Chapter Text
ARC I: DELLA, 1992
𓇢𓆸
“In the Underworld, there are three fates for a mortal soul.
The first are the Elysian Fields, where the heroes and righteous drink their fill, and revel in their version of bliss. The river Oceanus runs through, touching the wisps of the souls who lay there, its waters clear, untouched by the mess of mortal hands from above.
The second, the terrible, the Fields of Punishment, where the damned have their torture tailored. Here, find Sisyphus, find Tantalus, find the scum of the scum, the filth worth less than that which you expel. Find the rot, and see them in their place.
The final, and perhaps the worst: the Fields of Asphodel. Endless, endless fields of grey blooms, and souls, wandering, losing themselves in their death. Its inhabitants are neither saint, nor devil, leaving the Earth with barely an imprint, an even share of sin and virtue. They gave nothing, and are given nothing in return.
Dust goes to dust, and most of us go to Asphodel.”
Excerpt from History of Ruminations on Death, by Morticia Boechdel.
𓇢𓆸
When Della wakes up in the Hospital Wing, her father (her father! Merlin, that was still strange to think) is sat at her bedside. The first thing he says is: “Child, are you trying to kill me?”
Then, he hugs her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, and pulling her into his chest. His dark robes, the billowing, bat-like things they are, wrap themselves around her too, hiding her in a curtain that smells of clove and something else earthy she can’t identify.
“‘M sorry.” She’s speaking into his robe. “Didn’t mean to.”
And she really, really, didn’t. He could hardly blame her, really. All she’d done was stay to ask Quirrel a few questions! How was she meant to expect a kidnapping?
“Impossible child,” her father whispers, “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Della nods and can’t help but think they’ve come a long way since that July morning, when they saw each other for the first time.
It was a week before her birthday, and she had been making breakfast, carefully pouring and flipping pancakes, hoping her Aunt Petunia might spare her a piece, when there was a knock at the door. Noticing Della’s preoccupied hands, her aunt huffed, and went to open it for herself.
“You!”
“Hello, Tuney,” said a deep, drawling voice.
Della blinked. She had never heard her aunt so much as disagree with a stranger before, let alone speak to them with such vitriol. She’d also never heard anyone call her Tuney either.
There was a shuffling at the door that Della assumed was either the man being pulled in or pushed out.
“Girl! Come! Now!”
Della sighed, turned off the hob, and gave the fresh stack of pancakes a final longing glance before joining her aunt in the foyer.
There, at the door, stood a man that looked like he might be a vampire. He was pale, paler than anyone on Privet Drive, with an olive-y sort of complexion that suggested this paleness not to be his natural state, but something he’d acquired by virtue of staying out of the sun. In the middle of his face, he had a rather large nose, shaped like the ones she’d seen on Roman statues when she’d gone to the museum with her school. His face in general was severe-looking, with strong dark eyebrows and a pointy chin. His hair was dark, black like hers was, and pulled into a small ponytail that was so slick, it looked shiny under the fluorescent lights. His eyes though, his eyes were like hers, darker than brown, with irises indistinguishable from the pupil.
“Go on, take the girl,” Aunt Petunia had said, impatiently. “They told me you were dead, I’d have never have taken her in, otherwise.”
Della was going with this man? Did that mean… Was he…?
“I’m not here to take the girl, Petunia,” the man scowled. Della thought that the expression looked rather at home on his face, and guessed that it must’ve been something he did quite often. “I’m here to deliver her letter.”
With those words, he reached into the folds of his dark clothes and procured a thick, serious-looking envelope. Before he could hand it to her, Aunt Petunia grabbed his wrist.
“The girl is yours. Take her and explain your… nonsense away from here.”
Something stirred in Della’s chest. She was his?
The man’s scowl deepened. “The girl is not—“
“For goodness's sake, Snape, you and Lily visited me with her when she was born, how dense do you think I am?”
This, it seemed, finally gave the man—Snape—pause.
“We did what?”
Della squeezes her father a little harder at the memory of it all. Since then, Della had learned a precious few things about her family.
