Chapter One
MY FATHER WAS A WIZARD and the son of wizards. A lot was whispered about him: about his appearance, about his demeanour, but mostly about his deeds. Some said he was a tall, handsome man, that if your eyes were allured to his charming face, you were to be cursed for the remainder of your life with its magnificence. The others remained faithful to the image painted on the papers: that his appearance mirrored his personality, gruesome and ghastly — that if you crossed paths, you would wish you were dead.
Grandmother spoke about him, only once, that he failed her, the family name, and that his presence solely tarnished our lineage. The Blacks. But there was no obtained description from her front either, from the actual source, the monster's mother. Sirius Black, my father, was grotesque of a man, and that was enough knowledge for my younger self. The more I knew, the more I hated the flesh I was fated to reside in up to my dying day.
But, the paper Cassius Avery waved towards my face forced me into crumbling each and every wall I had crafted regarding my monster of a father. For the first time in many, many years, I was seeing him. Perhaps not in person, not in flesh and blood, but the crazy man in the moving picture was more than enough.
"Stop hurling it to my face, Cassius. I've already seen it."
I had not. For days, I had done anything and everything to manoeuvre from the long-awaited confrontation — yet I knew that it was inevitable and coming for my head. Regardless, I found a childish pleasure in hiding, hiding from him, hiding from the news, hiding from the judgemental eyes of the riches, hiding from the haunting thoughts that willfully plagued my nights.
The hide-and-seek game had ended that night at the Avery House.
"No, Mia, I didn't mean him," said Cassius. "I meant you. The Daily Prophet has written about you!"
The mentioning of my name, in the Daily Prophet that is, seized my attention so swiftly that I didn't skip a minute to grab the newspaper dangling in Cassius' hand. It couldn't be good, certainly not after Sirius Black's breakout from the bloody Azkaban Prison.
As the maniac runs rampant, many of us are reminded of that dreadful night, no? Well, it is to say that that faithful night is indeed not the only thing the notorious mass murderer Sirius Black has left behind for us to cherish! One must remind the rest of the lot about the lovely mini Black running around. Do not fret, dear readers, this one, seems not to bite! So let me present you, Daphne, the darling flower he has left us.
Daphne Black is the last of the Black Dynasty. As you all know, or frankly, don't know much like me, the Black family's inheritance is left to one's imagination — indicating that our lovely flower is the sole successor to the mass fortune following her uncle's mysterious death in 1979. Much like his niece, Regulus Black's short life and premature death remain unknown. Only his will is left to the public, in which he passed his patrimony to his only niece, Daphne Black.
Would you like to be in her shoes? I know I would.
Besides her abundance, barely anything is publicised about our sweetheart. That is if you subtract the many parties she and her grandmother graced that my watchful spectacles have caught! But what I'm sure about her is that she attends Hogwarts and currently resides in the Black's ancestral home with her grandmother.
I was unable to pull my eyes from the article, reading it again and again and again, hoping that it was a silly prank — like the ones the Weasley twins pulled ever since the Sorting Hat yelled the Slytherin name after mine.
"Well," I began once I managed to wrap my head around that it was real and there and not a Weasley prank. "I shall send my best regards to Rita Skeeter for soon turning our drawing-room into the next great owlery in London."
I could only imagine the masses of hatred-filled posts awaiting me to read, sent by the many frightened people of Britain that fed off of their anger.
"Don't know about you, but your grandmother surely will." Cassius snickered. "Oh, cheer up, love. Don't let your face fall for what that woman has said."
I heaved a sigh, telling myself that it was not my fault that that man escaped the impenetrable prison. What could I possibly do? Pay a little visit to that torment island, grab Sirius Black by the hand, and dance our way out of the prison? Even the notion, the thought of it, was more than bizarre.
But it became my fault the second my grandmother laid her gaze over mine, her grey eyes raging like the many stormy nights of London. At that moment, I could've effortlessly paid my visit to the island where they keep the prisoners, could've grabbed Sirius Black's hand with nothing but love and joy and delight etched all over my face and waltzed our way out of the prison as if we were any other father-daughter.
"Oh, no," said Cassius, articulating my very thoughts.
"Looks like Rita Skeeter won't be the receiver end of the Black wrath," I said. Then, a sudden thought brimmed inside my head. "But, if we were to vanish for the remainder of the night, I might just escape my inevitable fate."
