Informing the grandparents
August 9, 1975. (Saturday)
After taking their parents to Diagon Alley to pick up their stuffy dress robes, the Evans girls had some time to show them around. Them being squibs, and not non-magical people, meant that they could see everything in the Alley. Then, when it was approaching 10 in the morning, they took the Knight Bus to go to Marius Black’s home. They were currently debating whether or not to be blunt in informing him about magic. Cæla, Lily and Ivy were opting for the blunt option, while Ambrose and Petunia felt that maybe exercising a bit of caution would be better.
Petunia finally won when she said that she did not want her grandfather to pass out or have a heart attack when revealing things. Marius was indeed known to have some heart concerns.
Ringing the bell, the eldest Evans daughter rolled her eyes at Lily’s pouting. This one really had earned her place in her Gryffindor House. When their grandmother opened the door, she was clearly surprised to see them here but delighted when they told her that they thought about spending the night. Marius came to greet them too when they put their things in the entry hall.
“Did Fleur asked you to come early?” He asked to his daughter while hugging her.
“Not at all. It was a bit of a “spur of the moment” idea. That happened on Monday. We thought it would make for a great surprise before your birthday.”
Marius laughed and hugged all of his granddaughters too, before shaking hands with Ambrose.
“Let’s get you all settled then. It’s lucky we didn’t choose to move to a smaller house now that it’s only us in it,” he said while taking them upstairs to choose their rooms.
“We would not have done it, if that was the case, dad,” replied his daughter while rolling her eyes. “And we would have coordinated things with mum, otherwise.”
They spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen, helping Fleur prepare for the party meal tomorrow. They all made some sandwiches to eat at lunch, and carefully started integrating magical words in their speeches, to see Marius reaction.
The first word to trigger something was talking of Hogwarts, when talking about wanting to choose a boarding school for Ivy. And their grandfather then started to cautiously talk about magical things too, letting loose some words like “Floo” or “Portkey”. And Lily was the first to outright ask Marius if he remembered growing up in the magical world.
“I do, yes. Though I don’t know why. I thought every squib who were carted away from the family had their memories erased. As well as being disinherited completely.”
“Sirius said that his grandfather became the Head of House Black during the process of your ejection from the family. The head before him didn’t have the time to… Obliterate?”
“Obliviate,” corrected Lily.
“Yeah, that. He didn’t have the time to obliviate your memories or fully disinherit you. He tried to reverse the disinheritance but could just end it at the point it was or continue it,” piped up Ivy. “He also said that his grandfather would be happy to meet you again and to accept us in the family properly, in his last letter.”
“Since when are you writing to Sirius?” asked Lily, confused.
“Since the start. When we got an owl for our family, I immediately sent a letter to him, et we exchange at least one per day.”
Marius seemed to be deep in thought after the bit about the partial disinheritance and sighed softly.
“Do you know why the current Head of House stopped the process, Ivy?” he asked after a bit.
“Sirius said that his grandfather was against casting squibs out of the family, and that he was fond of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. His grandfather tried to find you over the years but resigned himself to probably never seeing you again after a decade of fruitless search.”
“Ah. I think I know why he didn’t succeed. I thought I was being clever at the time, when my memories didn’t vanish after a few years. I actually took some runic stones intended to hide me from anyone magical. I thought about digging them out when Leo and Cæla were nearing their eleventh birthday, but by then they weren’t obviously magical, so I let the stones in place.”
He smiled a bit, appreciating being cleverer than the bigot pureblood trying to cast him out. And frowned a bit too.
“Is the current Head of House Black name’s Arcturus?” he wondered.
“Yeah, it’s him,” confirmed Ivy. “Do you remember him well?”
“I do, actually. He was the only one kind enough to not pressure me to manifest magic over the years. If he was able to take the mantle of head of the House when his father started to disinherit me, then he likely started the process before knowing I was a squib. Probably interpreting our internal charter a bit differently than the rest and being able to replace his father because he genuinely thought that what Sirius was doing was detrimental to the family. Huh. I think I would like to meet him…”
While they talked, Petunia was observing their grandmother carefully.