One: Her father, the man who’d taken her from the Dursleys that very day, was a wizard named Severus Snape and a professor and Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Two: Della Evans was a witch named Asphodel Eileen Evans, named for a potion’s ingredient and Severus’ mother, respectively.
Three: Lily Evans, her mother, was a witch and relieved Severus’ mind of all this information sometime around Della’s first birthday, for some reason that her father refuses to tell her.
She has, of course, learned some other things. For example, she is apparently the picture of her mother but with her father’s colouring. Where her mother had red hair and green eyes, Della’s gone monochrome, with pitch black in their place. Della thinks that this might’ve made her look plain if it weren’t for the scar-she-thought-was-a-birthmark on the side of her face. The thing is white as paper, and shaped like lightning, with bolts of it fracturing off of each other from its source at the centre of her forehead, turning her eyebrow white where a piece of it cuts through. From her forehead, it spreads through her hair, in a bright white streak sprouting from her skull.
This is another thing she has learned — her lightning, her scar, is leftover from the attack that killed her mother, and the greatest Dark Lord of recent times, leaving her both (unwillingly, on Severus’ part) parentless and a celebrity.
Like she said, it’s been a busy year.
“Ah, Miss Evans. I’m glad to see you awake.”
Like a switch had flipped, her father releases her, changing his position from wrapped around her to standing next to her, with a hand on her shoulder. The Headmaster enters the hospital wing and brings his large, suffocating magical presence (and garish, colourful robes) with him.
“Headmaster,” her father says, inclining his head respectfully.
“Severus,” Professor Dumbledore says, smiling genially. When he refocuses on Della, his eyes go tight at the corners, like they always do. Often, Della thinks he sees someone else when he looks at her. Maybe sees the mother she doesn’t remember.
“Now, dear girl, why don’t you tell me what happened from the beginning?”
So Della talks. She talks about the lessons she took after class with Professor Quirrel, the way he’d teach her to duel, the spells he’d guide her through, the history she’d absorbed at his knee. She talked about how meeting him after dinner hadn’t seemed suspicious at all until she woke up in that strange room and the mirror with her mum in it. She talked about how, when Voldemort found the fake, he’d tried to kill her and burned instead.
Through it all, her father’s face moves through a storm of small micro expressions, loud on the face that is normally so quiet. The Headmaster’s expression stays in that relatively neutral, grandfatherly way of his, with his hands tucked behind his back and his gaze attentive and kind.
At the end of it, her mouth is dry, and her throat is a little itchy from talking for so long. Despite being out of the Dursleys’ for months now, talking is still not something that comes easily.
“Tell me, my girl,” says Dumbledore, “Where do you think of as home?”
Della pauses, confused. Has Dumbledore been listening to a word she’s said? What has home got to do with anything?
“Hogwarts, I suppose.” Images flash through her mind. First, there is her dorm, with its four-poster bed and dark green sheets, with the bioluminescent glow it takes on in the day, and the slow sounds of the water lulling her to sleep. Then, there is her father’s quarters, a rare warm spot in the dungeons, filled with wall-to-wall bookshelves and scattered notes on his research and various projects of the moment. There is her bed there, its sheets dark midnight blue, with lilies embroidered along the edges, a tribute to both her mother and her own name, that Severus tells her were hers when she was young. There is his (their) cat, Hemlock, and her calico fur that he spells off of his robes before each class.
“Before Hogwarts, would you have said Privet Drive was your home?”
Privet Drive brings very different memories to the forefront. The early years that come to her are full of pain—from the stove, the hunger, her uncle—the later ones are silent, passing in a haze she woke up from when her father took her away in September, all those months ago.
“I lived there,” she says. “But… I don’t think it was home.”
Professor Dumbledore hums, in a minor key. Her father is silent, his eyes gone hard, like they always do when she mentions her life before.
“I’m sorry, my dear girl, this all must be terribly confusing,” Dumbledore says, chiding himself. “I only mean to determine the best outcome for you when it comes to this summer.”
Della goes pale.
“Della will be staying with me, at Spinner’s End.” Her father’s voice leaves no room for arguments.
“Indeed, indeed,” the Headmaster agrees. “I only meant to confirm what I already suspect to be the case.”
