Geraldine : Professor Moony’s child

I loved this hot day on New Orleans so much.
Shadows from the canopy were dancing on our naked legs , and for a few hours, we said nothing more.

I was feeling Flora’s breathe on my neck , and the long locks of her hair wrapping around my hips, so softly ; and sliding in a caress when I moved a little. My all life could have been contained in these radiant hours of early summer.
Sharing Flora’s bed, and Flora’s story which had changed my sight of life, only in the time from dawn to afternoon when she told me what her life had been and who shaped her; bright amazon, tower of strength.

“ I kept something from his pure soul.”
The way she said it sounded like this revelation was not necessarily for me. She gently loosened our embrace; and stood up flexibly, to get a book of old leather in her secretary desk.

“ This is not the original. Hermione Granger had kept it in the Ministry. But she had copies made for all who were close to him. It’s protected by a charm. I in turn cannot make a copy, other than by writing it by hand; and there’s more than three thousand pages …
– Is it his diary?
– The one which had been donated by Andromeda Black. It begins in 1985, when he started teaching biology in a muggle Londoner high school ; and it ends, well…
– Oh lord, it’s an incredible testimony that you have here; a treasure …
– I must warn you however. The diary is protected. Not by aggressive magic, it wouldn’t have been the peaceful spirit of Remus. But it only opens for people who respect him sincerely, not those who are only attracted by its belated prestige. He has always worked in shadows and poverty; he would have folded in front of people too curious about his charisma and who would not share his love for the simple human will, and energy.
– I won’t be allowed to open it then, Flora.”

She stood a little bit surprised, the diary still in her hands.

“ Please call me Cypress. Why do you say that Geral’? What’s wrong ?
– I hardly dare say it; but you remember, the night before yesterday; when you told me I didn’t know who I was talking about, and that you left me to go dancing with the others … When I came back home… It’s so difficult… You know, mum has made a painting of him from a photo … Well, I raised the wrong finger in front of him.”

Cypress stared at me for a moment with wide eyes, then she burst out laughing. And while she was laughing like that, in front of my big nose all red with tears; the diary too was shaking itself in her hands …

“ What a child you are, Geraldine ! Do you really think it matters that much ? Anyway , give it a try!”
And she handed it to me, I took it shievering.

“ Come on, Gee, open it !”

But as I didn’t dare , the diary opened by itself , and there came out an amber light, dotted with twinkling stars.

“ You see, what I was telling you ! It’s more wonderful than ever… Because spirits know you’re a good person.”

And i laughed shaking my face in that warm light, with those little stars that came to tickle my cheeks; and curl up in my hair.
Me too, even if I came much later; I was accepted in Professor Moony’s spiritual family…

Lovely Andromeda Black

I’m not a great watcher of fan films, but I really appreciated Sisters of House Black, created by Kelsey Ellison ( who also play a stunning Bellatrix) and co-directed by Thomas Fisher and Petros L. Ioannou in 2019.
Not only that the story allows us to consider the story of the three girls’ personnality in a closer way; but Kelsey has taken special care for their characterization and appearance.
My favorite one is Andromeda Black ( Abby-Kaye Ellison) whom I propose you here a new mosaic :

You know Andromeda is the rebel in this sibling (and Sirius’s favorite cousin ! ) ; fighting against pure-blood supremacy; and she’s bannished from the family tree after marrying a muggle guy, Ted Tonks.
In the film, we can observe the evolution of her clothing; with more and more pieces taken from muggle fashion in the 70’s or the 80’s like the perfecto, the cap, or (picture 4) the coat-hoodie which prefigures the style of her daughter Dora …

Flora : Happy Potterveille

I was euphoric with Neville’s enthusiasm; but my arrival in the Room of Requirement threw a chill.
The conversations turned to silence, and looks of incomprehension for us both. But there was no questioning, since Neville had decided so, the others trusted him.

However, this lack of explanation made me uncomfortable; especially since Neville was called to other duties, and that I found myself with nothing to do.
It’s not just the intense moments of combat that put your mind to the test in a war; it’s also the endless days of waiting ; especially if you feel isolated in your camp.
It took a long time before they really spoke to me. I was sitting against a pillar, frozen; and I spent several days in a half-conscious state wondering what I was doing there.

“ Hey ! Slytherin! D’you want a coffee?” asked me one of the girls in the group with their backs to me. The voice which answered was Ginny’s; “ Stop it now, nobody gives a fuck about houses anymore. We’re all brothers and sisters !”
I think I was having a high fever; haunted with the threatening shadows of my past; Alecto, Amycus, my sister and cousins von Döllhof. I wasn’t sure if I was still somebody; and if I was really somewhere, if I had done well to flee; if I was able to this break with my old life, which I had so ardently desired, and who might kill me in the end.

