Eloquence.

It took a total of two days to finish going over my inheritance with Gringotts officials and I’d just managed to get a few hours sleep with the train blasting by outside my room at the Leaky. I’d gone through two more employees before finally the handed me off to a very nice bumbling boy a year my senior whose name was Miles McGregor. I think it was punishment for something he’d screwed up. He reminded me of Loyd.

“Here you are, Ms. Harris.” He slid a thick brass skeleton key over his teetering desk along with a thick manila folder and flashed me a megawatt smile, “Your vault number is 712, the key is required for identification however your wand may also be asked for and goblin will naturally accompany you in order to open the vault completely. Any other information you need is here in this folder.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Thank you.” I fiddle with the key and sigh when he pulls out yet another stack of papers, “If I am correct there is a house involved with this that I am supposed to be escorted to and inspect today.”

Miles nods a few of his corkscrew brown curls flying into his eyes before springing back and shuffled through a few more papers before calling over an older official a few cubicles away. Introductions were hurried through and the needed paper work was signed yet again. My hand was beginning to ache from all the initialing. Miles and Harper (I’d missed the slightly older mans first name and didn’t care much to ask) lead me back out into the Alley before sidealong-ing em me to the proper address. The Miles’ robes feel like a little rough beneath my fingers.

I stumble when we land and do my best to ignore the face Harper makes at me. Everyone’s a supremacist now it seems. I return the look as I brush off my knees. Harper does not look amused, in fact he looks a bit like he wants to run me through. That or spit on me. Miles is chattering away, fiddling with his cuff links and smiling a little too wide. I think he’s trying to cover up for his partners obvious dislike of my bloodline. I do my best to pay attention but can’t seem to force myself to listen.

I press my foot into the dirt road as we walk its length to my grandmothers- my house. I’d only met my grandmother a handful of times, most of them in the short time I’d been at Hogwarts. She was the reason I even got to be a student there.She wasn’t particularly kind to my mother and that was the main reason I never really saw her but I liked her well enough. I stayed with her my second summer with the Cartwright's, we read in the sun room together for hours. She taught me how to ride a broom and how to understand Quiditch and how to walk in heels, the last I was not keen on.

Miles is still jabbering, something about knit robes and itching cream, when the house finally comes into view. It’s a quirky thing, mostly tall and skinny with oddly placed offshoots. My grandmother said it wasn’t meant to be a show house and that’s what they had the place in France for. She told me once on a muggy summer day that she liked it better here, that it reminded her of her husband. Now it reminds me of her.

A couple of the shutters are broken, the glass from the sun room is missing panels here and there, it looks worn and sad and lonely. Grandmother used to say that the house reflected the state of its current owner, that she thought the house looked a bit green when her husband caught dragonpox like it was sick too. I wonder what it looked like when she died, peaceful I bet. I push away the memory because I don’t want to think about being as run down as the house looks. I want it to look like it did when my grandmother owned it, like magic.

Harper pulls a pad of paper and quill from the folds of his robes and begins to explain the cost of fixing up the house. I want to hit in and tell him to not circle the house like a vulture. I don’t. I simply stop at the steps leading up to the house. Miles looks back at me from the third step up and asks me if I’m alright. I ignore him for a moment and try to remember what my grandmother told me in a letter one year. You’re a Liddel, Alouette, stand up straight and don’t let anyone tell you what to do. I bite my lip and look at Harper for along moment as he begins to unlock the door. It swings open at his push and slams shut, the mail slot snapping at him wildly before settling once more.

I let Harper try a few more times to open the door purely out of spite. He falls down every time the door slams in his face. My grandmother and I did that warding spell together, mostly because at twelve I was a particularly vicious thing and at fifty-three so was she. We tried it on the teenagers who used to come and throw eggs at our door first, the neighbors still think the house is haunted. After his fourth try, I loop my way up the stairs and tap the side for the doorway with my wand four times. The lock clicks and the door swings open chiming a greeting. It looks like Miles wants to laugh and I’m sure that the look I’m getting from Harper could murder small household pets.

We spend several hours going from room to room, Harper’s quill scribbling wildly listing all the repairs he thinks it needs and Miles is still talking. I’m tempted to introduce the wizard to duct-tape around the second hour but refrain as best I can. The house itself seems to sigh in relief when they depart but once their gone I find myself standing at the front door not quite sure what to do with myself.

It hurt to be here, in this house that had so many old memories. Memories that didn’t know my friends, ones that didn’t know what it felt like without them. I leaned against the door, gazing into the room. It hurt again like when I walked out into the field and talked to Will’s mother. It hurt and I was tired, I wanted to sleep badly but I knew I couldn’t. Not without a potion, not anymore.