The House of Prince
The House of Prince was one of the oldest wizarding families in Britain—ancient, dignified, and rare. Not storied, like the Blacks. Not feared, like the Lestranges. The Princes were something quieter. Sharper. Like fine steel folded a thousand times, their lineage had been honed through centuries of discipline, clarity, and brilliance.
And Augustus Prince was its last lord.
He was not a man who craved applause. He craved precision. A prodigy in Arithmancy before he was old enough to sit the full OWL exam, he had published two groundbreaking works by twenty-five—restructuring magical probability theory itself. By thirty-two, his name was cited in academic journals across the world.
And yet, such achievements barely stirred him. The excitement they brought paled beside the quiet exhilaration he felt in the presence of Elspeth Rookwood.
He knew her name, of course—but it wasn’t until he overheard her speak, when he was seventeen and she sixteen, that he felt, for the first time, the desire to know and be known by someone.
It was a quiet moment, near the edge of a Hogwarts courtyard. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but her voice cut cleanly through the noise with the kind of elegance he recognized from mathematics—clean, unflinching, precise. It didn't seek agreement; it revealed it. “She doesn’t need a bezoar,” Elspeth had said calmly to a friend. “She needs containment magic at the site of absorption. The curse is blood-borne, not potion-based. Neutralize the source, not the symptom.”
Augustus turned toward her—and never looked away.
She was a Slytherin like him, but more beloved. Not because she sought it—Elspeth neither postured nor performed—but because people trusted her. There was something deeply private and grounding about her presence. You could place your heart in her hands, and she would neither drop it nor display it. She would simply hold it, quietly, with care.
For years, he tried. Letters. Long conversations at conferences. Sudden visits, each cloaked in excuses rooted in shared research. But she was resolute. Her love, she told him, could not be given until she had proven herself in her own right—until she was her own witch, with her name carved into the field of Healing.
He understood.
He waited—confident he wouldn’t have to wait long. And he didn’t.
They married in December, in the deep hush of the solstice month—quietly, surrounded not by allies or connections, but by peers. Minds. Theirs was a gathering of the brilliant.
Their home became a sanctum. A place where thought moved like water, and love was shown in annotated margins and carefully steeped tea. Evenings were spent in quiet conversation, debating magical theory by flickering candlelight. Books lay stacked in graceful disarray. Their laboratory—meticulously organized. Their laughter—soft, exquisite.
On occasion, Elspeth hosted evenings that the best minds of their generation attended with trembling eagerness. Wizards and witches from every discipline gathered around their table to dissect questions of power, ethics, and magic. It was said you hadn’t truly mastered your field until you’d earned an invitation to a Prince dinner.
And then came Eileen.
She was, Augustus once said, the first true equation that made his heart ache. A sum so elegant it felt inevitable. A formula only love could prove: Elspeth’s gentleness and his discipline, combined in one small, precocious child.
He would rest ancient scrolls beside her crib, telling her tales of arithmantic breakthroughs as if they were fairy tales. When she was four, he introduced her to cauldron ratios. By five, she could name herbs by scent alone.
She bloomed in Potions. Her instinct unnerved even the masters. And Augustus gave her everything: access to their private collection of ingredients, a journal bound in warded leather for her observations, invitations to observe discussions with Potions Masters from as far as St. Petersburg and Alexandria.
Augustus never spoke of ambition. But in their house, the pursuit of mastery was a kind of prayer.
But Elspeth taught her how to speak to people. How to smile without fear. The world was loud, and Eileen was quiet—and Elspeth helped her navigate the noise. After gatherings, Eileen would retreat into her mother’s lap, whispering questions like, “Did she mean that kindly?” or “Was I polite enough?” And Elspeth would stroke her hair and guide her without judgment.
Years passed.
Their life unfolded like the elegant solution to a once-impossible problem.
Everything was perfect.
Until the accident.
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It was 1957. Eileen was fifteen.
The accident happened in Elspeth’s lab.
A curse sample—drawn from a centuries-old case, a bloodline that had decayed from within, its members falling to madness and bone death. Elspeth had taken the sample herself. She was always meticulous. But the blood—volatile and ancient—pierced her skin through a shattered vial.
They tried everything. Augustus tore apart libraries. He summoned every Healer in Europe. But the blood rejected every treatment. It was Elspeth who realized the truth first. “It’s too late,” she said gently, as he paced before her. “My death will be fast.”
On the second day, she could no longer stand.
On the third, she asked to see the stars.
They sat in the observatory together—her head against his shoulder, her fingers tracing constellations she could barely see.
“I won’t be with you much longer, my dearest,” she whispered. “Will you promise me something? That you’ll meet the world with gentleness, and give yourself the grace I always tried to give you. I fear you’ll forget how, when I’m no longer here to show you.”
He wept quietly.
He hadn’t cried since he was a boy.
She died with his hand in hers.
The house sounded different without her. Even the fire crackled more cautiously, as though aware it was burning in the absence of something sacred.
He did not collapse. He did not rage. But something inside him… narrowed. His days became shorter. His conversations, clipped. The warmth in his eyes dimmed. The colors drained from the world.
Eileen was the only light that remained.
But he watched her now with an intensity she did not understand.
And when their eyes met, it was like looking into a mirror too long—seeing fear not just in him, but reflected back in her.
Fear she didn’t know how to chase away.
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At fifteen, Eileen Prince was everything the House of Prince had ever hoped for.
She moved like precision incarnate—quiet, graceful, exact. Her cauldron work was flawless, her theory sound. Professors at Hogwarts often spoke of her as a marvel—talented, focused, far beyond her years.
Her fame, if it could be called that, was cold and clean. Sometimes, she caught her reflection in a cauldron’s polished side and didn’t quite recognize the girl looking back. The edges were sharper now. The quiet, heavier.
The gentle guidance that once helped her translate her gifts into connection was gone now. Since Elspeth’s death, the world had grown louder, harder to interpret. The quiet murmurs in hallways no longer had context. Invitations felt dangerous. Compliments, suspicious.
She smiled when expected. She spoke politely. But the warmth her mother taught her to wear like silk had become stiff, unnatural wool.
And Augustus Prince—her brilliant, grieving father—watched.
Not intrusively. Not unkindly. But with a constant, calculating gaze.
He loved her. She knew he did. Could feel it in the silence that followed her mistakes. In the way his eyes tracked her hands, always a breath away from correcting her. Love, yes—but honed like a blade.
It no longer lifted her.
It measured her.
And though he never said it aloud, she could feel it: she was all that remained.
She could not falter. And so, she did not.