Love Letters to You

How do you act when you are hit with the realization that your home has been stripped of its safety?

You smile.

Even as you taste copper on your tongue. 

Draco glances at her, his frame tense as he stands by her side on the threshold of her childhood home. 

The Black Manor had never been much of a warm place, with halls more so haunted by ghosts and an emptiness that she had always felt as a child. 

Yet, for all of its coldness, Black Manor had been Elara's home. 

A place she was relatively safe and that saw fond memories of her toddler days with Daphne as lady in waiting. 

Now, the Manor is warmer, in a sense, she supposes. 

The lighting spells, cold and blue, have been replaced by a soft, warm glow that made the shadows lingering inside the building softer than they are. 

Gone are the portraits that used to sing praises of Elara's bloodline, though they would throw curses and jeers at the mere thought of her lord father who used to breathe in these halls. Their piercing eyes seem but a distant memory from those living there, but if Elara closes her eyes, she can still see and feel their contempt like a child remembers its dearest companion. 

There isn't much silence either, laughs and loud voices emanating from the dining hall, so boisterous in their cheer that it is like stepping into another world. 

There hadn't been laughter in the Black Manor before. 

Only screams when Elara's true parentage rang true with red and gold blood instead of green. 

"It's not too late to go back," Draco, her beloved brother in anything but blood, whispers under his breath. 

Elara chuckles, stiff and frozen as she waits like a stranger for a member of the Order of the Phoenix to announce their presence.  "I don't plan to go back." 

Even if it means to abandon her Slytherins. 

Draco tilts his head ever so slightly, eyes sharp and considering. There is something almost like pity that lingers in his grey eyes, a softness that her brother only holds for her, but Elara loathes to see it now. 

"They were your duty."

It goes unsaid that Elara had loved that duty. 

It had been a recurring thing to jest of, that if Elara would not find a lord husband, she'd be married to her title as leader of the Slytherins. But that crown is gone now, a crumbled dream of the past, because Elara chose otherwise. 

(it still haunts her, a whisper of what could have been. A memory of someone who had believed in her who stares at her with cold eyes as her words resonate between the two of them.

"Turns out you really are your father's daughter, aren't you, Black?"

No, Elara is nothing like him.

She can't-

right?) 

But, as it turns out, Elara loves her family and Heart more. 

"Lara!" 

Harry Potter is infectious in his joy, a bright grin that lights up his face golden curling his lips into a breathtaking sight. For that smile alone, the regret, that blossomed in Elara's lung like a flower, wilts. 

Elara is a traitor to her House. 

To her duty. 

All because she loves. 

(is in love with the sun)

A part of her loathes it to the point she struggles to look at herself and not see a deformed specter of something that should not have been born. 

It is not enough that she wears her lord father's face. 

She inherited his heart too. 

Weak, fickle. 

loving

"Harry," she greets. The name tastes like honey on her tongue, and she knows she is smiling too, a quietude to her voice that speaks of ease when the Gryffindor is within her sight. 

Her brother coughs pointdly. "What am I, Potter, chopped dragon liver?" Draco is harsh in his remark, bitter because he knows Elara would have not turned her back on her duty if it wasn't for her Heart. 

"Course not," Harry smiles bashfully. He opens his arms and show them the entrance hall in a grand sweeping gesture. "Welcome you two to the Order of the Phoenix Headquarters."

"Better known as Elara's childhood house, but go on," Draco adds, a mean smile playing at his lips as Harry's beautiful eyes widen, his arm faltering in its dramatic movement as if he had been hexed with an ice-cold Agumenti in the face. 

"I- I didn't know it was your home," Harry tells her, suddenly dim, and a part of her wants to hex Draco for stealing away his smile when she has just gotten it back. 

"It hasn't been my home for a while now," Elara tries to placate him. 

"Because he took it away from you." 

Draco winces at her silent hex, but his jaw is clenched, his lips pursed, and Elara knows that her soul brother will not leash his words nor stop their venomous bite. "Like he took everything else."

Harry visibly flinches at that. 

"Now, what do we have here."

It is Elara's turn to flinch, a mere jerk of her frame that is instinctual as he enters the hall. Draco shifts ever so slightly closer to her, pushing her a bit behind him as if he could shield her. 

