- Chapter Fifty-One -
"That's Sebastian's room!"

"Elladora."

The voice sent a shock through the young girl's body. She hadn't heard it for more than half a year and quite frankly, the tone and volume she spoke at frightened her. Being away from home, she had received unconditional comfort from so many people and now this voice was coming back and stripping it all away again.

"How have you been?" Her mother said and she looked up quickly in shock, trying to keep her face blank of any emotion as she gaped at the woman for a couple of moments.

"N-normal."

"Stupid girl!" Cassiopeia seethed and brought her hand up, grabbing her daughters face as Elladora fought to keep the wince down. "Have you forgotten all basic rules of not talking back even when asked a question?" She turned her head to the right side, as if checking for something on the side of her face.

She then turned her head the other way, seemingly checking the other side. In doing so, she gave Elladora perfect view of her four friends looking over at her and her mother angrily. They all had their jaws clenched and were staring very obviously at the two.

"Do you know those boys?" Cassiopeia's voice lowered down to a stern whisper as she kept Elladora's face held to the right. Her fingers were pressed deeply into the skin of her face and it would surely bruise soon enough. "You may answer this one."

Elladora looked back at them all as they carried on staring. All four of them looked angry, confused and worried at the same time as they watched. She wanted to yell at them to look away, to shout across the platform for help, maybe even run towards them and let them hug her like they did that day she was ill. She made eye contact with Remus and he blinked twice, nearly close to tears as he watched the terrible way she was getting treated.

"No." She gulped. "I don't know them. They're in a couple of my classes but apart from that I do not know them."

The hand on her face went away and she slowly turned her head back to face her mother, glancing at the boys out of the corner of her eyes. They were still stood staring but this time joined by Mr. and Mrs. Potter and Mr. and Mrs. Pettigrew, who were eyeing Cassiopeia warily.

"Come on." The woman seethed and grappled a hand onto her shoulder in the same place where a old bruise had faded over and a new one now seemed to be taking its place.

A sudden movement from the place that they were both staring at made the two of them look over in the boys direction once again to see Peter being pulled back by the rest of them. Elladora narrowed her eyes at them as some sort of warning whilst her mother gripped her other shoulder and turned her around so they were walking straight ahead.

"Blood-traitors." She scoffed as they walked and Elladora's grip tightened on the handle of her trunk. "Always goggling at us like we're the freaks. That Potter family is a mess, old parents and an arrogant bastard for a son. Sirius Black isn't any better. Just wait until you meet the rest of the Black family, much better than that little piece of wasted life."

Elladora's eyes were ablaze with anger as she bit her cheek to stop herself from saying something. Her knuckles were beginning to turn white and pale from how tight she was holding her own trunk. How dare her mother say that about James, how dare she talk about Sirius like she knows him. How dare she call them blood-traitors.

"Oh, Walburga." Her mother's voice sounded once again and snapped her from her anger and she lifted her gaze from the platform floor to see three people stood in front of her. Regulus and what she was assuming were his parents, she had a good mind to leap forward and punch them until their faces were unrecognizable for the way they threated both their children.

"Cassiopeia." The woman greeted, she had quite a slender woman and looked similar to Cassiopeia, but that's probably just the pureblood women fashion. "Elladora." She greeted the young girl, who nodded curtly at her.

"Manners." Her mother seethed into her ear, tightening her grip on her shoulder and practically pushing her into curtsey. Elladora relieved herself from the force by bowing down into a curtsey herself.

"How do you do?" She said politely, looking back up at the two adults before her.

"Very well, thank you." Walburga nodded down at her once before returning into conversation with Cassiopeia. "I suppose we are still welcome this evening." She said and the two children of the families glanced up to each other in apprehension.

"Of course, it would be unchallenging for tomorrow." Cassiopeia responded and Elladora caught a glance of Lily Evans walking hurriedly past her, glancing back ever so slightly with a small smile that was barely noticeable. "Rodolphus would be delighted to let you sleep in a couple of the spare chambers."

Elladora's eyebrows furrowed together slightly in confusion, but she recovered quickly and instead only milled on the confusing sentence in her head. There was only one spare bedroom in the Hargreeves mansion as far as she knew. But then again, she had never been anywhere above the second-floor which was where her own room was. The only rooms on the ground floor that she knew of were the basics obviously. Meaning, the entrance hall, the dining room, the kitchen, the pantry, the drawing room, the ballroom, the music room and the library.

Her parents slept on the top floor, which she had never been up to. There might be a lot of spare rooms on the floor between her and her parents but she wasn't sure.

"Excellent." The man behind Regulus spoke up, he looked even scarier than Cassiopeia and Walburga combined. He towered over the majority of people on the platform and his stern face reminded Elladora eerily of her own father. "You should expect us Early Afternoon."

"Of course."

With that, the Black family apparated out of view and Elladora was left in muddled confusion. Only when a hand was placed on her shoulder once again and she was sucked into the familiar feeling of apparition did she try to make sense of herself. But this didn't seem like the right time to examine her surroundings, considering the fact that her lungs now felt compressed and she would arrive at a new location any second.