Cassius' head snapped in my direction, brows furrowed. "What d'you mean, Mia? You can't be suggesting running to the Muggle side of Yorkshire?"
I should have weighed over the idea and should not have acted on impulse. Grandmother was not the forgiving type, and a single step out of the line would lend me over her bad graces. I did not want that. I could not imagine that. But in that very moment, for the first time in many, many years, I was pleased to be surrounded by so many riches that one could barely breathe. For the first time, the pureblood society shielded me from my deepest, plunging fears that found a body within the only woman that ever truly loved me.
She loved me; I knew that much. I am suddenly back to four, small and dainty and utterly alone, and then she comes and holds my hand and takes me to ravishing shops ornamented with the finest and brightest materials and shows and shows and shows until my fragile body can't resist the plumping urge to sleep and we are back to the cold halls of the ancestral home.
Then, I am back to seven and instructed to learn how to dance because I bear the heavy name of the House of Black, and it is too much for my delicate back, and it cracks, and I fall and snap my ankle. That's when Grandmother gets furious and yells and yells and yells because I have a name, a legacy to uphold, and the Blacks don't waver under pressure.
"But I am," I said. I looked around, shrouded by fancy riches, their grand toilettes dashing across the floor and hiding the lavish marble stones, and immediately knew that their beaded hairs were perfect cover to us as we shrank into the shadows. For the first time, the pureblood community was assisting me. And I was more than grateful.
It appeared that Cassius followed my gaze and put together my plan. He was cleverer than I credited. "This is bollocks," he said, "It won't work, nor will I ever set foot near those Muggles."
"Muggles are plain and simple and daft enough to miss what's in front of them," I said in a pitiful whisk of desperation as my ticket for salvation resisted my tries. "It will work. That is if we manage to sneak out."
Cassius was not convinced, not nearly, and I was not oblivious. I had heard of his choice of words regarding Muggles and their children.
"Have some faith in me," I said, and he hesitated.
Cassius Avery never hesitated.
He seemed lost in thought, brows morphing into many shapes before his hand grabbed mine and lost us in the depts of the shadowed figurines.
A smile to your left, then to your right, but never too much, or you might be named insolent. And then, we reached the empty hall, and the act was dropped. The chattering voices echoing throughout the foyer filled the silence between us as we hurried to the front door.
"I have faith in you," said Cassius earnestly after closing the door behind us, our youngster naivete shining under the moon. "But you owe me one, Mia."
I could not help the scoff that fled my lips. Of course, Cassius expected repayment of some sort. That's how Slytherins were. That's how we were.
"We shall see," I said. "And quit calling me Mia. You know I hate it when you do that."
He laughed, a genuine one, in the hands of our newfound independence. "Whatever that suits you, Mia."
Then we wandered, to no particular path in mind. Our laughter tangled with the voices of the nearby Muggles. I remember thinking that the Muggle world was much too similar to ours. I was astonished but was too dazzled by my newfound freedom to think it through.
A Muggle, a little child not over the age of six, stopped me in my tracks and said, "Isn't that the man on the news, mummy?"
My eyes flew down to the paper clutched in my hand. Had I forgotten it in the heat of the moment? I had not realised its presence, but my thoughtless actions guided me here, and now I was to find a plausible excuse for the child.
"It is nothing," spoke a calm yet an unfamiliar voice. Cassius nudged my side and halted my train of thoughts. I looked up and saw the stranger that spoke up for us. Then I saw the tip of his wand glistening under the moonlight.
Another wizard amongst the Muggles.
The child and his mother seemed to be under the stranger's spell as they parted to the other way, far from us. Then the man put his wand back, and the Muggles disappeared. But now, we were to face the stranger's disapproving look on his face, almost like a teacher bracing himself to lecture the misbehaving.
The man was dressed in shabby robes, with a few patches darned into his threadbare coat that seemed to be in dire need of more stitches. Light brown hair, freckled with grey strands poking under the dim lighting, accompanied the odd expression on his face. He looked like he was in ominous pain while seeming enraged beyond words. But his gentle manner declared otherwise.
"You should be more careful if you are to carry magical items," he spoke almost like an old friend. "Muggles do not take magic as lightly as we do."
Cassius and I shared a glance and nodded solemnly. We didn't intend on encountering any further trouble, not that night.
"Thank you, sir," I said.
His lips formed the faintest smile, terribly apparent a forced one, then he left, and we were left to ourselves once more.