"Two little Slytherins. Well, not so Slytherin anymore, now, huh"

Draco and Elara bristle at the comment that is sharp in its bite, a lion's roar as he sees his cub be threatened.

He looks good, her lord father, better than he should have been, it almost seems like the four years he spent running from the Dementors were nothing but paradise to him. 

"Padfoot!" is Harry's loud greeting, grinning as Sirius Black, traitor to his House, wraps an arm around his godson as if daring the two strangers to do something. 

Only they aren't strangers, are they? 

Technically speaking. 

(only strangers that should have loved each other. But Elara doesn't think they do. How could they? 

Her lord father had loved her so little he left and never glanced back)

"My lord," Elara curtsies, years of etiquette reminding her of her place because Sirius is the Head of her House. 

Years of Azkaban have hallowed her lord father's face, but apart from that, the whispers were right. Elara can see herself in his sharp features though hers are only a bit softer. She wonders what her lord father sees in return. 

A mistake, surely. 

Sirius Black nods in greeting, in acknowledgment at her manners, something that flashes in his eyes that is too quick for Elara to understand, but she thinks it to be disdain for the Green and silver that his daughter bears instead of red and gold. 

"Ah, Elara." The Black heiress is surprised he even remembers her name. He had seemed quite content to forget of her. "Welcome home." 

She gives him a demure smile. The kind that taste of copper, the kind that a tortured prisoner would smile before the axe takes their head off. 

Home. 

The Black Manor isn't home. 

Not anymore. 

Home should feel safe. 

But Elara Black is not safe in Sirius Black's presence. 

Her lord father was a cruel boy and grew crueler as he hid behind Mudbloods, Kreacher would tell her.

What cruelty will he keep for the daughter he abandoned?

He holds no love for his blood, her house-elf would whisper, loathing in his sniveling voice as he clung to her Uncle Regulus's robes. 

What feeling, other than hatred, will he hold for his own?

"Thank you, my lord."

Her lord father's smile grows colder. "Sirius, please." 

"Or dad," Harry pipes in, mischief in his eyes as if he knows not of the unkindness nestled inside of his words. The taunt of something Elara can never cal her own.

Draco's words echo in her mind. It's not too late to go back. 

Elara thinks it is already too late. 

It has been too late since she was eleven, a young Pureblood maiden that saw a boy while her brother prattled on silver shades and fell harder than one can after a Stupefy. 

"Ha, good one, Pronglset," Lord Black ruffles Harry's hair as if congratulating for his cruelty. Elara knows that Harry Potter means no harm, that he'd cursed himself sooner than knowingly hurt her, but it does not lessen the ache in her heart as she watches the two. Even Uncle Lucius is not so free with his affection. "What, too good to hug your dear father?"

"Is that an order?"

Elara's hand slaps at her mouth for such daring words that would earn her a Crucio. Yet, her lord father only barks out a laugh. "You're a funny one." 

A failure too. 

Because Blacks aren't supposed to be funny. 

"I told you so," Harry is smug in his remark. Lord Black rolls his eyes. 

"Reading it is different than seeing it, Prongslet."

"Reading?" Draco hears the same as her, and he is not too shy to spit the word out like he would spit out Mudblood on a bad day. Within their soul bond, she feels his indignation on her behalf, as well as the sorrow he tries so hard not to feel, but Elara is already so drowning in it that she recognizes its taste.

"Yeah. Ya know, sending letters to Sirius. We both did." Harry is almost detestable in his naivety as he looks to her lord father. 

Elara looks at him too, though it hurts even just to lock gaze with the mirror of her own eyes. 

Letters. 

Harry Potter had exchanged letters with her lord father. 

She wonders if it is betrayal that swells in her throat till she can only choke on it. However, why would it be a betrayal when Elara knew not to expect anything from her own father? 

(the last small part of the little girl who'd wish on the Sirius star for her lord father to come and soothe away her hurts dies. 

That little, naive child dies silently, a shackle to her neck that she put on willingly herself. To expect love when she should have known it would not come to her.) 

Elara is usually loud in her anger, louder in her injustice. 

Even when her Lady Grandmother would curse her, Elara would not waiver, would not bow because Blacks do not bow.

Yet here Elara Black is.

Quiet in her hurt. 

