Chapter 3 - Fledgling
I didn’t know that I was lonely until I left my father’s home. We held lands at the edge of the Uplands by the river Clyde under the authority of Máel Coluim, King of Strathclyde, and Owain the Bald, who came after him. My father was renowned as a seer and advisor, for he had mastered the art of Arithmancy. The Lords of Strathclyde, in return for his council, ceded him the Ravenclaw lands and protected him from the turmoil of the Kingdom of Alba, of which they were a part. As a child, I thought that our hills and moors, the river and castle and farmlands were all there was of the world. Certainly it seemed that we needed nothing else.
My father held the land, and my mother held him together. She knew how to soothe his tempers and lighten his gloom, how to distract him from me when all he could see were my flaws. And those I had in plenty. Frail and thin, with nothing of beauty to remark on, I learned to please him with precocious knowledge. And this came easily to me. I delighted in exploring his library, consuming the hundreds of books there. He called me his bright little bird when he was pleased with me, and I treasured those moments.
My mother made sure to contract my marriage early, for the years of my childhood were uneasy, marked by wars and skirmishes and the succession of kings. From the time I was eleven I knew that my future lay with the family of Gryffindor in Cornwall. I learned all I could of that their country and its rich heritage of magic, for they say that Camelot was within the boundaries of the Summer Country of the Dumnonii. All that is left now of that kingdom is Cornwall and Devon.
Some girls would find romance in the thought of marriage, planning the names of their bairns, but not I. I was more concerned with the number of books in the Gryffindor library and the possibilities of learning more than my parents could teach me of Charms and Transfiguration.
Four years after she had settled my future, my mother changed. She who had been robustly healthy grew pale. She took her meals, not in the Great Hall with the household as the lady of the castle should, but alone, hiding how little she ate. My father teased her about her growing belly, never noticing her wasting limbs and sunken cheeks. He could not, or perhaps would not, see that something was growing inside of her and consuming her from within.
At last she lacked the strength to leave her rooms, and even my father acknowledged what the rest of us had known for months: she was dying. He fell into a rage, and for the first time, my mother was not there to appease and calm him. I stood by, desperate and useless, for I did not know enough of wizardry to help either one.
As we laid her to rest, with the honour and ceremony due to her station, I knew that my life would never be the same. Now the task of smoothing out my father’s high and low moods fell to me, and I fell woefully short of my mother’s example. His dark fits would last for weeks, as I tried calming words and soothing spells to no avail. His antic passions were equally uncontrolled, and he would stay awake for days, whirling everyone around him into a frenzy of activity. But as the antic phases got shorter and ceased altogether, it fell to me to order the household. He would lie abed for days, weeping for the loss of his wife, or perhaps for himself, or sit in the Great Hall consuming cup after cup of ale and mead.
I had always revered my father, rather than love him. His learning and intellect had seemed so superior to my own, unattainable. My mother’s wit and practicality had been something I had taken for granted until it was gone. Now I watched with contempt and fear as my father was overcome by his loss and sank into black madness, slovenly drunkenness and disgraceful idleness. His abandonment of his duties to his people, and to me, infuriated me.
A household run by a fifteen year-old who had always cared more for learning than for the practical matters of mending and tending and keeping the people fed is a sorry thing. I was inept, and knew it. Our farm holders began to drift away to better lords; our servants vanished in the night. And still my father drank and slept and grew inward, curled around his sorrow.
Our salvation came in the form of Master Salazar Slytherin, an emissary of Sir Gerald Gryffindor. He bore a message of condolence to my father and a proposal to expedite the marriage contracted between me and the eldest Gryffindor son, Gareth.
It fell to me to welcome our guest as best I could. As he took in the disarray of our hall and lands his thoughtful consideration of my drunken father made me ashamed. My family is of noble wizarding blood, and yet here we were, with the fields unplanted, the beasts wandering and the hall stinking of old meat and spilled ale.
My father accepted the commiserations with all the self control we had come to expect from him, and agreed to send me early to my marriage without even glancing in my direction.
That night as I lay abed, I felt my soul contract with despair darker than the night itself. Even though I had known of the marriage contract these last five years, I had not faced the reality of it, always distracting myself with hopes of new books to read and new things to learn; new ways to please my father. Now it was upon me and I could hide no longer. I was to be tied irrevocably to a man I had never met, a land I had never seen and a way of life that I had never lived. There would be no going back.
I rose and paced restlessly, the cold stones of the floor striking my feet like a blow. As I gazed out the window I thought how easy it would be to cast myself out. A moment or two of fear and falling, a crash that would reverberate through my body and it would be done. My hand was on the window ledge, but I froze.
Was this how my father felt? Was I destined to be like him? I looked out at the rising moon and silver-washed landscape. No. I would not give in to despair so easily.
The next day Master Slytherin found me in the library. He bespoke me gently, as an equal, even, and seemed to understand how I felt, as if he could see into my thoughts. As he told me of a marvellous Healer who had joined the Gryffindor household, and how he would send for her to help for my father, I wept, hardly daring to admit hope.
And then something wonderful happened. He pulled out a slender, gracefully-carved rod of wood from the inner pocket of his robes. For the first time I saw something I had read about: a wand. Although wands had been made for hundreds of years, it was not often that itinerate wand-makers would come so far afield. Once my mother had spoken of having a wand, but it was clear she had lost it or hidden it away years before. Now it seemed that we might break our journey in London, and visit the famous Ollivander there. My heart fairly burst with joy.
Preparations for my journey south, the assembly of my dowry, and, once Mistress Hufflepuff arrived, experimentations with potions and spells to help my father made the next few months fly by. Under the guise of assisting my preparations, Master Slytherin skilfully manipulated my father into appointing Kenneth MacBede to oversee the lands, and his brother Domnall to oversee the hall. It was a clever thing to do, and well executed. There was no danger of the two ever colluding against my father, as they would never be able to stop arguing with each other long enough. And yet, each would try and outdo the other, to the benefit of everyone, including myself and my heirs, for there was no one else for the lands to come to.
All too soon, the day came for me to bid goodbye to my home on the moors. My father, thanks to the potions and spells, and to his own resolve, had been both sober and in his proper wits for the last month. It seemed that Master Slytherin’s spells, and Mistress Hufflepuff’s potions had worked the wonder that my mother, for all her loving effort, had not been able to do alone.
For the first and only time in my life, I clung to my father, looking to him for support, still afraid of the future. He smoothed my hair and his weary eyes met mine as he bid me well to fare.
I left with a heavy heart and many a backward glance, for all I had ever known was behind me.
Follow the Basilisk Home by indigo_mouse
Chapter Notes:Warning: Suicidal thoughts, substance abuse and mental disorders.
Many, many thanks to Rhi for HP for the wonderful suggestions!
Chapter Endnotes: The Kingdom of Alba (Gaelic: Rìoghachd na h-Alba) for the intents of this fiction, is the Gaelic Kingdom of Scotland that existed between 900 and 1286. The Kingdom of Strathclyde, on the valley of the river Clyde, was outside Alba and was semi-independent.
The history of Scotland in this time period is quite fragmented, so I have done the best I could with what I could find, there is rather too much fragmentary contradictory information, as opposed to too little information. It appears that during this time period, the Kingdom of Alba was fairly unstable, while Strathclyde was more peaceful.