Beyond the Tapestry - Chapter 4

So as you may have noticed, I'm really bad at working on what I'm supposed to be working on! November was supposed to be all about WWDtS, I had a vote for it and everything, but I've had...minimal success with that project 😭.

Still, I haven't done no writing and I do want to give you guys something! This is the project that has captured my limited writing attention this past month or so. Not sure its going to go anywhere yet, but I've really enjoyed working on it so far.

Beyond the Tapestry is sort of a non-quest revamp of Harvesting the Multiverse, a story I wrote a lot of at the start of this year. That story has developed a lot of cracks and ended up being terribly unbalanced, but I did really enjoy the initial concept and wanted to iterate on it. Its a Harry Potter/Magic: the Gathering/Multicross fic following an OC Black character (as in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black). The magic system is heavily revamped and based loosely on elements I've loved in other stories, and I've also changed a lot of the mechanics found it HtM to fix some of the problems that I ran into there.

Anyway, I think that's more than enough Author's Note. This is chapter 4/6 that will be coming out in 15 minute increments. Let me know what you think!

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Dorea didn’t bother staying to watch the team trio semifinals. None of the Hogwarts teams had made it into the top sixteen this year, much less top four, and her opponent for tomorrow wasn’t participating either. She did enjoy watching dueling—it was by far her favorite sport—but she had bigger things to worry about right now then if Beauxbaton was going to pick up a sixth consecutive win in the team trios. 

There was a deep, pensive frown on her face as she took the long path back to the rooms her team had been provided, the good mood she’d been in after her overwhelming victory mostly spent. 

Her opponent for the finals was…concerning. She’d been expecting to be facing Leon Delacour. Leon was an excellent duelist, talented and well practiced with plenty of power and a deep well of experience to draw on. She’d dueled him a good two-dozen times over the years and, while their record actually favored him by two, she felt good about her chances. She’d watched most of his duels this week and even fought against him in the first portion of the seven-on-seven event. Despite losing that match, she’d taken down both him and one of his teammates one versus two before falling to a hex Malfoy deflected into her back. 

Leon was good, but he was a known quantity. She knew what spells he favored, how he dodged, his tells and tricks. She’d been expecting to face him in the finals tomorrow since the mid-year tournament during the winter holidays and had been preparing for him specifically for months. She’d gone so far as to borrow the family pensive to review a handful of their matches in detail. 

She could beat him. She knew she could beat him. It would be close, it would be stressful, but she could do it.

But she wasn’t going to be dueling Leon Delacour, because Leon Delacour had lost in the semifinals. Had lost to a nameless, penniless, backerless peasant. Had lost to a sixteen-year-old who was by all accounts participating in his very first dueling tournament ever.

And it hadn’t been even close.

It was quite hot outside, and Dorea’s magic made her very resistant to the cold, but just thinking about the match she’d just witnessed sent cold shivers down her spine. It hadn’t been as one-sided as some of her own matches at the very start of the tournament, the ones where she dueled sixteen year olds from lesser schools who were just there to pad out rosters and gain experience. Except this time, it was the green sixteen year olds who was in control from start to finish.

Gellert Grindelwald was not an incredible duelist by any means. He’d barely moved the entire match, had a poor stance, and didn’t seem to know how to chain his spells together, but it simply didn’t matter. Why would it when he could cast spells Dorea expected her aunts would struggle with, could seemingly tell what spells Leon was casting before Leon himself did, and was simply too powerful for his age with a pitch-black aura at least as developed as her own.

The worst part was that a loss to Leon would be bad, but she could work with it. Leon was a known quantity, someone Uncle Sirius had heard of and even met. He was also planning to go pro in a year or two and Dorea could potentially argue that a close fight against him meant that she did have what it took to succeed as a professional duelist just like Leon’s family clearly believed he did. 

A loss to a sixteen year old peasant though? Not a chance. Uncle Sirius wouldn’t care that Grindelwald had thrashed Leon like a cat toying with a mouse. He’d care only about the bad press. She could see the headlines already, ‘Black Daughter Loses to Underage Peasant in IYDF Finals!’ No one would care about her reaching the finals, only the loss. She’d be married off in a heartbeat, if not stripped of her name entirely for bringing such shame to the family.

‘There were two of them. How were there two of them?’ The thought swirled round and round and round in her head, pounding behind her eyes and leaving her feeling twitchy and off balance. 