“Would you care to enlighten the rest of us of your brilliance, Headmaster?” her father says, drawling brilliance in the way he might drawl dunderheads when talking to her classmates. She cracks a small smile.
“When Lily died, I believe that she cast a powerful protection on young Della,” he says, “She always was good with runes, you know. Quite marvelous, really. I have long suspected it to be tied to her blood.”
“So you believed the solution was to leave Della with Petunia?” Severus asks, incredulous. “Headmaster, Lily was adopted.”
“I thought she might’ve aligned blood with the intent of family rather than the literal thing,” the Headmaster says, mildly. “But no matter, I shan’t question her brilliance. It worked out quite well for us, didn’t it?”
Della would, actually, like to know more about this supposed protection, if only to determine the ways it might fail. She suspects, based on the small twitch her father’s mouth makes, that he is thinking the exact same thing.
𓇢𓆸
Summer in Spinner’s End goes like this:
Della is given a room in the attic of her father’s childhood home in the town where he and her mother grew up. The property, surrounded by wards, is no longer the mugglehovel of his youth, and instead, through his own ingenious and careful ward work, a marvel of wizard’s space and familiar Slytherin comforts. It is in times like these that Della feels especially grateful to have a magically powerful and competent father.
Together, the pair of them will often brew and cook, with Della working on homework that the pair of them will review together, and improve on over a cup of peppermint tea. When he locks himself in his laboratory, Della wanders through Severus-approved areas of the town, walking down the park to meet the other local children and playing muggle sports she misses while at Hogwarts (Quidditch, despite being a sport, lacks the athleticism that football gives her, and, well, Della has always been good at running). She always wears a portkey — a silver necklace with a Lily on it and carries her wand holstered under her sleeve lest a rogue Dark Lord appear in the alley.
One day, when her father is particularly enraptured by some new brew of his, he gives her some money and sends her off to Tesco in town.
“Carrots, potatoes, short rib and stock,” he instructs her, “And, if you’d like, I believe you’ve earned a treat of some kind. Bring me back the change.”
She nods her head vigorously, he nods back once, and then she is out the door and on the loose. The Tesco is not so far from her, only a bit of the way into town, so walking is no great trial. Instead, she takes in her surroundings, marvelling at the stark difference between the Muggle world and the magical world she now calls her home.
The fashion, for one, is starkly different. Where she’s grown used to the draping nature of robes, most muggles wear trousers, swapping the silken and woolly fabrics that wixen favour for jeans and cotton (the texture of jeans was something she’d forgotten about in her months away, and something she had to reacclimatize herself to once she started to venture back into Cokeworth). Where many witches keep their hair tied, woven with magic into elaborate knots, many of the girls here keep theirs free, giving them a relaxed air that most of her Slytherin classmates scarcely emitted. Muggle men wear their hair much shorter than wizards. Most, like her father, favour that longish cut that lets it hang just above their shoulders, while the muggles have it much closer to their skulls.
The pure automation of it all feels more sterile in the Muggle world. While Hogwarts has its fair share of doors that open on their own, none feel the same as the slick slide of the aluminum doors that let her into Tesco.
She gets the groceries quickly, and as she’s making her way to the frozen aisle, she bumps into a woman and takes a tumble onto the floor.
“Oh dearie!” says the woman, “Are you alright, honey?”
“Fine,” Della says, wiping herself off. Upon a little inspection, it appears that her groceries are all right, too.
The woman smiles at her. She looks like, if Della had to guess, around Professor McGonagall’s age.
“I say, you look quite familiar,” she says, “Are you an Evans?”
Della blinked. At the beginning of the summer, Della and Professor Snape agreed that if anyone were to ask, she’d give them the name Leena (from her middle name, Eileen) Snape, believing it’d be safer to separate her Muggle identity here just in case some wixen ever passed through the town.
“I’m Leena Snape,” she says, smiling. She pauses, and before she can regret it, adds: “My mum was an Evans, though, Lily.” She doesn’t think a Death Eater would be hiding in a Tesco as a grandma, so she figures it’s probably safe enough to share. Besides, her face is well known at this point. The fake name is more to deter anyone from hearing her name and following a trail to find her. If she’s already standing in front of them, well, then the jig is up, isn’t it?
