Chapter 5
Revealers are to rejoice
When day and night once more align
We call on you to make the choice
To present to us what’s most sublime
This evening we celebrate the night
In dance we each highlight a feature
That inspires awe, fear and delight
As one transforms to midnight creature
Choose now fur, scale or feather
Leave your skin at the door
Our beastly forms will dance together
We frolic to our hearts’ galore
Autumn will not be delayed
Join the equinox masquerade
“It’s far from iambic pentameter,” Draco muttered, “and quite on the nose.” He was speaking to Teddy, of course. “When you chair the Committee you best submit better lines than this.” The toddler snuggled closer into Draco’s side as he sucked on a carefully constructed sipping cup. “We’re meant to be animals that come out at night, and they didn’t work in the word nocturnal. I could have whipped up something clever for that. Eternal, or kernel, or diurnal if we wanted to make people stretch.” Teddy slapped at Draco’s hands, trying to grab the invitation. “No, no, Edward. This isn’t good enough for you. I’ll write you spectacular poetry, just you wait.” Draco kept the invitation out of reach until he tucked it safely away in a pocket. He put Teddy down to bed and smiled at the child’s babbling on his way out.
His smile quickly ebbed as he walked back to his room, rubbing his fingers over the invitation in his pocket the entire way. The invitation might be crass by the standards he had expected for his first Equinox Ball letter, but what did that mean against the fact that Draco couldn’t go even if he wanted. What, would he drape on one of Teddy’s stuffies over his face and show up in paupers clothes?
The universe insisted on rubbing it in Draco’s face. They had guests for dinner again that night, and once more Andromeda chided Narcissa and Draco’s appearances. “You’re hardly paupers,” she insisted, directly contradicting Draco’s own assessment of his situation, before accusing them both of being lazy and wasteful.
The next morning Narcissa tugged on Draco’s arm after breakfast. “Perhaps you can ask Kreacher to show you how to access the attic today?”
“I thought we lived in the attic,” Draco muttered. His mother gave him a motherly look of disapproval. Draco huffed and stomped off towards the kitchens.
Kreacher huffed as well at Draco’s request, but after they worked together to prepare everything that would be needed for lunch Kreacher trudged through the house. Each flight of steps took an eternity for the aged man who refused to rush on Draco’s behalf. The actual attic was only accessible through a storage room where servants kept their bedding. Kreacher pulled at a cord Draco hadn’t even noticed hung from the ceiling. It took four hard yanks before the hatch door would budge, and then they had to heave to make the creaky door shift further. Kreacher left him not long after to figure it out on his own. After a brief break to put Teddy to bed for his nap, Draco returned to the storage room. He’d brought a lamp to see better and a small stool to step onto so he could climb up directly onto the folded stairs still hanging too high from the ceiling. Draco decided to find a way to scramble up as is, just to make sure whatever was hiding in the attic was worth the effort of fixing the trap door to access it.
There was so much dust that Draco had a fit of sneezing when he first climbed into the room. He covered his nose and mouth and tried to breath through his sleeve. Draco held the lantern up, his arm hitting the short ceiling above him. The light spread out, though, to reveal a long, cramped scuttle space that traveled further in either direction than the light could reach. Slanted ceilings traveled all the way to the floor, and storage crates and trunks of all sizes were crammed everywhere. Draco plopped onto a trunk and took it all in. Hundreds of years of his family’s history must be stored here, deliberately forgotten.
He steeled himself for disappointment before he pried open a trunk. In it was carefully wrapped table settings, finer than what Draco saw in their kitchens. Perhaps a wedding gift for someone long ago.
The next crate held old toys. Some were dinged up or broken, likely kept for sentimental value after being well loved.
Finally, Draco uncovered a trunk with clothing. It held winter garb, quite dated, but made from fine wool with fur fringes. Miracle of miracles, the clothes were in good condition and had not been soiled by rodents or moths. He held up one dress in a quick estimation and decided that yes, he could work with this. Draco did his best to drag the crate towards the hatch downstairs, then gave up and grabbed two of the heavy dresses instead. He tossed them down the shaft before hobbling down himself, and left the hatch partway open for the evening.
The next day he begged for help from one of the stable boys to fix the latches on the hatch. The boy, Doyle, taught him how to oil the hinges and fix a broken bit. It took two days of working around the openings in Doyle’s schedule, but the hatch was then fixed and Draco could pull down the ladder himself and focus on his investigation. He promised Doyle some bobble for his effort, should he find something he was certain Andromeda wouldn’t mind being given away.