Tongue leashed, a beast defanged and left defenseless in front of the world: her head bowed in her grief and her crown, laying shattered to her feet. 

Draco shoots her a troubled glance, chest buffing in righteous anger because her beloved brother would give her the world and more. 

"You would send letters to Potter, yet not do the same to your own daughter?" Draco's anger and disbelief are thick in his voice and Sirius Black opens his mouth without a word passing through his lips. 

"It wasn't safe-" is her lord father's simple, worthless reply. 

Elara can no longer leash her words. "Was it so or more like you just couldn't be bothered?" The Black heiress's voice is hard at the end of her accusation, a weight to her words as she voices what they all know well. 

"Elara-"

There is grief in Sirius Black's eyes though she doesn't know why. But it is his silence, so unusual for the man she had heard could talk circles around the worst Purebloods and Muggles alike, that breaks Elara's heart. 

Because there is no answer to her accusation. 

Only truth. 

A truth that her lord father is somehow kind enough not to breathe into life, not that she needs for it does nothing to lessen the spell's agony. 

It is not kindness that allowed Elara to live up to her bloodline. 

She does not need her father's kindness now. 

(she needed it seventeen years ago)

It has been a year since Elara and the Malfoy family joined the Order of the Phoenix, a year since Elara first spoke to her lord father and laid to rest the little girl who thought her father had loved her because of her ailing mother's pitying words. 

Since then, Elara has made her peace with facing old classmates, playmates alike on the battlefield. To see their anger and hurt because she had promised to be better than him, but as it turns out, the sin of her blood is too strong to escape. 

Elara loves someone she should not have, and her court has paid for it. 

Has her lord father ever felt it when he chose the Potters? 

Only but a pang of regret that comes and haunt her once or twice every night? 

Draco is in his quarters, probably wretching at the memory of Astoria's mangled corpse on the battlefield. Another victim Elara carves into her heart, a victim to a promise never kept. Elara knows who her murderer is, an Auror that sometimes comes for tea in Elara's childhood home, sipping Earl Grey from the same cup that his victim used to love.  

He sips it, tilting his head with a barely respectful "Black" at her. Elara cares not to return the same politeness, not when she still remembers Astoria's unseeing eyes. There is a knife in her hand, hidden by the long, bell-like sleeves Elara likes to wear, and she already has half a mind to slit his underserving throat with it before Sirius Black comes into view. 

He appears like a vengeful ghost, eyes glinting and a smile that Elara knows is not for her on his chapped lips. 

"Dawlish," he drawls, the same drawl Elara uses when she wants something. "Be a dear and leave me with my daughter." 

It is almost funny how free and easy Sirius Black is with crowning her with the title of daughter. As if he has ever seen her as one and not a strenuous duty he has let go of the earliest he could. 

Her Lady Grandmother would tell her the tale of it when she is deep in her cups, and her hatred for her eldest son bled onto Elara. 

"As soon as that wretched Potter called, Sirius was already half gone, a briefcase in his hand and the other holding Floo powder. You were crying, little pureblood angel begging for her lord father, but you know what your lord father did?"

"Nothing," is Elara's automatic answer. Her lady grandmother's smile is sharper than a Diffindo, crueler than a Crucio.

"Nothing," she repeats. "You could have been dying, and he would have still not looked back. A duty done, he said, and he then asked never to be called on again. 

"Sure," the Auror agrees, a prey slipping from her fingers that Elara would prefer to see on the floor, dead like little Tori. 

Sirius Black sits at the head of the table, chin pointed at the chair at his left in an open invitation. Elara wonders if she can just leave in a flurry of skirts. It is not the first time her lord father tries to get her alone, surely to warn her away from his precious godson. 

"Elara," he greets. 

"My lord." 

His jaw clenches at her perfectly polite greeting. A usual sign for sharp words that have not lost their sting to Azkaban though she does not understand why'd he unleash on her when she tries to be as agreeable as possible. "You did good," he says,

There’s that almost fatherly glow in his eyes, a pride that had been Potter’s alone yet now, Elara can finally catch a glimpse of it.
Only now, the longing she had felt before has long since rotted in her mouth. She nods, words too big, too angry to be said and so, she swallows them back like one swallows back glass shards and smiles even as they scrape her lungs raw. 