The woman laughs and smiles brightly. “I didn’t think that Snape boy had it in him,” she muses, “Good for him. Have the three of you recently moved back to Cokeworth, then?”
Della’s smile falters a little. “My mum died when I was a baby,” she admits, “But yes, my father and I have just started living here again for the summers.”
“Poor girl,” the woman’s face goes sad, barred with grief for someone she once knew. “You are just the picture of her at that age, you know?”
“Without the red hair, though, I’ve heard,” Della agrees. “I get it all the time.”
“I was their teacher in primary, you know,” says the woman. “I remember the pair of them; thick as thieves they were, you never saw one without the other. They even went to that fancy boarding school together. I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s called.”
“St. Helga’s,” Della provides, “That’s where I go now. My father is a teacher.”
“Yes, chemistry, wasn’t it?” Della nods. “Well, I’m glad he’s done so well for himself. Tell him that Mrs. Brown would love to have a cuppa and catch up.”
“Will do,” Della agrees, “Have a good day, Mrs. Brown!”
“You too, Leena dear.”
When Della goes home that night, her father makes stew, while she tells him about Mrs. Brown’s offer.
“I remember her,” he says, “She was always kind to me. I suppose I could do tea some time.”
“Told her my name was Leena, like you said,” Della goes on, “Why did you name me Asphodel, anyway? It’s… such a mouthful.”
“What are the uses of asphodels in potions?”
Della huffs. Trust her father to make it about potions.
“Well, I know they’re used in the Draught of Living Death,” she says, “For their quelling nature, and likeness to death.” She wrinkles her nose. “That’s not very nice.”
“Asphodels, more broadly, are used to let the effects of a potion settle over long periods of time,” her father says. “The most potent and long-lasting potions are infused with asphodel. And you’re right, much of this nature of theirs has lent them an association with death. Your mother and I… we thought about them differently.” His eyes are far away now. Della wonders if he’s lost in the memory, if he can hear her mum whispering about baby names in his ear. “Asphodels, in the Greek myths, were immortal lilies. When your mother was pregnant, we lived in very uncertain times. Names have power, Asphodel. We hoped that we could give you, if not immortality, a long life, despite the war-scape you were born into.”
“Does Lily have a meaning?” Della asks, curious.
“Your mother’s full name wasn’t Lily, it was Lilith,” Severus tells her. “The meaning behind that fit her much better. Lilies, the flowers, are meant to represent purity and innocence. Lilith was a demon, who refused to be subservient. That was much more like her.”
Della frowned. “That doesn’t sound like what other people say about her. Everyone always goes on about how nice she was.”
“Your mother was very nice,” Severus agrees. “But she also had a temper like nothing else, and could scream her head off when she really wanted to.” He smiles, wryly. “Believe me when I say I speak from experience.”
Della supposes that he would know best and nods. It was nice hearing these things about her mum. It made her feel more real, less like the Mother Mary much of the wizarding world believed her to be.
“What does Severus mean?”
“Stern or harsh, if you translate it from Latin.”
Della smirked. “Say, was Grandma Eileen a seer? Seems like she hit the nail on the head with that one!”
“Brat,” Severus says, without any of the harshness for which he is named.
𓇢𓆸
Della, technically, has a godbrother, though Draco Malfoy doesn’t know it.
When she found this out, she spent the better part of the following week watching the other boy in class. Being in the same house offered a proximity to him that allowed her to semi-stalk him without totally freaking him out. What she found, in that week, was that Draco was smart in the way that you could tell had been trained into him by a wealth of tutors, going about everything in an optimized manner that minimized work and maximized results. He was also ridiculously spoiled, sporting the newest and most expensive variation of just about anything you could possibly own, from eagle-feather quills to notebooks bound in that expensive dragon leather most other people saved for boots. Other than that, he was far from the budding Death Eater most of the Gryffindors seemed to think he was, and only really as racist as the average Dark-aligned Slytherin (which, while not a good thing, mostly meant that he was spouting rhetoric he didn’t really understand yet. Della had hope that becoming friends with him next year might help curb that before it became something worse).
