KNOWN SOBRIQUETS AND/OR PSEUDONYMS: absolutely not, and should the attempt be made, you’re 10 knuts worth of ‘god help us.’
REGISTERED BLOOD STATUS: pureblood.
KNOWN LANGUAGES: mandarin, japanese, gyeonggi dialect, english, archaic chinese (limited knowledge, mainly for the decryption of older forms of divination and runic talismans), baihua (note: written language), and basic french.
BIRTHPLACE: london, england.
GENDER, PRONOUNS: woman, she/her.
FAMILY: arcturus black iii, O.M. (father), melania macmillan (mother), orion black (twin), pollux black (uncle), cygnus black iii (cousin, †), walburga black (cousin), alphard black (cousin, disowned), druella rosier (cousin), cedrella black (cousin), charis black (cousin), callidora black (cousin).
MARITAL STATUS: not married.
SPOUSE, IF APPLICABLE: n/a.
OFFSPRING, IF APPLICABLE: n/a.
ORIENTATION: heterosexual and heteromantic.
DATE OF BIRTH & AGE: twenty-three ; may 9, 1927.
WESTERN ZODIAC: taurus.
PROFILE:
EYE COLOR: black.
HAIR COLOR: black.
BUILD & HEIGHT: 5′5 ft. bird-boned, narrow - very sparing of softness and coated in a meticulous gesso. posture is calculated and never really seems to relax. fluid and assertive with something to prove.
IDENTIFYING MARKS & SCARS: red spot in the side of her right index finger from when she was splinched. after a head injury at the base of the stairs, there is a thin, easily concealed line of scar tissue at the back of her head from which hair no longer grows.
SCHOOLING: hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry.
HOUSE, IF APPLICABLE: slytherin.
O.W.L.s.: astronomy ( A ) ; charms ( E ) ; defense against the dark arts ( E ) ; divination ( P ) ; herbology ( A ) ; history of magic ( E ) ; potions ( E ) ; study of ancient runes ( O ) ; transfiguration ( E )
N.E.W.T.s.: study of ancient runes ( O ) ; defense against the dark arts ( A ) ; potions ( E ) ; transfiguration ( E )
AMORTENTIA: shucked oysters, puffs of chimney smoke, the steam off of a glazed ham, lilies.
BOGGART: death ; a faceless, cloaked figure animating her thoughts and shortcomings as manacles chaining her to her fate. she also has a terror of war bombs, being tricked into bankruptcy and leaving a secure environment.
PATRONUS: horse ; historically a symbol of high class, youth, human endeavors (war, migration, entertainment), and the mediator between heaven and earth. in dreams, the black horse of death is synonmous with misery. unable to be cast (for now.)
KNOWN AFFILIATIONS: orion black, druella rosier, and ignatius prewett.
CURRENT MAILING ADDRESS: 12 grimmauld place, islington, london, england.
LAST SEEN LOCATION: carkitt market.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: disappeared for ten weeks after cygnus died which had been explained as a period of mourning (to anyone who had been nosey enough to ask), or otherwise the excuse she’d given her parents of having a bad case of cerebrumous spattergroit (that of which causes memory loss, which was ideal when avoiding certain questions.) it’s only been a few weeks since she’s been out in public - is hardly ever at the townhouse, always on the move.
‘ maybe, ’ he answers, mischievous smirk slipping onto his countenance with practiced ease. that’s where he thrives after all, getting in just enough trouble to leave behind a smile and a story. ‘ could be, y’know ? or could be they jus’ like me. ‘m funny, handsome. there’s plenty o’ reasons i could draw a crowd. ’ he swallows down the unhelpful thought that the mudblood label he’d been gifted ( if anyone could call his baby brother’s name in black and white print a gift ; a thing to cause blood to boil, watch the saccharine smile of the trickster spirit turn acrid, an urge to play at a game far more permanent ) by certain circles might also draw a crowd, but not the kind he wanted to attract.
features turn into a frown of confusion at her words. ‘ tha’s not a team, ’ he says with confidence, but in a gentle voice incase she’s made a mistake … even though he doesn’t understand how. thaxter has been reading about quidditch since he was six years old, and has what most would qualify as an absurd and useless amount of knowledge stored in his head about it, both regarding the current state of the game and its history. he is decently confident that the bogan broomfleet has never been a team, and certainly isn’t one currently active within the uk and ireland league. his confusion turns to curiosity as she continues her blatant lie, and something lights in the back of his mind ; the small spark of potentially being impressed with the absurdity unfolding before him. ‘ the montrose magpies, ’ he says with a nod when she references the “ wiffleball league ” he plays for. ‘ i’m impressed you know about our recreational work, most people just watch the quidditch game. personally i think the wiffleball is even more difficult to master than the quaffle, so i appreciate the recognition. ’ a pause. ‘ you know, i don’t think i’ve had a chance to play stix. what position ? ’
“you think so.” lucretia’s features pinch as she assesses his face, not nearly as bland as she’d like to admit, but of harmless quality as a dog's might be, which is to say it demands too much attention, but it is still incorrigibly well-meaning. still, she cannot understand other’s adoration for him as something as certain and ordinary as rain, wind, or flowers turning their heads to follow the sun. “this doesn’t seem happenstance to your charm. maybe they like to humor you because you’re annoying.”