It's odd. 

He says she did well. 

Elara does not feel like a good witch as she curses those who once swore to her. 

It is a dichotomy: to be on the so-called Light side, yet her hands are bloodied the same. 

"I'm glad you found the right path." Lord Black adds, undeterred by her silence. 

Elara's brows rise. She thinks there is a misunderstanding, and she wishes for her lord father to stop seeing someone she is not. She is not the second coming of Harry Potter, only with Black's blood. 

She is not his legacy of Gryffindor pride. "I didn't do it to be good."

"Yet you fought for what is right. You turned your back on your privilege and chose to fight for something greater than yourself."

See?

Sirius Black still speaks as if he knows her. As if Elara Black is his daughter in more than just flesh and blood. 

"Master Sirius was cruel as a boy, oh yes he was. Spit on Master Regulus because he saw blood traitor Potter instead of Master Regulus, wretched boy"

Elara could not care less about what is right. 

was it right to abandon your child?

"I chose my brother and my Heart. I chose my family."

Lord Black makes something complicated with his face. "So, if they had decided to pledge allegiance to Voldy, you would have followed them?" 

She knows what he wants of her. 

And maybe, another day, Elara would have given it to him if only to keep the peace, if only to keep Harry's smile. 

But, she sees Astoria Greengrass, who died at the Light's hand. 

Her lord father remembers his lessons as a young heir, she notices. After all, he hands her the rope to hang herself on, a meager peace offering that is, truthfully, a dagger beneath pretty lies of silk. 

Oh, but Elara is tired of playing a game that only has Sirius Black as a winner. 

And so, Elara takes the rope. 

And she hangs herself on it. 

"I would have followed them to the fiery pits of hell."

A crystal vase nearby shatters. 

A loss of control of a man that has killed before. His face is a frightening thing, all sharp angles twisted in fury that is barely restrained, his knuckles white as if only just holding back not to hit her. Harry would not stand for it. They both know it, and maybe that is the only thing that acts as a shield. 

She wouldn't put it past him. 

Already so generous with his sneers and insults, she is sure that her lord father would color her blue and yellow if given the chance. 

Elara tilts her chin higher up, arrogance that is both bred and beaten into her slipping on her aristocratic face as if it was always meant to be there. 

Elara is a Black. 

He inhales sharply. "I thought you were better than that." There is scorn in his voice, fury too, but Elara can only smile because isn't that fucking ironic. 

The sheer hypocrisy tastes likes ashes on her tongue, and Elara bares her teeth, elegance long forgotten in favor of an anger fierce that mirrors her lord father's. 

"You don't know me," she spits out at the man who walked away and never thought that perhaps a little girl was hoping for a father to love her like he was supposed to. 

He looks at her as if she is burning his dream, his pretty illusion right before his eyes. 

It is not fair of him to look at her like that. 

Not when he stumped over her own hopes and have carelessly torn them apart. 

She wonders if she had looked the same when he did so: like her world was being set onto flames and all she could do was watch through wide eyes as the fire swallowed everything in a charred, bloody mess. 

look, father. 

We both have had our dreams destroyed by the other. 

what a family

"Because you wouldn't let me." 

Elara scoffs at his weak, frail defense that is hurled right back at her as if it would hurt. 

Her?

Not let him know her?

She had prayed as a child for him. 

She had cried as a young girl for him. 

She would have given anything for a letter. 

But no, her father couldn't have bothered. Perhaps for Potter, but never for the daughter. 

"Because you abandoned me."

It is the first time that Elara puts onto words what she knows all too well, since she was old enough to understand. 

It tastes like ash and rot on her tongue, and it burns her so to say it, to give it life but they must not kid themselves and hide behind petty words. 

It is a fact of the world: the sky is blue and Elara Vespera Black has long since been abandoned. 

Lord Black looks so very pained at her words. She did not mean them to hurt him, quite frankly, it is her own heart that burns at the truth, but she supposes she can take it. 

"I didn't abandon you. There were just more pressing things, but I never planned to abandon my own daughter."

An almost hysteric laugh escapes her. Tears prick at her eyes. 

"More pressing things?!"

His sharp jaw clenches. "I was saving the world," he bites out through gritted teeth. 

