Prologue, January 1957
Muriel stood stiffly, if it where anyone else, she wouldn’t have kept her mouth shut, would have spoken her mind for everyone to hear. She was sixty-seven and had built up quite a reputation for doing so her whole life.
But she didn’t, because as much as she loathed those stood adjacent from her, she had already told everyone of her suspicions and not one of them believed her. So she would ignore them all. They wept, but none of them cared enough to listen to her. She knew there had been foul play involved. Ignatius had been a grounded, intelligent boy. Under no circumstances should he have met his end in a carriage incident. He had a wand. He should have been able to use it. That Lucretia Black was responsible to this. Muriel knew it. You didn’t get to her age without being able to tell with things like this.
And those infernal Blacks were here. The lot of them. They’d had the audacity to bury her Ignatius alongside that blasted woman. Muriel had been outraged, but yet again her protests had been ignored and rebuffed. They’d told her to stop it, because she was making things up and didn’t understand.
She was sixty-seven, not senile.
She had barely managed to keep her wand at bay the whole day.
They service finished and everybody filed out. None of them stepped forward to console her or leave with her. She was the mad woman to be left alone. Well damn them all to hell.
She had raised him. Ignatius had been her son far more than her was her brother’s. He and his young wife hadn’t had the first clue what to do with a baby. They were both only eighteen years old when Ignatius had been born. Muriel had been thirty-five, had helped her own mother raise her brother and knew far better than those two how to take care of a child. They had had more children, two in fact. Though one hadn’t made it past the age of eight. That had been a tragedy and Muriel could almost forgive her brother and his wife for not wanting to hear her. They had lost two children and didn’t even want to consider that the second may have been due to anything but a tragic accident.
But Muriel knew it was true. Ignatius should have been able to apparate out. He had to have been stopped, and the only one there to do so had been that Lucretia Black.
Those Blacks were a nasty lot. Muriel had always known that. Cold and self-serving. Lucretia had drawn Ignatius to her like a fly to her web, seduced him into losing his senses so he refused to listen to reason. Cut him off from his family so he could hardly even see Muriel. She had changed him from as good as Muriel’s son, to a man who didn’t even write to her.
Muriel wouldn’t let it stand. She was still alive. Even if everyone thought she was insane, she would get her penance. Until then, the Prewetts would have nothing to do with the Blacks.
She would make sure of that. She would keep the Prewett line clean from that line of murderers. She swore it on the family magicks.
They heard her at least.