now one of the most eligible bachelors in England and Wales.

“Yes,” Harry agreed.  “My mother was the only child of the late Lord Gaunt.”

“It is then, by all accounts, rightfully yours.”  She sat down after offering him milk.  “I take it we’re not here for pleasantries.”

Harry put down his cup.  “I have reason to believe that Jonathan—no, that’s hearsay.”  He took a deep breath.  “I haven’t caught it on camera, but my brother is an unregistered animagus.  It is how I believe he escaped Azkaban.”

“How can that be possible?” Madam Bones demanded.  “He’s only seventeen years old!”

“Apparently, my father completed the transformation with his friends fifth year—and remained unregistered—and he taught my brother when he reached the age of fifteen.”  He took another sip of tea.

“He never taught you, though,” Madam Bones gathered.

“No,” Harry agreed.  “I am not the favored son.”  He grimaced to himself.

“I will question Auror Potter.  What is Jonathan’s animagus form?”

“If my information is correct,” Harry stated carefully, “a vulture.  I don’t know how well he would have been able to fly from Azkaban to land.”

“Well enough,” Chief Bones sighed, making a note.  “Thank you, Lord Gaunt.  I know you have your fiancée to think of.”

“Yes.  Lady Magnolia is my chief concern.”  He took a deep breath and held it in the back of his throat before letting it out through his nose, counting backwards from four in his head.  Harry realized how ironic it was that he had Roman tracing Jonathan when Harry’s primary concern was Magnolia’s safety.  He was stuck in a romantic triangle—and that didn’t even count Violet.

Harry stood and offered his hand.  “Thank you, Madam Bones.”

He swept from the halls of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement back down to the fireplaces, and he left the way he had come.  When he entered Grimmauld Place he was practically throwing off his outer robes in frustration, only to hear someone clear his throat.

Harry paused.

“Harrogate, I came to give you a housewarming present,” Roman greeted him, gesturing to a bottle of chilled wine on the kitchen table. 

His dark blue eyes tracking to the wine, Harry instantly relaxed.  “Roman, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Why, because my niece might be here?” Roman asked in all seriousness.  “My father was your mother’s ‘Uncle Abraxes’ and in that way we are connected—do I not deserve familial consideration?”

“Roman, you know that’s not the reason why.”

“I know no such thing.”  Great, he was being difficult.

Harry leaned forward and undid his cufflinks.  “My mother is in the house.”

Roman leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “I should very much like to see Lady Maia.”  He took a step back and arched an eyebrow.  “Do you think we could convince her to share a glass with us?”

Harry sighed, giving into Roman’s charm.  “Kreacher!” he called.

The house elf popped into the kitchen.

“Did you want to tell me someone is here?” Harry asked a little testily.

“He is waitings for you,” Kreacher scratched out.

The house elf did have a point.

“Take my outer robes to my room,” Harry commanded him.  “Then could you tell Lady Maia that Lord Roman is here and we’re in the Tapestry Room if she wants to join us for a glass of chilled wine?  We understand if she chooses to remain in her rooms, however.”

Kreacher, who was quite ugly, looked up at Harry and then popped away, taking Harry’s outer robes with him.  Harry had forgotten about the cufflinks.  They lay on the kitchen table, catching the lamplight.  Roman picked one up and examined it before putting it back down.  It was ivory and monogrammed in onyx was Harry’s new initials—H.M.G.  They had been a gift from his mother for his seventeenth birthday.

Harry turned to Roman.  “Mother probably won’t come—”

But Roman had plucked Harry’s glasses off his face, causing Harry’s vision to go blurry.  “Ah, I see you are very nearsighted.”  He put them back on Harry’s nose.  “Why have you never had your eyesight corrected?”

Harry adjusted his glasses.  “Dad had a very bad reaction to the potion when he was thirteen.  I always assumed I would as well.”

“If I’m not mistaken, Fleamont Potter invented that potion specifically for your father,” Roman began, levitating the bottle of chilled wine and following Harry as he led the way to the Tapestry Room.  “It should have been safe.”

“It should have been,” Harry agreed.  “But it wasn’t.—Jonathan had bad eyesight.”  Harry had a vague recollection of Jonathan wearing glasses when they were children.  “He insisted on using the potion when he was seven.  He had a horrible reaction, but it did work.  I remember the screaming.”

When they arrived at the Tapestry Room, it was to find Lady Maia waiting, her dirty blonde hair in a twist on top of her head, dressed in pale yellow and gold robes, the left side of her face, neck, and hand covered in black scars.