The scenery became dark and her feet hit the ground with a small pat as she and her mother arrived at their house. The gates stretched far higher than needed, like the always did and the long path from the gates to the doors of the house was ridiculous. Lawns of grass surrounded a straight and clear path and they went all around the house, accompanied by some hedges stationing themselves at the edges of the lawns.

She gulped at the sight of the dark stone that made up the house and her eyes went to the window that peeked into the ballroom, seeing her father stood watching them arrive at the gate before the black curtains whipped shut in front of it.

Cassiopeia paid no mind to her daughter and walked straight up to the gates, waving her wand so it opened for them. Elladora followed slowly after her, trying to take deep breaths, but seeing all this familiarity, it was hard to find something to ground herself. She was worried that at one point she was going to have some sort of breakdown that would lead to her accidently spilling all of her secrets to her parents, so finding something that would calm her down seemed crucial.

As the two women made their way down the narrow but infinitely long path, their shoes clicked against the smooth cobblestones that had been cemented together below their feet. One sound at a time, the nagging in Elladora's brain got louder. One half of it was telling her to run away and never come back but the other half was reminding her of Regulus and how lonely he would be in this terrible situation, not to mention how much danger she would be putting the others in if she showed up at their houses and her mother knew she had run away.

The large doors were getting closer and closer with every step they took and she just wanted to freeze time, take a minute or two to prepare herself for what lay in the future for her if she went beyond those doors. But they opened before she could think any longer.

Her father stood on the threshold, stood tall and firm with his hands clasped behind his back as he stared down at his daughter who stood at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the porch. His familiar monocle was wedged into its space over his left eye and the dark brown iris behind it didn't show a sign of emotion, maybe except for disgust whilst he looked down at her.

"Daughter." He said and just like at the platform with her mother, his voice sent an uncomfortable shiver of shock up her spine though this one was much worse compared to when she arrived in front of her mother.

"Father." She said quietly and did another little curtsey, not daring to forget in front of her parents, especially now that they were back home and out of the public eye.

"Good to see you haven't forgot your manners." He snarled and even though in his book, it was a good thing he was saying, his tone of voice said differently.

She felt her mother's hand on he back for a split second before she was pushed forward, her leg stepping up onto the first step to stabilize her as she hurried up the rest of them and stood in front of her father as she stayed in the doorway. He then moved out of the way and shoved her further inside. She almost tripped over her trunk if it wasn't for the house-elf quickly taking it off her and setting it down but then acting like he hadn't done such a thing.

"We should think about giving it to the Malfoy's." Her mother spoke as she and her father made their was inside the house, shutting the door behind them as they eyed their house-elf.

"A wedding gift perhaps, when Lucius and Narcissa get married. We need another one anyway, it seems to be slacking." The man agreed, eyeing the elf with distaste as he squeaked and began to dust harder at the mantel shelf. "Dobby!" His voice raised to a yell.

The elf whimpered and abandoned his dusting, rushing forwards to stand before his master. He bowed so low that the tip of his nose brushed the ground. "Yes, master." He glanced up with his big round eyes.

"Have you cleaned her bedchamber?" He gestured to Elladora and Dobby turned to her, eyes widening in delight.

She had always been kind to him. Not so much kind as sending smiles and engaging in conversation with him, but more as a not telling him off or not hurting him and Dobby was very grateful, Looking at him now, Elladora was heartbroken at how she saw how he had been treated and she had not done anything to make him feel better in the past. She had no idea when Lucius and Narcissa were getting married but just then, she had promised herself that she would be there for him as much as she could before she left.

"Dobby has." He turned back to her father. "Dobby has cleaned Mistress Elladora's chamber in preparation for her arrival."

"At least you're useful for something." He snarled and grabbed Dobby by the pillowcase he wore. Elladora felt her fingers twitch in need to go forward, but stopped herself at the last second. "Go and clean the spare rooms for the Blacks."

"Rooms, sir?"

"The empty one on the second-floor and the empty one on the first-floor." He seethed in return to Dobby's query, throwing the elf back down to the floor by his pillowcase as Dobby squeaked and grabbed his dusting materials again, running to the large staircase that stood in the middle of the entrance hall that they were currently stood in.

"That's Sebastian's room!" Elladora protested before she could stop herself. The words had just spewed out of her mouth before she had time to process what it is she was saying. She knew that there was only one spare room that someone would even be allowed to go in, so having the knowledge that the one was only a few meters away from her own, she became defensive.

Cassiopeia and Rodolphus both turned slowly to face her and she suddenly felt even smaller than she had a couple of seconds ago. Her mother advanced slowly, coming to a halt right in front of her before she swung her hand in the air and Elladora's head flew to the side.

It had been ages since she had been slapped across the face by this hand, the last time having been the day before she started her sixth-year at Hogwarts. Of course she had slapped many many people from that day onwards but only one person had slapped her and Sirius ended up punching him in the face. But this felt new again, yet she wasn't shocked, just dissapointed, in herself.

"It seems you have let yourself go. What can we do about that?" Her father tutted mockingly, approaching the two women as he looked down at his daughter with a sick smirk.

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A/N: time is going so slow for me, I though the last update was like 5 days ago but it was only 2??? Anyways, here you are my lovelies