Since her dad-being-her-dad is meant to be secret, Draco doesn’t know it, but it doesn’t mean that Della doesn’t think about it. She thinks about it especially hard when her dad has to go over to Malfoy Manor for appearances' sake and leave her at Spinner’s End alone.
“Why are you Draco’s godfather?” Della asks, one day, “You don’t seem to particularly like the Malfoys.”
Severus pauses. “Politicking, my dear. It was a strategic move for them. I was a good-standing Slytherin, a rare thing at that time.”
“Do I have a godfather?”
“You did,” he says. His face closes off, the set of his eyebrows changing just so. It’s an expression not dissimilar to the one he makes when the thought of her mother is paining him. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Della sighs, knowing she will not get a better response. Not tonight, at least. “Alright. Bye.”
He nods once, then disappears into the green flames of the floo.
Della sighs. The secretive nature of their relationship makes it so that she is often incredibly lonely. She wonders about what her life might’ve been like, without the war. Her mother would still be here, and Della would’ve grown up with her parents, together. Lily would not be a name cloaked in grief; she would be a presence, a feeling. Maybe Della would be going through the phase of hating her, like Hermione is with her mother. Or maybe they’d never fight at all, teaming up against Severus to make sure he saw the light of day more than a few times a week.
Maybe she would’ve grown up seeing the Malfoys, running around extravagant grounds filled with the albino peacocks her father so likes to complain about. She likes to think that if she had, Draco might be less of a ponce, and that he might show off his singularly redeeming wit in a way less aligned with terrible blood purity.
It’s painful that she will never know.
She sighs aloud and leans back into the settee.
What to do? What to do?
She supposes she could write a letter, though she doesn’t really have anyone to write to. She and Hermione had decided before the end of last year that letter writing was tedious and unnecessary, where calling on the telephone could be used instead, so they have not been using wizarding methods of communication anyway. She could write to Daphne, her closest friend among the Slytherin girls, but Daphne hasn’t written her, so would it be weird to initiate something this late in the summer?
Della groans aloud. Why were friends so complicated? It’d never seemed that way when she was looking at friendships from the outside, but now that she’s in them all she can think about is the ways she might mess it up.
At least the muggles she plays football with have low expectations. Their entire relationship is built on the fact that they happen to be there when she goes to the park.
Della sits up. Why doesn’t she just go to the park?
Satisfied, she slips on her trainers and slips out the front door.
But then, the strangest thing happens when she passes the ward line: a house elf pops into existence in front of her.
“Miss Asphodel! The Great Miss Asphodel, defeater of the Terrible Dark Lord!”
“Hello there,” she says, hesitantly. “Call me Della, please. What’s your name?”
This is apparently the wrong thing to say, since the elf promptly bursts into loud sobs.
“The Great Miss Della wants to know Dobby’s name?” He whimpers. “She is being even more kind than I’s be thinking.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dobby,” she says, attempting to treat the situation as normally as she can. “Why are you here?”
The elf straightens up at that and calms himself.
“Miss Della must not go back to Hogwarts!”
Della blinks. “What?”
“There’s being a nasty plot,” Dobby says, twitching a little as he does. “It is not safe at Hogwarts for Miss Della Evans!”
“What’s happening at Hogwarts?” she says, whispering. “What can you tell me?”
Dobby shakes his head before slamming it into the ground. “Bad Dobby! Dobby’s being a bad elf!”
“Stop that!” Della says, desperately. “Don’t hurt yourself, please!”
“Dobby can’t be telling you’s more!” the elf insists, “Miss Della must promise not to go back to Hogwarts!”
“Alright! I promise,” Della lies. “I promise, okay? Please just stop hurting yourself.”
“Miss Della is a good sorts,” Dobby declares, before disappearing with another pop.
Della sighs, then continues her walk to the park, where she continues to think about the exchange throughout the entire time she is there.
When she eventually makes it back home, she walks through the door as her father floos in.
“A house elf warned me not to return to Hogwarts.”
Her father blinks, making an expression she recognizes from when it appears on her own face. It’s a moment of internal processing, as if you can quite reconcile what you’ve witnessed with what you know.