“Lady Maia,” Roman greeted, setting the bottle down with his wand.  He instantly went to her and picked up her scarred left hand and raised it to two inches beneath his lips, letting it hover, before releasing it.  “How good it is to see you after all these years.”

“You flatter, Lord Roman,” she murmured.  “I haven’t seen you since we danced at your sister’s wedding.”

“How well I remember it!” he agreed, looking back over his shoulder at Harry.  “I was barely a schoolboy.”  Turning back to Harry’s mother, he smiled widely.  “You should not hide away from your true friends.”

Kreacher popped in and began to pour the wine into three flutes.  Lady Maia was the first to take a flute and then Roman took the second before Harry, as the host, took the last. 

“I only agreed to see you, Lord Roman,” she admitted, “because Harrogate told me of your proposals and I was curious.”

“I take it Auror Potter would not approve,” Roman guessed as he clinked glasses with Lady Maia and then with Harry.  “He’s lived too long among the savages.”

Breaking into the conversation, Harry admitted after taking a sip of excellent white wine, “Don’t you mean I’ve lived too long among the savages?”

“Hardly, Harrogate!” his mother decried.  “You’ve been growing up in Slytherin House.  You also have had the excellent influence of your Uncles Marvolo and Lucius this past year and a half.”  She reached forward and let her fingers linger on his right cheek.  “I couldn’t be more proud of you if I had raised you myself.”

“He is certainly the scion of a great house,” Roman agreed with a small smile.  “And now one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.”  He leaned forward and clinked glasses with Harry again. 

“Surely, clinking glasses was not your intention, Lord Roman,” Lady Maia teased, and Harry looked at her in confusion.

Roman gazed at her for a long moment and inclined his head, “With your permission.”

“Granted.”

Roman reached out with his right arm and wrapped it around the elbow with Harry’s until his glass was once again at his lips, Harry’s turning inward toward his lips. 

“What are you doing?” Harry asked in bewilderment.

“Stating my intentions,” he murmured, his violet eyes staring into Harry’s ocean blue gaze.  “Sláinte is táinte!”

“Sláinte,” Harry echoed in confusion before they each took a drink from their glasses. 

Harry could feel magic pass up his arm into the glass and into the wine and he wondered at it.  He glanced over at his mother who was smiling slightly at them, her hands clasped together, her flute of wine set aside. 

Once Harry untangled himself, blushing slightly from the magic and the closeness to Roman, Lady Maia admitted, “I don’t want my son to lead a double life.”

Roman didn’t seem at all surprised.  “Like you had to.”

“Exactly,” she agreed, picking up her flute of wine and taking a sip.  “I spent well over a year being courted by a married man.  You can’t imagine how difficult that was.  Even when I realized he wasn’t married by Mother Magic, it was still dreadfully hard.  Do you know how difficult it was to exchange owls given that he had to hide them from his wife?  We did decide to elope, but you saw how well that turned out.”

“Some would argue it turned out particularly well in some respects,” Roman pointed out, his heavy gaze on Harry. 

Harry’s mother looked over at Roman with a steady gaze.  “I want Harrogate to have an honest choice, and once he makes that choice, I want everyone else to walk away.”  His mother’s voice was firm and even.

Roman looked over at her and nodded.  “I understand you well enough, Lady Maia.”

“But do you understand me completely?”

“We have an understanding,” he stated, his gaze turning to Harry.  “That doesn’t mean until that choice is made, I will clear the field.—But just in case Harrogate is of another mind, my original offer of letting him wed but being first in his affections does stand.”

Harry felt decidedly uncomfortable under his hot gaze.  Nonetheless, Harry held Roman’s purple eyes with his own and didn’t back down.  This seemed to please Roman. 

“Shouldn’t you clear the field already like Mother said?” Harry asked carefully.  “I’m engaged to Lady Magnolia Riddle.”

Roman didn’t even blink.  “Have you put an engagement ring on her finger?  And did you actually propose to her?  Have you even asked me to go?”

Harry swallowed uncomfortably.

His mother placed a scarred hand over his, covering his ivory vined ring.  “I think we all know what happened.”

“Yes,” Roman stated, anger repressed in his voice.  “The question is did she blackmail Harrogate or try to offer him a fair trade?”

Harry glanced over at his mother and saw her looking back at him with their shared ocean blue eyes.  His mother tilted her head toward Roman, as if to say that Harry should tell him and Harry lifted his right shoulder in question. 

