II - old friends
Sirius was breath taken. Again and again, he started to speak, but he couldn't get rid of more than a few babbled syllables. Almost as if no sentence was possible to come over his lips. It was a stupor he could not break as his mind was trying to fathom what he was seeing.
"I ... well ... you ... what ..." he stammered, stunned.
In another situation, it would have been a hilarious moment since Sirius Orion Black had never been speechless in his entire life and now looked like a fish out of water. He always had a quick come back on his tongue or a snarky remark to counter any given situation. And right now he had nothing that he was able to put into words.
But it was now this exact situation, and it was severe. Sirius had thought that she had died decades ago. That she was dead or at least missing since she had disappeared one day without leaving a hint about her whereabouts, without a figment of a trace. Just like that, Elinor had vanished, and it had been as if she never existed. And why did she look so young? So young, as if the last nearly two decades had passed her by without a trace?
Remus managed to hide his confusion a little better but also, the shock was undeniably written all over his face as well. He had also thought her dead, vanished, no longer existent on this earth.
"Elinor."
His words echoed in a dull, but he didn't understand what he was looking at, whether she wasn't just a figment of his exhausted mind. Neither man understood what he was seeing. Wondering if they were hallucinating or if their minds had finally broken.
"You haven't aged a day," Sirius uttered, his voice croaked. It was his first complete sentence since her arrival. He accidentally knocked over his chair a second time as he broke free from his stupor and disengaged himself from the table to walk towards her.
The witch was still standing in the frame of the door, her raven-black hair cascading in silky curls over her narrow shoulders and framing her delicate, fair face. Sirius reached for her curls as if it hypnotised him, those curls so familiar to him, from which radiated a gentle scent of roses, as they had always done, that he hadn't smelled for years. The smell that had haunted him, as he was not able to fathom how and why she had vanished, eventhough the frequency of it haunting him decreased over the years.
She was there, right in front of him. She wasn't a ghost, not an apparition, not a mass hallucination of those present.
He felt her curls silky soft in his hand and let go as he realized she was really there, in front of him, just a step away. Elinor stood before him, very much alive and not a day older than he knew her to be, or rather had known her.
She still looked so perfect. Perfect like painted by the old masters or by the goods themselves.
The familiar curls, her soft pink lips, that always lifted so gently into a smile, her slightly blushed cheeks and the eyes. Sirius couldn't take his eyes off hers. The green in her eyes shimmerd behind tears, that not dared to leave her eyes. The green he had never seen somewhere else.
It was totally silent in the kitchen. Everyone continued to stare into the frame of the door until George raised his voice. His ears were still slightly red because he still felt a little exposed but they stopped burning. After all, Elinor had heard his statement about her even if she wasn't supposed to. The situation seemed so bizarre to him.
"How do you know Sirius?"
George's question sounded like someone had tried to mix in too many layers of meaning at once. Buried somewhere in that terse question was jealousy and at the same time rampant neutrality, wonderment, and confusion, as much as curiosity and surprise, maybe there was even a tiny bit of joy. It was too much to be able to separate it, let alone understand it.
He received no answer. Elinor bit her lip, she did not know how to answer, she did not know what to say really and let her gaze wonder over all the people present. At Sirius her gaze lasted a bit longer.
"You got some soup there."
Softly and melodically, those five words rang through the kitchen. Elinor had moved for the first time since she appeared there in the doorway and pointed at the shirt Sirius was wearing.
No one said anything.
She entered the kitchen now, and Remus thought he saw desperation flash in her eyes as she now stepped fully into the glow of the brilliant candlelight, no longer wrapped in the semi-darkness of the hallway.
Her skin seemed to be flattered by the candlelight, making it glow outstandingly beautiful, like a delicate, expensive doll made of porcelain. Something shone in her eyes that could not be directly classified. Elinor did not seem very happy, rather strained, somewhere also anxious, as if burdened with great worry. It was not what she had planned, she just had needed shelter immediatly and it was the first place with wizards that had come to mind. She hadn't spend a thought at how it would pan out.
"Best would be if you all sat down."
And as if in a trance, everyone found their way back to their seats, their eyes still fixed on the pretty witch, and silence reigned in the kitchen.
It was only in the bright light that they could get a good look at her because the shadows in the hallway before had covered her up.
She wore a heavy, dark green traveling cloak, decorated with silver embroidery, on her slender shoulders and a step behind her stood a black handbag that must have belonged to her.
As if in a trance, the four men followed her hands, watching as she expertly undid the button at the top of the coat and slipped it off, then hung it on a chair. Under the cloak, her petite, slender figure came into view.
She wore a scarlet blouse that didn't cover much of her shoulders and laced around her waist with a wide black corset. Her legs were in a dark but elegant pair of cloth pants, and her feet were in velvety pumps of the same color.
While her clothes were not what seemed to matter to Fred and Remus at the moment, George and Sirius stared at her more emphatically, admiring her curves, which were so familiar and yet seemed so different from how they remembered them.
She turned to the side to pick up her bag from the floor, revealing a long and thin cut, no more than a millimeter deep, that ran across her right temple and cheek. Dried blood was smudged around it, it seemed to be a new wound.
"You're bleeding," Remus stated in shock; the other three had only sucked in their breath sharply.
Immediately Elinor's hand traveled up to the cut. Since no blood remained on her fingers, so she just smiled mildly, "It's nothing, nothing bad."
She tried to downplay it, rearranging her curls, so they covered the wound, "But it has something to do with why I'm here."
Elinor sat down at the table. The four men had a good look at her.
As if a curse of silence broke the moment she sat down, the shock and trance the four men had been under before dissolved. All four began to talk in confusion. All the questions that were buzzing around in their heads since she stood in the doorway pelted them simultaneously, unfiltered.
"You look the same as you did 18 years ago," Sirius was still looking at her as if she were a figment of his imagination that would disappear as soon as he averted his eyes.
Fred and George eyed the older man in confusion.
"But she's 17. How can she look the same as she did 18 years ago?"
There was hopeless confusion, but Elinor just started to speak. Abruptly it became quiet.
"I look the same as I did 50 years ago."
"Like 50 years ago? As in five decades? Half a century" four voices shouted in chorus.
Elinor began to nervously play with the band, on her left ring finger. Tears formed in her eyes.
"I'll tell you everything, but please...," her voice broke, and she tried to control the tears by deep breathing, unsuccessfully.
Close to tears, she turned the ring a few times and averted her eyes from their faces, fixating on the ring and staring at the wooden top of the table.
"I beg you, please don't judge me."
Almost shyly and fearfully, she raised her eyes again and looked into astonished and tense faces. Fear twisted her inside and she asked herself if it wouldn't have been better she had never come here.
Sirius had stood up again and crouched down next to Elinor, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear and taking her ringless hand in his, "I could never judge you. And you can trust us, you can trust me. We are all just confused, but we will never judge you for what you are going to tell us."
He squeezed her hand lightly and used his thumb to take away her tears, she twiched in surprise but not in fear anymore.
Something in George's stomach tightened at the scene, but he was heartbroken to see Elinor cry, so he nodded affirmatively, "That's right. We could never judge you."
The witch took a deep breath, Sirius squeezed her hand encouragingly, and she began as he settled in his seat again.
"Sixty-eight years ago, I was bound. Bound by magic thousands of years old. Bound by the December rose?"