"Oh, what a Gryffindor thing to say." Sarcasm has always made her tongue sharper than a blade, more vicious than a snake backed into a corner. Though her lord father has always taken pride in his Hogwarts house, having changed the Black Manor to better suit his red and gold tastes, he flinches at the venom she uses. "What good did you do, my lord? You were imprisoned."

"I failed Lily and James!" Grief is an ugly thing on him, and his eyes grow more frenzied. "I HAD TO MAKE IT UP TO THEM! I KILLED THEM!"

"AND YOU KILLED MY MOTHER!"

Sirius Black without a fire is a rare thing to see, yet Elara sees it all the same.

She wonders who between the two of them wears grief the least well. Sorrow clogs her throat, a whisper of her name that echoes in her ears, her mother's voice that promised her child love where there is none. 

"I- I didn't kill Angeline."

She is surprised he even knows her lady mother's name. 

"You might as well did."

Her lord father shakes his head, weakly, strongly. "I would have never killed her, she was-"

"Grandmother slipped her something at one point," even years after, numbness weighs on her tongue and her heart begs her to silence herself, to forget once more, but it is far too late. And like how her lord father had tried to hurt her with his love for Harry Potter, a love that should have been hers, she decides to hurt him too, only with the truth. "Because she wouldn't let her educate me. She wouldn't let Grandmother remind me of all the sins I had to make up for."

"That bitch raised you?!"

Elara does not need him to tell her to know who the bitch is. 

"You left me behind in Black Manor. Grandmother asked you to take me with you. You called me a duty done. What did you expect?"

Her lord father shakes his head, hands desperately reaching towards her, but she flinches away from them, almost an instinctual thing that comes with flinching from his words. He looks as if she has just Crucioed him. 

"I didn't leave you in Black Manor, I-. She wasn't supposed to get near you, Lord Acturus said-"

"I never met Lord Arcturus. Grandmother said I would only pain him, to look so much like his failure of an heir."

There is anger brewing in her lord father's eyes. Elara does not understand why. 

"Morgana's tits! Elara, you weren't supposed to meet with Walburga. Oh, Merlin, what did she do to you-"

Elara draws straighter at that. It might have been a hard childhood, to suffer at the whims of her lady grandmother, but it has made her a worthy heir. Worthier than her father, though she supposes one cannot curse the traitor out of someone. 

"She made me great."

For all of her flaws, as many as they were, her lady grandmother had made sure that Elara would be ready for the real world: to be challenged for the sins of her father, to be stronger, cruler than anyone else lest they think her easy to trample on. 

"You didn't have to be great."

Elara's brow furrow. Would her lord father really condemn her to mediocrity? 

Who is he to question her education when he left a mess of things behind? A ruined legacy, the weight of their House on her shoulders and a void that no one could replace and her lady mother, bless her kind heart, has only fed till it grew and grew and took Elara's heart with it.

"And you didn't have to leave me behind."

The Head of House Black sags at her words, shoulders slumping and something dark in his gaze. "I was 20, Elara. I could not just halt everything for you-" she refuses to admit it, but the words sting. "I was a soldier. Barely an adult. What did you expect from me?"

anything

"And I was a babe! I expected you to love me!"

Elara's heart stutters at the forbidden truth that slipped past her in a moment of weakness, a truth so damning that Elara would give anything to give back because, as traitorous as she is, she refuses to be a beggar. 

Even for all of the gold of the world, for all its spells, she refuses to beg like a common Muggle, she does not need, yet.

"Was it so hard to?"

She did not mean for him to hear it, but her lord father does. 

Sirius Black falters as if his breath had been knocked out of him and he cannot breathe. He looks soft, impossibly soft, soften than he had ever been with Harry. Yet, there is clear agony etched onto his face, the kind of pain that Elara knows well, the kind of pain that makes you want to rip your heart apart. "Oh, little star-" there is an echo of warmth that comes with that nickname, Elara freezes as he steps closer to her like one might approach an injured unicorn, "I love you. I always have."

"Liar" is her response, a trembling breath that threatens to collapse like a sand castle before the might of the ocean. 

Warm arms engulf her. 

Her head is tucked on a firm chest. 

There is a press of the lips on the top of her head, adoration in a single kiss.  

"I love you, my little star. More than life. More than anything."

And Elara breaks.