Certain Dark Things || Book Two

xii. the tree that flourishes

It took Elara a long time to fall asleep the first night Snape stayed in Grimmauld Place.

Though the wizard taught at her school, he was—for all intents and purposes—a stranger, a silent, sharp-tongued intruder whom Elara had threatened only weeks before, a stranger who now had unfettered access to her home. She didn't sleep well in proximity to strangers, those first few weeks at Hogwarts made less difficult by the presence of other similarly aged girls, but ever since the orphanage, ever since they came for her in the dead of night and dragged her from her bed, Elara had been a light sleeper. She stared at the ceiling every time the floorboards overhead creaked and didn't nod off until well after midnight.

As such, her mood was less than pleasant at breakfast, where she and Harriet ate food prepared by a Hogwarts house-elf named Rikkety, who'd been deputized by Snape to bring their meals from the castle. They saw no sign of the Potions Master that morning, and once the dishes were cleared and their familiars fed, they found themselves waiting restlessly by the Floo for their first minder to step through.

Said minder didn't so much as step through the Floo as come barreling out and collide with Harriet, collapsing into a heap of soot, swears, and bent elbows.

"Oh, shite! I'm so sorry!" the pink-haired witch cried as she leapt to her feet and dragged Harriet upright, nearly dropping the dazed girl again in the process of smacking ash from her robes. "I really did think I had it that time, but I must've turned at the last minute. Figures, I'm dead clumsy—but there you are! Good as new!"

Elara stared at the witch—Nymphadora, her second cousin, who hated being called Nymphadora—and right at her heels the fire blazed green again, admitting the familiar figure of Nymphadora's pretty mum, Andromeda.

"Hello again," the older woman greeted, entering the room with far more aplomb than her daughter. "It's nice to see you well, Elara."

Elara answered her with a tight-lipped nod, suspicious of Andromeda's presence, and wondered if the Headmaster had an alternative motive for asking her here. She introduced Harriet, and was again introduced to Nymphadora— "Tonks!"—before they migrated to the living room on the second floor.

Tonks proved as clumsy as promised, and Elara was surprised to learn that, as unlikely as it seemed, she was a promising new recruit in the Aurory. "I spend most of my time shadowing a mad bugger named Alastor Moody," she explained as they poked about through the ruined furniture. "Told him I had a family emergency today, so he let me off."

"He's going to be displeased if he finds out you lied to him, Dora," Andromeda said from her spot on her conjured chair.

"You'd get tired of him too, mum, if he kept shouting 'CONSTANT VIGILANCE!' at you through the loo door."

Harriet laughed outright and Elara smirked, settling farther into her spot on the dusty sofa by Andromeda. Tonks was invaluable in picking out what was and wasn't cursed in the room while her mum set the furniture back to rights, the witch proficient in the kind of household magic neither Elara or Harriet had seen at Hogwarts yet. It probably isn't taught there, she mused. It's probably something passed on from mother to daughter through the generations.

She felt a small pang of loss at that thought.

Elara watched as Andromeda drew her wand over old wood and torn cushions, returning luster and tying together loose threads as dust lifted into the air and vanished out of sight. Bit by bit, the room emerged from its own ruin; the afternoon wore on and the strange witches who'd invaded her home returned Elara's living space to something of its former glory. To be sure, the defunct wallpaper needed to be stripped, the floors refinished, and the antique chairs reupholstered, but she could see something livable in it now.