then, her hand flung into the air as if to bat away gnats or smoke. “you’re wrong.” she’s certain, lofty as an animal and proud as one too, and by all counts unmistakably miffed. if lucretia had a tail, it would curl in a signal of warning at thax; as would her claws appear, and the black eyes narrow, which they do, cat or not, as offended as being thrown into a pool of water, or a vat of cold air. “it is a team. they’re portuguese. how have you not heard of portugal?”
his descriptions are lost on lucretia, who makes only the pallid offering of a nod at his mentions of her knowledge and his own montrose magpies or montlily potpies. really, who cared but him? still, her body shifts itself around, as if to find a balance to comfortably stance itself in again. “stix is a chaser. and you?”
normally, normally thaxter is not particularly bothered when one individual hasn’t bought into his act, so long as the crowd was still on his side. that was the important thing. and perhaps bothered is not the right word, not quite, but rather that he sees it as a challenge of some kind. she, standing in front of him, has become an audience of one ( despite assertion otherwise ) and he is under personal obligation to try to entertain. ‘ so not a quidditch person, aye ? ’ he asks, ‘ or just more of an arrows person ? ’ he selects one of the english teams at random, even though any of them are equally likely.
‘ sounds like th’start of a riddle, but i don’ think you’ve given me enough to go on, ’ he says, eyebrows raising slightly in question. skull tips as he looks at her, as if he’s trying to pull another hint from her countenance, but the empty smile gives him nothing. there’s a flash of a memory, but he was at hogwarts at the same time as practically every wix from the country between the ages of twenty one and twenty eight, so that hardly helped. ‘ thaxter wood, ’ he says, identifying himself as if it is a token to be traded, for which he hopes he’ll be granted something in return. ‘ an’ you are ? ’
“oh, is this what this is? you’ve gathered this crowd because you’re a quidditch player?” when she looks around she sees a sight of all ages, all peoples. if someone could have divined the hour for her, she would have alchemized it into something worth her wait and sold tickets (after all, talents, abilities, and knowledge are all currency to be estimated and exchanged). the crowd would have gathered in a line while she stood at the front of it, arms crossed, exactly the way she regard him now: impatiently, and with one hand out. “i do like the sport. all the black’s do. i mean, have you heard of the bogan broomfleet? we have our places reserved at the team’s VIP boxes at every match. you’ll see me, lucretia black, on VIP box number 3.”
when she shakes his hand, and kneads his name through her head, it is only conducive to the glass-eyed acknowledgement of a stranger. no semblance of interest betrays her, no flicker of recognition. it is these very rare instances when life doesn’t feel like it drags, where one is allowed to act and fester without inspection or interruption at the scandalized tales of their last names. “so, maybe when you get big enough from whatever wiffle ball league you play in, you might see me at the box, cheering on - ” lucretia pauses to look past his shoulder, bright and wry for the mistake she is keen on making. “joao stix.”
in spite the sense of urgency, she is, after all, willing to bare him the promise of another day. “and maybe, just then, i’ll let you tell me a joke at my expense.”
the way he had hidden, as well as thaxter wood could given his personality, over the summer was now less possible given the return of the quidditch season. despite some personal misgivings, mostly concern for his family, quidditch’s hot topic was all smiles whenever a camera is turned to him. partly because he was a stubborn git who refused to let whoever it was talking about him make him disappear completely, and partly because ( as he had since he was a child ; little thing that yearned to hear stories about himself repeated ) he had an vain streak in his soul that thrived off of the attention. he hadn’t exactly planned to turn the front of the restaurant where he intended to have dinner into a photo opportunity but … well, sometimes things just happened. he’s grinning wide as the camera flashes, arm around a witch of similar age to himself, and gives her a wink as she heads off. he doesn’t mean anything by it, but he can feel the headache that his manager is going to have as he repeats his reel it in, thax speech. it’s just good fun to cause a stir.
he watches with curiosity as someone pushes to the front, questioning the man with the camera. he’s both impressed and in disbelief and he cannot wait to see what she does next. ‘ we’re not charging, ’ thaxter assures her, stepping forward with a bit of a bounce. ‘ if y’need t’get past, go on in, but if you’re a fan, ’ he pauses and flashes her a smile, ‘ i mean your up here already, you might as well jump in. there’s not really a line s’much as a crowd so. ’ he shrugs slightly, caroming ( or quite nearly ) back to his original position, a few paces back. he cocks his head in an invite and holds out his hand to her. ‘ i know ‘m not pertinger, ’ he name drops the seeker of the magpies, ‘ but i promise ‘m more fun. even for two minutes. bet i can make you laugh, miss … ? ’ he says, fishing for a name. he found people liked it when you were a bit more personable with them.
lucretia seems to wobble like a flickering light; at times she seems to be similar to orion in height, jarring pedestrians like ants who have just noticed the spider in their midst, and at other times she can vanish so well that someone would be able to mistake her for an open seat on the 10:15 a.m. train that passed by surbiton station. but now, both sick of standing and waiting, lucretia doesn’t take to the notion of drawing attention to herself kindly. she is whatever the emotional opposite of a cherry-on-top or a pertinger is.