Harry’s mother turned to Roman.  “You have to understand that Harrogate was given to James Potter when he was merely days old and I had already slipped into a magical coma.  I have been much weakened since.”

Roman set his glass to the side and leaned forward.  “Are you telling me that Magnolia Riddle offered you an introduction to your own mother?”

“On my seventeenth birthday,” Harry qualified.

Roman looked between them carefully.  “But you clearly met before three days ago.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed.  “I’m cleverer than people give me credit for.  All I needed was access to Riddle House to gain access to my mother.—But you forget, I love Magnolia.”

Showing no reaction, Roman looked at him steadily.  “Do you?” he asked.  “Or is that what you tell yourself?”

Harry was so surprised he almost upset his glass. 

Roman and his mother shared a look.  Roman let Kreacher serve him another glass of chilled white wine before asking about the piano shoved up against the wall.  Harry had honestly forgotten it was there.

“It’s not that wonderful an instrument,” Harry apologized, walking up to it and touching the top of the instrument.  It was a standing piano, made of peeling wood with cracked keys.  “I don’t even know if it’s been tuned in the last century.”

“Lux used to play it,” Harry’s mother admitted, coming up to it herself and running her smooth hand across the top.  “So it was played twenty years ago.”

Roman took this as invitation enough and sat down at a Hitchcock chair Harry brought over that was roughly the right height.  He began to play an A-flat, which to Harry sounded in tune, and then he was playing notes in a flowing motion and Harry recognized, “Dawn.”

His mother looked at him.

“Roman wrote this for me,” Harry told her.  “It’s called, ‘Dawn.’”

A small smile lifted on Roman’s lips as he continued to play, flipping into another piece that was more like moonlight than dawn, the notes washing over Harry like a lover’s caress.

“He loves you very much,” his mother noted when Roman had flooed out well over an hour later.  “I could feel it in his music.”

“I thought only I could feel it?” Harry wondered.  “I thought it was a love song.”

“It is a love song,” she sighed, picking up her robes and walking up the stairs, “but I could feel his emotions for you, as your mother.  Wizards close to you would be able to sense his intentions.  Muggles would have no idea.”

“Would Jonathan be able to tell?” Harry asked, curious.

His mother paused.  “Your bond is so deteriorated, I highly doubt it.  I don’t think your father would be able to tell, either.  Violet—perhaps.  I’m not certain.”

“She’s no longer my sister.”

His mother turned on the landing and looked at him sadly.  He was a step below her so they were roughly at eye level.  “She may not be a blood relative, but you were brought up together.  She cares for you in ways she should not, but you are protective of her.  She will possibly always be your little sister.”

Harry indicated that she should go back into the Tapestry Room, and he followed her in.

“Roman said something once.”

“What?” his mother asked.

“He said he wanted to raise my children.”

“He wants to form a household with you,” she murmured, retaking her seat and looking into her empty wine flute.  The bottle had been drunk dry so Harry couldn’t pour her another glass.  “You can’t have children together, of course, but he wants to be your husband.  Of course, he never can be that legally.  But he wants to have the closest relationship to that.”

“So he wants me to marry, have children, and take them from their mother and raise them—where?—in Paris with him while I leave my wife at Grimmauld Place?”

“Oh, no,” his mother promised, reaching out to him.  “No, there are new innovations in magic.  You can hire a witch to have your children.  It’s all perfectly legal.  Victor Yates couldn’t have children because his wife, Aurelia, was barren so he hired a Weasley—who knows which one—to have his children, and they were recognized as his heirs.  He raised them with his wife.  You could find a nice pureblood and pay her to have your children.”

“But I couldn’t—”  Harry lifted his left hand and showed his middle finger.

His mother took his left hand in her own.  “You wouldn’t have to lie with the witch,” she explained.  “The magic does everything for you.”

Harry was surprised at this new magic, but it certainly sounded intriguing.

“I certainly like Lord Roman,” he admitted, “but I don’t know if I want to start a home with him—”

Harry’s mother took both his hands in her own, “And that is your right.  However, I am promoting the match because you are now a wizard and a lord in your own right.  You don’t need Magnolia anymore.  It could just have been a schooltime romance.  I don’t want you to be trapped just because ‘Gaunts marry other Gaunts.’  I was a Gaunt.  I certainly didn’t marry Uncle Marvolo although it would have been advantageous.”  She pulled him into a hug.  “You’re my little boy and you’re all grown up.  I want you to have love like I had.”