“ You should eat something, girl.” told me Dean Thomas who leaned over me, one evening when we had received supplies from Abelforth. Lee Jordan had put on some music, it had to be one of those joyful moments; so necessary to strengthen the morale of the troops. “ Come on, let’s have some fun.”
I don’t know which cadaver he took control of at that moment. It was Let’s dance, from David Bowie; synthesizers and drums have returned the blood to my veins. Sitting close to us, Stanley Ingham started beating to the rhythm; and I danced with him just after.

I was then allowed to sit in his group, who had heard from my stunt in DADA’s class.
In the back of the room, Neville, Lee and Weasley twins were tinkering with a sizzling radio. Everyone was only talking about Potterveille, which would take place in a few hours. I was curious, but mostly busy eating apples and drinking butterbeer as if my body had finally come back to life.
Life … when it burns again in your heart, there the face of happiness appears.

With Dean’s exclamation.
“ Remus, you’ll never find out who we’ve recruited ! “
I couldn’t believe my eyes. He was there, even more stunned than me, the same tall tutelary presence with his sparkling eyes; but tired, and in a poor patched raincoat.

“ Flora ! I knew it … I knew it …”
And I felt my feet take off from the ground, for the most memorable hug of my entire life.
It was pure heat, eyes full of hair ( mine, his, anyway), laughs for no reason; as if I had just found my father again, after four years. Dean, Neville and the others didn’t know at all what brought us together in third year, and they were all surprised; but incredibly happy, as if the trust they instinctively placed in me had just found its irrefutable proof.
“ I’ve not been brave, Remus.
– Is it a joke ? You really think heroines never have a moment of doubt ? There’s no hazard Flora; you have always been on the side of justice, and you will not regret your choice, we’ll take good care of you.
Do you do you want to be my assistant for this radio programme ?
– I don’t know muggle technologies at all
– You’ll learn quickly. You always did.”

Students were all asking him how Dora felt around the table.
“ Oh , I didn’t tell you, Flora. I’m gonna be a father soon … me who thought I was made to stay an irresponsible kid all my life, I’ll have to clean up my acts from now on …
– Afraid by the married life like Snape in front of a shampoo bottle? Asked Fred Weasley
– In this precise case ; I would rather say that it is the bottle of shampoo that will take its legs around its neck to flee.
– Great ! I will keep it for the talk show !”

Flora : Dark Crash

Flora Carrow at the Slug’s club (Half-Blood Prince)

We barely saw each other. Things go like that in pure-blood families, pairings are decided by the parents; and love has strictly nothing to do with it. Ewald and Pavel von Döllhof were the heirs of a prestigious name and a large estate somewhere in the coldest center of Europe; the alliance was made to raise the name of Carrows further, and we had absolutely nothing to complain about. Especially in those times of war where the oldest stumps had to tighten up on their roots.
It was therefore decided that the following summer, we would be engaged; Hestia with Ewald, and me with Pavel. I had danced with him a bit on the evening of the concerto; and he told me with a face so unfazed that I hadn’t been able to interpret his words : “ You’re bored with all this pump; but better days will come.”

You know then how things went, after the Department of mysteries’ battle, Lucius Malfoy has been sent to Azkaban; and every travel has been canceled, even for us. But that didn’t stop dad and Alecto to bring out the champagne when they learned of Sirius Black’s death.
“ Ours did not have the wolf, but we will soon make a doormat with his skin.
– It would even disgust me to wipe my feet on it.”
What disgusted me was you, fat bitch … However I had nothing but a marble face , measured gestures. But since I didn’t want to be married; dad let Alecto torture me just before my sixth school year in Hogwarts. With a Diffindo which inscribe words slowly, deep in your flesh … I am just a silly brainless peronnelle and I will submit to my blood.
I felt my blood. I even remember my split skin and muscles heaving on my bones; and she was taking her time.

My wounds sometimes opened and I was still bleeding when Hestia and I were invited to Slug’s club. You can’t even imagine what a breath of freshness it was for me to hear Hermione talk about her dentist father with such a smile of ingenuity. She must have been scared by my gaze, but it wasn’t contempt. It was pain.

I was thinking on Remus when words started to bleed under my quidditch jersey.
This suffering had a meaning; this skin couldn’t be mine forever.
But Darkness continued to spread. There was once again a celebration for our guide Dumbledore’s death.
This tragedy had yet divided the purebloods, but I belonged to the worst of them.

And there we are, seventh year. Under the direction of Snape, but mostly under my father’s reign; which was inspired by the darkest Durmstrang’s decades. The sound of boots in rhythm on the great stairs, and that silver ring on my finger, two entwined snakes attached to it by Alecto’s spell; the sinister pledge of my engagement sent by von Döllhofs during the summer.