“Did they say why? Whose house elf was it?” He stalks over to her the way he does when a student is about to add the wrong ingredient.
“I don’t know, but his name was Dobby—“
“Dobby, I see,” he mutters. “Did he say why?”
“He said there’s a terrible plot,” she says, rather unhelpfully. “He was pretty vague.”
“I’ll inform the headmaster,” her father says, simply, closing the topic for now. “Now, how did you occupy your time?”
“Went to go play footie with the muggle kids again,” she says, “I reckon’ I’m pretty good.”
“Are you?” he says, mildly, “I don’t suppose you’ll start a football league to compete with the Quidditch league?”
“I might, who knows,” Della says, cheeky. This is, of course, a lie, but it’s nice to think about.
𓇢𓆸
Going to Diagon Alley is the most exciting thing to happen to her all summer. She and Hermione had planned to go together, which leads to her also going with the Weasley Clan, due to her best friend's “friendship” with the youngest brother, Ron (Della puts those quotation marks there due to the overall confusing nature of their relationship. She didn’t think that friendship could contain so much fighting).
The morning of, her father has his hands on her shoulders, steadying himself and inspecting her for imaginary dirt, as if to commit her to memory.
“You will be safe,” he says. It is not an order, nor a question, but a simple statement, as if to speak it into existence.
Della rolls her eyes. “I’ve been fine so far, haven’t I? And I’ve practically explored every corner of Cokeworth on my own.”
“There were no wixen there,” he says simply, “And no reason for any of them to pay you any mind.”
Not like Diagon, goes unsaid. There, everyone will be watching.
“I’ll be fine,” Della says, more brave-sounding than she really is.
Her father nods once and squeezes her shoulder before stepping aside, allowing her into the floo.
If they were a normal father-daughter pair, perhaps this is when one of them would say I love you. As it is, she’s never even called him father aloud, despite doing so in her head. So she just smiles at him, then drops the floo powder and yells: “Diagon Alley!”
In seconds, she finds herself whipping through the system, hair flying around her wildly, before being spat out the other end, stumbling forward into the Leaky Cauldron.
“Della!”
Della whips her head around, smiling brightly at the sound of Hermione’s voice.
Her friend, she notices with envy, has grown over the summer, inching closer to womanhood. Curves now line her frame, shaping her robes around her just so, where Della remains drowning in the sea of their fabrics. She hopes this will change soon, but isn’t holding out hope, considering her father’s similar long, skinny and lanky frame.
“How was it? This summer?” Hermione asks, holding her in a. tight hug. “Everything… all good?”
Hermione is the only person other than Severus, the Headmaster and Della herself who knows who Della’s father is, and thus, she is the only one who knows where she’s been the past few months.
“Good,” she says, honestly. It was good. She and her father had become very comfortable in sharing a space in her first year. The summer had made them comfortable interacting in that space now too. It was baby steps, but given her history, she thinks it’s a big deal nonetheless.
“I’m glad,” Hermione says softly. “Now come, I’ll introduce you to the Weasleys.”
Della sighs and lets Hermione pull her toward the hoard of gingers in the corner of the pub.
The matriarch badgers her husband as she watches them approach, and the man quickly puts down the Prophet to face her straight on.
“If it isn’t Asphodel Evans!” says Mr. Weasley, extending his hand. “I can’t say how pleased I am to meet you.”
The reaction to Della is often a mixed bag. To some, she is the saviour, the beacon of hope that downed their Dark Lord. To others, her muggleborn mother and unknown father mean that her blood is too dirty to be elevated to such a station. The Weasleys seem to be in the slightly preferable former group.
“Della, please,” she says, taking the hand. “Asphodel is too much of a mouthful. It’s good to meet you, Mr. Weasley.”
The man is thin and tall, not unlike her father, with a rosy complexion that suggests he spends more time in the sun. His ginger hair has gone white at the temples and is thinning on the back of his head, putting him just on the older side of middle-aged if she had to guess (middle-aged, that is, for wizards, putting Mr. Weasley anywhere between fifty and seventy).
“Arthur, then,” he replies, beaming at her.
