Chapter Text
Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe were devastated to say they weren’t normal anymore, not after the Incident. No matter how desperately they tried to weasel their way back into the higher social classes, the Incident seemed to follow them like an overly excited puppy. They still had some friends, of course, but not the kind of friends that invited you to fancy dinner parties and magnificent balls. The ones they themselves organized also didn’t have the turnout they used to have in the good old days, no matter how much money or time they spent on it. They’d simply fallen out of social grace.
Mister Wolfe came from an old pure-blood family, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. He was a tall wizard, with broad shoulders and long limbs. He had sand-colored hair that was a mess every morning and stark grey eyes that looked a little blue when he wore his slim rectangular glasses. He had some kind of job with the Ministry of Magic that was likely too boring to care about. Miss Wolfe was an alchemist, equally tall as her husband but much more elegant, with long blond hair but darker, heavy brows and warm amber eyes; fine features, high cheekbones and a slim nose. She wasn’t from any highly-regarded English wizard family, but she was absolutely stunning and very smart, plus she came from the European mainland. That had to count for something.
The Wolfes had a daughter, Jade. When she was toddler, she looked a lot like her dad but as she grew up that shifted more and more in her favor, until she looked like her mom but with her dad’s piercing grey eyes. Jade grew up to have her mom’s intelligence, her dad’s innate aptitude for magic, his feeling for cynicism and sarcasm and her mom’s love for books and art, which in both their minds were pretty much the same thing. She was tall for her age at any age, and an absolutely delightful child. The little girl with the two blonde braids could sit quietly content in a corner as long as she had a book to read or paper to draw on, though she could be quite shrewd with her teachers, to their great frustration.
Young Jade didn’t always see the need in veiling the truth, in wrapping her blunt honesty in a neat bow for a softer delivery. It didn’t make her the most popular kid, but she had a few close friends who liked exactly that about her. Still, as she got older, Jade learned the value of sweet talking and started paying more attention to body language, until she could read people like a book and could say exactly what would get her to what she wanted, especially to grown ups. She taught herself the art of kissing ass and became an innocent-looking force to be reckoned with because of it.
The Wolfes had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, one they would do absolutely anything for to make it disappear. Though you couldn’t quite call it a secret, considering every living soul in the wizarding world knew about it. Jade wasn’t an only child, you see, though she might as well have been for how hard Mr. and Mrs. Wolfe tried to deny the existence of their oldest child. So when eight-year-old Jade asked her mom where her brother had gone, and why, a few months later at the start of what should have been Jacob’s seventh year at Hogwarts, they hadn’t dropped him off at King’s Cross, Miss Wolfe just smiled and shook her head the way adults do when a child says something incredibly irrelevant.
So you can imagine how thrilled the Wolfes were when their daughter received her letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as going to school was a surefire way to distract their little girl from her brother’s disappearance. Because even four years after the fact, Jade never stopped asking questions, never stopped thinking about her lost brother. Mister and Miss Wolfe laughed and smiled and Mister Wolfe promised to buy Jade her own cat, but deep down they tried to ignore a nagging fear. As with their curious daughter at the exact place of the Incident, the past they tried so hard to bury just might come back from the grave to haunt them. Little did they know, digging was exactly what Jade Wolfe was planning to do.
***
It was a pleasant summer afternoon, one of those perfectly sunny days the entirety of England cherishes for their rarity, when a lone tawny owl settled down on the elegant iron fence around the Wolfe Estate. By a matter of chance, Jade Wolfe, who was now eleven years old, was reading in the shadow of her favorite tree, a particularly large willow close to the fence, and noticed the bird as soon as it rustled its brown feathers. She looked up from her book, pages worn with years and years of love, and squinted against the sun. The owl had an envelope in its beak.
Slowly, Jade put her book down. “Hello,” she said to the bird, “what do you have there?” As a daughter of two wizards, Jade was more than used to owl mail but still got delighted every time one of them swooped down with a letter attached to their leg. When she was younger she’d made it a point to have some owl treats in the pocket of every pair of pants or dress she owned, just in case. It frustrated the nice maid who did their washing to no end when she found the soggy remainders of yet another treat sticking to the otherwise freshly cleaned clothes.
The owl didn’t answer, obviously, but it hooted softly, muffled because of the parchment in its beak. Jade got up and walked over to the bird, approaching slowly to make sure she didn’t startle it. The owl patiently waited for her to reach her little hand up to drop the firm envelope in her opened palm, and then hooted again when she offered it a pair of treats with her other hand. The girl didn’t notice, though. She was too busy reading the elegant cursive in emerald-colored ink, and too excited to keep her hands from shaking.
Jade took the letter inside. Despite its family having fallen out of grace, Wolfe Estate was still as grand and glorious as ever. A tall, stately building with black walls and gothic decorations, surrounded by sprawling acres of land, flowing hills and large trees and even a winding river. Jade had never really cared much for it, though. It was home, the only one she’d ever known, and she cherished it, but she knew that once she grew up and got the opportunity she’d leave it just as easily.