"not at all.” she likes the tea from here like everyone else in london; she likes the gargoyles in the private parlor even more. so she offers a simple and bland smile, a well-worn groove as far as social reflexes have taught her. a smile that empty can mean absolutely anything. in this situation, it is also a cover for the very rare sense of surprise that doesn’t take root at her stomach. rather, the sort of the curiosity of roots who spread beyond their borders. but in contrast, she slips aside from his hand, and thax altogether, like the easy shadow of a serpent through brush where the air won’t be as stuffy and never makes gambits or claims. “i’m not part of your audience. or whatever you’d call this.”
‘and, i am—’ money, plant, and equipment – in four syllables, ‘valuable,’ and not meant to be galavanting. “not someone with spare time for a joke.”
september 23, 1950
// the verdant reliquary
@snappedwands : lazarus avery
it’s been weeks since the news broke out and it has beat onto her senses like a fist at the door. a part of her, the nerves dedicated to damage control, had already dialed down the distal regions of her brain to silence. only the steel remained, sorting from task to task as a machine might. so she had spent entire weeks smiling – blandly, pleasantly, consistently (much like a clock or a photograph in eternal loop) to everyone who can see her, especially those at the front counter. the kind that cuts gossip short and discourages extended conversation by feeding on other’s sympathy. only then when she is alone in the four walls of her room does it come loose like a knot.
here, in the brief interim before the sound of a customer entering through the door, lucretia’s smile persists the way a rubber band yanked between two fists persists: tightly, and with an interest in snapping. she is not used to this—feeling displeased at lazarus, someone that had inspired genuine appreciation—but as it were, the new wizengamot law had only added onto the mole hill of problems that had to be taken care of, and lazarus wasn’t someone she wanted to take care of, least of all with the kind of flair that the burial society acted upon.
“so,” voice tempered like a rattle of laundered coins that she could pass as genuine, “i hadn’t considered it till i overheard a gamble on my way here, but which family do you think is going to drop first like flies?”
here, lucretia is a nondescript, a bystander among many just adjacent to the action, a tendon in the neck that turns the head rather than the head itself. and lucretia being a hare doesn’t know a thing or two about delay, other than it being a hindrance, which is why she hasn’t understood why the entrance at the restaurant has been barricaded by all these people. really, thaxter wood is someone who she should know and should be interested in, but isn’t. be it a careless disregard for sports or an extended leave of ten weeks, lucretia has now looked at him a dozen times, sideways, mirrored, so intently that she’d slightly recognize something about him by way of the reflection of milk glass dinnerware winking at her from inside the restaurant. however, it does not, because she doesn’t care, so she easily relegates him to the role of bus boy, or one of the annoying sort of peddlers that had come into some money after selling necklaces, probity probes and other joke items after the news of the dinner party barreled into wizarding london.
as both a hare and a child of immediacy, her stride takes form as a bird taking flight into turbulence –– soaring effortlessly into the headwind in non-flapping venture. “excuse me, hi ––” she’s cut off by the circumference of a camera that she takes up entirely with one beady eye, bright and unimpressed, and then the corner of her mouth and jaw, each set equally as firm, turns to its owner. “what do you think you’re doing?” and then, rearranging her fur stole, she turns to whatchamacallit: “how much do you want so i can skip the line? and before you ask, i’m well acquainted with the owner.”
could you please state your name, age, house, and wand specifications for the record?
“lucretia charis black, 23 years old. i’m a slytherin alum. my wand is eleven inches and made of mulberry wood and a dragon heartstring core.”
who sent out your invitation to the Norris’s home?
“i assume mr. cecil norris did.”
was there a signature of any kind?
“it was signed to the name of cecil norris esq.”
did you attend the event with anyone?
“no.”
could you state, in your own words, what happened at mr. norris’s home prior to his arrival?
"i remember everyone was confused because it was getting late and the host hadn’t showed up at all.” there’s a long pause followed by a crease in her forehead that makes her look like someone who had risen from a thousand year sleep and was stuck making sense of everything that transgressed before and after the slumber.
though in fact, she saw and sensed many things that night, even if she had been distracted after her encounter with said pandora box. but it’s something that she bares with equal distance, the minutest of details carefully laid out around the aurors. “eventually we all sat down for dinner, and still nobody had shown up, and then fleamont potter - yes, FLEAAA-mont. write that down. he gets up and invites everyone to the lounge to try to speak to mr. norris the only way you can if you believe someone is no longer among the living. so we went, we contacted someone, and mr. norris arrived.”
were you, at any point, aware of mr. norris’s location between the night of his alleged disappearance and the dinner party?
“i have always been entirely unaware of where he could be.”
as far as the seance, what kind of questions were asked of the deceased, mr. cygnus black?
uhhh, her lungs reverberate. what to coagulate? what to hide?
“how and when he died.”
did anyone seem particularly uncomfortable with the event during or immediately after?
"i don’t know,” she lies. “my mind was somewhere else.”
do you know if there’s anyone else who might be more knowledgeable about the situation?
she rearranged herself in her seat, looking like something unlike what she really is: a pawn, all manipulated strings, a slow learner only in games like these, but in the end, she still learns.
“mr. norris needs to be questioned. he bust the door open only after my cousin, cygnus black, said that someone in the house had murdered him. and then he abruptly ordered us to leave. now he’s nowhere to be found.”
do you know anything about the necklace that was recovered?