“And I’m Molly,” says the matriarch, going in for a hug. “Truly wonderful to meet you, my dear. I remember your mother, you know, you are just the picture of her! Though I suppose your colouring must come from your father.”
Della squeaks as Mrs.Weasley squeezes her once before letting go. The woman is decidedly more stout than her husband, with a wider frame and large, strong arms from what Della suspects are long hours of gardening. She is much more freckled as well, so much so that she almost looks tan.
“It must, yes,” Della agrees.
“Well, I must say it does leave your colouring much more amenable to a wide range of clothing, believe me,” she says, pointing at her own fiery red hair.
“I do appreciate that, yes,” Della says, ever agreeable.
“I suppose you know my boys,” Mrs. Weasley continues, “But I must introduce you to my youngest, Ginevra.”
With that, the woman steps aside, revealing a young girl with the same fiery hair as the rest of her family. She’s pretty, Della thinks, or at least, she’ll grow to be. For now, she is firmly in the cute category, evoking the need to protect her.
“Ginny, not Ginevra,” she says, firmly. “I’m going to be a first year.”
“Nice to meet you, Ginny,” Della says, “Why don’t we go get some shopping done?”
They begin their trip at Gringotts, where Della goes to her vault for the sake of appearances. Her father has provided her with more than enough money for the trip, so anything she takes from her vault is pocket money to bring to Hogwarts if she fancies ordering anything via owl, later.
Her vault is a rather new thing, on the upper floors, due to her lack of connection to one of the old wizarding families. Its contents come from various donations and estates from families who perished under the Dark Lord, given to her through right of conquest and revenge, resulting in a tidy fortune that could tie her through life if she so chose.
She averts her eyes when the Weasleys grab only a handful of coins from their large, nearly empty vault. Being an old Sacred Twenty-Eight family, something must’ve happened to leave them so destitute.
Soon enough, they are back in the Alley, making their way to their first stop: Flourish and Blott’s.
The bookstore was booming with people, even more so than last summer, which Della suspects has something to do with the massive sign out front:
GILDEROY LOCKHART’s BOOK SIGNING OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY “MAGICAL ME!”
Gilderoy Lockhart, in her father’s words, is a numbskull with a penchant for theft and disregard for human life and decency. Della’s description is decidedly less wordy: a dangerous idiot.
He is also the next Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor.
Last year, Della and her father would have weekly lessons, mostly focused on Occlumency, which was essentially a protection against someone mind-reading her. Her father would call it shrouding the mind into an ordered illusion, but Della thinks he’s a tad dramatic.
Her father said that if she “proves herself responsible,” he’ll teach her legilimency, which would be wicked. Together, the two arts are two halves of the whole that is the Prince Family Gift in the mind arts.
Her father, through his mother, inherited some natural level of legillemency that gives him impressions of the feelings of others. Della wasn’t so lucky, having no baseline ability to begin with. She does still benefit from the gift, though, showcasing a natural prowess with the exercises he’s taught her so far.
Unfortunately for her, due to Lockhart’s general incompetence, she suspects many of those lessons may get co-opted for defence practice instead, meaning she’s only going to progress more slowly.
As she muses over the man’s inadequacies, he happens to spot her in the crowd.
“If it isn’t Asphodel Evans!” Della wishes she might be shot. “Come here, darling!”
Darling rolls off his tongue like a skunk, keeling over. If she were any less of a Slytherin, Della might run straight out of there, appearances be damned. Alas, fame is fickle, and given her assumed blood status, Della can’t afford any bad press. So she smiles that placating smile, the one that won over her primary teachers, the one that softens the corners of eyes. It’s a small thing, but a deadly weapon when wielded correctly. Della thinks it fills in the blanks with whatever the viewer wants to think, allowing them to build their own picture of her without knowing her at all.
“Now!” he says, commanding the room. “Asphodel Evans came into this shop looking to get an autograph from me, Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin Third Class, only to be gifted with her set of my novels — free of charge!”
In one fell swoop, a box set is shoved into her hands, and Lockhart wraps a hand around her waist, directing her towards the camera. She does her best to smile as the flash nearly blinds her, wishing desperately her father were here to push him away.