What hurt me the most ; it was my father’s grip on Defense against the Dark Arts’ department. I was not proud at all; what I had experienced in my third year did infinitely more honor to this subject. But everything was spoiled in the class; they had destroyed the phonograph, and most of the aquariums had been smashed to pieces; except curiously that of the gryndilows … My father’s teaching had although replaced the term of Defense by this of Practice.

Practicing Cruciatus Curse on the first years, it was Alecto’s idea. When a stupid sadistic person has a free hand, its damage capacity has no limits anymore.
Very young people, our little sisters and brothers; can you imagine them, writhing in pain on the floor; screaming and sobbing to death ? But you know, Geraldine, I read a muggle experience report, which explained that people did not hesitate administrating to others even fatal electric shocks; from the moment they were told it was their duty …

Despite everything there was this group in a corner of the room, who stood united in the half-light; and who refused.

“ You, Longbottom, once more … What would you say to demonstrate on yourself?”

Neville took a step towards Alecto, jaw clenched, resolved not to conceed anything this time again. But an irrepressible trembling shook his shoulders, and his face was all swollen.
This is what made me wave my wand, not the compassion I could feel; but the rage of resistance that there was in this step forward; in the contraction of this jaw, in this gaze on fire.
There I found myself; not in the servile group obediently gathered behind the man to whom I owed this life.

My wand’s stream shattered the aquarium glass, and the gryndilows threw themselves furiously at Alecto; whom they sowed to compress all the fat.
At that moment my ring grip loosened around my finger; and I threw it , burning, at my sister’s face who was approaching me, threatening; with other slytherins.
“ Marry them both!”

And I felt a hand pull me back, Neville’s hand. “ Come, come, quick !”
I no longer understood what was happening to me. I ran with the whole group in endless rows of corridors, bundles of hair stuck in my eyes by my tears. Arrived in front of a large ornate door that opened for us, Neville asked me
“ D’you want to be one of us ?”
I couldn’t say anything, but I squeezed his hand in mine, and I followed him.

Flora : In a pure-bloods’ evening

« Do I understand now why you’re called Cypress Johnson ?
– His wand’s wood, and filiation to his middle name. But despite this, my name goes unnoticed … It’s just my tribute to him for a new kind of life, and I consider it now as my true identity. But the way has been so long, Geral’

When Remus quitted Hogwarts, he left a big void. The other house’s girls could show it and then forgetting did its job. The Triwizard Tournament quickly occupied all minds; and I returned to my role of plague with my sister.
I didn’t have for Harry the sympathy I had for Neville; it’s terrible to say, but I ended up rallying to his cause, for his allies; and maybe because I was fascinated by Hermione Granger.

Being trapped in my role didn’t stop me sometimes from discreetly warning Neville from ambushes my mates held out to him. He didn’t understand at all why I was doing that, but I felt him sincerely relieved and grateful. Too much grateful in fact, I was just preventing unfair actions, I was true to myself; as Remus had advised me to be.

This sense of honesty, it was all I had left of his passage in my existence. I didn’t realize by then that it was the most important; I was just full of bitterness, but now unable to change my course.

My father and his fellows announced one night that they suspected the Order of the Phoenix to have reformed.
The information had created some tension, and sounded in our homes like a threat. But when they listed all the names of those who made up the First Order; I was taken with a thrill of excitement.
I imagined Sirius and Remus together, leaning over a battle plan , like the good old times; and I was dreaming of what was the truth , in fact.

Why did life give me birth on this side of the war ? The atmosphere in the house had become stifling since mom died, and fat aunt Alecto had come pretending to take her place.
All that could have made me happy; muggle things, had been irretrievably banned; Hestia and I were living as in eastern Prussia in the XIXth century.

Dad received important people who spent nights plotting in the smoking room.

We were often obliged , Hestia and I, to play in chamber music ensembles in Malfoy’s manor.
It gave fat Alecto hot flashes and she gave us a lot of instructions, although she’s never been able to read music.

Malfoys were receiving several aristocrats from Central Europe; and I understood why my father absolutely wanted us to be there.
“ Play well, jewel” he told to me one evening. And before I could recover from the surprise of his unusual tone, I saw in the golden door frame two boys ; tall and emaciated; with white blonde hair cut very short, and long scars on the face.

We all knew that in Durmstrang, future elite fighters used to slash their faces during duel sessions.

The two boys were very similar, maybe not twins; but in any case cousins, who must have been in their twenties.

I sat down at my cello, and noticed that one of them was staring at me despite the pout of disdain on his face.
I was scared of his long red mark which started from the cheekbone and went down to the chin.

Those insane guys can’t even respect the natural beauty of a scar.