Haunted Bones

i, The Language of Girls

One. The Language of Girls

 𓃵

     She was hungry.

Dinner was supposed to be at six. It was now seven-oh-five. She couldn't blame Kreacher this time, nor was it her cousin's dramatics, it was them. These days, Grimmauld Place was so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. They had set up camp in the dining room three weeks ago and showed very little sign of leaving. A werewolf, a convict, a mother, some revolutionaries. It wasn't her dining room—she couldn't be angry—but it would be soon, then she could have them carried out, orchids placed in vases to mask the stench of the past, and she would be presented a steak pie with plenty of caramelised onions, potatoes, carrots ...

There was more to power than infinite steak pies, she'd come to discover, otherwise kings would have little to complain about. Power had come to her as she slept in a cot, unaware that her grandmother had succumb to dragonpox. Camille (Cam, Cammy, Millie ...) Black was five then, fifteen now, and hardly anything had changed: Her uncle was still acting as regent, her cousins were sharpening their knives, and she was unwilling to wear the crown that'd been placed so unceremoniously upon her head. A gloomy kind of hopelessness had engulfed her that day. She'd seen what the House of Black had done to people, especially her father, who was nothing more than an emaciated mess. When she was around six, she had refused to step foot into Grimmauld Place after believing Nymphadora's stories about people being eaten by the walls and disappearing forever. Eleven and a half years later, she realised that it did, indeed, consume you. But then she thought, this happened sometimes, didn't it? Things you had a history with, they wouldn't let you go, and as hard as you tried, you couldn't disentangle yourself, couldn't set yourself free. Maybe after a while you just stopped trying.

Her father had made that conscious decision to become less of a Black, but Grimmauld Place was once again his home. The Order of the Phoenix were happy to settle into the London terrace—the decorations were rather disconcerting but nevertheless—seeing as it had been going to waste for the last ten years. Walburga Black had bestowed the ancestral home to her eldest granddaughter, Camille, rather than either of her sons. It had been around twenty years since Sirius found himself trapped within those four walls, Regulus seventeen, yet very little had changed. It still held the air of a dying person that engulfed you like a bad smell, Camille thought, despite all of Mrs. Weasley's chores.

Seconds later, her mother appeared in the bedroom doorway.

"The meeting's over, you can come down now."

Camille followed Sara out of the room, leaving her music to die out on its own. Both of them were stealing apprehensive glances at one another, as though they feared the other would start shouting.

"It's important that you make an effort," Sara began, but Camille shook her head and said quietly, "I'm not being friends with them."

"When this is all over, you're going to need them on your side," said Sara, much to her daughter's irritation. "You inherit too much power to have enemies."

Camille scoffed. "Because I'm Sirius Black's daughter?"

"Because you're my daughter. You have more than one birthright, you know."

Her mother was a rather marvellous woman, Camille liked to think. They shared the same nose, wit and wild temper. Her past, specifically how she contributed to the First Wizarding War, however, was something that was very rarely discussed, so Camille cast around for a topic that didn't involve the Order, because the very thought of it all made her insides burn with anger again.