The Sacred 28

Summer, 1953

Euphemia Potter née Shafiq and Dorea Potter née Black were unlikely friends and even unlikelier in-laws. Nearly three decades apart in age, they had never crossed paths at Hogwarts or even met until they had married: Charlus, being much younger than Fleamont, always seemed to be too busy bouncing around with his quidditch career to come and visit. So it had been a surprise when, one Saturday morning, Dorea showed up of Euphemia’s doorstep and blurted out that she needed advice.

“Are you barren,” she said, her hair askew and her pale, pointed face currently a deep and slightly splotchy red. Euphemia blinked.

“Come in, Dorea,” she said, tightly. Dorea obeyed, and Euphemia flicked her wand towards the lemon yellow kettle hanging above a cheerfully crackling purple fire. Doria seemed momentarily entranced by her surroundings.

It was, Euphemia thought proudly, a rather good house. Not a manor— even her father-in-law old Harry Potter had found that entirely too pretentious— but a beautiful home all the same. After they had sold Sleakeasies, Fleamont and Euphemia had retired to the countryside and dedicated themselves to travel. The house was filled with strange magical relics and hung with chattering tapestries that swayed and laughed as unicorns and maidens ran from dragons and knights across the parlour. Hanging by the door was her great-grandfather’s medal for special services to the school that he had received for saving half the student body from a rogue abarimon. Dorea’s eyes were drawn to the intricate painted bronze.

“Maya…avidey..alaya?” asked Dorea. Euphemia frowned at her.

“Mayaavidyalaya” she said, “the wizarding school of west asia. Tea?”

“Please,” said Dorea, tearing herself away from the medal. She looked a little ashamed of herself. The splotches on her cheeks had faded slightly, and she looked sick. Euphemia softened.

“Sit down, duck,” she said as the tea began to pour itself. “Dilly?” An elderly house elf with hair pouring out of his round, mouse-like ears appeared in an elegantly wrapped bedsheet.

“Is Madam wanting her biscuits?” he squeaked, and Euphemia smiled.

“Yes please, Dilly, the ginger snaps if you don’t mind,” Dilly nodded enthusiastically and vanished with a crack.

“I didn’t know you kept elves,” Dorea said lightly. She seemed to be stalling, trying to decide something. Her hands were shaking and her usually slightly haughty face betrayed a twinge of doubt. Euphemia decided to humour her.

“Yes, well,” she said calmly, “we don’t particularly need elves but Dilly was getting on in years and Harry didn’t want him struggling with all those stairs in the London place. He couldn’t release him either, you know how they react to being socked.” Dorea nodded. The tea floated over in brightly painted bone china cups and the cream and sugar offered themselves first to their mistress and then to her guest. Euphemia, who drank hers “clean” on principle, shook her head but Dorea looked positively nauseated by the little pitcher.

“Just the tea, thanks,” she said faintly, and Euphemia scrutinised her.

“You asked if I was barren,” she said, and Dorea coloured.
“Not very tactful of me,” she muttered, “only it’s been a bit of a day. I wished to know… that is, I was wondering… have you ever tried for children or is it… by choice.” Euphemia stared at her.

“We’ve never tested it,” she said finally, “for all I know I may be barren. Monty and I have… taken precautions. I will no doubt no longer require them soon, as we get older. We love children but,” she hesitated, “it is not the life that we have… chosen.”

Dorea was looking at her in excited apprehension. “Why?” she asked, and Euphemia was glad to see the top of Dilly’s shiny head making its way through the poufs and armchairs with a plate of biscuits levitating slightly above it.

“Thank you, Dilly. Biscuit, Dorea?” Dorea’s face fell, but she accepted a ginger biscuit and thanked Dilly. After a delicate nibble, Dorea seemed to gather the courage to ask what she had been skirting around.

“So you’ve never been pregnant,” she said, and Euphemia nearly dropped her tea with sudden realisation.

“You’re pregnant,” she said in a hushed tone, and Dorea’s face crumpled.

“I’m usually so careful with the charms,” she whispered, burying her head in her hands. Euphemia just stared. “Only… well it was after the quidditch world cup and… oh Merlin I must have forgotten and now…” when she looked up, her eyes were full of tears. “What am I going to do.” Euphemia blinked at her, too shocked to respond.

“I,” she began, and then shook her head. “Do you not like children?”

“I do,” said Dorea. She hiccuped and began to sob in earnest. “I really want this baby.”

“Oh,” said Euphemia, who was trying not to project her own feelings onto the young woman, “so, you’ll have it. Is there,” she hesitated and moved to sit beside Dorea on the couch, “is there a problem?”

“I don’t know,” Dorea wailed, and Euphemia rubbed her back in slow circles.

“What do you mean, duck,” she said gently, “what problem?” Dorea looked up at her with blotchy cheeks and reddened eyes.