Dorea was a good mage. She was powerful, talented, and motivated. Charms came to her easily and she’d breezed through all her lessons on witchcraft. She’d had no talent at all for the dark arts, but her affinity for light magic was the strongest her family had seen in nine generations! She’d managed a fully formed Patronus at thirteen and had only further honed her abilities in the years since.

It took a lot more than good to stand out when you were only a year above Albus bloody Dumbledore. Perfect, brilliant, impossible Dumbledore. Dorea was good for her age as she’d been told time and time again. 

Dumbledore was just good. Amazing. The British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot was supposed to be a seventh year, should have been her, but the gods’ gift to mages Dumbledore had held the role since his fifth. He wasn’t even of age yet and he was winning international awards for his groundbreaking research!

For three years her only solace had been that Dumbledore, for all his power and talent, had absolutely no interest in dueling. Professor Ogden had begged him to join the team, had offered to make him team captain when he wasn’t even old enough to compete on the senior team, but he’d thankfully turned the man down. Here at least Dorea could prove her worth and power without his shadow looming over her.

And now…there were two of them. And this one did duel. She wanted to cry, wanted to rage at the world, at the unfairness of it all. How! How were there two of them?

Dorea found an out of the way bench and collapsed onto the sun-warmed wood. Her vision was blurry and her head hurt and her arms twisted with phantom pains. She leaned forward, cradling her head in her hands and squeezing her eyes shut against the tears threatening to break free. If she started to cry now, there was no way she was stopping any time soon. A lady of the House of Black does not do something so unseemly as cry in public.

Her shoulders shook and her chest ached, but her tears did not fall. She should have been used to it by now. Her whole life events had conspired to make her second best. Most people would be happy with second best, but she was a Black. Blacks did not settle for second best. Uncle Sirius had said it himself when he’d sat her down after her third year at Hogwarts, when eyes had first begun to turn away from her pale spark and towards the star that was Albus Dumbledore. 

‘A Black that settles for second best is no Black at all.’

She didn’t need to hear it said to understand what he’d really meant. Would be no Black at all. It hadn’t been long after that that she’d heard of him putting out feelers for a match for her hand. 

She understood that he had to keep the greater good of the family in mind, it was his job, but after that day he’d always been her Lord Black to her when they spoke, and never again just her Uncle Sirius.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d sat there, wallowing in her own misery. More than a few minutes, but likely less than an hour. 

It was the sun, as it so often was, that broke her out of her dark mood. A ray of light broke through the canopy of trees shrouding the bench in shade and fell across her neck. Her shoulders loosened, her muscles relaxed, and without really thinking about it she leaned back, tilting her head so her face was fully illuminated.

She kept her eyes closed—light mage or not, staring into the sun was stupid—but she could still see its brilliance even through her eyelids. The warmth of the sun mingled with the cool chill of her magic and left her feeling complete, drying her yet unshed tears and burning away the shadows inside her.

It wasn’t over. Not yet. Grindelwald was undoubtedly a stronger mage than Leon, but then so was she. And while light magic was often seen as inherently less suited for violence than the dark arts, those kinds of spells had always come easily to her. 

She could feel her pulse quickening, blood loud in her ears. Light magic was a far more effective counter to the dark than vice versa. As ill as dark magic toxicity left her feeling, the reverse was said to be even more unpleasant. And while sure, it was much easier to treat light magic toxicity than dark magic toxicity, the spells to do so were almost all light magic themselves! With how dark his aura was, Dorea doubted Grindelwald could even cast a light-aligned spell like that.

Yes, yes, yes, she could do this. She leapt to her feet, nervous energy driving her back onto the sunlit path she’d been walking down earlier. She could do this. 

Gellert Grindelwald was not Albus Dumbledore. She’d never heard anything about him before, so he couldn’t possibly be half as accomplished. He was just a particularly strong mage for his age. Maybe he’d been born in a place of power or had a trait that allowed him to grow his magic from a young age. She could deal with power. She’d said it herself, he lacked grounding in the basics. She could use that. 

Dorea looked up at the sky. The sun was just starting to set, and she thought she could hear sounds of merriment in the distance. It seemed the party had already started, and she had a well deserved victory to celebrate. She’d caught one of the Beauxbaton girls—a French Malfoy she thought—eyeing her butt earlier in the week. Nothing had come of it yet, but that white hair and those gorgeous gray eyes, not to mention the rest of her…

Well, the finals weren’t until the afternoon. And Dorea could use a little pick me up. 