“Little does she know this won’t be the last we’ll see of each other.” If only, she laments. “Since I will be starting as Hogwarts’ new professor in the fall!”
She chants to herself in her mind: Keep smiling. Keep smiling. Keep smiling.
Eventually, it ends, and Della is allowed back into the crowd, swimming towards the lighthouse that is the firetruck red of the Weasley hair.
“That was a nightmare,” she whispers to Hermione, behind a smile.
“I don’t understand why you go along with these things,” Hermione says, “You hate them.”
Hermione, for all that she is Della’s best friend, is still a Gryffindor beneath it all.
“I do what I have to do,” she says, “And might as well get on his good side, right?”
“Such a Slytherin,” she says with a fondness that three-quarters of the school would gawk at. Della just smiles.
Her sorting had initially come as a surprise to the Hogwarts student body. To Della, there was nowhere else she could see herself going. A childhood with the Dursleys does not leave you feeling brave, or make you value intelligence, and it certainly does not leave you choosing kindness. No, a childhood like that teaches you how to survive, how to look out for yourself when no one else will. It teaches you that the world will always take more than you’re willing to give, so all there’s left to do is take as much as you can back.
“I see you’ve managed to scrounge up some funds then, Weasley. I suppose all that overtime must have been worth it, then?” The drawl is achingly familiar, though the voice itself is not. Della is unsurprised to find its owner with that bright Malfoy blond hair.
Mr. Lucius Malfoy resembles his son greatly. The pair of them standing in the middle of Flourish and Blotts have hair so pale that it attracts attention from all of the surrounding customers. Unlike this son, Mr. Malfoy’s hair is not constrained by pounds of potion, but rather, flows down his back, straight and slick. His eyes are icy blue, and his face rather thin, with a neatly trimmed blond goatee.
“I work overtime because of people like you, Malfoy,” says Mr. Weasley.
As the fathers begin their grandstanding, the sons sneer at each other from across the store. Draco is glaring hard at Ron, while the youngest Weasley boy appears to be miming himself choking Draco to death.
“Then I suppose I accept your thanks,” Mr. Malfoy drawls, “After all, it is only with your senseless searches that you might be able to afford more than rags for your, what, sixth child?”
Della senses that this conversation is quickly going downhill.
“Just you wait, Malfoy,” Mr.Weasley growls. “I know you’re hiding dark artifacts. I will find them, and when I do, you’ll be sorry.”
And then he punches Mr. Malfoy square in the face, and the esteemed pair of wizards start brawling like muggles in a pub.
Della felt a little bad. It wasn’t fair of Mr. Malfoy to poke fun at the Weasleys' finances. Della had once been very familiar with the insecurity that came with a lack of money, so she sympathized with him greatly. However, she also knew that many “Dark” artifacts were family heirlooms, and for many families of the Dark faction, something to be cherished.
Her father had some Dark artifacts of his own, passed down to him from his grandfather, that were the only things remaining of the Prince family line.
Eventually, the two wizards seem to tire and pull themselves away from each other. Mr. Weasley’s lips have been split, and Della sees the beginnings of a nasty black eye forming on Mr. Malfoy.
“I pity you, dear, for having a ruffian of a father that can barely afford you,” says Mr. Malfoy, handing Ginny her cauldron full of books that had fallen wayside in the squabble. “A word of advice: separate yourself from him as soon as possible.”
And without another word, Mr. Malfoy sticks his nose in the air and walks out of the shop with his son following.
Della takes that moment to pull Ginny aside, out of view from the gathered crowd.
“Take these,” Della says, hanging Ginny her Lockhart box set. “I already have a set of my own,” she lies, “I just didn’t want to turn Lockhart down, you know?”
“I don’t need your pity,” Ginny says, eyes ablaze.
“Not pity, just practical,” Della assures her, “I’m ashamed to own one set of these hideous novels, let alone two. Please, just take them. You’d be doing me a great favour.”
Ginny narrows her eyes, but thankfully accepts them. Della smiles, then runs back to Hermione.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says, “Now.”
Thankfully, Hermione understands the urgency, grabs Della’s hand, and drags her back into the cobblestone streets of Diagon Alley.