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chapter one
"LITTLE EMILIA ELODIE"
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The men in black stood outside. Colourful fabrics peeped out from the pockets of their jackets. Cars lined the street. Relatives that hadn't been seen outside of a photo album for decades stood around, silently critiquing what they could, smiling as they said yes, I would love a cup of tea...
Their family was the sort that had a relative in all continents, the sort that went all-out for any occasion somewhat special. Birthdays were treated like the second coming of Christ. Funerals were celebrations of death and black outfits. Even the current reason of gathering was being treated like it needed a chapter in a history book — it was literally just a nice dinner party to say farewell to one of the younger family members. Like, that was all. And yet, the house-elves were working tirelessly to make the house look spotless, and the food look perfect.
The house is big. It isn't large, nor arrogant enough to be named a manor, or a mansion, or anything equally cocky, but it's enough to resemble a home taken over by the National Trust. Like, the ones with hidden hallways and priest holes marketed to the capitalistic tourist as "haunted". (Although, it might not work well as a tourist attraction, the house is still on a street, masses of tourists would spark an outcry to the council.)
Upstairs, one of the inhabitants has her gaze fixed on her own reflection. A dainty brush leaves sandstone-coloured powder on her eyelids. Dying flowers sit next the mirror. Someone knocked on her bedroom door. She frowned. Her brother let himself in. His smile was the exact mixture of politeness and nastiness. "I come bearing news," he said.
Freshly-ironed table linen was hurried through hidden hallways — big enough to fit a house-elf and whatever they were rallying around the house on a trolley, and just big enough for a witch to sneak through — followed with trolleys holding the expensive vases, the ones usually stored away in a display cabinet. Another trolley followed. Bouquets of marigolds and cosmos and hollyhocks blocked the house-elf's vision. The fake butterflies enchanted to sit on the flowers flutter around the house-elf's eyes and ears; he shook his head, the trolley scraping past the skirting board on one wall.
Outside, some great-great-uncle from Canada was laugh-coughing. He stopped, and he returned to his cigar.
Inside, the walls began to shake with the volume of the witch upstairs yelling. A house-elf in one hallway skidded to a halt, and whimpered. The witch storms out of her bedroom, away from her brother, away from her worried godmother, and in the direction of her younger sister's room.