For the next week, Draco worked methodically. He opened crate after crate, mentally cataloging the contents and even trying to reorganize so like things were stored together. It was a struggle, since there were so many things and not enough space to shift things around. Draco ended each evening sweaty and covered in dirt, but usually also with a few choice findings to add to his project pile for a growing wardrobe.
The trunk he didn’t know he was looking for was jet black. It was the first item locked on the outside Draco had discovered. An intriguing proposition. Draco scrounged up a few different sized hair pins and paperclips, and spent his afternoon fiddling with the lock. He smiled to himself, remembering youthful days with Aunt Bellatrix and her love of puzzles. In another world, this was another family scavenger hunt prepared just for him. He grinned when the lock finally clicked open, turning to look over his shoulder as if his Aunt would be there grinning back. Of course she wasn’t. She was dead.
Draco’s grin faded. Somberly, he pulled the lock off the trunk and heaved open the heavy lid.
He lifted the stack of letters first, opening them one at a time and reading the contents reverently. Each letter was a formal invitation, each with a handwritten sonnet in the most beautiful prose, inviting the reader to the most spectacular events of years past. On the back of each letter, in simpler writing, were names. Elladora. Cygnus. Belvina. The names went on. Draco’s ancestors who one by one chaired the Equinox Committee and had the honor of their words being preserved forever as part of its history. There, in the pile, was Narcissa. Draco’s own mother, who had written a beautiful poem about the night sky.
She had told Draco once that she and his father met under the stars.
Gingerly, Draco stored the letters back in the crate. He could not bear for a single one to dent or crinkle.
With greater care than ever, Draco began to unwrap the other contents in the crate. He hardly dared to touch what he unveiled. Each mask was a piece of art, telling complex stories with such intricacies that Draco knew the makers poured their heart into them. He saw flowers, trees, demons, reptile scales, elaborate feathers, sparkling rainbows, each more fantastic than the last.
And there, wrapped so carefully together as one, were three masks he realized he knew. A pearly white moon, a radiant sun, and a silver constellation. Three masks for three sisters who once loved each other very much.
Shaking, Draco put the masks back in the crate and shut it tight. He struggled to put the lock back on, but couldn’t bear to leave this box unprotected. Draco pocketed the tools he’d used to open it, lest anyone else find them and use them to get inside.
Draco found himself rushing out of the attic. His heart was pounding in his chest. He ran down the stairs to the third floor and unceremoniously began to open doors. He couldn’t remember where it was, only that he would know it when he saw it. A faint memory from childhood only half accessible in an adult mind.
Down another floor. Draco grew more frantic, fearing his memory was wrong after all. It wasn’t Teddy’s rooms, he knew those well. He feared he’d be caught in his aunt’s, although she was out for the day like she so often was.
It was in her rooms, afterall, where Draco’s memory snapped into place. The study looked the same. Same large desk, same wide window, same looming bookshelves along the wall. The curtains had changed, something lighter and embroidered. There were more candles and lanterns to conjure more light.
Draco walked in. He stepped around the desk and examined the book shelf that took up most the wall beside it. There were knicknacks still, but not the items his grandmother had displayed. There were books, but Draco had no memory to compare. There were photos, the way there had always been photos. These highlighted the people Draco had nightmares about. The Weasleys. King Potter. His lion nights. And of course, one person Draco loved, his cousin Teddy.
“What are you doing here?” Fannie barked.
Draco jumped from fright. He was thankful it was just Fannie, not his aunt. “Where did the pictures go, the ones from before?” he asked.
Fannie glared as she stomped into the room. She pinched Draco’s ear and began pulling him like he was a naughty child. “You know better than to pry in your aunt’s affairs. I should send someone to her right now to let her know you’re causing trouble.” Draco yelped when she twisted his ear for emphasis.
“I was looking for a picture!” Draco said, honestly. “One I remember from when I was a child. I just wanted to see if it was there.”
Fannie shoved him off towards the stairway. “Ms. Tonks cleared out the whole house when she moved in. The Black family was bad news and treated our mistress terribly. Good riddance to be rid of it all.”
“All of it?” Draco squeaked. “She didn’t keep anything?”
Fannie glared at him, and Draco realized in a new way that any help she’d given him in the past couldn’t have been actual help. There was too much resentment in her heart to leave room for any kindness. “She burned it all.”
Draco didn’t realize he could still feel the disappointment that coursed through him in that moment. It had been so long since he’d hoped for anything the way he had hoped he could connect with that memory. He had wanted, desperately, to put the picture to the masks he discovered. He knew he had seen it before. His mother, his Aunt Bellatrix, and who could only have been his Aunt Andromeda, arms wrapped around each other as they smiled for the camera at a masquerade ball.
For generations, the Black family treasured their role in the Equinox Ball. Draco would not let that legacy end with him.