Therese giggled breathlessly, leaning heavily against Dorea’s arm. The pale-skinned girl’s face was flushed red, her dress was slightly askew, and there was a row of darkening red marks extending from below her ear to her collarbone. Her footing was unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with the heels on her red sandals and strands of her white-blonde hair had escaped from their neat plaits and stuck to her forehead. 

“Now you will win tomorrow for certain, oui?” she asked in halting, heavily accented English.

“Most certainly!” Dorea confirmed. She leaned in and Therese met her half way, her tongue and lips minty-cool and sweet with the lingering taste of mouth-cleaning potion. 

“Good.” She paused, lips twitching as she searched for the right words. “My brother bet me fifty galleons Gellert Grindelwald would win the tournament. I like to ah, how you say, be sure of my investment?”

Dorea blinked in surprise, then laughed, Therese joining her a moment later. “Damn, I better get a cut of that,” she joked.

Therese grinned. “Win first. You come visit me in Biarritz, yes? Beautiful beaches, beautiful city, good for beautiful girls.” She gestured at Dorea, who was wearing lilac dress robes. “We simply must put you in a proper dress. French fashion is best fashion. Not like you stuffy English.”

Dorea gave an appreciative glance at the dress Therese was wearing. It was made from a shimmery, almost metallic-looking silver fabric that clung to the French girl’s hips and hugged her legs like nothing she’d ever worn. “No arguments here.”

“Merveilleuse!” She pecked Dorea on the cheek. “Have you ever visited France?”

“Only for the championship in eighty-six.”

“Ah, you will love it! I have visited my cousins in England three times and it is so cold and dreary. If only you had attended Beauxbaton!” 

Before Therese could continue, she was interrupted by a soft, cultured voice calling from the nearby footpath. “So this is where you got off to, Dory. Phoebe thought you’d run off to your room but I had a feeling you’d be out here somewhere.” She paused as she came around the corner and took in their appearances. “Ah, my apologies, lady Malfoy. I was hoping to speak with my dear sister. She left the stadium early and I haven’t had a chance to congratulate her on her victory today yet.”

Therese didn’t miss a beat. “Ah, nothing to forgive, lady Black. My friends are likely wondering where I’ve gone.” She turned back to Dorea. “I hope to see you after your duel tomorrow. And if not, perhaps later in the summer?”

“For sure. I’ll owl you if I miss you tomorrow.”

“Fantastique! For luck then,” she kissed Dorea’s cheek again and flounced away, leaving Dorea alone with her sister.

Cassiopeia (her sister, not the one whose journals she’d referenced the night before. It was a very common name in their family) drew her wand and twirled it over her head, erecting a silencing paling around them. Then she looked at Dorea and raised an eyebrow. “A Malfoy? A French Malfoy? Really, Dorea? You’re engaged. Act like it.”

Dorea glared up at her younger sister. Cassiopeia had decided to switch things up again. She was nearly a head taller than Dorea today, and her hair was wine red and pulled into an elaborate nine-strand braid that hung down to her knees. She’d kept her usual pale skin tone, but her eyes were a new color Dorea hadn’t seen before, an acid green with specks of blue and red.

“We’re not married yet,” and they never would be, “and even if we were, it wouldn’t matter.” It was perfectly acceptable––expected even––for nobles to have misters or mistresses on the side, particularly if they’d been married for reasons of politics or economics. She knew for a fact that her parents’ suite had an attached third bedroom, as did Uncle Sirius’s. 

Cassiopeia rolled her eyes. “Oh alright. I’ve heard the Potters can be a bit prudish at times, but it's your marriage.” She sighed heavily. “But a Malfoy, really?”

Dorea shrugged. “Not mother’s side of the family, and we’re both women anyway.”

Cassiopeia sighed again. “I know, I know. I just…I don’t see it.” She screwed her face up into an expression of absolute focus and then her features twisted like they were made out of soft clay. Her hair shortened and lightened, she lost several inches of height, her skin gained a warmer undertone, and her facial features changed. In moments, an almost exact copy of Therese Malfoy stood in front of Dorea, though still dressed in Cassiopeia’s dress robes. 

Dorea tilted her head to the side, then gestured at Cassiopeia’s chest. “Little bit smaller, actually. She’s wearing a bustier under the dress.”

Cassiopeia tried to slap Dorea. Dorea dodged nimbly out of the way, but her sister’s arm lengthened in mid swing and caught her in the shoulder anyway. 