“i brought it in when it was still in the box,” she nods. “let me me begin by saying that i know it’s rude, but everyone was getting bored, and all that stomping up and down the stairs offset a ringing in my ears that i’ve learned to manage with medicine. anyways, i went to look for my coat because i keep my pill-box in there but it was gone. i assumed the servants had confused it with one of mrs. norris’s so i went and found nothing. i came back out, took taliesin lestrange with me the dressing room this time, and...” lucretia pauses again, doubling down in speed to funnel through dark tunnels where the caverns of slick, age-old memorex can be obscured from the inquisitive and hovering light above her. the cameras are rolling, rolling, and rolling to scenes no one can pinpoint, because the point is: the truth will always be what she makes of it, and not what actually transpires. “i picked up this jewelry box, and i just went into a trance. i felt like it was telling me to open it, and i knew i had to, but i was fighting the urge for so long that someone had to come get me for dinner.”
“and i couldn’t stop touching it, so i had it in my coat all night and it was so distracting. i’d never meant it to leave the house, but after mr. norris arrived, i knew it was something important to hand over after what happened. i want to make it clear that i did not know what was in there.”
were you aware of any business dealings between Mr. Norris and Mr. Black?
“no,” she says truthfully, but lucretia can hardly bring herself to be surprised over many things these days. a rat is a rat, after all. whether it was raised in a vacuum or not is besides the point: if the adornments were removed (the black name, the sterling silver, the servants, the playthings), the animal would still react in much the same way it would with others of its kind. and much like cygnus, cecil had grown to be a pest in the inviolable space of her home.
would you be willing to leave your memories with us for observation?
“how?”
she’s frozen on spot, expecting to feel blood run into her face, pinching it red, or for her chest to heave into a spell, but there’s nothing of that sort. it would be expected to have to extract memories from someone related to cygnus, but both mind and mannerisms would remain empty and blank in a way that bespoke of an ancient magick that barricades one’s mind in full measure.
“i was jinxed. and i already said i was in that dressing room for hours. i really don’t see how helpful anyone’s memories could be if they were fussing and jittery over that box for the length of the night.” her shoulders settle squarely. “so until you can explain how much of that isn’t going to be a waste of your department’s efforts, i say no.”
have you spoken with anyone outside of the attendees about the event?
“yes..”
if so, who? And what did you tell them?
her eyes cast down for but a breath, not out of shame but in emulation of a sore lightly prodded. despite everything, she was still dedicated to strong-arming the black family, of which lucretia was a mournful cog of nestling secrets and wider hurts. and that meant telling them details before they hit the press. “i told my family that cygnus black knew who had murdered him.”
“i also told them about the jewelry box and how mr. norris eventually arrived.”
is there anything else of relevance that you can think of that I didn’t ask you about?
the realization comes at the speed of a blink: the wife. they hadn’t asked about mrs. norris. why wouldn’t they ask where the other member of the household was?
“no,” she sighs in want of a quick escape. i now wash my hands clean of this. “i think i’ve had enough.”
timestamp : —— , august 16th, 1950 location : the dressing room, the norris estate, public & unwarded tagging : @miresofblack
taliesin only vaguely remembered the coat in question, but he was not one to tell lucretia black, of all people, no. their history was somewhat complicated, transitioning from something he might have described as antagonistic, to what it was now: habitual, a practice of routine. they were friendly because it made sense, and they kept up the relationship because that’s just what was done. instead he listens to what she has to say, her spiel of stupid house elves and the confusion that had occurred, and found himself being pulled up the stairs and, subsequently, into the dressing room belonging to mr. and mrs. norris. he frowns as they step inside, but lets the expression fall from his face before lucretia sees it. he’s uncertain about traipsing through the house without the hosts guidance, both due to the fact that it feels rude to disturb their things and because he was somewhat anxious about what he would find. what he knew about cecil norris was that he was willing to dabble in black markets and illegal commodities. he felt there was already enough heat on him without stumbling across an example of those business practices. he intends to let lucretia do most of the searching, while he stands in the doorway. ‘ remind me what it looks like again ? ’
much of how she moves forward is in mathematical steps.
she follows the problems she can solve, and she’s undone by those she can’t. the deeper she looks, the more she finds (or, in this case, doesn’t find).
the room is placidly silent. it is haunted by the absent presence of what once filled it and what had soon filled it. it is in these arresting moments, in-between when the world is about to erupt into motion, that lucretia finds herself arriving like a foot through a glass window, or an arm shoved blindly into the wrong sleeve. the light is here is patient, listens well, soaks two silhouettes from the entrance of the room deep into the silvery exposure of a wide spanning mirror. but in spite all its grandness, none of it arises anything in greater fluctuation than true exasperation not unlike from when she had ushered taliesin into the dressing room. but her frankness mustn’t be mistaken for anger — only focus, as frank and easy to follow as a swung gavel. theft is a crime, after all.