“How is grandmother taking it all so well?” she asked finally, frowning a little and startling her grandfather from his thoughts.
“Oh! He told me everything one day, before asking me to marry him when I didn’t run away afterwards. He did not want to hide anything from me. And from what I understand, everyone thought that he was properly disinherited and obliviated . So they had no reason to watch him and to catch him in breaking your Statute of Secrecy thing,” smiled Fleur, holding her husband’s hand. “Over the years, he made some shopping in your Diagon Alley to buy books to perfect our understanding of magic in case our children or their children were magicals. So far, it doesn’t seem like Leo’s children are magicals. We knew Lily was, when you told us about her new boarding school when she was eleven. And we had our doubts about Petunia too but thought that we maybe were mistaken when she just continued her normal schooling. We definitely knew Ivy was magical because she had some accidental magic over the years when she came visiting.”
It seemed like the Evans family was a little bit in shock after that explanation, and Fleur moved to make some tea. Petunia was the first to recover.
“I am a witch, but the current headmaster of Hogwarts did something that stopped my Acceptance Letter from manifesting and stopped other magical school to recognize me as magical. He likely did the same for Ivy. We just don’t know why.”
“Oh, poor dear. And you didn’t have problems with accidental magic, over the years?”
“It turned out that I’m not very powerful in term of capacity for holding magic. But I have a short recovery time. Lily is actually in the upper norm for both. And Ivy has definitely a large capacity and a short recovery time. So my accidental magic was likely there but not significantly noticeable. And now, I’m an adult in magical society, but I don’t know anything about using magic. And I’m the Head of House Sayre, because there is no older magical person with enough claim to the family.”
“Oh, my sweet flower…”
Fleur moved to engulfs Petunia in a hug, likely feeling that the older girl was nearing some sort of panic attack. Marius shook his head, cursing this headmaster in his mind, before patting Petunia on the arm he could access.
“Okay. With everything out in the open, I guess that it would be beneficial to meet with Arcturus soon. Did you decide on where Ivy will be learning magic?”
“I want to go to the Accademia Medici!” proclaimed Ivy, jumping from her chair to run in her room.
She came back soon after with a pamphlet.
“It sounds awesome and it’s not full boarding school. The students are allowed to come back home three days for every Holy Days that are not during holidays. It’s basically three days every month and half. And they speak Italian, but they have a way for those who don’t to learn it quickly. It’s so cool!”
She handed the pamphlet to her parents, letting her sisters and grandparents read it over their shoulders. She was fidgeting, really wanting them to approve of the school.
“It doesn’t seem too bad,” finally said Cæla. “Having you home regularly is even a bonus compared to Hogwarts and the similar boarding schools. And this school has a more advanced curriculum as well, especially compared to the day-schools. Ambrose?”
“I don’t see any reason to deny Ivy this opportunity, if this is really what she wants?”
“YAY!” exploded Ivy, almost tripping on her feet when trying to get around the table to tackle them into a hug.
“The legilimency thing to acquire the Italian language is intriguing,” mused Lily. “I wonder if this could work to download other knowledges? Like for helping Tuney learn what she needs to pass her OWLs and NEWTs?”
“What is this legilimency thing?” asked Petunia, frowning.
“Sirius said that it’s basically “reading” the mind of others. But that’s more like “navigating memories and emotions” than really reading. And that to protect from this skill, there is something called “Occlumency”, of which every pureblood knows at least the basics to protect family secrets”, smugly explained Ivy when Lily struggled to start to explain it.
Lily rolled her eyes but seemed to think about something.
“I think Sev’ knows Occlumency and is learning Legilimency… I don’t think he used the last one on me, but… I can’t be sure.”
“Well, we would need to start learning at least Occlumency, then,” concluded Petunia with a determined nod of her head.
“Only after the Italian language transfer,” warned Ivy. “They said that it is best done without mental shields.”
“After that then,” agreed the eldest Evans girl.
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