ᴅɪsᴘᴇʟ ᴍʏ ʙᴏʀᴇᴅᴏᴍ | ᴍᴀʀᴀᴅᴇᴜʀs' ᴇʀᴀ

Chapter 51: Family Issues

Malfoy Manor

Eliza felt bad. Terrible.

She saw the ghosts next to her, heard their soft, dull voices, howling and crying, felt someone touching her hands with cautious icy fingers, laughing and sobbing over her ear.

Eliza felt the heat, and she wanted to run straight down the long marble corridor and jump into the icy lake under her balcony. Then she felt cold and, in a moment, she found herself next to a lighted candle with her hand trembling over it; a sweet smell of burning skin floating across the room.

She was going crazy. Her body was going crazy. The voices in her head were going crazy.

Her mother came more and more often, sat next to her on a wide bed and took her hand in warm, soft palms.

One of such evenings full of despair and madness, Eliza realized that she was ready to drink this bloody potion instead of lunch and dinner just to see her mother, watch as she smiles, as the wrinkles gather around her eyes, lips, and forehead when she winks at her daughter; admire her stooped, aged figure, wrapped in a grey shawl.

Mother died so quickly. Eliza said goodbye to her before leaving for Hogwarts, carefully pretending she believed father's words about the mother's soon recovery. She smiled at her until her lips and cheekbones grew dull, telling funny stories about the school (mostly made up ones), and stubbornly looked away when warm tears rolled in her mother's eyes.

When Eliza stood on the platform in front of the puffing Hogwarts Express, she knew that she would never see her mother again. She wanted to stay, she even said about it to her father, but he assured her that there was nothing to worry about.

The letter came only a week after the beginning of the classes.

"Hermina's gone."

No condolences, no consoling words, no requests to come home. Just one miserable line, only a name that mother hated so much.

"Everything will be fine, pumpkin," mother breathed, clasping Eliza's hand. "Do you believe me? I'll get well, you believe me, pumpkin?"

I don't believe you, Mom.

"Of course, Mom..."

A knock sounded in the room, and Hermina's ghost, smiling awkwardly, melted in the room's dusk.

"Eliza?" Erica's muffled voice rang from the other side of the door. "You received a letter from, uh, Peter. Your owl's been knocking at the window for an hour, but you didn't let it in, and it flew into my room, so..." Erica stood under the door, hoping for some reaction. "It's all right, Liz? Well... I'll leave it under the door. Don't forget, dear."

Erica looked like Hermina in her last days. Whatever Lucius thought, Eliza could not harm her. Not now, when she was so much like her sister.

Sometimes, when another attack died down, and it almost seemed to Eliza that she had dealt with her curse, she went down into the living room to Erica and stood for several minutes beside her quietly. Until Erica looked up, Eliza could imagine her mother in Mrs. Malfoy's place.

Eliza squinted her eyes to the side, took a deep breath and, leaning on the mattress, raised herself on the bed. It was very hot and stuffy in here, it smelled of sweat and illness. Eliza knew well how the illness smelled. This dirty, suffocating odor, instantly infiltrates the room. It corrodes your nostrils and makes you want to run away.

Stumbling and almost falling to the floor, Eliza reached the door and weakly slid down to the letter tucked under the door with her name on it written in Peter's uneven handwriting. "Eliza Killbrook."