“it’s a paul poiret piece,” she says with a grim, thoughtless wave of her wand. “as you probably know, it’s french. it’s black and of panne velvet with a wadded collar.” and then, her eyes flash at him, bright and hard. “and the big-headed, springy servant stole it. and quite well, as i cannot even use the accio charm to full effect.”
and then, “accio, lucretia black’s coat,” and only the faintest rustle of a passementerie and a row of vitaldi babani dresses. “see? it’s out of sorts. i don’t know if it’s my wand or the room, or a hiding incantation used on my coat.” and so, while her conjecture can’t arrange themselves to a solid clue, the only trail to follow was the one proved by the brandishing of taliesin’s own wand.
artemis glances around the room, behind her, before glancing back to lucretia with a delicately arched brow and feigned confusion, “ i don’ possess the magic t’vanish; do y’think i’d still be here if i did? y’must have t’wrong person, lass. ” over the course of the night, her accent had thickened past it’s normal brogue. yes, she had been taken from her trial, but she had not vanished into thin air; she had been ushered out a door and made to sprint through back alleys and side streets. there was no elegance in what she was made to do. the anger that would have burned through her veins is dulled only by the rocks glass in her hand filled with two knuckles worth of amber liquid. “ as fer the chicken, i couldn’t tell ye. i had the salmon which was cooked t’perfection. ” the corners of her mouth upturn just so, a smirk beginning to form on delicate features. “ if t’chicken was raw, you’ll have t’take it up with our gracious host, if y’can find him. though since you ate it, i cannae imagine that you were displeased with yer meal. ”
the burial society, for lucretia, sinks like a weight dropped onto her chest. It crushes her, this sac of gravel that she is forced into relations, that has no purpose but to depress her, even if it had organized itself so efficiently to form a solitary boulder.
boulders are smooth; they press evenly from one side to the other, and in the dealing of relations, especially cousins, lucretia had never been so fortunate. that rock that is this troupe of deviants crumbles into countless shards that dig into her stomach, so when she observes artemis’ expression grow from a flatline into the smallest trough, the tiniest disturbance, it only twists something equally as corrosive within lucretia.
sucking air in through her teeth, she focuses on that – the breathing. not of week’s past as she held a wand at the neck of a guard in the trial of the wild thing new-caught, or the meetings that undertook the besiegement of the ministry, but simply resisting the connivance of how a bushy tailed beast could even begin to understand the social cues and emotions of a real human.
no, it is something you treat like water, and you tread it. you keep your head above water. you think about who you will tear apart when you come out on the other side, alive, and all the more barbaric for it.
“that was not literal,” she makes plain in the silence that follows, rearranging her body as way of self-modulation. “and i’m not upset. though i imagine it’s last decent meal you’ve had, or ever, since you’ve.... not vanished, as you’ve put it, but hid among the bushes with the erklings?”
A brooch of her namesake, “B,” carved out from transparent moonstone and set in white and gold. Never worn on blouses but on the lapel of a coat.
Too impatient and flighty for the quiet and exacting pursuit of graphite and needle through thread, Lucretia has instead built a collection of art prints that are similar in style to those of the muggle artist Tanaka Ryohei. These drawings capture the silence and solitude of the places that stubbornly resist the passage of time.
Fond of beautiful and difficult things (like the yosegi-zaiku) that she can work through with mental dexterity and quick fingers, she has a cryptex of five enamel dials that can rotated to spell the word ‘Heihe.’ Not quite what meets the eye, as it is the place she had left for weeks prior, her hope is that she doesn’t have to leave it to solved by a specific someone anytime soon.
What she insists is a “pill box” (as she is never seen without it, insisting on the lie of an incessant ringing in her ears) is a prized Meiji era inrō (a carrying case) that is without its cord fastener. It is a layered case compromised of small, nested boxes in which there is a an even smaller notebook with pages full of number sequences. They are recorded timestamps of her lapses under the duress of practicing occlumency. The pages are dated from the day she returned to Islington and appear nonsensical to anyone that hasn’t followed the pattern; because much to Lucretia’s frustration, the time lapses are not linear.
On her dresser, there is an antique French etui with bronze mounts propping up a liondragon-style egg. It opens with an incantation to reveal three vials containing a swooping evil cocoon with a little leftover venom, powdered dragon claw, valerian sprigs and one of the several bitter powders of Menoke that supposedly cure a number of ailments.
From collectors items to rare carvings, materials made of umoregi and umimatsu are a staple in the Black family due to its color and difficulty to obtain. As such, she has a gold signet ring and in its center, an outline of a fox etched in umimatsu. In East Asia, the Korean kumiho shares many similarities to the Chinese huli jing and the Japanese kitsune, all which explain fox spirits as being the result of great longevity or the accumulation of energy as the kumiho is said to live for a thousand years. The true identity of a kumiho was said to be a secret that is guarded by the kumiho themselves.
august 16th, 1950
// the lounge, norris house
@moonlegacy
they’re sitting in what lucretia calls the royal room. there’s a chandelier of variegated shine sitting above their heads like an imperial orb that speaks of most boastful things, like claret or golden filigree. but across from artemis, though, lucretia thinks she'd rather be anywhere else in the world even if she is glowing in different colors from all different shards. being beneath an anvil sounds more welcome. in front of a spear. hanging off a cliff, or being chased by a swarm of quintapeds. the distaste is palpable in the way she is bodied and tempered like a pyre, the quality of smoke and ash only matched by her eyebrow as it climbs into an arch. in a moment’s indecision, she glares resentfully at the snifter of kina lillet in her hand.
as it were, lucretia doesn’t have to look from above the rim to sense that of what she doesn’t care for: tiredness. it’s also not the same sort of unhappiness she’s felt all night, the sort that will stick and will forever be as time, which is also the length of an hour, so there will be no goodness or a well-meaning vowel to offer - especially when the clock begins to near towards the penultimate hour.