“But he hurt you,” Harry murmured, his voice catching in his throat.

“Yes, he did,” his mother agreed, “but he gave me you.”  She pulled away and traced the line of his cheek.  “I would not trade you for anything.”

Five days later, Harry and his mother were having lunch in the kitchen when the floo activated and Magnolia fell out.  Aurora barked at the green flames.  She seemed to think she needed to announce every visitor.  Harry stood and escorted Magnolia from the floo.  “I didn’t know you were coming,” he said with a grimace, wishing she hadn’t have come.  “You haven’t met my mother, Lady Maia Gaunt.”

His mother stood, showing only the slightest hesitation.  Her hair was done in a circlet on her head, and she was wearing a deep purple dress made of summer velvets.  The black veins stood out against her pale skin against the left side of her face and neck, disappearing into the bodice of the dress, only to appear again on her left fingers that stuck out of the sleeve.

Magnolia blinked and then blinked again. 

His mother looked at Harry and then turned her attention back to Magnolia.  “Am I addressing the Lady Magnolia Riddle?”

Magnolia blinked a third time.

“Yes,” Harry said quickly.  “Mother, this is Magnolia.”

Magnolia opened her mouth and then closed it.  She turned to Harry, stared at him, then turned and reentered the floo, which still flamed green.

Sitting, his mother took a small sip of her pumpkin juice.  “I don’t think your intended liked what she saw.”

“No,” Harry tried to explain, looking at the fireplace.  “She just—”  He didn’t know how to explain it.  Turning back to his mother, he sighed, “I’m so sorry, Mother.”

“It is not your fault,” his mother said firmly, feeding a piece of meat to Aurora.  “You are not responsible for others’ reactions.  I will grant you that Lady Magnolia is very pretty.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed, sitting back down and picking up his soup spoon. 

“I see what you mean about a glamour, however,” Lady Maia continued.  “I noticed a flash at her neck.  It could have been a trick of the light, but I don’t believe it was.”

“Her neck?” Harry checked, surprised.  Aurora nudged his knee for food.  He absentmindedly petted her ear.

“Yes,” his mother told him.  “Her neck.”

“Usually it’s her cheek or hairline.”

“No, it was her neck.”

Harry sighed.  He took another sip of his soup.  It really was quite good, but he’d lost his taste for it.

As Head of one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, Harry had duties in the Wizengamot.  There were elected seats, but he sat one of the hereditary seats.  Harry sat on the fifteenth of August, and was glad to be sitting with Lord Malfoy.

“What are we hearing?” Harry asked, setting aside his copy of The Daily Prophet.

“Divorce case,” Lord Malfoy told him.  “You’ll be interested.”

“We hear divorce cases?” Harry asked incredulously.

“When they involve purebloods,” Lord Malfoy agreed.  “It’s the final session of Ralph Vaughn and Sarah Pratt.  We’re dividing assets.”

Harry knew a Vaughn in Hufflepuff, Randolph Vaughn.  “I thought purebloods couldn’t get divorced.”

“They never got married, but they lived together as wizard and wife for twenty years, so they had a common law marriage.”

Sighing, Harry turned his eyes to the law wizards that were coming in.  “That’s peculiar.”

“Especially with children involved—three, if I’m not mistaken.  I cannot imagine what they were thinking.  Of course, they’re not six generations, so they weren’t wearing vined rings.” Lord Malfoy related, his ice blue eyes flashing.

This caused Harry to chuckle, looking down at his own left hand.

In pureblood cases, the wizard almost always got everything.  He retained custody of the children, he retained property, he retained most of the finances.  Sarah Pratt was left only with her dowry, which was unsubstantial.

Of course, conversation turned to other topics when the law wizards tended to drone on.  “Where did Fleamont and Euphemia Potter live?” Lord Malfoy asked in curiosity as a particularly boring piece of evidence was being given.

“Potter Abbey.  Obviously it was never in contention.  We would go there some summers.”

Lord Malfoy looked over.  “I take it Jonathan Potter will inherit, unless inheritance laws bar him given his attempted rape conviction.”

“Interesting thought.”  Harry pondered the topic.  “I have enough to be getting on with at the moment, so I won’t be looking into it.  I have a wedding to plan.”

“Surely that’s Aloysia and Magnolia’s prerogative.”

“I must have preparations to make, surely,” Harry thought aloud.  “Or am I superfluous?”

Lord Malfoy chuckled.  “I think you have the right of it.”