Now she wandered through the hallways, searching for either of her parents. She found her father first, striding to Merlin knew where with a heavy book in his hands and ink stains on his left cheek. She offered him the envelope and Byron Wolfe’s brows crept up when his piercing grey eyes slid over the words on the thick parchment. Then, he looked down at his daughter. “Let’s go find your mother, shall we?”
Jade shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unable to stay still. “Is that it? My letter for Hogwarts?”
Mister Wolfe returned her smile. “Why yes, I believe it is, dear.”
They found Miss Wolfe in the attic, flipping through an old photo album. One of the people in the pictures waved at Jade as she walked over to her mom, making Theresa Wolfe look up and flip the leather-bound album shut. “What’s that? Is that for me?” Jade shook her head and Mrs. Wolfe looked up at her husband, who grinned at his daughter’s fixation. Theresa’s eyes widened comically when she realized. “It arrived, then?” Jade’s smile was wide enough to split her face in half.
They went down to the periwinkle living room to actually open the letter. Dear Miss Wolfe, it read, we are pleased to inform you you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A triumphant squeal escaped Jade’s mouth, making her parents exchange an amused glance behind her back. She pulled out the list of requirements, decided it wasn’t interesting enough and handed it to her mom.
Miss Wolfe took a quick moment to scan the list. “I suppose that means we’ll be making a trip to Diagon Alley soon.” The grin her daughter gave her was blinding.
That evening, Jade locked herself up in her room immediately after dinner. Usually she wandered around the Estate for a while whenever the weather permitted it, or made herself comfortable on one of the many grand couches to read or draw or dream up an elaborate story that usually included the return of her brother. That night, however, she went from the burgundy dining room up the black staircase to her own bedroom and plopped down on her bed.
Jade’s bedroom was larger than that of your average eleven-year-old, what with her father coming from old English wizard money and her mom from old European wizard money, but it didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the house. Everything about Wolfe Estate was dark and grand and imposing and unnecessarily elaborate, as all conceited wizards liked their homes. Jade’s bedroom was light, from all the sun that poured in through the windows that spanned most of the walls. And whatever wall wasn’t made of glass was covered with bookcases, which were overflowing with stories and fairytales.
The frame of her four-poster bed was made from dark mahogany with a night blue velvet canopy, which matched the heavy curtains. When she was about four, Jade had convinced her nanny to embroider an entire night sky of little silver stars and moons on the inside of the canopy, so that whenever she couldn’t sleep at night, she could look up and see the sky. It was underneath this velvet sky that Jade now laid down to read the letter again and again until she knew it by heart.
The list of requirements she’d disregarded at first, she now threw a look at. A History of Magic and Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find Them she already owned, though the pages of the latter, emerald-covered book wore several stains from carelessly put down teacups. Hogwarts, a History she knew her dad had lying around somewhere, and though she’d once started it Jade had never bothered to also finish the book. Something that rarely happened to her, but this one had been too thick for how dry it was written.
Most of the other books on the list could probably be found somewhere in the house as well, considering both of her parents had attended Hogwarts and were firm believers of never throwing books away, but Jade herself was a firm believer of the related concept that you could never own enough books, even if that meant possibly buying doubles. Besides, Flourish and Blotts was too tempting not to visit.
Jade rolled off the bed and dug through the pile of parchment on her desk. The dark wooden desktop was barely visible underneath a scattering of books, a variety of unfinished sketches and letters from both her dad’s parents in York and her mom’s parents in Paris. Even in the complete chaos, it only took her a couple seconds to find what she’d been looking for. Hidden underneath two strategically stacked books laid a picture of her brother she’d nicked from one of her mom’s photo albums. A sad, involuntary smile crept over her face when she looked at it.
Young, eager Jacob Wolfe, fully dressed in his robes, waving and grinning broadly in front of the familiar scarlet train. Jade turned the picture around and slid her finger over the date on the back side. September 1982, it read. She’d been one, she hadn’t consciously experienced her brother’s first year at Hogwarts, though she vaguely remembered what his sudden absence felt like. And of course the joy when he returned ten months later, full of stories about his new school. Jade swallowed something bitter away. If only I’d known then, she thought, thinking of every time she’d waved goodbye to her brother at the station, counting down the days until he’d return home for Christmas. Until one year, he didn’t anymore.
The memory of Jacob always filled Jade with a cold array of emotions. Sadness, mostly, and a dark kind of melancholy. But when both of those simmered down anger remained, both directed at her brother and her parents. At Jacob, because he’d disappeared without saying a word and worse, without even saying goodbye. At her parents, for pretending like nothing had even happened at all. Jade knew she wasn’t being silly, knew she wasn’t insane. She had a brother, even though she might not have known him as well as she once thought she had.
It was late at night when Jade finally fell asleep, with a hollow void in the center of her chest and thinking of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.