“well,” she exhales in frustration, almost as if the air around her has been pinched out of her. “seeing as you are ever the debutante tonight, maybe you’ve got a platitude about your latest vanishing act or even how the wasn’t chicken raw enough for you at dinner?”
timestamp: 16, Aug. 1950 · location: norris house, the conservatory ( unwarded, public space ) · tagging: @miresofblack!
he’d found himself in the conservatory a few times that night and lazarus tipped his head from side to side in thought as he found lucretia there. electing to open with a joke, he teased, ❛ you know, i don’t expect harvesting plants to be part of your job description. ❜ the whole evening had a horrific weight on everyone’s shoulders and lazarus hoped that this didn’t all prove to be a mistake that blew up in his face. helena’s attack on cecil norris had saved the man’s life but it had also led them to the trick situation that they were in at all. even he knew that his obliviation techniques were not strong enough to overcome what had been done and he was not about to ask helena hyslop of all people to try and cover up for him. no, he’d done things his own way and he had to be confident they’d worked. shaking his head, as though to pull himself back into reality as he looked at lucretia, that easy smile came back to his face. he pushed down the feelings of anxiety, replacing them with a placid lake of comfort and ease.
such as black-winged bats fleeing from unwanted light, she too weaves away from light chatter, hand pressed to the wall till her hand finds the shape of a knob and finds nervous pleasantries to null. however, in trading one source of light she gains another, only in the shape of someone that isn’t any less pleasant than the scent of plant-life. it doesn’t make her smile, but her eyes brighten with brief warmth and appraisal.
she’s never been one for delicacy, but by all accounts had she possessed the spirit of things that are made by candlelight and the stories made thereafter, she would not have thought of herself to be the wrong kind of company for magical plants like that of the white snakeroot, the castor bean, rosary pea, oleander, and persian tobacco that rest in potted rows of the conservatory. they bespoke of slow-grown violence in the way they branched; raised, smooth and gutted from the insides; at times purple-striped, and mottled, making the skin irate and throat shut. where they bloom, lucretia thorns. but were she also someone that knew the right words to things, she’d consider that she did possess the soft, underhanded care needed to coax things out the dirt. if she, too, had the right imagination that comes with having bold roots that burr into cinderblocks, she would have thought of orion and how she possessed something magical in the bones that meant she’d been good at preening and emitting light. then, she would have smiled.
but there is no candlelight, no bold roots and imagination, so she does not think of these things. instead, she smiles in the direction of the moly plant. “not quite. my hands are more suited for topiary, if at all.” her fingers skip along the moly’s length as she turns the corner past the unit of plangentines. “though, for my employer, i’d be happily obliged.” and then, she finds herself trying to figure out if the next statement is a valuable leap in logic or an accompaniment to lazarus’ joke: “though we’re not here for work related matters, are we.”
there was something unnerving about the norris estate, and it wasn’t just the missing host. every guest in attendance seemed a little more on edge than usual, but that was to be expected — if their invitations were as disconcerting as druella’s was.
with a simple flick of her wrist, the placard emblazoned with her name went flying across the dining room toward, straight toward the opposite end of the table where she had seen a matching ‘euphemia gibbon’ card earlier… only to circle back around and fall right back into it’s original place like it never left. her lip curled in something resembling disgust as she read the names on either side of hers — not company she usually kept. a small gust of wind that seemingly came from nowhere billowed the tablecloth, as if the house was daring her to try it again… and like the grown ass adult she was, dru stuck her tongue out at the not - so - inanimate object.
she was about to leave ( the dining room, though the leaving the estate did cross her mind more than once throughout the night ) when she spotted a familiar face… and because she was still channeling her inner first year, she pouted, folding both arms over her chest. “whoever made these seating arrangements has a death wish,” she grumbled, head canting to the side. “i can only hope that you faired better with your assigned dinner companions than i did.”
at the far end of the room, resting like a panther sunning itself in the presence of lesser beasts, lucretia is still and silent. robed in ivory and the bearing of a marble bust watching in charged silence known best by dormant volcanoes, she is as mich as direct and unsavory. “i don’t know,” comes the flat and orderly tone. “and i don’t care for them at all.”
“i hate it here.” airily, plummy, and dismissively, her hand motions to the air as if to gesture that her distaste for the party was in its architecture or its aesthetics. after all, she has vision aplenty, but other people craft the clothes or paint the paintings, so she cannot trust the scaffolds of a missing man’s home when their beautiful oddities all but seemed a menagerie of his own making.
absently, with eyes upon no fixed point, she turns to the curve of druella’s elbow to lead them down the length of the hall as if she knows its best to be displayed elsewhere, which is not the same as trying to hide. it would imply that lucretia black was afraid or troubled or anything beyond absolutely inconvenienced, especially when lucretia’s demons were more distasteful and diseased than someone as inconsequential as an animal trainer.
like now. looking at druella is so often like looking into a painful mirror, which in turn so loves to leer back, and play with its food. and as far as meals go, that of dark creatures and beautiful, breakable things to knock over ,are certainly appetizing enough. druella’s bones are fat with mess and lucretia knows when to reel that wiliness like fish caught onto hook.
“do me a favor? stay away from anything that leads beyond the staircase.”