Of course, Magnolia wouldn’t come back to Grimmauld Place.  They met at The Wicked Stepmother instead, which made Harry angry, as he had a perfectly useable address in London and this wasn’t a date.  She just wouldn’t come because she wouldn’t face his mother.

“What happened when you flooed in?” Harry demanded when Magnolia appeared, dressed in beautiful deep green robes, that he barely glanced at.  “Mother thinks you don’t like her.”

“I don’t like her,” Magnolia told him straight out.  “I don’t want her to live with us.”

Harry blinked at her.  “What do you mean you don’t want her to live with us?”

“Magic scarred half of her body.  She’s practically cursed!”

“Mother,” Harry whispered, leaning forward, “is not cursed.”

Magnolia, however, wasn’t paying attention.  “Shall we order tea?  You like Earl Grey.  Would you like Earl Grey or shall we choose something lighter since it’s such a warm day—”

“—Magnolia—” Harry interrupted, but she kept on talking.

“—Rose tea would be quite lovely, or Paris—”

“—Magnolia, she’s my moth—”

“Paris tea then,” she decided, taking out her wand and moving to touch the teapot to place their order.  Harry reached out and grasped the end of her wand with his hand.  She looked up in shock and the clatter of cutlery sounded throughout the club as every witch and wizard looked up at the scene they were making.

Harry took a deep breath.  “I’m not here to have tea, Magnolia.  I’m here to find out why you cut my mother dead.”

Her ocean blue eyes flashed.  “Harrogate, let me order tea.”  She stared at him.

Harry glared at her and she shoved her wand in his hand until he let go.  As if nothing had happened, she touched the teapot with the tip of her wand and ordered Paris tea and lemon cakes.

“Now, Harrogate, you’re seventeen—”

“Don’t change the subject—” he begged, but she just continued speaking.

“I’m turning seventeen in November.  Don’t you think it’s time I had—” Magnolia continued.

“My mother was quite—” Harry overrode her.

However, Magnolia wasn’t listening.  She just continued: “—an engagement ring.”

—Just as Harry concluded: “—hurt.”

They stared at each other.

“You want an engagement ring after you cut my mother?” Harry asked in shock.  “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Harrogate,” Magnolia wheedled him.

“I’m not just going to do everything you say as if this is Slytherin,” Harry told her, point blank.  “This is the real world, Magnolia.  The real world has consequences.  What happened to you looking forward to being presented to my mother?”

“I’m not sure that’s the wisest idea anymore—” Magnolia admitted.  The teapot glowed blue, and Magnolia turned to it to pick it up.

Harry stood up, scraping his chair against the wooden floor.  For the second time, the entire club turned their attention to them.  “Your reaction is not normal, Magnolia.  We had a guest before you, and he acted perfectly rationally around my mother.—She’s my mother.”

“She’s deformed!” Magnolia stated loudly, the hush of the club ensuring that everyone heard her.

Harry leaned down over the table.  “My mother is not deformed.  Her vined ring punished her because she conceived me.”

“No,” Magnolia argued.  “She’s deformed.”

“Then your father is deformed,” Harry argued back, “if we’re talking about skin abnormalities.”

“My father is the greatest wizard—”

“He still looks like a snake—“ Harry shot back, knowing that he was digging his own grave.  The Dark Lord was going to kill him even though it was true.  It was a dead certainty.  “I would never say so to his face because he’s my uncle, but if my mother is deformed, then you must admit so is your father.”

“My father will have your wand—”

“For defending his favorite niece?” Harry demanded, praying this was true.  “You forget that your father raised my mother, and he has given her shelter the past eighteen years.  He has seen her every week if not every day since her vined ring punished her and he never once blamed her.  He rightly blamed James Potter.  And Uncle Marvolo never once called Mother deformed.”

“Then he should have!” Magnolia seethed.  “She’s disgusting.”

If the club had been quiet before, now it was as silent as a ghostless grave.

“Well, then, we’re at an impasse,” Harry told her.  “My mother lives with me, and if you can’t accept her, you can’t become my wife.”

“Gaunts marry other Gaunts!” Magnolia practically yelled.

“Well, it seems like this Gaunt doesn’t!”  He stared into Magnolia’s ocean blue eyes and saw fear for the first time since she had first confronted him in the Slytherin Common Room.  It was refreshing to see such an emotion, to know she was human.

Harry sighed and said, “Enjoy your tea,” before walking out of The Wicked Stepmother, not once looking back.