* I'll post again next week on Friday. See you then!*
Jacqueline's owl arrived a few days later, following a rather intense D.A. meeting where everyone appeared with a particular energy that I hadn't seen before. Sam thought it was pent up excitement to get back to work after the holidays but it was Ginny who seemed to see what I meant.
"I bet after seeing that article of the escaped death eaters, more people are starting to believe what Harry has said about You-Know-Who. There's more of a reason to take the D.A. seriously."
Sam and I exchanged a similar look but we didn't talk about Ginny's remark until that evening when we were getting ready for bed. Ignoring our roommates as usual, we kept things relatively vague, though our point was clear.
"I wasn't the only one to have forgotten about the school's vendetta on Harry, right?"
"No," Sam confirmed, "I forgot people thought of him as a loon."
"We really need to pay more attention," I said with a laugh, and Sam appeared to have agreed, though her attention had quickly left the conversation once my cat had made an appearance in the room.
"Attention whore," I muttered darkly as Oliver made himself comfortable on Sam's lap and purred contently as she stroked his head.
Jacqueline's owl found me as I was walking back from the library after studying transfiguration for a lengthy period of time. It was Saturday, and the January snow had halted for the time being, making it a bit more bearable to walk to the court yard and sit with my letter in peace.
My little American writes to me! What a surprise.
But I expected you needing to use me for something. I heard Le Monde doesn't send it's paper off continent. I will start sending you my copy once I'm through with it. The others are a bit jealous that you're writing to me about this and not say, Gisele for example.
Favoring me, is that it?
Tsk, tsk. Marie wants me to add here that she's been meaning to write back to your letter but has been "swamped". I feel like it is my job to tell you she is lying and has instead been spending her morning skiing and participating in debauchery.
To my amusement, I noted the change in handwriting written sloppily under Jaqueline's writing that was no doubt Marie's.
I have done nothing of the sort. And I've only been skiing twice this winter thanks to Professeur Lecour screwing us all in Transfiguration homework. You're lucky you're not here to experience it. Also, I miss you and wish you were here to back me up. I'll write soon!!
An obvious change in hands were made as Jacqueline's writing returned.
Lies. So many lies. The password for Le Monde is Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Cliché is it not? Say it with a tap of your wand on the letter M. If you have problems let me know. I will judge you but I promise to help.
Another change in hands was noted as a new handwriting was shifted in the letter that didn't fit with Jacqueline or Marie. I knew it was Gisele the moment I started reading.
You don't need to take out your wand, just say it and if the M flip flops of the page, you'll know you did it. Open the paper and it will switch inward to the wizarding world. If you don't open it, it won't work. Jacqueline never does this, I have to do it for her, so don't be discouraged if it doesn't work. I hope classes are going well and the others are well! Send my love to Ginny, Ella and Hermione!
Jaqueline was back on the writing, adding with a comical underlining the following:
Gisele wants me to add Sam to the list of friends to say hello to. She feels bad for forgetting that particular raven head. I on the other hand, am curious to hear whether said friend has gotten any closer with that brother of yours. Do tell.
And write back. So I don't feel like you're completely using me for my papers.
Kiss kiss
J
On top of the folded up Le Monde in my lap lay a single cigarette that made me smile happily and a vial of fountain water no doubt. The peng of homesickness for Beauxbatons hit me again as I opened the vial and smelled it.
"Is you're not going to light that now, are you?" I turned to see Ginny stopping beside my bench, eyeing the cigarette in my lap. I laughed at it and shook my head.
"No, I think that was just Jacqueline being funny," I informed, as Ginny sat down next to me and chuckled at the mention of the girl.
"Wasn't she the one that went out with your brother?" I nodded and snickered at what Jaqueline would say if she heard people remembered her only for that small detail.
"I doubt she would call it that, but yes. Want some?" I offered, showing her the vial. Ginny extended her hand and I poured a little in her palm.
"Toss it on your face like this," I showed her, and felt the water turn icy cold as it hit my cheeks against the cold air. Ginny followed suit and shook it off with a shiver.
"That was not pleasant." I laughed at her again, but kept to myself as I closed the vial and returned it to my robe.
"That's what this is usually for," I said, raising the cigarette to her gaze. "To keep you warm." She snorted as I placed that too with the vial in my pocket.
"How are your friends?" Ginny asked eyeing the letter. I smiled sadly at the letter but handed it to her.
"Not much to understand I realize but as you can see Jacqueline had to share the letter with a few of them," I explained, pointing to the different penmanship across the page. "They seem to be doing just fine."
"Do you ever miss it? Beauxbatons," she clarified, handing it back to me. I tucked the letter in my robes before responding.
"I do actually. But I like it here too. Just in different ways."
"It would be hard to enjoy the school know with Umbridge around," Ginny said with a line of distaste flooding her words. I nodded at her meaning before turning to the paper remaining in my lap.
"Le Monde," Ginny said hesitantly as she tried to read the newspaper title. I nodded encouragingly as I opened the magazine fully for her to see.