𝒊 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒌𝒏𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 — i never promised you an open heart or charity / i never wanted to abuse your imagination
𝒔𝒚𝒏𝒐𝒑𝒔𝒊𝒔 : the date is may 25th, 1938, and spring is not the only thing twisting dark damsons by their stems.
her clothes don’t fit quite the way she likes it – being away for months had meant she’d grown out of everything but aside from the lightness, she is clean and sprightly as spring rain, and has arrived at pollux black’s countryside estate like a strong current blowing through the drapes. the morning had been spent hovering about the entire estate, listening to her aunt’s mumbling about minding the carpet, the way the humidity clung to the glasses, fussing at every green thing in turn until alphard, poking his head out from the top of the stairs, asks if lucretia has seen the great dane in the courtyard.
“maybe i saw it the foyer,” she says as she draws closer to the railing, “but i saw cygnus cleaning today. what’s that all about?”
alphard finds her trivia hardly interesting but simply stupid. it’s obvious he’s busy about the dog and all, and what he does offer is not quite an explanation but a well-know fact: “cygnus doesn’t do many things, much less with cleaning anything.”
“oh.” lucretia’s hand settles on the edge of the railing where she lingers inconveniently, smiling like a thunderhead on a tether worth pulling. “you don’t say.”
-❈-
it’s noon now, and the day's heat is whistling through her kindling body like a greeting.
she looks behind her and finds that the light behind her is weaker — like looking at sunlight through a fine white cloth, orion is now sat at the hilt of the mound, a silhouette of grey and shadow no different than an unsuspecting doe resting in a round, makeshift nest of grass.
'can you believe—' (now rolling her eyes, a fine spray of lucretia’s flyaway hairs scatter with irritation in the breeze; in this way, it's true that lucretia has always been a thing of motion.) '—they're making me learn—' (and motion, like way of sound, can only be compelled to change its state by the actions of an outside force.) '—about those BEASTS!' (and lucretia, by way of law, will always be the one of two to carry that force.)
the way he sounds and looks at her seems to turn every leaf, every single one, to a breathless crisp. “what.”
“the half-beasts. i’m talking about centaurs.”
he glares for something else that isn’t her answer even if it is all the more unspectacular and irritating. “like you? you’re half-gnome yourself.”
lucretia wastes no time shoving him into the grass with the delicacy of a bulldozer. “don’t ever say that to me again.”
and then she felt a tug. it was the kind of tug like having a rug pulled out clean from beneath her, like a plug yanked out straight from a socket. and then another tug, carrying with it that same sense of surprise, the same sense of blinking and finding herself severed until she’s face-planted into the ground. the dead of spring breeding dead thistles that scratch her bare legs with each shock of pain with every tussle, shredding whiteness into her skin and pinpricks of blood in the afternoon glare.
"you SNITCH—” he mumbled between both of lucretia’s hands she’d placed over his face in attempt to ward him off. “now i won’t be able to go to the world cup game, because of what you did, you snitch!”
“stop it, cygnus!”
they strike each other hard enough to ring a two-tone bell, the sound mad as a bull and heavy and scarlet enough that it all but shakes the trunk of the trees.
“you shouldn’t have done what you did!”
the thought of it leaves an agitation, a trepidation, like wings beating in her chest, that precise half-moment she’d watched cygnus hide something in his pocket before going through a chest full of linens. at first she’d thought he had been cleaning, that perhaps had meant to launder the linens, but elves did the laundry and she’d found for herself the antique pipe he’d placed behind four layers of linen.
“you stole.”
“and was it worth it to have told? well, let me tell you something lucretia - nobody likes a know-it-all, especially one as stupid and sneaky as you.”
when she’s older the pressure of her disdain will smash windows, but for now it only rattles in her scowl, the spring air giving a violent rustle as if it’d developed the requisite nerves to feel cold. lucretia stands over him and delivers one final spat:
“i’m not to blame for the bad thing you did, cygnus.”
when she shuffles down the path that cygnus had led her to not long ago, the soles of her shoes drag on the dried-out flower heads that litter the path, slogging miserably and diminishing the brown husks to ash. cygnus is following in her tracks and calling out to her only to remain in miserable earshot.
it is only when she nears orion she is reminded her to correct her dizzied gaze. “do not ask,” is all she has to say, “but you may see later.” with a hand now at his forearm, she steers them to a less aggravating area of the estate. “ right now i’m thinking bad things because i’m mad.”
-❈-
there’s a lag in the star’s sparkle, a wrinkle, a chink, in the way she blinks and unwraps her eating utensils and crosses her legs at the ankles after taking her seat at the table. both violent with thistle and scalded like flowering dogwood refusing to be pared for the cold bark of winter.
“a-yā!” her mother’s hand pecks at her hair and the slit of dirt on her elbow. “don’t look so pestilent, lucretia. we’ve hardly begun to cut into our food.”
terse, but still shaken after the tremor of cygnus’ underfoot, lucretia decides to try her best to remain placid. “i’m sorry,” she exhales with a squaring of her shoulders, gently smoothing out the fabric of her skirt as each thistle catches her fingers like a small sting. now with butterknife in hand, she’s cutting into a scone and eyeing cygnus with the fondness of an arrow enroute to bullseye. “i guess that cyngus and i are just not good at playing fair.”
the other looks up in gummy embrace and toothy smile. “it’s all in good fun, really.”
“but lucretia isn’t used to such excitement...”