“Hey!” Dorea protested. “I still have to duel tomorrow, you know!” Cassiopeia mumbled something rude under her breath, then made the adjustment. Dorea regarded her chest for a moment, then nodded approvingly. “That looks about right.”

“Thanks. You know,” Cassiopeia mused, “I think that might be the first time anyone has ever asked me to make my breasts smaller, no matter how indirectly.”

“Glad to be of service,” Dorea deadpanned. She rubbed her stinging shoulder––Cassiopeia really hadn’t needed to hit her that hard––and then her expression turned serious. “Why are you here, Cas?” 

Dorea did not get along with her sister very well. They could manage short conversations and were friendly enough now, but Dorea couldn’t help but bear a grudge. It wasn’t anything that Cassiopeia had done precisely. Dorea’s sister loved her, and if anything that made it worse. It was just that, well, Dorea wasn’t Cassiopeia. And no one ever let her forget it. 

Cassiopeia had been born a metamorphmagus, the single most prized bloodline trait in the British Isles. She could change her shape freely with just a thought, had an innate gift for free transfiguration, and old age would never find a grip on her body. Mages grew more powerful with age and by using magic, and some of the most powerful spellcasters in history were ancient metamorphmagi like The Morrigan––who many mages venerated as a goddess––and Salazar Slytherin. 

Her birth had been celebrated by days of partying and their extended family doted on her endlessly. Dorea could not count the number of times she’d been ignored or past over in favor of her sister. Uncle Sirius did have a favorite niece, and it was absolutely Cassiopeia. No matter what Dorea did, it could simply never compare to what Cassiopeia could do. 

Cassiopeia smiled at her sadly. “I did want to congratulate you. You were amazing. I don’t care what everyone keeps saying. I’m not half the mage you are, Dory. I don’t know if I ever will be.” Dorea stared at her, face blank. Cassiopeia sounded like she believed what she was saying, but it rang hollow nonetheless. 

Cassiopeia sighed heavily, sounding far too old for a girl of fifteen. Her body shifted again, shrinking until she looked like nothing more than a younger clone of her sister. It was the closest thing she had to a natural form, something she’d based off of Dorea and their parents. It was impossible to say for certain how she would have looked if she had not been born with her gift, but this was her best guess. 

“Charlus is here. He came with me, dad, Uncle Sirius, and a few of his friends to watch you duel. He’s looking for you.”

Dorea grimaced. Uncle Sirius thought she was going to lose. There was no way he’d have brought Charlus here if he didn’t. That hurt more than she wished it did. She’d looked up to him for most of her life, and it hurt to see how little he cared about. “Thanks for the heads up, little sister,” she whispered. 

“And…” Cassiopeia’s voice caught in her throat. After a moment, Dorea extended her arms and her sister slipped into her embrace, shrinking down a few more inches until she could bury her face in Dorea’s shoulder. “...Uncle Sirius has started to entertain offers for my hand.”

“Okay?” Dorea asked slowly. Fifteen was the typical age for such arrangements to begin. Cassiopeia likely wouldn’t actually marry till a few years after she graduated, but it was traditional to begin the courtship process early. 

“Uncle Sirius is…looking out for the good of the family,” she said after a moment. “He’s not just entertaining offers for boys my age. I’m a metamorph. That gives him a lot of flexibility.”

It took Dorea a moment. “He doesn’t want you marrying out of the family.”

“Yeah,” Cassiopeia whispered. “And not just that. He’s been exchanging letters with Lord Gaunt and Lady Smith.”

Dorea blanched. “What?” she hissed. Neither family had any suitable heirs of an age to marry Cassiopeia. What they did have were unwed sons and daughters a decade or more her senior. Her skin tingled, her magic sharp under her skin. “He goes too far.”

Cassiopeia smiled up at her sadly. “He’s the Lord Black. It's his job to look out for the family’s best interests.”

“You don’t even like women! That is not in your best interests!” Dorea didn’t even like her sister, but she deserved to be happy!

“I’m a metamorph. What’s a century or two of marriage to me?”

Dorea clenched her jaw, teeth grinding together. Sunlight played along her skin and her right arm ached where Cassioeia had hit her. There was nothing she could say to that. Nothing she could do about it either. 

Did Sirius think she was going to lose…or was their entire bargain just a trick. Had he ever really given her a way out, or had he just let her think he had? She didn’t expect such a thing from the man, but neither did she think he’d have her little sister––his favorite niece––to act as a man and marry a woman twice her age. 

Dorea held her sister gently, tears soaking into her disheveled dress robes, and fumed.