"It's what I asked for from Jacqueline. Le Monde only sends the newspaper to France."
"Sounds normal," Ginny said, eyeing the paper with a quizzical eyes. "It's a muggle paper."
"Right, I have to change that." I took my wand from my robes and pointed it at the bolded M at the top of the page and after a hesitant moment said the words: "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!"
The M flipped like it was doing a backflip on the page and quickly I took the front page and opened it out wide. The pages that were once full of perfume adds and news on their no-maj prime minister's judgement on the latest Parisian riot had changed to moving pictures of a seamstress ad on silk embroidered cloaks on one corner, a watch ad with a fourth hand to tell the wearer if they are near any dark magic on the opposing page and a mass article down the left hand side on details to the recent breakout from Azkaban. The ten pictures from the Daily prophet were still there, all of them looking more disgruntled than what I remembered. Maybe they knew they were in a French paper and were truly disgusted by it.
Wouldn't be the first time a picture reacted to its surroundings.
"What do they say?" Ginny asked, eyeing up the Azkaban article. I scanned it quickly, finding to my great surprise that there was in fact many mentions of You-Know-Who's return and questioning Fudge's role in the matter.
"Leave it to the French to complain about the UK when given the chance," Ginny said, sounding impressed at what I had relayed.
"It just shows how bad it's getting here. The amount censorship the daily prophet shares, I mean," I added looking up from the paper. But Ginny was nodding along with me, her gaze dazed off in thought about who knew what.
"I meant to ask you," I started after a moment, "But I figured it was the wrong time to ask on the train-" Ginny turned to me and it made me falter. She knew what I was alluding to.
"Never mind," I said, sensing the mood change. I turned to the newspaper and turned the page for something new. But the awkwardness broke quickly as Ginny answered me.
"My dad's fine now. He was discharged from St. Mungo's before Christmas so we did a family celebration."
"That's good to hear. Did he have along stay at St. Mungo's?" She nodded, but I knew not to press any further. To my surprise, Ginny kept talking after another pause.
"He was attacked by a snake. So there was poison control that made his stay longer than usual. But the healers at St. Mungo's are nothing to scoff at."
"I've heard they're the best in the country," I admitted, drawing away from the obvious topic my mind revolved around.
A snake? What damage could a possible snake do to Mr. Weasley that would send him to the hospital for enough time to send all his children out of school? It would have been something serious not to mention dangerous. But were such snakes in the wild in Britain?
"What are you two up to?"
We both looked to the call to find both Sam and Ella walking from the covered halls to the courtyard in their warm cloaks.
I hadn't seen Sam since breakfast, something I had at first took to mean she was at quidditch practice until I spotted Draco in the common room with some of his gang.
Sam was disappearing to who knows where a lot recently. Though I couldn't exactly call her out on it without feeling like a hypocrite. She had those Ravenclaw boys to call friends too that I kept forgetting about. She did a good job on not bringing them up around me; Something Ginny sometimes forgot about.
"Did you see the new decree by our lovely High Inquisitor?" Sam asked, walking up beside me and taking a seat. Ella stopped in front of me and looked down at the moving pictures of the newspaper curiously.
Ginny gave snort that made the three of us turn to her.
"One of my brother's friends, Lee Jordan, caused trouble over that decree. Since Umbridge said information relatively when decreeing that teachers can't mention info outside of their subject, he thought that extended to Umbridge and her ability to boss us around."
"What happened to him?" Ella asked. Ginny gave a small shake of the head in answer.
"He's been icing an injured hand for the past three days."
The three of us winced and internally I felt grateful for being in Slytherin. Umbridge had not so subtly avoided giving out detentions to any Slytherin so far but plenty of news had spread over her methods.
"Someone's going to have to kick her off her podium sooner or later," Ella said bitterly. "I mean, you see what's she been doing to the teachers..."
"Hermione's told me Umbridge has it out for Hagrid now."
"And Trelawney," Sam said, "though I guess that's old news."
"What do you think she's going to do to them if they fail?" Ella asked with a growing frown.
"Boot them if she can, I'm sure," I mused, thinking of the possibilities.
"Dumbledore won't let that happen." Ella replied quickly. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Trelawney is a an old coot but at least she grades well. You just have to write rubbish and she'll believe it if you say stuff with enough fear in your voice."
"I wouldn't know," I said candidly. "I avoided Divination like the plague after what Hermione told me."
"No one asked, Ava," Sam said, making the others smoother grins to themselves.
Following our disbandment from the courtyard on the pretext that I had work to do, I found myself back at the library with Le Monde tucked in the crock of my arm.
Madam Pince was sitting at her desk with her usual pinched expression that seemed to sour further as I approached her desk.
"What may I help you with?" She asked in the furthest from a welcoming tone. If I knew any better, I would assume her distrust in me emanated to the numerous times I had caused a scene in her library. If she only knew the true number of times I had created such scenes in the library. And worse.