“she has to.” a third voice announces as graceful and filled with intent as a serpent, or arrowhead, both marked with imperial demand. “present afflictions tend to our future good - better she and orion scrape their knees in the bounds of our homes than be clubbed over the head by anyone else outside our gates.”
they all nod. but what they don’t say is that tyrants are blind to their own rubble until they are crushed by it; which is to say, there is a kind of joy in the being crushed, as well as a kind of apathy. that’s all holiness is, really – the joy of indifference. so lucretia sinks like a stone into her seat. at a glance, her expression is flat, the body looks discarded, like a doll flung akimbo, but she’s eleven and all play, a wind-up toy waiting to be vitalized again after dinner. she doesn't know words like hate, like smash, like pain, like war, like murder, but she knows that familiarity is a type of ownership, ownership a type of omnipotence, and so that famous black family spirit is naturally crammed tight into all four foot, eleven inches like a handful of a molotov cocktail.
so she’ll play along, and the look she levels him from across the table is scorched and barren from the height of day. “next time, cousin, we play a game that you won’t see coming.”
Rowan felt the thrill buzz through her as she got a response to her question. Finally someone who she could hopefully give her information she could use to write a good piece about. It wasn’t until the person turned around that she recognized the Raven-haired beauty that always seemed in control of, well, everything.
“Miss Black, lovely seeing you here,” Rowan replied, ever as warmly and ignoring what could be considered a personal dig. “Hey, low hanging fruit is all it takes for someone to take a bite.” She replied with a smile.
Rowan grabbed a quill that she had tucked behind her ear, almost impossible to see behind her long curls and a piece of paper she had held in her hand and started writing. “Were you there? At this festival.” Rowan asked directly as the quill moved at the pace of her words. “Did you see anything or anyone out of the ordinary?”
“and you are that someone.” lucretia regards this so flatly and dead in the eye it’d shame even the minister of magic for waylaying her. though it wouldn’t be right to call it scathing, or unreceptive unto the other’s efforts. "i was there, but not for the entirety of the day. if there was anything out of the ordinary, i didn’t notice,” she says in earnest, no balm or indication, only what she has offered at the wake of june 13th and every day after it. almost nothing. which is to say: not quite guarded, implying the active maintenance of a façade, but naturally obscure, like the details of far off mountains or both sides of the moon.
but if there’s anything lucretia learned since then, it’s that very little is certain, and it’s better to assume more moving parts than not enough. all the more, now, that change that can be made when the pen is permitted to be mightier than the sword (a fact that had unfettered in her a degree of hate for every byline that added to walburga’s freak value to the press.) a sentiment that uncle pollux had matched tenfold, and whereby they family had agreed to do the impossible to not have the black family’s indignities on any article ever again.
but this, too, is a gesture careening into an offense. lucretia’s insight on mr. norris’ disappearance in the tabloids would have her chastised for having expressed herself in a way incapable of judgement and moderation, while the rest of the sacred, pureblooded families would have considered it a bleak attempt for notarization.
lucretia chuckles then, as if she is keen to a secret that rowan has yet to find out. lesser to known to the greater public was that pollux had upturned any and all writers after his son’s fall from grace. “but, i wouldn’t write that,” is all she says, narrowing in on her to intimate at a fact (not quite a secret, after all) they both know: the black family was worth its weight in galleons and secrets to govern over wizarding london’s opinions. “i’m sorry i wasted your ink,” she lies lazily, like the cat that ate the cheese, swallowed the rat, and drank the milk.
“i figure you’re busy, taking to inform us citizens and what not—” her back turns to rowan, but not unkindly; instead, her slow gait seems an invitation to join. “but right now i’d like it if you’d join me for lunch. i’ve got a few questions of my own and.. i think there could be something enlightening to us beyond whitehall.”
Rowan Shafiq was weaving her way through all the people, trying to get a quote. With everything that was happening, she wasn’t the only writer vying to get more information. Nothing the press loved more than a mystery or three. Though in her mind, she was felt more concern - she was truly in the dark and had to be open to all answers, making her wonder if one of her compatriots had something to do with it.
Unlike the other reporters however, Rowan was bold enough to begin cold calling on people within the Ministry itself. Let them drag her out, she might get a quote or two first. She stopped and looked around, tapping someone on the shoulder. “Hello, did you happen to speak to Cecil Norris before he went missing?”
the ministry inquiry does not descend upon her.
lucretia descends upon it, as if everything that had occurred over the past few months had been little more than a matter of altitude, cabin pressure, and landing gears. it unfolds like that, at least: reintroducing her slowly, nerve by nerve, to the particular dregs of the auror investigation offices, though it no less summons what little patience she has, all because of a goat herder of some significance.
with one foot off from the elevator and several meters away from the the floo fireplace, the whirling voices around outside the ministry are at breakneck pace, but they’re so tangled— by the time she is capable of thinking, ‘noisy,’ and ‘shut up,’ it’s only when she is thinking of knocking someone out of her line of sight partway to ireland that lucretia feels someone beside her.
hello, the other says. you, lucretia thinks. she looks rowan up and down as if it had taken her a moment to recall the other’s name, though whether this was symptomatic of apathy or arrogance could not be said.
“miss shafiq, that’s lazy journalism. very low hanging fruit,” is lucretia’s greeting, hitting all the flat notes in her dull regard for rowan.
and then, there's a small sigh in appraisal: “why don’t you begin by asking me if i’d been at the festival at all?”