“I have a curse,” she said quietly. “A blood curse.” Euphemia stared at her, feeling a tug of nausea in her own stomach.

“Bloody sacred twenty-eight,” Dorea said bitterly, “the cousin-marriage is really ruining us isn’t it? Not that they care. My father would have rather I died than marry a muggle, didn’t even come to the wedding when I married a blood-traitor..” Euphemia had a sudden horrible urge to laugh. Dorea Black and Euphemia Shariq had much more in common than either of them had realised.

“I’m a maledictus,” she said suddenly, almost without realising she was saying it. Dorea’s eyes grew massive.

“What?” she whispered, and Euphemia cringed at her own tactlessness. “But….”

“There are potions,” she said evenly, “to extend the lifespan. And as long as I don’t morph purposely I have a much lower chance of transforming permanently before I’m, oh, a hundred years old. Plenty of time, really. I’ve made my peace with it.” Dorea looked at her in morbid fascination.

“What do you..” she began, and Euphemia gave a short laugh.

“A hyena,” she said. Dorea grew pale and shifted away from her ever so slightly.

“Don’t worry,” said Euphimia, doing her best not to appear annoyed, “even when I transform I retain my mind. Hyenas are sacred creatures where my family comes from. They are fiercely protective of their families and smarter than most beasts. You will come to no harm from me.” Dorea was still trembling.

“This, of course, is not something that you will tell anyone,” she said sharply, and Dorea nodded quickly.

“I…” she began, and bit her lip, “I’m just a carrier. My mother was an infirmusanguini.” Euphemia gave her a sympathetic smile. She and Fleamont had decided against have children and in nearly thirty years of marriage had managed to prevent accident. She didn’t know what she would have done in Dorea’s place.

“Would it be terrible,” Dorea asked, “to end this child’s life before it could begin in misery?” Euphemia swallowed.

“I don’t know,” she said, honestly. She stared into the fire in order to avoid looking at Dorea, whose eyes had again filled with tears. “I don’t know if there’s a difference between preventing pregnancy and stopping an early pregnancy. It rather feels like there is, though I can’t explain why. I’d like to have lived, even with my condition. But I wouldn’t want to pass it on.”

Dorea looked distraught. “When my mother died,” she said quietly, “she made me promise that I would never have children.” Euphemia’s sharp eyes flicked up quickly from her cup of tea.

“That is a terrible thing to do to your daughter,” she said, and Dorea looked confused.

“But you,” she said, gesturing vaguely towards the medal, “you never had children either.” Euphemia sighed.

“That was my choice,” she replied firmly, “and Monty’s. Does Charlus know?” Dorea shook her head.

“I didn’t think he cared much, about children,” she said wistfully. “he didn’t mention them at all when we were courting, not even after we married. Not until recently at least. I don’t…” she pointed her wand at her tea and heated it carefully, avoiding Euphemia’s eyes.

“It was a secret,” she said, sounding almost petulant. “Father never let us even say it out loud after mother died. Just that she was frail. She was gone by the time I was fifteen, I didn’t… he didn’t need to know…” Euphemia was rigid, doing her best not to betray the anger that was welling up inside of her. She had told Monty when they were twenty-four, both of them young and eagerly entrepreneurial. She had been his legal advisor for Sleakeasy after she’d graduated from Oxford’s magical college of law and he had taken her with him to America on the guise of a business trip. Despite his glasses and gawky frame, women were drawn to Fleamont’s quick grin and easy charm. So, to her horror, was Euphemia.

One night after a particularly wild pitch in a Chicago club, Euphemia had angrily pushed out the last of Fleamont’s admirers when she turned to see him behind her, his bowtie undone and his glasses askew, a glass of giggle water shaking in his hand. He looked as though he’d just lost a game of exploding snap, bewildered and slightly crestfallen.

“What,” she’d snapped defensively, crossing her arms over the thin silk robes she’d bought in New York with her entire month’s salary, “it’s three in the bloody morning Potter.”

“I love you,” he had blurted in reply and then blushed, looking rather ashamed. Euphemia had stared at him in horror.

“This is very inappropriate,” she said sharply, and then without realising what she was doing she strode over and kissed him. The two had stayed up long into the night talking, negotiating, arguing. Euphemia wanted a career. Fleamont wanted to travel. Both had had grandparents who had grown up in India and wanted to live where their grandparents had lived. They agreed on a half-way compromise. By the time the sun came up Fleamont had asked Euphemia to marry him twelve times and each time she had countered with a question, an argument. On the thirteenth time she told him that she would never have children, told him about the curse, morphed into a hyena, and growled at him. Fleamont had stayed calm throughout— or at least appeared to be, as Monty had told her later that he had very nearly screamed— and when she was finished raging at him about how she had been perfectly happy before he had come along with his beautiful eyes and slim, sharp jaw he had gotten on his knee and asked her to marry him. And she had.

