The Potion Princess

Home

The house seems to have grown colder in the time that she's been gone.

Hogwarts is certainly a big place, with hallways that make your footsteps echo and cold marble and cavernous ceilings, but she still wasn't prepared for the return to the enormous structure of Stanton castle.  It's marble and glass and golden chandeliers that drip with crystals, giant picture windows stretching up the walls and great stone fireplaces where the fire is always roaring.  There are no photos, no blankets or throw pillows, no couch that you can sink into after a hard days work.  Audra's home is a cold place, and always has been. 

But she supposes its also a part of the girl she has to be now, someone who appreciates things that are made from stone and blood money, so she tosses her suitcase to the side and leaves it for Vinnie to find.  She stalks down the hall and climbs the stairs, the heels of her boots clicking on the stone floor.  Her parents hear her coming, and the two shadows draw apart and move to opposite sides of the room.  By the time she makes it in there, trying to look like the fighter she tells herself she can be, both of them are smiling from opposite sides of the room.

"Audra,"  Her mother smiled, a very real smile.  It's one that makes her remember that this is not the enemy, not really, even if they are doing bad things to good people for all the wrong reasons.  Despite what they've done, they are her flesh and blood, and she loves them with all her heart.  It's the same heart that she's given to the Weasley family, as well as Hermione and Harry and countless others.  The thought does not change things, but it does make it harder.  "We thought you would want to go to sleep right away.  It's been a long couple weeks for you, hasn't it?"

She wonders if she knows, from the parents of other children, about how the Slytherins have been having nightly sleepovers together in the days since Cedric's death.  About how they stay in the common room to eat grilled cheeses and smores until they can't keep their eyes open anymore, and then the sixth and seventh years drag the little ones to bed.  About how eventually, they all end up in the same room, all of them feeling the same exact fear for very different reasons. 

"I figured we should talk."  She throws herself into the arm chair in a way that certainly wasn't lady like.  It also looked a bit like someone who found a pile of junk and managed to turn it into a throne.  (Her Aunt Cissy said Bella used to sit like that, like her friends were her court and the world was hers to rule.  So many things they share.)  "Things are changing."

"Yes,"  Her mother says, pausing.  She was smiling that trembling smile, the one she wore on her first day of flying lessons, and on the night of her first party, and the day she first went to Hogwarts.  It was not a good sign.  "So many things have changed.  You've changed."  Her voice was the same one she used when she would talk Audra into letting her rip off a band aid, or when she held her when she was sick.  It was the voice of bad things.  "He wants to meet you, Audra."

There was no need to ask who he was.  "And I him."

"You have to make a good impression."  Her mother knelt by her side, gripping her hand tightly in a surprisingly strong hold.  "He needs to be impressed."

"Don't worry mother."  Audra raises her hand to her mothers face, pushes one greying curl out of the way.  On her hand, her family ring glinted in the light of the fire.  "I'm nothing if not impressive."

They left her soon after.  She wonders if they found this new version of her a little unsettling.  It probably should bother Audra more, that she could slip into this personality as easily as changing clothes, but it doesn't.  She had been given years of training on how to walk and how to talk, on what to believe and how to look at the world.  And then she had heard whispers of who her Aunt had been and what they were all expecting Audra to become.  It is not so easy to turn into someone else when that's who everyone has been seeing all along.

Neither of her parents had questioned it when she had said that she wanted to stay in the library tonight.  It had always been her favorite room in the house, probably because it was the one that felt the most lived in.  She had spent hours in here as a child, learning all sorts of things, wonderful stories about heroes and princesses and knights in shining armor.  And if this was last year, she would have spent this time with her brother, the two of them eating toasted cheese by the fire and catching each other up on all the wonderful things that had happened.  But tonight, she was alone, left in the dark and empty library.

Which was a good thing, because she had a job to do.  Audra ran to the desk, heart pounding, and started to rummage through the drawers where she knew her mother kept important things.  Her parents didn't bother with enchantments, so it wasn't hard for Audra to shuffle through the junk and remove the false bottom underneath, revealing the bundles of letters.  She rifles through them, lines jumping out -the Dark Lord requests Audra's presence, the prophecy must be gathered, the boy must die, the next meeting is on the 17, the Dark Lord grows stronger than he was ever before, the time for action is now- before she duplicates them and stuffs the copies up her sleeve.

It's not a moment too soon.  Her brother opens the door with his usual charisma, leaning in the doorway.  "I'm surprised you haven't come to see me."  Vance said, grinning.  "Or is our yearly tradition over?  Vinnie's already making the snacks."

Of course it isn't over."  This doesn't take much effort either, falling into the role of the adoring and much adored younger sister.  "I just needed a few minutes to myself.  Lot going on."

"Are you worried?"  Vance crosses the room in a few steps and makes his way over to her.  He'd always been tall, and even now he towered over her.  "Don't be.  He'll see the promise in you, and soon enough you'll be his right hand man."

He pulls her into a hug, and she lets him.  Despite everything, it's comforting for her to have her older brother protect her.  Vance doesn't even notice the crinkle of the letters tucked into her sleeve.

Audra makes her way to her room just as the sunlight started to pour through the window.  She wants nothing more than to sleep, but she can't, not yet, not when she has a job to do. She sits down at her desk instead, the one where last year she penned letters to the twins about quidditch and joke shops. 

Bill,

Here's the letters.  They were all I could find tonight, but they were right where Snape said they were.  I'm not sure how important they are, but they do have dates, and talk quite a bit about Harry.  I couldn't look through them in detail, I'm too terrified that they'll find them if I keep them for too long.

Vance is with them.  He already has the mark.  My brother was the first of the new recruits, but he's not alone- others of his class, and those in the class above, as well as a few from Durmstrang that Voldemort found through Karkaroff.  It's a whole new group of death eaters to join the old. 

And they're already talking about setting the prisoners free from Azkaban.  He likes the dementors, and thinks they'll help.  And he wants my aunt to be by his side again.

With love, and hope that I will see you soon, Audra.