"Do we have any books on the Sacred Twenty-Eight?" I asked sounding as demure as possible.
"What do you want to know about the Sacred Twenty-Eight?" She asked eyeing me in a squint. Her curiosity didn't do much for my nerves as I was used to far worse questions angled at me from Benoît.
I simply gave her a polite smile and replied, "I was told of them from a classmate and wish to learn more. Can you help me?"
She gave me another long look before pushing away from her desk and motioning me to follow her.
"I can't say I'm surprised students are curious about such a waste of space on my shelves," she said in a low tone as we walked passed tomes of books sitting on a desk while a fourth year Ravenclaw and a similar aged Gryffindor rearranged other texts on an open shelf. At seeing Pince walking their way, they stopped their dawdling and pretended to be counting books and checking numeric codes of the spines of the books.
Whether Pince noticed the falsehood of her staff or not, she gave no comment and kept walking past with me following quietly behind.
"It's always Slytherin house who asks for such a book," she went on as we turned down a line of shelves and out onto another hall of shelves, these ones smaller in size with thinner spines of books peeking out of their spaces.
"You'd think you Slytherins would have learned by now the importance of other topics."
"Like what?" I asked, continuing my sheared. Pince stopped at a shelf and pulled out two books: one in black velvet with silver lettering and another in grey canvas.
"Like information that sets up your future career. What knowledge do you wish to gather from the lineage of 28 families?"
I played dumb and shrugged at her critical eye.
"I'm just curious."
She took a long look at me, but deciding that her time was better spent elsewhere she gave me a nod and walked off without another word.
I placed the books down on the table that lined that shelf and turned on one of the shelf lights above me before sitting down.
Opening Le Monde again, I turned back to the article on the Azkaban escapees and spent a moment scanning the names listed.
Antonin Dolohov
Bellatrix Lestrange
Rabastan Lestrange
Rodolphus Lestrange
Mulciber
Augustus Rookwood
E.F Travers
After tracking the last of the names, I took the first of the two books, the black silk cover with silver writing. It was interesting as there was no author on the label, only the title: Pure-Blood Directory. I opened the front cover and saw on the borrowing slip how true Pince had been on those who've read the book before. A line of names with the initial S for Slytherin documented the book with even Nott making an appearance. I half expected Draco to be on the list but he wasn't.
Probably has his own copy then.
It was a short lexicon of the family names all of which belonged to British lines and tracked back to surprise surprise, the age of Hogwarts founding with an important note of my house founder, Salazar Slytherin.
My curiosity got the better of me and I tracked Slytherin to the Gaunt family, one of two lines now considered ended with the other being Crouch.
Each family listed had their own tree that interlinked some of the other families in the line. From there I was able to find what Nott had meant earlier. Lestrange was linked to Malfoy through a sister bond between Narcissa Malfoy and her sister, Bellatrix Lestrange. She was married to Rodolphus (which I was surprised to find written in by one of the last to have borrowed the book).
As I flipped through the rest of the book, I found inserts in almost every family tree, with even a few scratched out names. Whether it meant they were dead or disowned I knew not though knowing how this goes, I would assume the latter.
Bellatrix and thus her sisters, Narcissa and Andromeda were from the Black family, linked to mass murderer Sirius Black. Cousins. It didn't take long after looking at the trees that there was some serious mixing of families almost to an disgusting extent. The families that kept to only pureblood wizards was few but the Black house was one of them.
I flipped next to the Malfoy tree. Draco's family was nothing to scoff at, though it didn't please much either. There was an obvious trend of only single generations with male heirs. And of the Malfoys inheriting the family line, they obviously married with the intention of keeping their line pure. It wasn't until the later part of the 19thcentury when I spotted more intermixing. Half-bloods. Many of them in fact were interacted in the blood line.
I released a breath I didn't realize I was holding and closed the book gently.
So at least his family wasn't full of inbreeds. I snickered at the thought and shook my head before grabbing the next book.
This book was interestingly enough a critique on the originating text I had just finished. While the Pure Blood Directory told the cold hard facts of what seemed to be the sacred 28, the next book, The Sacred 28 Blood Lines went on to describe in detail each fault of the families listed in the directory, and how more importantly, most of them were no longer truly pure-blood.
It also described the interbreeding and diseases formed in the families that were guilty of the transgression. On said list were the Blacks, Gaunts and Lestranges.
Grossed out, I flipped back toward the front of the text where a note had been scribbled in black ink.
Directory thought to have been written by Cantankerus Nott back in the 1930s.
I recognized the handwriting. Did Nott seriously write that? I shook my head and closed the book.
I was finding nothing else of value in its contents anyway. Bellatrix Lestranges face jeered at me from the paper, making me stop to watch. She almost looked ecstatic in her picture. As if getting locked up in Azkaban was her dream in life.
And that was Draco's aunt?
I stacked the books and placed them back on the shelf before gathering my things and turning off the light with a subtle click. Some things were better left unlearned. Pureblood lines were one of them.