Of course she hadn’t had much in the way of a choice about telling him about the curse. Someday she would be gone, trapped in the body of the beast she had been holding off as long as she could remember. Her mother had killed herself when Effie was only sixteen, before the benedictus potion had been invented and after she had begun to transform against her will into the massive bengal tiger that they had burned in an carefully arranged shroud. There was no way out of that, no passivity in the cursed blood they shared. Would she have done the same, in Dorea’s place?

“Euphemia?” Dorea said, hesitantly. Euphemia stood and began to pace the room.

“It’s your decision,” she said. “Keep it or don’t. But tell your husband.”

….

Marius Charlus Potter was born in the spring of 1954, a hale and healthy boy with a name that was generally agreed to both be bad luck and in bad taste.

“We made him godfather too, if you’d believe it,” Dorea told Euphemia as the two women watched Harry play with his baby grandson. Euphemia laughed uproariously, upsetting her tea.

“Oh lord, a blood traitor father and a squib godfather,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. Charlus and Fleamont were playing Quidditch in the back garden (with more enthusiasm than agility, as they were both getting on in years) and Euphemia and Dora were left in the parlour of the London house as Harry and Marius entertained each other.

“I don’t mind that you named him after a squib,” said Harry from where he sat levitating christmas gifts in the air just out of Marius’ reach, “but where’s my namesake hmm? I’m not getting any younger you know.”

Dorea smiled at him, standing to bring him a cup of tea. She had always looked more at home in the London house than Euphemia did, with her pale fine-boned face and dark, fashionable robes. Motherhood had softened her slightly, rounding her cheeks and necessitating more practical garb, but she was still a Black. The baby, though, was thoroughly Potter from his thick patch of black hair to his warm brown skin.

“You can take it up with Marius and whoever has the misfortune of marrying into this family next,” she teased, smoothing the baby’s hair.

Harry grinned. “Nah, he’ll saddle the poor kid with another one of those weird star names like you did, I can tell.”

“But rich coming from a man who named his son Fleamont,” said Charlus as the two walked in. Fleamont affectionately messed up his brother’s hair.

“Ah, bugger off,” he said genially, “I made it work.” He threw Euphemia a wink and she rolled her eyes at him.

“Anywho,” said Harry, standing on creaking knees, “your mother’s questionable taste in names aside, I thought we ought to take the newest Messer Potter to the Quidditch World Cup this summer?”

As his sons roared their assent, looking bright and excited as boys a quarter of their age, Dorea turned to Euphemia with a grin.

“What is it with Potters and Quidditch,” she said, tossing her silky black hair in mock disdain.

“Says the finest beater the Holyhead Harpies ever saw,” Euphemia replied wryly, and Dorea laughed. It was times like this that Euphemia wondered how her sister-in-law had ever been raised in the Noble and Moste Anciente House of Black. Then again, she herself wasn’t much of a Shafiq any more. The two had settled comfortably into bloodtraitordom, safe from blood curses and the cruel traditions that Marius, like his father, would never suffer at the hands of his doting parents. Not for the first time since his birth Euphemia wondered if perhaps she and Fleamont had made a mistake in not having children of their own. Blood curses aside, they’d have made much better parents than most of the pureblood British wizarding families about. Of course it was almost certainly too late now. Both she and Fleamont were pushing sixty and adoption was almost entirely unheard of in the wizarding world, not since it had been made illegal to kidnap muggleborn children who showed early signs of magic. No, they’d made their choice.

Still, it was with a hint of wistfulness that Euphemia watched as Fleamont kissed and cuddled a giggling Marius. She felt Dorea’s gaze settle on her and turned, self conscious and unduly annoyed.

“What?” she snapped, and Dorea had only offered her a sad smile.

“I was only thinking,” she said gently, “how grateful I am for your advice.”

December, 1959

“Bugger,” said Euphemia, with feeling. “Bugger. Bugger. Bugger.”

“Effie?” asked Fleamont from outside of the kitchen. Euphemia clutched the rim of the cauldron, and stared at potion.

“Eff let me in or I’m blowing down the goddamn door,” Fleamont tried again. Euphemia didn’t move.

“Stand back!” he yelled, and Euphemia flirted briefly with the idea of not moving ever again, just staying frozen at the the kitchen counter for the rest of her life. But Monty would blow up the door and it would be hell to fix so she got up and unlocked it, opening the door to reveal her husband in his nightshirt and bathrobe. His wand was raised and his greying hair was wild around his lined face. He looked, she thought for the first time, very old.

“Eff?” he said uncertainly, and she imagined a child with his knobbly knees and kind eyes and felt a cold swoop of excitement and fear.

“I’m pregnant,” she said. “Merlin help us, I’m pregnant.”